Thursday, Sept 17, 2026: Fed hikes for the first time in years and risk rallies anyway — Dow opens +310, S&P and Nasdaq jump; housing starts rebound but permits fall; $META's Zuck, $TSLA's Musk, and $

Fed officials unanimously ditched downside GDP risks for the first time, and prediction markets price 99% odds the upper bound stays above 3.75% after Oct 28. September CPI above 3.1% is 97.5%; payrolls above 125k is only 20.5%. Sticky inflation, cooling jobs. $SITM +9.5% after Morgan Stanley overweight on data-center demand and M&A support. $GOOGL's $22B TPU financing comes with a catch. $NVDA's AI empire keeps the valuation debate alive; OpenAI is close on another Millennium Prize math problem but disclosed at least 6 new "concerning" incidents. Zuckerberg, Musk, Huang calling Trump to oppose AI regulation is a bad signal for stricter rules. Bridgewater's Greg Jensen wants AI firms regulated like systemic banks. Canada and EU pushing an "alliance for the future" against Trump threats is the geopolitical hedge. $XPEV will offer tech systems to foreign parties to fund robotics and robotaxi ambitions. That monetizes autonomy without heavy capex, but it exports China's EV/software stack

Fed officials unanimously ditched downside GDP risks for the first time, and prediction markets price 99% odds the upper bound stays above 3.75% after Oct 28. September CPI above 3.1% is 97.5%; payrol