Pre-Market Brief | Friday, September 11, 2026
Research Desk · September 11, 2026
August CPI lands at 8:30 AM ET after four straight losing sessions. One decimal point in the core reading decides whether the Fed raises rates next Wednesday.
Where Futures Sit
S&P 500 futures up roughly 0.5 percent. Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.6 percent. Dow futures up 0.5 percent.
Thursday was the fourth straight decline. The S&P closed at 7,591, the Dow at 52,064, the Nasdaq at 26,081.
This morning's bounce is mostly a relief trade in crude. WTI is back near $99 after Thursday's 6.7 percent spike to $102.
Macro Pulse
August CPI at 8:30 AM ET. Consensus looks for headline up 0.4 percent on the month and 3.4 percent year over year, with core up 0.2 percent and 2.4 percent year over year.
Thursday's producer price index ran 5.4 percent against a 5.3 percent forecast. That pushed the 10-year Treasury to roughly 4.94 percent, its highest in close to three years.
Futures markets put the odds of a quarter-point rate increase at next Wednesday's Fed meeting near 70 percent. A core print of 0.3 percent or higher hardens that. A 0.2 percent loosens it.
The VIX broke above 17 on Thursday for the first time in 28 sessions. Breadth has been narrowing underneath the averages for a week.
All of those questions are answered in my briefing .
Tickers To Watch
ORCL: Up roughly 6 percent premarket. Fiscal first-quarter backlog reached $664 billion against a $640 billion estimate.
ADBE: Down more than 3 percent. Fourth-quarter revenue guidance came in light at the midpoint.
NVDA: Up about 0.9 percent, carried by the read-across from Oracle's cloud demand.
XLE: Energy gave the tape its only real defense Thursday. With crude off 3 percent this morning, some of that comes back.
TLT: The cleanest live read on the print. Every tenth of a point in core CPI shows up in long bonds first.
Stock Highlight: Oracle
Oracle booked more than $30 billion of new AI cloud contracts last quarter. Total revenue backlog now sits at $664 billion, comfortably past the $640 billion Wall Street expected.
The stock is up about 6 percent premarket to roughly $161. It is still down more than 21 percent so far this year.
A backlog is signed work, not collected cash.
Think of a contractor holding three years of confirmed jobs who has not yet bought the lumber, hired the crew, or been paid a dollar. The order book is real. So is the money he has to spend first.
That is the whole Oracle debate. Nobody doubts the demand. The question is whether the data center buildout can be financed long enough for the backlog to convert.
At about 17 times forward earnings it trades at a discount to Microsoft near 24 times and Amazon near 23 times. The discount is the market's price for that financing risk, not a mistake.
Bottom Line
Today is a binary tape. A single number at 8:30 sets the Fed's path, the direction of the 10-year, and the multiple the market is willing to pay.
A hot core print pushes the 10-year through 5 percent, and long-duration holdings take that hit immediately.
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