Here's a fun one. The most important number this week arrives Tuesday with a page torn out.
The October inflation report will tell you how much prices rose in one month. It will not tell you how much they rose in a year, the number every news anchor reads out loud. That's because last October the government shut down, nobody collected prices, and you can't compare this October to a month that doesn't exist. Then, on Wednesday, the bond market takes the day off for Veterans Day.
So the Fed gets a manual with a missing step, and the people who set your mortgage rate get a day off to stare at it. Last week's stairwell stampede is in Saturday's Week In Review. This week, we build.
Step 6, check. Step 8, check. Step 7 was last October.
What You Need to Know in Under 60 Seconds
The short version: stocks limp into a week where Tuesday's inflation report could shift expectations for the Fed's December 8-9 meeting. That matters for borrowing costs, though existing fixed-rate loans won't reset.
Inflation comes out Tuesday at 7:30 AM CT. Economists expect prices rose 0.3% in October, and 0.2% excluding food and energy. There will be no yearly number for either.
A December rate hike is a heavy favorite. As of Sunday morning, interest-rate futures implied roughly a 77% to 81% chance, depending on whose snapshot you read. Polymarket, a site where people bet real money on events, priced a quarter-point hike at about 77%.
The Nasdaq is about 11% below its October 6 record. Wall Street calls a drop of 10% or more a "correction."
The AI landlords report. CoreWeave goes Tuesday night. Nebius, Cisco and Applied Materials go Thursday.
Wednesday is Veterans Day. Stocks trade. The bond market and most banks are closed.
Oil fell about 13% last week, with Brent, the global price, finishing at $98.32 a barrel. Iran keeps trying to push it back up the stairs.
Wholesale prices close out the week Friday, with more than a dozen Fed speeches sprinkled in between.
The Week at a Glance
Every date that matters. Times are Central. Forecasts are named where a named one exists; otherwise you get last month's number so you know what "normal" looked like.
Day | Data (CT) | Earnings | Wildcard |
|---|---|---|---|
Mon 11/9 | Fed's Bowman 7:40a · NY Fed survey of what people expect inflation to be 10:00a (last month 3.9%) · Fed's Barkin 11:15a · 3-year Treasury auction 12:00p | Rocket Lab, Take-Two, Trade Desk, Lucid, Hims & Hers, Occidental (p.m.) | UN climate summit (COP31) opens in Turkey. China's inflation figures land Monday in Beijing. |
Tue 11/10 | Fed's Waller 3:00a (in London) · Small-business optimism 5:00a · INFLATION REPORT (Labor Dept.) 7:30a (forecast +0.3% in one month, +0.2% excluding food and energy; no yearly figure) · Fed's Logan 8:35a · 10-year Treasury auction 12:00p · Fed's Bowman 2:30p and 5:30p | Sea, On Holding (a.m.) · CoreWeave, StubHub (p.m) | The page is missing. Read the one-month number. |
Wed 11/11 | Veterans Day. Stocks open. Bond market closed. Mortgage applications 6:00 a.m | Franco-Nevada, Corteva (p.m.) | OPEC's monthly oil report. Thank a veteran. |
Thu 11/12 | Jobless claims 7:30a (last week 189,000) · Fed's Hammack 8:00a · Fed's Barr 9:00a · Existing home sales 9:00a (last month 3.99 million yearly pace) · Freddie Mac mortgage rate 11:00a (last week 7.18%) · 30-year Treasury auction 12:00p · Fed's Williams 5:30p | Nebius, Brookfield (a.m.) · Cisco, Applied Materials, Cerebras, Nu Holdings (p.m) | UK growth numbers scheduled. Bonds get two days of news in one day. |
Fri 11/13 | Wholesale prices (PPI, Labor Dept.) 7:30a · Fed's Collins 8:10a · Fed's Bowman 9:50a · Fed's Jefferson 6:00p | Mitsubishi UFJ, Sumitomo Mitsui (time to be confirmed) | Friday the 13th. Wholesale prices picked their day on purpose. |
Theme 1
The Missing Page
The yearly inflation number is the one everybody quotes. This week, it's missing.
Here's how the inflation report normally works. The government checks prices on everything from eggs to rent, compares them to a month ago and to a year ago, and the year-ago number becomes the headline. In September, it was 3.7%, up from 3.4% in August. That's the one your brother-in-law yells about at Thanksgiving.
This time, the government can't do the year-ago math. The Labor Department's own explainer says it "could not collect October 2025 reference period survey data," so it won't publish the yearly change for overall or core prices. Core means prices excluding food and energy, the two categories that bounce around too much to tell you the trend. You still get one-month numbers. A few items, like gas and used cars, still get yearly numbers because those were tracked separately.
So the market reads the one-month figure. A Bloomberg survey of economists expects 0.3% for everything and 0.2% for core, a cooldown from September's 0.6% jump, the biggest since April. The Cleveland Fed's own running estimate is a touch softer, at 0.24% and 0.21%.
What could go wrong: a hot one-month number with no yearly figure to soften it. Without the big headline, every tenth of a point in the small one does all the talking.
You know that flat-pack bookshelf where step 7 is just gone? You can still build it. You just squint at step 6, guess, and pray the shelf holds. That's the Fed this week. If core comes in at 0.2% or below, the shelf probably stands and December gets debated. If it comes in at 0.4%, the shelf leans, and so does your next credit card bill.
Theme 2
The AI Landlords Bring Their Rent Checks
The companies that rent out AI computers report this week. Their stocks have already been knocked down by half.
Last week, the bill for the AI boom came due all at once (Friday's daily has the stairwell footage). On Thursday, a basket of 30 big chip stocks fell more than 12%, its worst day since March 2020, and the Nasdaq slid into a correction. As of Friday, it sits about 11% below its October 6 record. Truist's Keith Lerner called it "something of a buyers' strike in tech," a polite way of saying nobody wanted to hold the last chip when the music stopped.
This week, the landlords report. CoreWeave (Tuesday night) and Nebius (Thursday morning) rent out warehouses full of AI chips to companies building chatbots. Both stocks have been cut roughly in half since October 6: CoreWeave about 49%, Nebius about 48%. Then Thursday night brings Applied Materials, which sells the machines that make the chips (down about 37% in the same stretch), and Cisco, which sells the networking gear that wires it all together (down about 20%).
The question everyone gets is the same: are customers still signing leases, and who is paying for all this? Remember, Democrats won control of both chambers in the midterms, per the AP's calls, and voters favored limits on data center development in 40 of 41 local ballot measures, per CNBC. The landlords have new neighbors, and they did not bring a casserole.
What could go wrong: a forecast that says "customers are pausing." When a stock has already halved, even a polite pause can sound like a vacancy sign.
These businesses are spending heavily on capacity and relying on customers to follow through on their commitments. That works great when tenants line up around the block. If CoreWeave says the waiting list is still full, chip stocks can catch their breath. If it hints that tenants want shorter leases, Thursday's reports walk into a room that has already decided what it thinks.
Five days, one missing page. Tuesday does the heavy lifting.
Theme 3
Oil Fell Down the Stairs
Iran Keeps Grabbing Its Ankle
Brent dropped about 13% last week. The war that sent it up is still going.
January Brent futures, the world's benchmark oil price, fell 13.3% from the previous Friday's settlement of $113.43, ending the week at $98.32 a barrel, according to settlement prices reported by Reuters and CNBC. On Wednesday, it slipped below $100. The oil funds tell the same story: the U.S. crude fund fell about 12% and the Brent fund about 13%. Traders bet the election and the Qatar-brokered talks with Iran meant the worst was over.
Iran did not get the memo. On Saturday, U.S. Central Command said it disabled a cargo ship called the Huda in the Gulf of Oman for trying to slip the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports. It also set up a new unit, Task Force Iron Gate, to choke off Iran's land routes. Trump confirmed more "minor" strikes on Iran's Qeshm Island, while saying Tehran still wants a deal. Iran's Revolutionary Guard says two more tankers hit mines near the Strait of Hormuz. Independent maritime confirmation wasn't available. Talks continue. Nothing is signed.
Wednesday also brings OPEC's monthly oil report, the cartel's official read on how much oil the world needs. It rarely moves prices, unless it does.
What could go wrong: one confirmed tanker hit by a real shipping authority, not just a Revolutionary Guard press release, could send oil sharply higher.
Oil is a toddler who just got down the stairs on his own, and everyone's clapping. Lovely. But the gate at the top is still open, and Iran keeps leaving toys on the steps. If the talks hold, gas prices keep cooling, and that helps the inflation picture for December. If a tanker goes up in flames that someone other than Iran can confirm, the toddler is back at the top, and Tuesday's report gets a lot less important than next month's.
Theme 4
More Than a Dozen Fed Speeches
and a Bond Market on Holiday
The Fed has more people talking this week than a family group chat. The bond market gets Wednesday off to ignore them.
Count them up, and there are more than a dozen Fed speeches between Monday and Friday. Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman alone shows up four times. Bowman kicks things off Monday morning, and Governor Christopher Waller speaks at 3:00 AM our time Tuesday, from London, four and a half hours before the inflation report. Bold. New York Fed President John Williams, who votes at every meeting, speaks Thursday at 5:30 PM CT.
Here's the twist. The bond market, where the 10-year Treasury rate gets set, closes Wednesday for Veterans Day. That 10-year rate is the one your mortgage rate follows, and it finished Friday at 4.86%. So the bond crowd gets Tuesday's inflation report, a day off, then Thursday's pile of Fed speeches, a 30-year bond sale at noon CT and Williams at 5:30 PM CT. Freddie Mac's 30-year mortgage rate was 7.18% last week.
The Fed's current range is 3.75% to 4.00%. It raised rates in September and held in October, with two officials voting to raise again. Friday's report showed 165,000 new jobs, well above the 65,000 forecast in Reuters' LSEG poll. As of Sunday morning, interest-rate futures implied roughly a 77% to 81% chance of a December hike, depending on whose snapshot you read; Polymarket priced a quarter-point hike at about 77%.
What could go wrong: the Fed speakers all decide Tuesday's number means something different, and the market gets a bad case of whiplash on Thursday.
Imagine a dozen relatives each giving you assembly advice for the same bookshelf, while the one person who actually owns a drill is on vacation Wednesday. That's this week. Focus on officials' comments about inflation and the economy. Waller and Williams matter, but they aren't the only voters speaking this week. If they sound worried after Tuesday, December's hike gets closer to a done deal and mortgage rates stay parked above 7%.
A dozen experts, one Allen key, and the guy with the drill is off Wednesday.
Geopolitical Corner
Ranked by how likely each one is to move your money this week, not by how loud the headlines get.
Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. blockade got tighter over the weekend: one more ship disabled, a new task force for land routes, and more "minor" strikes on Qeshm Island. Since July, the blockade has turned away 147 commercial ships and disabled five, per Central Command via Al Jazeera. Qatar has a draft deal on the table. As of Saturday, no agreement has been announced. If a deal gets signed, oil drops again, and December's rate hike looks less certain. If a confirmed tanker attack lands, oil will jump and inflation worries will return.
Britain after its rate hike. The Bank of England raised rates to 4.00% on November 5. UK growth numbers are scheduled for Thursday. If Britain's economy shrank, that's a warning about what rate hikes do to a slowing economy. The Fed reads the same textbook.
China's numbers. China's inflation figures land Monday in Beijing (Sunday evening here). The U.S.-China trade truce runs through January 10, after a two-month extension in September, so this is not a deadline week. In September, consumer prices rose 0.9%, and factory-gate prices rose 5.0% from a year earlier, per China's statistics bureau. Watch whether October's report shows price pressures easing in China, since the world's factory sets the price tag on a lot of what you buy.
The UN climate summit in Turkey. COP31 runs November 9 to 20 in Antalya, with world leaders expected on November 11 and 12. It almost never moves markets in a week. If anything does come out of it on oil and gas, energy stocks will notice before you do.
The One Thing
Tuesday, 7:30 AM CT: the October inflation report, missing page and all.
Everything else this week is commentary on this one number. The forecast is +0.3% in one month for overall prices and +0.2% for core. There will be no yearly figure, so the one-month core number is the whole show.
If core comes in at 0.2% or lower: the December hike stays likely, but not a lock. Stocks that got beaten up last week, especially the AI names, could get some breathing room before their landlords report.
If core comes in at 0.4% or higher: the December hike odds, already well above 70%, head toward a sure thing. Bond rates rise, mortgage rates follow, and the bond market spends its Wednesday holiday stewing about it.
The honest posture: don't be a hero before 7:30. One number decides the mood. By Thursday, a dozen Fed officials will tell you what they think of the mood. Let it come out, then decide. And if you do something with your 401(k) at 3:00 AM because Waller said something in London, please, go back to bed.
It stands. It leans a little. There's one screw left over. Ship it.
The Sign-Off
This week, the instructions are missing a page, the AI landlords are checking the mailbox for rent, the oil toddler is on the stairs, and the bond market is out of office Wednesday.
You've built worse with less. Keep the leftover screws. Somebody always needs them by Friday.
See you Tuesday.
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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. It's a newsletter written by people who have also stared at a flat-pack manual for 40 minutes and declared step 7 optional. Do your own research, talk to a licensed professional, and never trade your retirement account on a Tuesday-morning hunch.
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