But more impressively – yet perfectly consistent with his earlier comments – Jensen Huang said that “Blackwell sales are off the charts”. The company now expects revenue to grow to $65bn this quarter. That was higher than analysts expected, but still in line with Huang’s earlier claim that they have already sold around $500bn worth of Rubin and Blackwell chips for this year and next. In short, there was nothing in yesterday’s quarterly report that sounded off. Nvidia did what it has done best since 2023: it surprised to the upside.

And the bulls couldn’t resist. The share price jumped 5%. What might have made a difference in the market’s reaction is Huang saying that “we’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI. The AI ecosystem is scaling fast – with more new foundation model makers, more AI startups, across more industries and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.”

Translated into simpler terms: don’t worry about circularity; just look at the horizon.

So I believe it’s safe to say that Huang saved the day. Nasdaq futures are up nearly 2% as I write this morning, while Asian tech buddies are raving with joy: the Kospi is up around 2.5%, and the Japanese Topix is up around 2%. But SoftBank is having a hard time holding on to its gains: a reminder that not all clouds have dissipated. Anxiety about overinvestment in AI and concerns about AI-related debt keep ballooning – and for good reason. Bond issuance from Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle has risen above the $100bn mark this year, at least 2.5 to 5 times previous years.

And while Nvidia sees revenues flowing in from big spenders, investors will still want to see the hyperscalers generate revenue from outside the AI circle. Let’s see how long Nvidia’s fuel keeps this market engine running.

Outside Nvidia, the news and expectations around the Federal Reserve (Fed) are not heading in the right direction – to say the least. One of yesterday’s biggest headlines was the BLS announcement that the October jobs report will not be released before the Fed’s December meeting – it will instead be published together with the November numbers, one week after the Fed’s verdict. The BLS says it wasn’t able to collect enough data due to the government shutdown – which is likely true – but if the delay also reflects numbers that look bad (a possibility, given the Trump-led drama around the BLS), then this certainly doesn’t serve the White House’s wish for lower rates.

The news that the BLS won’t publish the October jobs data – combined with uncertainty around when the October CPI will land – further smashed expectations of a 25bp cut from the Fed. Activity on Fed funds futures now suggests less than a 30% chance of a December cut. Ultimately, that’s not good for risk appetite as higher yields pull valuations down. And yields are rising. The US 2-year yield – which best captures Fed expectations – is consolidating above 3.60% this morning, while the 10-year sits near 4.14%.

The US dollar surged past its 200-DMA on the back of waning dovish Fed expectations and is extending gains in Asia today. And – though it will feel like a weather forecast from last month – September jobs data from the US will be worth watching. A Bloomberg consensus suggests the economy may have added 53k jobs in September, before the shutdown.

But a softer or stronger number is unlikely to reverse the “no-cut” expectation, as the FOMC minutes yesterday confirmed that “many” Fed members think it would be better to keep rates where they are in December. So expect further upside in US yields.

Speaking of yields, the sell-off in Japanese bonds continues at full speed. The 30-year JGB yield is testing 3.40% this morning, while the 10-year has hit 1.84%. Rising yields in Japan – which could encourage Japanese pension funds to repatriate funds – also pull the rug from under US Treasuries at a time when confidence and appetite for US government debt are already waning due to ballooning deficits and deteriorating US relations with the rest of the world. As Japanese yields rise, so does the risk of reverse carry trades. And I don’t need to tell you how bad a reverse carry is for global equities. It could trigger a 10–15% sell-off in the S&P 500 in a matter of weeks. This is one of the biggest risks to the year-end market rally.

Because we always want to go one step further: the vanishing yen carry trade, and the end of Japan’s era of free liquidity, could eventually be replaced by a newcomer. And that newcomer could be China.

What allowed Japan to print endless free money was its long battle against deflation. Now it’s China fighting deflation – along with an ageing population and a property crisis. And guess what: the Chinese 10-year yield has just dipped below the Japanese 10-year yield.

In other words, the world’s favourite funding currency may be quietly changing hands.

If China keeps easing while the rest of the world tightens or normalises, markets may soon discover a new source of “free liquidity”, rerouting capital flows and rewriting familiar carry-trade dynamics.

It’s early days, but the seeds of a China-funded carry era are clearly being planted — and investors are already watching for the first shoots.