The market is playing with nerves again.

At last night’s close, the US stock market appeared calm on the surface—the Dow slipped 0.07%, the S&P rose 0.11%, the Nasdaq edged up 0.22%, and the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index for Chinese stocks also held steady with a 0.39% gain. But what really kept traders glued to their screens into the early hours was the question hanging over everyone’s heads: Will the Fed dare to cut rates in December?

The answer might be more straightforward than expected. White House economic advisor Hassett openly stated a couple of days ago that the likelihood of a 25 basis point rate cut in December is “extremely high.” As soon as he said this, the CME’s FedWatch tool went wild—the probability of a December rate cut shot up to 87%, and 27% of bets even expect a cumulative 50 basis point cut by January next year.

The tech sector, however, put on a show of “fire and ice.” Nvidia rose 2% after announcing a partnership with Palantir and CenterPoint Energy to launch an AI data center platform called “Chain Reaction,” targeting the trillion-dollar computing power market. Meta also gained 3%, with reports that Zuckerberg slashed the metaverse budget by 30% to go all-in on AI.

On the flip side, Micron Technology suddenly announced it’s exiting the consumer storage business and fully pivoting to the AI chip track, causing its stock to drop 3% that day—this could mean you’ll be paying more for SSDs and memory sticks in the future. Even worse was Intel, whose network business sale negotiations collapsed, leading its stock to plummet 7%.

The employment data is even weirder. Initial jobless claims were only 191,000, the lowest in three years—at first glance, it seems companies are still clinging to their employees. But dig into the total layoffs for the first 11 months of this year, and it’s already surpassed 1.17 million, up 50% year-over-year, the highest since 2020. ADP’s private sector employment data is even more ridiculous: instead of growing in November, it actually shrank by 32,000 jobs.

This “no hiring, no firing” stalemate is exactly the best justification for a Fed rate cut. BlackRock has already publicly predicted: not only will rates be cut in December, but they may continue through 2026. Global capital is already raring to go, just waiting for the “liquidity signal” to jump into risk assets.

BTC, ETH, and DOGE have also started to stir in recent days. If the rate cut expectations come true and liquidity loosens up again, whether the crypto market can seize this wave of gains may depend on the trends in the coming weeks.