https://macro.hotpixelgroup.com/ Live macro dashboard by Hot Pixel Group: the Sunday-night weekly read, same-day reactions to CPI/jobs/PCE/GDP prints, and Bitcoin through the liquidity lens. Not investment advice. en-us Tue, 08 Sep 2026 22:54:03 GMT https://macro.hotpixelgroup.com/s/overview.html weekly-Sep 7, 2026 Tue, 08 Sep 2026 22:54:03 GMT The data is telling you something uncomfortable: headline CPI is 3.3%, core PCE is running at 3.34%, and PPI is printing 4.66% year-over-year. That pipeline pressure from PPI into CPI is not a theoretical concern — it is happening in real time. GDP is tracking at 1.5% SAAR, which means you have an economy that is decelerating into a price level that is still running well above the Fed's 2% target. The Fed sits at 3.5–3.75% on the funds rate, which is not tight in any historical sense when core PCE is above 3.3%. Real rates are barely positive on a PCE-adjusted basis at the 2-year, and the market seems unbothered — which is exactly the kind of complacency that precedes the next leg of yield pressure. Liquidity is the tell this week. Net liquidity at $5,768.7 billion is down 1.1% over the trailing 13 weeks, and that negative drift matters even if the absolute level remains elevated. The RRP is effectively drained at $0.5 billion — that marginal tailwind for risk assets is gone. The TGA sits at $967.9 billion, a large Treasury war chest that, if drawn down, could provide a short-term liquidity pulse, but the Fed balance sheet at $6,737.2 billion is not expanding. M2 is growing at 5.41% year-over-year — not alarming, but not benign either given where inflation is running. Net of these crosscurrents, I read liquidity as neutral-to-tightening at the margin, which is consistent with the regime dial. This is not the environment where you lever up risk indiscriminately. WTI crude at $91.48 per barrel — up 9.69% on the week — is the macro shock this week that most desks are not fully pricing. Energy feeds directly into PPI, which is already at 4.66%, and with a one-to-two quarter lag that flow-through into core goods is not trivial. The 10-year at 4.78%, two-year at 4.37%, and a 41 basis point 2s10s spread tell you the curve is steepening — the market is beginning to price an inflation re-acceleration scenario, not a soft landing. VIX at 15.04 is still docile relative to the macro complexity on the table, HY OAS at 2.65% is tight, and equities with the S&P at 7,718 are priced for a world that does not yet exist in the inflation data. The week ahead is data-heavy in exactly the right places. On September 10, the PPI report lands — given WTI's 9.69% spike this week and current PPI already running at 4.66%, any upside surprise confirms the reflation-with-teeth thesis and is a direct catalyst for higher long yields and a re-pricing of Fed cuts. Watch the goods components specifically. On September 22, Personal Income and Outlays delivers the PCE print — with core PCE already at 3.34%, the question is whether energy passthrough and services stickiness push this higher or whether consumption is starting to crack under the weight of a 6.71% mortgage rate and UMich sentiment at 55.2. On September 30, GDP rounds out the month — at 1.5% SAAR, any downside revision starts to put the stagflation word on the table in a serious way. And on October 2, the Employment Situation will tell us whether the 3-month payroll average of 71,000 is a genuine deceleration signal or a one-month aberration relative to this month's 162,000 print. Key risks: WTI at $91.48/bbl — up 9.69% in a single week — risks a CPI re-acceleration that forces the Fed to hold or hike into a 1.5% SAAR growth environment, a classic stagflation policy trap. · PPI at 4.66% YoY with an oil spike in the pipeline means the September 10 PPI report could print materially hotter and reprice the long end violently; 10Y at 4.78% could push toward 5% rapidly. · Net liquidity down 1.1% over 13 weeks with RRP fully drained at $0.5Bn removes the marginal bid that supported the risk rally — any TGA drawdown pause leaves equities without a liquidity backstop. · UMich sentiment at 55.2 signals consumer fragility; a 6.71% 30-year mortgage rate is already crushing housing affordability — a negative consumption surprise in the September 22 PCE report could gap down growth expectations sharply. This week's calls: WTI crude up, 10Y yield up, VIX up Track record: 4/4 calls right (100%). Regime dial: REFLATION · LIQUIDITY NEUTRAL · RISK CALM. https://macro.hotpixelgroup.com/s/bitcoin.html btc-Sep 7, 2026 Tue, 08 Sep 2026 22:54:03 GMT BTC is trading at $79,396, down 1.2% on the session in thin holiday volume — headline three tells you exactly why the tape is quiet. The 30-day gain of 22.3% is real and not nothing, but zoom out and you are still 36.4% off the 52-week high of $124,753 with a 1-year return of negative 28.6%. That is a bear-market bounce until proven otherwise, and the $77.5K–$82.2K consolidation range the desk is flagging is precisely where you'd expect a reflex rally to stall before the next directional verdict. Net liquidity sits at $5.77 trillion but has contracted 1.1% over 13 weeks and 3.6% over 52 weeks — this is not a liquidity-driven melt-up environment. The 90-day correlation to gold has quietly moved to 0.52, meaningfully above the 0.31 reading on both Nasdaq and S&P 500; BTC is trading more like a hard-asset hedge than a risk-on lever right now, which is consistent with a reflation regime. Funding at 3.5% annualized is benign — longs are not crowded, leverage is not extended — but the headline about traders piling back in post-deleveraging tells me the dip-buyers are already re-engaged. That is constructive for the near term and dangerous if liquidity rolls over. On-chain, the security picture is the loudest signal today: the Liquid Network exploit — $320 million, 4,000 BTC drained — is a direct hit to Bitcoin's institutional sidechain infrastructure and will reprice custody risk in the short run. Hashrate at 940 EH/s is off 5.3% in 30 days, a mild negative, but the upcoming +3.69% difficulty adjustment suggests the network is still attracting compute at elevated levels. Fees at 2 sat/vbyte are trivially low, confirming the base chain is uncongested and economically underwhelming for miners. What changes my mind to outright bullish: net liquidity re-accelerating above its 13-week trend, BTC reclaiming $85K on volume, and a clean resolution of the Liquid exploit without contagion to spot custody flows. Drivers: Liquid Network $320M exploit (4,000 BTC) is repricing sidechain custody risk and creating an overhang of forced or precautionary BTC movements that muddies near-term flow analysis. · Post-deleveraging dip-buyers re-engaging after the sharpest unwind since 2023, with funding at a benign 3.5% annualized — positioning is not yet crowded but the re-entry is happening fast. · US CPI print is the next macro catalyst; with BTC now correlating more tightly to gold (0.52) than to equities (0.31), a hot number that pushes real rates higher is the cleaner bear case. · Liquidity headwinds are structural — net liquidity down 3.6% year-over-year in a nominal reflation regime means the monetary tailwind that powered the 2024–2025 run is not present at the same magnitude. https://macro.hotpixelgroup.com/s/calendar.html reaction-50-2026-09-04 Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:53:05 GMT August payrolls came in at +162K, a dramatic reacceleration against a prior-two-month trend that had collapsed to +31K and +21K — this is not a marginal beat, this is the labor market throwing a curveball after two months that were screaming slowdown. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, steady for a second consecutive month after drifting down from the 4.3% range that dominated March through May. But the number I keep coming back to is average hourly earnings: 37.75 hours worked, wages trending up five straight months from 37.35 in March, a clean and relentless grind higher in the wage series that has no business being this persistent if the labor market was genuinely softening. This print directly challenges the softness narrative that had been building off those sub-50K prior months, and it puts the Fed in an uncomfortable spot — you can't cut aggressively into a 162K print with wages accelerating, full stop. The 10Y has barely flinched, down only 2bps to 4.77%, which tells me the market isn't yet repricing the Fed path meaningfully, and that's the opportunity — duration is mispriced if this wage trend persists. My stagflation-creep-with-a-commodity-kicker thesis gets a green light here: WTI at $90.71, wages running hot, and a labor market that just proved it has more pulse than the prior two months suggested. The 0.76 recession probability barely budging up 0.2pp confirms the market is not treating this as recessionary — it's treating it as complicated, and complicated with rising wages and oil above $90 is stagflation, not reflation. Watch: Watch the September AHE print — if average hourly earnings continue climbing beyond 37.75, the Fed's ability to ease into year-end collapses and the long end of the curve is going materially higher.