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What a week it has been. 

The US CPI rose 0.3% on the month in Sep, putting the annual inflation rate at 3%. Excluding food and energy, core CPI showed a 0.2% monthly gain and the annual rate was also at 3%, below market expectations. Then, the Federal Open Market Committee, as expected, cut its policy rate by 25 basis points. However, Fed chair Jerome Powell unexpectedly held back the bulls when he pushed back hard on another cut in Dec, an action for which markets had been assigning a 90% probability of happening. Powell said during his news conference. "A further reduction in the policy rate at the December meeting is not a foregone conclusion. Far from it." Jerome Powell is right in moving prudently. Cutting the Fed's policy rate in Dec leaves no room for the FOMC to raise its rate later on while pausing its rate cut in Dec leaves open the option of more rate cuts after that should this proves to be necessary. 

Not wanting to be left out of the limelight, Nvidia continued with its marathon deals as it became the first company to have a market capitalisation of over US$5 trillion. Nvidia will invest US$1 bln for a 2.9% stake in Nokia and it also introduced a new product line called Arc, designed to work with telecommunications equipment. This came after Nvidia announced that it will build seven new supercomputers for the United States Department of Energy. Further back in Sep, Nvidia, for example, has pledged to invest US$100 bln into OpenAI. What the deal essentially means is OpenAI's intention to purchase Nvidia hardware for a massive, multiyear infrastructure buildout. OpenAI intends to "build and deploy at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers with NVIDIA systems representing millions of GPUs for OpenAI's next-generation AI infrastructure." In return, Nvidia will invest in OpenAI equity in tranches, with each funding tranche being initiated as the infrastructure gradually expands. Nvidia is building a stronger backlog of orders.