Credit & Fed Desk: October 13, 2026
Good morning. It's Tuesday, October 13th, and you are listening to the Credit and Fed Desk.
The bond market is back from the holiday, and it opened with a bid. The ten-year Treasury yield is trading around 5.19 to 5.20 percent this morning, per press and newsletter quotes. That's down about 4 basis points from Friday's official close of 5.24. Oil is lower, and that's the push.
The bigger story is at the Fed, where officials looked at the same AI boom and came back with different diagnoses. Governor Waller says the rise in yields is about real growth, not inflation. Chicago Fed President Goolsbee says AI is an inflation problem that is "jumping out of its lane." And this morning, Nick Timiraos flagged a line from Beth Hammack that sits awkwardly next to Chair Kevin Warsh's push to say less.
CPI is tomorrow at 7:30 Central. Futures put an October hike at roughly one in five to one in four.
Show notes
- Fed: Waller (real growth) vs Goolsbee (overheating AI demand) vs Cook (still sectoral); Hammack's reaction function vs Warsh's push to say less; October hike odds about one in five to one in four ahead of tomorrow's CPI.
- Treasuries: early trade has the ten-year around 5.19–5.20% (down ~4 bp from Friday's 5.24) on softer oil; BlackRock Investment Institute overweight short-term Treasuries and neutral long-term, ending a 2020 underweight.
- Credit: ICE BofA still through Thursday (HY 315, IG 82, CCC 12.52%); WhiteHorse Finance marks the private-vs-public gap (~60¢ public vs high-90s private bids); Volta markets ~$5B AI infrastructure loans with commitments due Wednesday 4 PM CT.
- AI capital and banks: JPMorgan prints $15.3B net income; Apollo/Blackstone Anthropic chip vehicle cited as a record private-credit deal; Anthropic investor day tomorrow.
- Arthur Hayes (labeled, speculative) on hike-as-liquidity and France; Brent 104.47 / WTI 91.95; scoreboard and the CPI–Volta–Warsh calendar.