What moved
Asia's chip-heavy markets led the day. The Kospi closed 7.1% higher, Taiwan's index gained 6.23% and the Nikkei 225 rose 4.21%. Hong Kong did not join in: the Hang Seng slipped 0.54%. The Shanghai Composite finished 0.54% higher. In Europe the DAX closed 1.2% up, within 0.11% of its 52-week high, while the Euro Stoxx 50 added 1.04% and the FTSE 100 0.78%.
On Wall Street the S&P 500 is at 7,619.38, up 1.31% on the session, and the Nasdaq Composite is up 1.6%. The Dow lagged with a 0.49% gain. Even after the bounce, the S&P sits 2.87% below its 52-week high and the Nasdaq 8.14% below.
Why
The day turned on CoreWeave. The AI cloud provider reported third-quarter numbers after Tuesday's close, raised its 2026 revenue guidance and said it expects to be profitable on an adjusted basis in the first half of 2028. That eased the fear that has weighed on AI stocks for weeks: that the huge spending on data centres is being financed faster than it can pay back. CoreWeave closed 24.71% higher. Peers such as Nebius, up 15.44%, rallied with it, and the buying spread to chip and memory names such as Sandisk, up 13.69%. Nvidia also recovered some ground. It had lost heavily over the previous two sessions on reports linking chief executive Jensen Huang to an alleged Chinese intelligence operation, which its independent directors are now investigating.
The second story pulls the other way. Tuesday's October inflation report ran hot: consumer prices rose 0.4% on the month against an expected 0.3%, and core prices rose 0.3% against 0.2%. Traders now fully expect a Fed rate hike of at least 25bp in December. That is why the dollar strengthened. Higher US rates make dollar deposits and bonds more attractive, which pulls money out of the euro, sterling and the yen. Political and budget worries in France added to the pressure on the euro. Sterling had no clear trigger of its own beyond the Fed repricing.
Sentiment & risk appetite
Fear eased, but buying was narrow. The VIX, Wall Street's main gauge of expected volatility, closed down 10.12% at 17.49. Bond-market volatility was a different picture: the MOVE index rose 7.5% to 92.43 on Tuesday as the inflation data hit. The rally was concentrated in a few sectors. The tech sector ETF gained 3.23%, while consumer discretionary fell 0.05% and real estate barely moved. Across our own US universe, advancers beat decliners by only 3,406 to 2,494. The Nasdaq rose about three times as much as the Dow, a sign this was a tech story rather than a broad recovery. Gold fell 0.97% to $3,991.2, and the dollar index is within 0.04% of its 52-week high.
Economic calendar
The macro story is still Tuesday's CPI report. It was the Fed's last look at consumer prices before its 8–9 December meeting. The usual year-on-year rate was not published, because last year's government shutdown left a gap in the October 2025 data. With the cash Treasury market shut for Veterans Day, the 10-year yield's 1.5bp rise to 4.998% says little. The dollar did the repricing instead, and USD/JPY is trading at 159.813. Strategists warn that a move past 160 could prompt Japanese officials to step in.
No major US data printed today. The next test is UK third-quarter GDP on Thursday morning, where economists expect growth to pick up to 0.7% from 0.5% in the second quarter. Further ahead is US PCE inflation, the Fed's preferred measure, later this month.
Earnings
Siemens Energy closed 10.78% higher after a record fiscal year, a new buyback of up to €9bn and a 2030 margin target of 20–22%. Defence group CSG fell 21.58% after cutting its 2026 margin forecast to about 21% from 24–25%, which dragged on European defence stocks such as Rheinmetall, down 6.94%. Vestas closed 3.8% lower after missing earnings estimates. ABN Amro and RWE both beat expectations.