Relief, but the selective kind. Nvidia flashed a good datacenter forecast, yields backed off six basis points from their 5.01% scare, and Nasdaq sprinted 1.7% while small caps shuffled 0.55% like they weren't invited to the party. That is not risk-on. That is mega-cap cosplay. Gold is still sitting near $4,418 despite falling yields and a firmer dollar, which means somebody in the hedging community did not get the all-clear memo. Futures want a gap higher at the open, but oil's third straight losing session and a yen that just blew through 157 are the signals actually worth listening to.

Friday's scoreboard: S&P 500 up 1.14% to 7,637, Nasdaq up 1.69% to 26,418, because nothing says broad-based confidence like everyone piling into the same handful of stocks. The Dow limped to +0.61% and the Russell 2000 to +0.55%, the equivalent of getting invited to the rally and standing by the snack table. Gold finished at $4,418 with a quiet 0.43% gain, refusing to budge even as yields fell, which is its way of saying it does not believe any of this. Oil cratered 5.79% to $96.01, the 10-year yield fell to 4.947%, and the USD Index nudged up 0.14% to 100.36. Four assets, four different opinions about what just happened.

The catalyst chain, for anyone keeping score. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh hiked 25 basis points to 3.75%-4.00% on Thursday and rattled everyone's nerves, then Nvidia showed up Friday with an upbeat datacenter hardware outlook and talked the AI trade off the ledge. Yields easing six basis points off their 5.01% high gave equity multiples room to breathe again. Oil's story is uglier: Saudi Aramco quietly started running tankers around the Sohar terminal instead of through the usual chokepoints, the EIA found a surprise 2.1-million-barrel distillate build, and just like that the Houthi risk premium that had crude flirting with $109 evaporated. Three straight red sessions for crude. Geopolitics giveth, tanker logistics taketh away.

For your book: nuance, not a victory lap. QQQ rode the Nvidia halo, but with a 10-year yield still near 4.95%, Warsh's higher-for-longer regime is not handing out favors to money-losing growth names. The cash-flow generators win. The speculative tier gets left holding the bag. On oil, the XLE and USO thesis just flipped: the Saudi Aramco bypass route is a structural supply fix, not a one-headline wonder, so anything still priced for a Houthi risk premium needs to reprice, fast. Gold near $4,418 is the one refusing to play along. It is not selling off despite a firmer dollar and falling yields, which usually means someone bigger than you is hedging something you have not heard about yet, likely the BRICS New Delhi Declaration's slow-motion attack on dollar clearing and the September 24 Trump-Xi summit looming over everything.

Today's setup: S&P futures up 1.04% to 7,719, Nasdaq futures up 1.45% to 29,873, a clean gap higher and a market that has apparently already forgiven Thursday. The yen just blew through 157.88, sailing past the 156.00 line FX desks were watching for BOJ intervention, and Governor Ueda's cautious tone did nothing to stop it. South Korea's KOSPI jumped 2.66% and Japan's Nikkei added 1.38%, both cheering a weaker yen the way exporters always do, on someone else's currency pain. Europe is flat, which is Europe's version of an opinion. The number that actually matters today is the 10:00 AM ET New Home Sales print: at a 3.75%-4.00% fed funds rate and a 10-year near 5%, this is the test of whether the hike is already biting housing. Miss it and rate-sensitive sectors reprice fast. Oh, and Buffett announced he is stepping down as Berkshire's chairman, because apparently even Father Time reads the macro calendar.