U.S. stocks fell Wednesday for the fifth time in seven sessions as a blowout PMI reading sent the 10-year Treasury yield above 5.1% for the first time since 2007. That’s nearly twenty years of FAFO.

In macro, the S&P flash composite hit 58.4, the fastest expansion of private manufacturing and service sectors in five years, and Fed Governor Michael Barr said further hikes are likely needed with inflation risks rising. Markets now price strong odds of another hike on October 28: 73%. Of course, oil at $92 only helped hurt chances for lower rates. On that front, the strait is not moving, but in trade news Presdients Trump and Xi are due to start a summit on AI, trade, Taiwan, and all things super powers talk about over lunch on Thursday.

The Stocktwits community was loudest in $VKTX after Viking announced a $400M stock-and-notes offering for October. Some traders were worried the bio tech took a good PR day and turned it into a cash in, at worst. $MCD and $FSLY drew the other big crowds as McDonald's warned inflation is the new normal and Fastly ripped 14% on its AI investor day.

Today's Briefing: Powered by Stocktwits Community API.

Fastly, the edge cloud and content delivery company, held its investor day Tuesday and Wall Street answered Wednesday. Management laid out long-term targets and three new AI products aimed at the agentic traffic boom.

The RIP: $FSLY ( ▲ 13.69% ) jumped 13.7% to $29.65 on Wednesday. The company guided to $1.1B to $1.3B in 2029 revenue, a 14% to 21% CAGR, with 20% to 22% non-GAAP operating margins. New products include an AI Firewall, AI Runtime Control, and API Security for traffic the company says is growing 6.5 times faster than human traffic.

The Street likes the ambition but not the price. RBC kept a Sector Perform with a $25 target, calling the wide revenue range a reason to wait. DA Davidson stayed Neutral but lifted its target to $23 from $21, while flagging valuation near 47 times 2027 earnings estimates. Piper Sandler said the 2029 range sits slightly above buyside expectations and could prove conservative as agentic AI scales. Traders are fixated on $30 as the next fight.

The $FSLY room is extremely bullish, see the $30 price fight ->

McDonald's, the fast-food giant, used its investor day to tell investors something they didn't want to hear. CEO Chris Kempczinski told CNBC that sticky inflation is the new operating reality and the industry shouldn't expect robust traffic growth anytime soon.

The RIP: $MCD fell 4.8% to $238.32 on Wednesday, tagging its 52-week low intraday. Kempczinski said inflation will stay elevated "for, unfortunately, many more years," with beef prices up 14% last year and nearly doubled over five years. The company unveiled its NEXT strategy: $8.5B in investment through 2036, targeting low-to-mid 50% operating margins by 2030 and 1.5 points of market-share gains in chicken and beverages.

The market hated the combo: flat traffic guidance plus a multibillion-dollar spending plan. Shares are down 22% this year and have fallen in 9 of the last 11 sessions. One sharp objection from the room: CEOs who warn of lower sales get the stock hit twice, on the warning and again on earnings day. The technical crowd notes the stock is back at July 2024 levels, its first monthly Bollinger Band break this deep since COVID.

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^{References: 1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chronic Kidney Disease in the United States, 2023. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 2023.}

Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce and cloud giant, slid as a data-security probe rattled Chinese tech. China's internet regulator is examining whether AI labs let sensitive domestic data reach Anthropic, and the investigation is pulling Alibaba into the blast radius.

The RIP: $BABA ( ▼ 4.74% ) fell 4.7% to $110.80 on Wednesday. The Cyberspace Administration of China is examining whether DeepSeek and Moonshot AI allowed sensitive domestic data to reach Anthropic, the US maker of Claude, according to The Information. The probe follows Anthropic's report that seven China-based labs, including Alibaba, ran large-scale distillation against Claude, with 151 million exchanges attributed to Alibaba over 14 days in July.

This lands on top of the September 8 joint accusation from the NSA, FBI, and CISA that Alibaba and five other Chinese firms extracted US model capabilities "at an industrial scale," with Treasury's Scott Bessent warning of sanctions or Entity List designations. On the other hand, Citi raised AI capital-spending forecasts as Alibaba targets 20 gigawatts of AI capacity by 2032. Thursday's Trump-Xi summit is now the binary event, with the room split between $130-after-the-meeting bulls and traders who just watched $120 become $111 in two days.

The Community Read: The $BABA room is bullish into the summit, see the $130 call ->

The bond market did the talking Wednesday, and growth stocks paid the price. A blowout September PMI reading convinced traders the Fed isn't done hiking, sending yields to levels not seen since before the financial crisis.

The RIP: The 10-year Treasury yield surged to 5.11%, its first trip above 5% since 2007, after the S&P flash composite PMI hit 58.4, the fastest expansion since July 2021. $GOOGL fell 3.8% to $337.83 as megacap tech repriced. The 2-year hit 4.9% and the 30-year touched 5.4%.

The Community Read: The $GOOGL room is neutral on the rate scare, see the dip-buy debate ->

39.7K WATCHERS · EXTREMELY BULLISH · EXTREMELY HIGH ACTIVITY

Viking announced plans to sell $200M of common stock and $200M of convertible notes due 2032 to fund VK2735 and VK3019 development, and traders are split between dilution fears and a longer cash runway, with some reading the raise as a sign no near-term buyout is coming.

11.9K WATCHERS · BEARISH · NORMAL ACTIVITY

Barron's reported Meta's AI assistant Muse can now book flights and lodging directly, and Morgan Stanley warned that if trip planning shifts to Muse agents prioritizing Expedia listings, $ABNB and $BKNG face pressure to cut similar deals or risk losing traffic.

3.3K WATCHERS · BULLISH · NORMAL ACTIVITY

Paychex beat fiscal first-quarter estimates with $1.631B in revenue and $1.34 in adjusted EPS but said a key segment came in slightly below expectations, and the stock logged its worst day since July despite maintained full-year guidance.

39.8K WATCHERS · NEUTRAL · LOW ACTIVITY

Palo Alto launched Unit 42 Continuous Frontier AI Defense, an annual subscription putting agentic AI penetration testing on a continuous find-and-fix cycle for enterprise clients.

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Main stage keynotes span public and private markets — Nvidia, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Databricks, Arm, Cerebras, Crusoe, Vercel, DoorDash, 8VC and more — with breakout tracks across labs, silicon, power and capital. 

*3rd Party Ad. Not an offer or recommendation by Stocktwits. See disclosure here.

🌎 Trump threatens to ‘annihilate’ Iran in UN speech

📰 Judge skeptical of White House press ban on Politico, MS NOW, CNN: Due process ‘wasn’t followed’

💰 SPCX, RKLB, LUNR, ASTS In Focus , Space Economy Investment Surges To $23B In Year Ending June, A Near 140% Jump

📊 GOOGL, NFLX Stocks In Focus — Alphabet's YouTube Reportedly Rolls Out Fresh Tools To Prevent Creators From Defecting To Netflix

🧬 NVO Stock On Track For Worst Week In Over 6 Months After Strategy Day — Direct US Listing Talks, Drug Approval Fail To Halt Slip

📈 The charts the Stocktwits community is trading, in your inbox by 8pm ET

Macro: New York Fed President John Williams speaks (4:10 AM ET), Weekly jobless claims (8:30 AM ET), Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack speaks (8:50 AM ET), Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report (9:00 AM ET), Philadelphia Fed President Anna Paulson speaks (10:10 AM ET), +2 more. 📊
Pre-Market Earnings: $BB BlackBerry Ltd, $KNDI Kandi Technologies Group Inc, $WIMI Wimi Hologram Cloud Inc - Ordinary Shares - Class B, $UXIN Uxin Ltd - ADR, $DRI Darden Restaurants, Inc., +1 more. ☀️
After-Market Earnings: $COST Costco Wholesale Corp. 🌙

P.S. You can listen to all of these earnings calls on Stocktwits.

Want to see some change? Respond to this email and reach me, Kevin Travers, with feedback. Follow me on Stocktwits. Send me charts and ideas! Refer a friend for this quarter’s edition of The RIP Forecast 😎

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