The market that moved the most since your notes were written — lead with the Fed, not the AI story, if asked to open here.

5.1 Jobs, inflation, and the Fed's actual decision

• August jobs (rel. 4 Sep): nonfarm payrolls +162,000 vs. ~53,000 consensus — a big beat. Unemployment held at 4.1%. Average hourly earnings +0.3% m/m.
• August CPI (rel. 11 Sep): headline +0.4% m/m / 3.4% y/y; core +0.3% m/m / 2.4% y/y — hotter than the 0.2% expected, driven by non-housing services (strongest monthly gain since January) and a 27.4% y/y jump in gasoline.
• Kevin Warsh, Fed Chair, Jackson Hole (28 Aug): explicitly hawkish — flagged inflation as too high, argued for a "quieter" (more data-driven, less forward-guidance-dependent) Fed, opened the door to hikes. Hike odds for September jumped ~55% → ~60% on the speech alone.
• FOMC, 16 Sep: hiked 25bp to 3.75–4.00%, 12-0, first hike since 2023. Cited resilient spending, strong productivity, robust capex, a labour market keeping pace with the workforce — alongside inflation still above target.
• What's priced next: dot plot points to one more 25bp hike in 2026 (to 4.00–4.25%); next FOMC 28 Oct, then 9 Dec.

See §2 for how this exact sequence transmitted into gold, the dollar and the rupee.

5.2 Treasury market — buybacks and the deficit

Separately from Fed policy, the Treasury tripled its long-bond buyback size (10–20Y and 20–30Y sectors) from $2bn to up to $6bn per operation, mid-August to early September, "for liquidity support." Context: July's fiscal deficit was $432.3bn (highest since March 2021), pushing the YTD shortfall to ~$1.8 trillion against ~$40 trillion total debt and ~$1.2 trillion in annual interest costs — and foreign demand is fading, with China and Japan both trimming UST holdings. The 30-year sits near a 19-year high (~5.2–5.3%). This is the "who buys the debt when foreigners won't" problem in miniature. Contrast with China's own debt-management approach in §4.4 and India's opposite move — cutting borrowing — in §3.2.

5.3 Talking points, cold

• The AI capex cycle (hyperscaler data-centre spend) remains the single biggest driver of US equity outperformance vs. every other market here — a large part of why the S&P is up ~5% YTD while the Nifty is down ~7%.
• The dollar is structurally firmer post-hike — the transmission mechanism pressuring the rupee, and the reason gold/silver corrected hard from their January peaks.
• Don't overstate a 5-year dollar call — the honest answer is "near-term firmer on the hiking cycle; longer-term the de-dollarization/central-bank-gold-buying trend argues for gradual erosion of the dollar's reserve share." Different time horizons, not a contradiction.