Dip-buyers are fading a Fed shock rather than confirming a trend reversal.
Wednesday's tape whipsawed hard: stocks were green into the decision, then Warsh's press conference turned it, with the Dow shedding over 600 points and the S&P closing down 0.45% at 7,551.81 as the dot plot penciled in another hike this year and a pause through 2027. Futures are bid again this morning, SPX +0.5%, Nasdaq 100 +0.6%, with prediction markets pricing an 80% chance of a green open. QQQ is back near 712 in premarket versus a 704.72 close, but that's a bounce inside yesterday's 700-712 range, not a breakout. With live GEX unavailable, treat dealer positioning as indicative: post-hike repricing typically thins call-side gamma and widens realized ranges, so expect chop around 750-760 on SPX-equivalent levels rather than clean trend.
Catalysts land early: initial jobless claims, housing starts and the Philly Fed print all hit 8:30am, with pending home sales at 10am. None of that competes with the overhang from Warsh declining to call policy restrictive, tying elevated yields to capex, fiscal strain and geopolitics. The 10-year sitting near 5% and financials leading Wednesday's slide is the tell, priced-in path is now one more hike, not a cutting cycle.
The risk: a soft claims or Philly Fed print gets read as recession-adjacent rather than dovish, or a hawkish Fed speaker reinforces the 4.1% terminal-rate message, sending 10Y decisively through 5% and pulling the premarket bid back into a retest of Wednesday's lows.