Outpoll Weekly Recap: Finance (September 15 – 21, 2025)

3 hours ago7 min read

This week, the financial markets delivered a masterclass in volatility, with the Federal Reserve's 'hawkish hold' on Wednesday sending shockwaves through every asset class. The Fed held rates steady, as widely anticipated, but the updated dot plot and Chair Powell's subsequent press conference painted a picture of a central bank in no rush to cut, projecting just one reduction for the remainder of the year as inflation proves stickier than a summer humidity.The immediate reaction was a classic 'risk-off' pivot: the S&P 500 took a 1. 8% dive, Treasury yields spiked with the 10-year note briefly kissing 4.5%, and the dollar flexed its muscles. However, by Friday, a classic 'buy the dip' mentality emerged, particularly in the tech sector, with the Nasdaq clawing back most of its losses on the back of blowout earnings from a major cloud infrastructure provider that beat revenue forecasts by a stunning 7%.This tech resilience, reminiscent of Warren Buffett's adage about being fearful when others are greedy, suggests underlying confidence in corporate profitability even amidst higher-for-longer rate anxieties. Over in prediction markets, the sentiment was equally schizophrenic; contracts predicting a Fed rate cut by December plummeted from a 65% probability to a mere 28% by Thursday, only to rebound to 40% by week's end as traders digested mixed retail sales data.The big mover, however, was in the crypto-corner, where Bitcoin, acting as a speculative high-beta asset, got whipsawed, dropping 5% on the Fed news before a surprise announcement from a major sovereign wealth fund exploring digital asset custody sparked a 9% weekend rally. It was a week that underscored the market's current identity crisis—torn between robust earnings and the looming specter of restrictive monetary policy, leaving investors to parse every data point like a Buffett disciple searching for intrinsic value in a sea of noise.

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