Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly said “the whole world would’ve fallen apart” if the company had a bad quarter

New York Fed President John Williams said he “fully supported” recent rate cuts by the central bank and is in favor of an additional reduction in the “near term.”

Per the prepared remarks of a speech delivered in Chile, Williams said:

“Looking ahead, it is imperative to restore inflation to our 2 percent longer-run goal on a sustained basis. It is equally important to do so without creating undue risks to our maximum employment goal.”

“I still see room for a further adjustment in the near term to the target range for the federal funds rate to move the stance of policy closer to the range of neutral, thereby maintaining the balance between the achievement of our two goals.”

Bitcoin pared some of its big losses, going from less than $81,000 to nearly $84,000 after these remarks hit the wires, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF flipped to up 0.5% from down 0.5%. Event contracts show that the likelihood of the US central bank reducing its policy rate next month doubled to around 60% from 30% on these headlines.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

The New York Fed president is always a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee. We’ve previously discussed that, for this reason, Williams’ words can often carry more weight than other monetary policymakers.

Odds of an interest rate cut in December increased yesterday after labor market data showed the unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in September, its highest level since October 2021.

Only four times in the more than 32-year history of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF has the fund opened at least 1.5% higher only to end the session down 1.5% or more.

And one of those days was today, with early enthusiasm over Nvidia’s strong earnings report turning into a wave of selling as speculative assets, chief among them bitcoin, cratered and dragged everything down with them. The S&P 500’s winners in particular saw heavy selling. Among the 15 stocks in the index that are up at least 70% year to date, the average performance on Thursday was down 5.6%.

The other occasions where US stocks have suffered such a violent turnabout:

April 8 of this year (the bottom, year to date!), when the White House said tariffs on China were going up to above 100%, kneecapping a nascent bounce-back attempt after a 10% drubbing in the three days after the Rose Garden tariff announcements. President Donald Trump would go on to announce that he was slashing reciprocal tariffs for 90 days the following session.

And the other two such instances both occurred in October 2008 (on the 7th and the 9th), as the fallout from the unfolding financial crisis was spreading after the prior month’s collapse of Lehman Brothers and the VIX Index, Wall Street’s so-called “fear gauge,” was routinely above 50, making immense volatility par for the course.