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- Affordability Promises, Tariff Rollbacks, and a Fed on the Fence
Affordability Promises, Tariff Rollbacks, and a Fed on the Fence
Washington is suddenly obsessed with making America affordable again, floating food-tariff rollbacks, $2,000 rebate checks, and even 50-year mortgages while voters grumble that prices never really came back down.

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The Big Picture
Energy
Warm Homes, Hot GPUs, Cold Logic

Across colder states, some households are testing heaters that double as crypto miners. These rigs push warm air through living rooms while producing small digital payouts.
It is a tiny trend, but it fits a growing appetite for alternative heating ideas during pricier winters.
The interesting part is how fast this idea is spreading in U.S. online forums and maker communities. Many users view it as a way to offset rising utility costs.
Others simply enjoy the novelty of running a heater that earns instead of burns cash.
Buildings Discover New Thermal Tricks
Workshops, garages, and small commercial sites in the U.S. are rerouting mining heat into their indoor spaces.
The warm air keeps pipes from freezing while reducing traditional heating loads.
Some mixed-use spaces have already added miners near HVAC intakes. The goal is simple: capture heat that would normally drift into the air.
Even small savings matter when utility prices stay elevated.
A Preview of America’s Next Energy Experiment
This micro trend hints at a bigger shift in how Americans think about energy efficiency. More computing means more waste heat, and that heat can be redirected into homes or businesses.
The combination can reduce winter strain and reveal new hybrid models for heating.
It will not replace furnaces anytime soon, but it signals where American tech culture is heading. When energy and compute collide, unexpected innovations pop up fast.

Logistics
Going Postal: America’s $9B Mail Problem Isn’t Just About Packages

The U.S. Postal Service just posted another loss—$9 billion for the year—but it’s a smaller hole than before.
Revenue ticked up, shipping costs eased, and early retirements helped trim overhead.
Yet its controllable loss still widened, showing the deep cost puzzle inside one of America’s oldest institutions.
For a system moving nearly half the nation’s mail ahead of schedule, the math still doesn’t balance. The challenge now is not delivery, but durability.
Peak Season, Peak Pressure
With the holiday rush approaching, the Postal Service faces its annual stress test.
Package surges drive volume, but also reveal where the cracks in logistics and labor spending widen. Even small slip-ups can turn into billion-dollar setbacks.
Still, its new Ground Advantage service shows promise.
Faster shipping times and improved reliability hint that the agency’s modernization efforts might finally be taking root.
Modern Mail Needs Modern Math
The Postal Service is lobbying for reforms that could give it breathing room, pension rules, debt limits, and outdated financial mandates, all of which sit at the heart of its problems.
Without change, efficiency alone won’t save it.
The bigger story is what this signals for America’s infrastructure playbook.
If the nation’s most historic delivery network can’t keep up with digital-age economics, no public service is safe from the same fate.

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Utilities
When Gas Gets Pricey, the Grid Gets Dirty

A surprise jump in natural gas prices has pushed several utilities to dust off their coal units and slow down gas-fired output.
It is a flip that breaks nearly a decade of cleaner generation trends across the country.
The shift is spreading because utilities are under pressure to keep monthly bills stable while power demand keeps climbing.
Six states are driving the reversal.
Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, and Wisconsin sit right on the coal-to-gas pivot point, giving them outsized influence on the national mix.
The Gas Price Pop Hits the Grid Hard
Gas prices have surged more than forty percent over last year. When gas gets that expensive, coal starts looking like the cheaper safety valve.
Utilities have leaned into it, boosting national coal-fired output by double digits while trimming gas generation to save cash.
The Key 6 states moved even faster. Their coal output is up more than twenty percent this year, and their gas use dropped nearly ten percent.
With winter heating and LNG exports pulling more gas off the grid, the gap between fuels is likely to widen.
The Emissions Bill Comes Due Later
Coal is the cost saver of the moment, but it carries heavier emissions per unit of electricity.
That means the short-term relief comes with long-term consequences. Utilities know the polluting curve will eventually force another pivot.
Renewables and storage remain the endgame. But until prices settle, the Key 6 will keep shaping America’s power mix one fuel swap at a time.

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Metrics to Watch
Backlogged September Jobs Report:
This is the first real labor snapshot since the shutdown started and probably the last clean read before federal layoffs muddy the picture.
If payroll gains stay stuck near August’s 22,000 and unemployment holds around 4.3%, it reinforces the slow grind, not free-fall narrative, and keeps pressure on the Fed to stay friendly.Follow-On Catch-Up Data:
Retail sales, wholesale prices, and trade for September should drop fairly quickly now that agencies are back at work.
Stronger sales plus tame price gains support the soft-landing script; weak demand or surprise inflation pockets would tilt the conversation toward slower growth or stickier prices.Bond Market Breadth:
With the Bloomberg Agg up around mid-single digits this year and the 10-year drifting near 4.1%, the key tell is spreads.
Investment-grade credit sitting near late-’90s tights means investors aren’t being paid much extra for risk, if those spreads start widening, it’s an early warning that the best year since 2020 saying is getting tired.Tariff Ripple Checks:
EU exports to the U.S. just jumped over 60% month-on-month after a new 15% tariff deal, even as U.K. shipments slid to their weakest since early 2022.
Watch upcoming trade and customs data to see whether supply chains continue tilting toward Europe, and which U.S. importers are leaning hardest into the cheaper-food, higher-steel-tariff mix.Housing Stress Gauges:
Between talk of 50-year mortgages and builders dangling sub-4% teaser rates, keep an eye on the share of underwater FHA loans and payment-to-income ratios.
If more borrowers are stretching past that ~43% of pretax income threshold and negative equity climbs, housing goes from affordability band-aid to potential sore spot pretty fast.

Market Movers
🧾 Affordability Pivot: Politics Meets Your Grocery Bill
After a rough election night, the White House is scrambling to show it “gets” the cost-of-living pain, talking $2,000 rebate checks, antitrust probes into beef, cheaper prescriptions, and even 50-year mortgages.
It’s more about signaling than instant relief, but it does keep consumer staples, utilities, and select healthcare names in the political spotlight.
☕ Food Tariff Rollback: Cheaper Coffee, Messy Trade Map
Cutting tariffs on beef, coffee, fruit, nuts, and spices is a rare walk-back of the everyone pays trade stance.
Grocers and packaged-food companies like the idea of lower input costs, while some domestic producers may grumble.
Bigger picture, it’s a quiet admission that tariffs really did push prices up, and that future tariff threats might come with faster U-turns if voters yell loudly enough.
💸 Fed Split vs. Bond Bliss
The Fed is arguing with itself over whether to cut again in December, but bonds are already enjoying their best year since 2020 as yields grind lower and credit stays surprisingly calm.
For investors, that favors sticking with quality duration—Treasurys and high-grade credit, while being choosy on corporate debt where spreads are thin and optimism is thick.
🌍 EU Exporters Up, U.K. Left on Read
EU goods shipments to the U.S. just jumped 61% in September after the new tariff deal, while British exports to America fell to their weakest since early 2022.
That gap underscores how trade frameworks translate into real orders, helping EU industrials and logistics firms while keeping U.K. exporters fighting uphill for U.S. shelf space.
🌍 Japan’s First Contraction in Six Quarters
Japan’s economy shrank 0.4% in Q3 (-1.8% annualized), with tariffs biting exports and housing investment dropping almost 10%.
That likely pushes any Bank of Japan rate hike into next year and keeps the yen under pressure, good for some Japanese exporters, but another reminder that U.S. trade policy is still a global growth headwind.
🏠 Builders’ Cheap Mortgages: Sweet Rate, Sour Equity
Big builders offering 3–4% loans (or even 0.99% teaser rates) are helping buyers qualify, but often at inflated home prices, leaving a chunky share of FHA borrowers already underwater.
That’s a quiet risk for housing and mortgage lenders: great headlines on cheap financing today, more vulnerability if prices stall or slip tomorrow.

Market Impacts
Equities: Futures are basically shrugging to start the week after a choppy stretch where valuation worries dinged the AI darlings while the Dow and S&P quietly held up.
The next test is micro, not macro: Nvidia, Walmart, Home Depot, Target and the rest of the retail crew all report, which gives you a clean read on both AI capex and real-world shopping carts.
Keep your core in cash-generating tech with actual earnings, plus high-quality retail and home-improvement names that can pass along modest price moves.
Treat the most hyped AI stories and stretched software as tradeable, not tattoo-able.
Bonds: The 10-year Treasury has drifted back up around 4.15% as traders dial down the odds of a December cut to coin-flip at best.
Yields are higher on the week, but remember that 2025 has still been a very good year for bond holders overall.
If you want income without heartburn, the three-to-seven-year pocket still makes sense.
Long bonds can stay your break glass hedge if growth or deficit fears flare; just size it so another Fed wobble doesn’t ruin your month.
Currencies: The dollar is stuck in the middle, not ripping, not collapsing, while traders wait for the backlog of U.S. data to finally show up.
Safe-haven demand is flowing into the Swiss franc, the yen is still soft, and the pound took a hit on U.K. budget jitters.
Short term, FX is mostly about Fed communication and surprise prints: softer U.S. data plus a cautious Fed keeps the slowly weaker dollar story alive; hotter data or a hawkish chorus gives the greenback another bounce.
Keep position sizes modest and respect the headline whiplash.
Commodities: Oil just popped more than 2% after a Ukrainian drone strike forced Russia’s Novorossiisk port to pause exports, adding a fresh dose of supply risk on top of ongoing sanctions.
That backdrop usually favors refiners, tankers, and midstream over the most levered wildcat drillers.
Airlines and chemicals, as usual, are on the wrong side of any sustained crude spike.
Gold, meanwhile, dropped over 3% as hawkish Fed chatter knocked down odds of a December cut and triggered a classic sell-everything risk-off spasm.
It still works as a small insurance policy in a portfolio, but if you’re sizing it so a 3–5% daily swing ruins your mood, it’s too big.

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Key Indicators to Watch
Empire State Manufacturing Survey (Mon, 8:30 a.m. ET) - First look at November factory vibes.
A solid reading says higher rates and tariffs haven’t totally crushed production; a slump would add to the slow bleed story and usually helps bonds and defensives over deep cyclicals.Import Price Index (Tue, 8:30 a.m. ET, may be delayed) - This is the “what are we paying for stuff from overseas?” gauge.
Softer import prices, especially on goods that just saw tariff rollbacks, support the idea that inflation pressure is easing at the margins.
A surprise jump would complicate the lower-prices narrative coming out of the White House.Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization (Tue, 9:15 a.m. ET, may be delayed) - A clean check on how hard the industrial engine is actually running.
Stronger output and tight capacity favor cyclicals, energy, and shipping; a weak print says the slowdown is spreading beyond just consumers and tech and usually helps Treasurys.Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Survey (Wed, 8:30 a.m. ET) - Another regional pulse, but this one tends to move markets around the edges.
A rebound would calm recession takes; another soft or negative reading keeps mini-manufacturing recession chatter alive and supports the case for more easing in 2025.Minutes of the October FOMC Meeting (Wed, 2:00 p.m. ET) - The main event for Fed watchers.
Everyone will be parsing how deep the split really is over a December cut and how worried officials are about tariffs vs. the labor market.
More hawkish language leans toward higher yields and a firmer dollar; a surprisingly dovish tone could revive the one more cut soon trade across bonds, gold, and rate-sensitive stocks.

Everything Else
The government is finally mapping out when the backlog of delayed economic reports will hit, so markets can stop guessing quite as much.
Atlanta Fed chief Raphael Bostic plans to leave when his term ends, opening the door for a new voice in the rate-cut debate.
The White House is suddenly connecting the dots between Trump’s tariffs and high beef prices, while trying to show it’s on the side of frustrated grocery shoppers.
Fed hawk Jeff Schmid is still calling inflation too hot and signaling he’s ready to fight another cut in December.
In China, factory output and retail sales just posted their weakest growth in over a year, keeping the global demand story decidedly average.

That’s it for today’s edition—thanks for reading! Reply to this email with any feedback or let me know which macro trends or markets you’d like me to cover next.
Best Regards,
—Noah Zelvis
Macro Notes


