Xi comes to Washington this week 🇺🇸 🇨🇳

Welcome back to the Day Trading newsletter 📈

The Fed hiked for the first time since 2023, the 10-year yield touched 5%, and the Dow posted its worst week since March.

Now the focus shifts from the Fed to the White House, where Xi Jinping lands Wednesday for a Thursday summit, his first Washington state visit in 11 years.

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

📆 Tuesday 9/22 — Fed speakers Williams, Jefferson and Barkin (10:05am / 10:20am / 1pm ET): The first concentrated round of Fed commentary since Wednesday's hike, part of at least 10 official appearances this week. Listen for whether "one more hike this year" is the consensus or the ceiling.

📆 Wednesday 9/23 — S&P Global Flash PMIs (9:45am ET): September's first read on manufacturing and services activity after the rate hike and with oil above $100. A drop below 50 would revive stagflation talk fast.

📆 Thursday 9/24 — Trump-Xi Summit at the White House (all day ET): Xi arrives Wednesday; the arrival ceremony, closed-door talks and East Room state dinner are all Thursday. Watch for progress on the $30 billion tariff-reduction framework, any extension of the Nov. 10 truce deadline, and rare-earth or soybean commitments. Also on tap: weekly jobless claims (8:30am) and August new home sales (10am).

📆 Thursday 9/24 — Costco Q4 Earnings (after the close): Wall Street expects revenue near $94.8 billion, up about 10%, and EPS of roughly $6.55. Costco's membership renewals and same-store sales are one of the cleanest reads on whether record-low consumer sentiment is showing up at the register.

📆 Friday 9/25 — Durable Goods + Final September Consumer Sentiment (8:30am / 10am ET): The preliminary Michigan reading plunged to 47.8, the second-lowest on record, with year-ahead inflation expectations at 4.6%. Durable goods are the last major look at business investment before quarter end.

🏦 The Bank of Japan raised its policy rate a quarter point to 1.25% on Friday, the highest since 1995. The 7-2 vote came just three months after the last hike, the fastest pace since Japan began normalizing policy in 2024, and the BOJ warned inflation could overshoot its 2% target. Two dissenters appointed by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sent the yen lower on doubts about how far tightening goes.

📈 Bitcoin climbed back above $80,000 on Friday, and Coinbase jumped 12% to $194, three days after the Senate killed the Clarity Act. The catalyst was regulators moving where Congress wouldn't: the SEC's tokenized-stock exemption Thursday and a CFTC crypto rulemaking sent to the White House. Strategy rose nearly 13% and Robinhood 9%. Pantera's Dan Morehead summed it up: "The industry doesn't need Congress."

📊 The SEC issued a five-year "Innovation Exemption" on Thursday that lets approved venues trade tokenized versions of U.S.-listed stocks, effective immediately. Token holders must get the same dividend and voting rights as regular shareholders, and companies can block their stock from being tokenized within a 30-day notice window. It's a step toward 24/7 stock trading, with volume caps to limit wild swings in thin hours.

🔻 The Dow lost 1.7% this week, its worst since March and third straight weekly decline, closing Friday at 51,682.64. The S&P 500 slipped about 0.1% while the Nasdaq gained 0.7%. Banks took the brunt of the Fed's hike: Goldman Sachs and Bank of America each lost roughly 8% on the week, their worst since April 2025, and the financials ETF (XLF) had its biggest weekly loss since March.

📉 Nucor and Steel Dynamics fell after hours Thursday after both guided third-quarter earnings below Wall Street's estimates. Nucor sees $5.55 to $5.65 a share versus a $5.99 consensus; Steel Dynamics sees $5.34 to $5.38 versus $5.60. Both are still up sharply from a year ago thanks to tariff-protected pricing, but the misses suggest the steel windfall is peaking. Nucor closed Friday down 6.3% at $248.38.

🧑‍🚀 SpaceX pushed its first orbital Starship test flight back six days to Sept. 28, and the stock fell 1.4% Friday to $152.71. The mission is slated to complete about six orbits and deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites. JPMorgan flagged $570 million of retail selling over three weeks, including a record $250 million last week, though Ron Baron, whose firm holds about $25 billion in shares, told CNBC Starlink alone could be a trillion-dollar business.

🛢️ Oil finished the week roughly flat, with WTI closing Friday at $100.30 and Brent at $103.87, as fears over Saudi Arabia's shut East-West pipeline eased. JPMorgan says the Saudis have pushed 2.8 million barrels a day through the Strait of Hormuz over the past six days, up from 700,000 in August, but warned the workaround holds only "so long as Iran allows it to." Rapidan expects the pipeline outage to constrain Saudi exports through at least the end of September.

💼 Initial jobless claims fell 10,000 to 196,000 in the week ended Sept. 12, the lowest since July and one of the lowest readings since 1969. Continuing claims dropped to a more than two-year low. The week included Labor Day, which can skew the data, but it reinforces the Fed's view that the labor market is strong enough to absorb higher rates, and it strengthens the case for another hike this year.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng sat down Sunday morning at JPMorgan Chase's headquarters in New York, with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer joining, to lay the groundwork for Thursday's summit between President Trump and President Xi in Washington.

Bessent said he expected "focused, fulsome and constructive talks" that would "set the stage" for the leaders' meeting.

The agenda: tariffs, rare earths and AI.

The stakes are real because the current truce has an expiration date. Washington's suspension of its heightened reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods runs out Nov. 10, and China's side of the bargain, rare-earth exports and U.S. farm purchases, is tied to it.

Even under the truce, the effective U.S. tariff rate on Chinese imports was 22.8% as of July, the highest of any major trading partner, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

Both sides are signaling they want a deal.

Beijing says the two governments are negotiating a tariff-reduction framework covering about $30 billion of goods on each side, a goal set when Trump visited Beijing in May.

Reports also say the U.S. may delay a pending Taiwan arms package. Trump has a midterm election on Nov. 3 and $100 oil to worry about; Xi has an economy that exported 75% of the $400.8 billion in two-way trade through August.

Neither wants a blowup.

Who's affected: soybean farmers, chipmakers, automakers and anyone whose supply chain touches rare earths, the minerals China dominates and used as its main lever to force last year's de-escalation.

The White House guest list for Thursday's state dinner includes Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Jane Fraser, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai, which tells you how much of corporate America has a stake in the outcome.

What to watch:

• Thursday's headlines, first. Senior U.S. officials told reporters Friday that both sides may be ready to ease tariffs on a "narrow band" of nonstrategic goods, but that Washington is not prepared to loosen export controls in exchange for rare earths.

• A concrete deliverable on the $30 billion framework or an extension of the Nov. 10 deadline would be read as risk-on for China-exposed stocks, industrials and ag. A vague joint statement with no numbers would put the tariff threat right back on the table.

• The sticking points to listen for are China's support for Iran, which Washington has flagged as a flashpoint during the ongoing war, and AI, where the U.S. accused Chinese labs earlier this month of stealing American capabilities "on an industrial scale."

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your research before making any trades.