The Midday Tape

Quad witching Friday has the tape choppy and rotating, with hawkish Fed talk pressuring bonds and small caps while crypto and select mega-caps hold up better.

Fed speak is doing the damage in rates.

Kansas City Fed's Schmid told markets he backed the recent rate hike and that inflation is trending above 3%, calling the price pressure "hot" across a broad set of goods and services, not just energy. He also endorsed the Warsh framework on why yields have climbed: growth, AI-driven demand for capital, and geopolitical risk. That's showing up directly in the bond market, with the 20-year plus Treasury proxy (TLT) off 0.7% and the dollar (UUP) firmer. Equities are feeling the pull, with the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) down 0.5% and small caps (IWM) the weakest major index, down 0.9%, more rate-sensitive and more exposed to the day's soft Leading Index print.

Crypto is the one clean risk-on pocket.

Bitcoin cracked $80,000 and Ether and XRP jumped as roughly $170 million in shorts got liquidated, helped along by the CFTC sending an early-stage crypto rulemaking proposal to the White House, a signal regulators are moving after the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate. The move is dragging the whole crypto-equity complex higher, and BitMine (BMNR) is the standout, up 7.3% on the day.

Mega-cap tech is mixed, not a clean rotation.

Alphabet (GOOGL) is up 0.6% and Amazon (AMZN) up 0.8% even as Bloomberg reports the EU is probing Amazon over suspected price curbs on third-party sellers. Nvidia (NVDA) is flat. Tesla (TSLA) is the laggard, down 0.8%, with the auto sector also facing a fresh headwind as domestic automakers press Trump to keep Chinese carmakers out of the U.S. market. Elsewhere in tech, traders are watching chatter around Broadcom, Western Digital, and SanDisk, with a new China-based memory rival adding competitive noise to the storage space.

Single-name action.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) is in focus after Warren Buffett's exit from the chair, with the stock testing a key technical level. Activist JANA is pushing Cooper Companies (COO) and Bausch (BLCO) for a CEO search, calling the current setup "a crisis of its own creation." On Holding (ONON) is edging higher on a new Kylian Mbappé partnership. JPMorgan upgraded Crown Holdings, Ball, and Tyson Foods to Overweight, spreading some optimism through industrials and packaging.

Still ahead this afternoon:

expect volume and volatility to build into the close as quad witching triggers index and options-related flows, with Fed rate repricing likely to keep pressure on duration-sensitive assets.

Bottom line: a hawkish Fed and a soft macro print are keeping equities on defense into the witching close, even as crypto strength shows risk appetite hasn't fully left the building.