ING and MUFG missed the window today. The Dark Side Of The Boom published four pieces and they pull in the same uneasy direction.
The Dark Side Of The Boom is the only desk in this window. ING Think and MUFG Research both published outside the 12-hour gate. With a single source, there is no multi-desk consensus to report. That is the honest answer, and padding it would be worse than saying so plainly.
The tension sits inside the desk's own four calls. The dollar piece says the greenback looks healthier but the desk is reluctant to call this the opening act of another broad dollar advance. The rates piece relays Goldman's call for another Fed hike in October and additional tightening ahead, with resilient growth favouring a higher, flatter yield curve. Those two readings sit uneasily together. A sustained tightening cycle tends to lift the dollar. The desk is not contradicting itself, but the gap between those two pieces is where the real argument lives.
Taken together, the desk's four pieces point in the same direction. Goldman, as cited by The Dark Side Of The Boom, sees another Fed hike in October and additional tightening ahead, with the curve expected to go higher and flatter. Markets have spent recent weeks pricing in a pause; the desk is pricing the opposite.
On China, Deutsche Bank, as relayed by The Dark Side Of The Boom, sees little prospect of a grand US-China bargain when Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet in Washington on September 24. A truce trade is the working assumption. Quiet enough for markets to breathe, not enough to clear the structural overhang.
The S&P piece makes the sharpest point. Semiconductor margins are the real earnings fault line. A return toward historical gross margins could remove roughly 10% from S&P 500 earnings, on the desk's reading. If AI capex cycles down before another driver replaces it, the index is over-earning at current prices.
The September 24 meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is the clearest near-term event. Deutsche Bank's read, relayed by The Dark Side Of The Boom, is that a quiet summit could be enough for markets. Watch whether the outcome holds to that minimum, or surprises in either direction. Both the Fed path and the dollar's floor depend partly on what comes out of Washington that day.