AMERICA'S DRINKING RESET The share of U.S. adults who drink is holding at 54%, the lowest reading since tracking began in 1939. Three years ago it was 62%. For the first time, a majority of Americans say even one or two drinks a day is bad for your health, and 17% reached for a nonalcoholic beer, wine or spirit in place of a drink this past year. Now the part most people miss. Gallons did not collapse. Pure alcohol consumed per person slipped about 2% in 2024 to 2.42 gallons, still well above the mid-1990s trough near 2.15. Fewer drinkers, not an empty glass. The pressure is landing category by category. U.S. beer and wine volumes each fell 6% in 2025 and spirits gave back 4%, while spirits-based canned cocktails grew 14% and nonalcoholic beer ran up 15%. The dollar is not leaving the shelf. It is moving across it. That migration runs straight through the public names behind the brands America still reaches for: Modelo and Corona's U.S. business, Bud Light and Michelob ULTRA, Baileys and Guinness, Jack Daniel's, Blue Moon, Sam Adams. The growth inside this market now sits with moderation formats, not a return to 2022. Record-low participation does not mean record-low gallons consumed. Watch the reallocation, not the obituary. $STZ $BUD $DEO

S&P 500 +0.70% to 7,676.77. Anthropic filed its S-1. $16.3B first-half revenue. The AI complex repriced on it and tech led all eleven sectors. Oil gave back the war premium. WTI $101.63, down 1.6%. VIX 18.35. Nobody paid for a hedge. Fed Wednesday, 2:00 PM ET.

QM LIVE 10.26.26 xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1yxBePWAl…

Artificial intelligence can solve the world’s most complicated problems. Apparently, nobody remembered to order the extension cord. @Reuters reported on October 22 that shortages of electrical cables are becoming a bottleneck for #AI data-center construction.

America’s cattle squeeze reaches far beyond the ranch. The U.S. beef cow herd shrank 12.7% between January 2019 and January 2026, and 43% of cattle inventory was in drought areas on October 20. Rebuilding takes years. Keeping more females for breeding can tighten beef availability before supply improves. For investors, follow the margins. Scarce cattle pressure processors $TSN and $JBS, while expensive beef raises costs for $TXRH and $SHAK. Chicken substitution could support $PPC, while valuable herds strengthen incentives for animal health spending at $ZTS and $ELAN. Higher beef prices do not automatically mean higher profits.

Global energy risk is rising. Brent settled Friday at $116.72 after another escalation around Gulf shipping and Saudi infrastructure. Meanwhile, France kept its Aa3 rating but faces elevated bond spreads, and Europe is weighing broader safeguards on Chinese imports. Capital is still moving: global equity funds took in $28.16B last week, including $11.53B into Asia. Watch oil, sovereign yields and supply-chain costs. $SHEL $ASML $XOM

Here comes the $AAPL Duo. You want one?

QUASAR MARKETS · DAILY MARKET BRIEFING Friday, October 23, 2026 · What to think about today THE BIG PICTURE The worst tech selloff since June landed this week, and it landed right before the market's two biggest tests. A giant earnings slate and a Fed decision both arrive next week, now with $114 oil layered on top. So the real question is not whether stocks fell, but what the setup says next: was this a sentiment wobble, or the start of a turn in the AI trade? What are you watching to tell the difference? AI's capex bill comes due, and the chipmakers pay first AI and Tech · $NVDA The AI story stopped being about promise and started being about the invoice. Meta lifted its 2026 capital spending guide to $135 billion to $145 billion and missed on profit, and the market flinched: the Nasdaq fell 2.6% Thursday, its steepest drop since early June. Crucially, the pain concentrated where the buildout gets paid for. Nvidia dropped 4.4%, while Intel and AMD each shed roughly 8%. Because Gartner still projects $2.7 trillion of global AI investment this year, the debate is no longer if the money gets spent, but whether investors will keep rewarding the companies spending it. For context on how the desk frames this, see the Quasar Markets AI and Semiconductors hub. What to watch: Alphabet and Microsoft report Wednesday and Amazon Thursday. Their cloud growth and capex lines decide whether this was a flush or a top. The Fed meets with rate cuts already off the table Fed · $TLT Heading into next week, the rate story has quietly flipped. Policymakers gather Tuesday and Wednesday, yet markets have pared their cut bets rather than added to them, and some strategists now flag another hike as the live risk given sticky inflation. Moreover, rising oil only hardens that stance. Higher for longer keeps the pressure on long-duration bonds and anything priced off them, which is why the move in rates matters as much as the move in megacap tech. Our rates and Fed tracker lays out the path. The tension: The policy statement lands Wednesday at 2:00 pm ET. A hawkish word on inflation could jolt rates and stocks in the same direction, down. Oil spikes above $114 and reheats the inflation fear Geopolitics · $USO While equities fell, energy was the one place money hid, and that is its own warning. Brent crude pushed above $114 a barrel Friday, its highest since May, after renewed US-Iran tension and a reported Saudi Aramco evacuation. In the short run, that is a relief for energy holders. Over the next month, however, pricier crude feeds straight into inflation expectations, which is precisely the variable the Fed cannot look past right now. So the oil tape and the rate tape are now telling one connected story. The commodities and energy desk has the full picture. What to watch: A push toward $120 Brent would turn an inflation scare into a growth problem. Watch whether energy keeps outrunning the broader tape. Crypto bends as risk appetite drains out of the market Crypto · bitcoin:native To close the week, crypto behaved exactly like the risk gauge it has become. Bitcoin slipped to around $81,600, roughly 35% below last October's record, as U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $635.6 million of net outflows in a single day and about $418 million of leveraged long positions were liquidated. Notably, Ether and XRP fell alongside it rather than offering any hedge. That lockstep with tech, instead of independence from it, is the tell that this is a positioning story and not a crypto-specific one. The tension: The Crypto Fear and Greed Index sits at a neutral 47. A clean break of $80,000 would test whether dip buyers still show up. THE QUESTION FOR YOU Is this the AI trade topping out, or just a dip to buy before the next leg? And heading into the Fed decision and Big Tech earnings, what is the one number or chart you are watching most closely? Reply and tell us, we read every one.

WASHINGTON, Friday October 23 Congress is gone. Both chambers left town for the midterms and will not take a recorded vote until Monday, November 9. The Senate stands adjourned until 3:00 p.m. that day, holding pro forma sessions on October 26 and 29 and November 2 and 5. The House is in a district work period. Eleven days to the election. The president's published schedule carries one item. Doors open 10:30 a.m. at Alico Arena on the Florida Gulf Coast University campus in Fort Myers, remarks at 2:00 p.m. Travel on either side is published without announced times. No White House press briefing is scheduled. Reporting, not the official schedule, puts the Florida stop in a run that went through Iowa on Thursday and continues into Georgia Saturday and Michigan Sunday. Congress may be out, but one vote is already written. A cloture motion is pending on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2347, the vehicle carrying permitting reform, with the vote set for roughly 5:30 p.m. on November 9, the Senate's first afternoon back. Agencies and the Pentagon are dark. The only civil body with something live today is the Federal Reserve, and only in the negative sense: Chair Warsh has no public appearance ahead of the October 27 to 28 FOMC meeting. Thirty-two further civil bodies were checked and clear on the published record. The Supreme Court does not sit again until November 2. At the Pentagon, no press briefing, no DSCA arms sale notice this week, no published combatant command activity, no announced force movements. The daily contract announcements post at 5:00 p.m. Eastern, the one scheduled federal release of the afternoon. Against all that, the White House published four presidential actions on Thursday alone: a Section 232 proclamation adjusting wind turbine imports, a Defense Production Act Section 303 determination on domestic petroleum, an executive order on housing costs, and a seafood proclamation. The read: with no legislature in the building for seventeen more days, the only policy channel still open is the one that does not need a quorum, and the wind turbine proclamation is the piece of it with a cost line attached.

The AI trade cracked yesterday. Meta posted its first negative free cash flow in over a decade and fell 7%, dragging the Nasdaq down 2.60% to 26,008.86, the worst session since June, while the Dow finished flat. Money ran straight into Treasuries: the 10-year closed at 4.953%, the first sub-5% close since September 23, and the 2-year at 4.635%, both down about 19bp. Futures this morning are mixed and quiet by comparison, Dow around 0.6% lower with Nasdaq 100 flat. Oil is the other live wire. Brent is near $114.47, a five-month high, after Houthi strikes pushed Aramco to evacuate its Dhahran headquarters, with WTI just over $101. That is a problem for a Fed that hiked in September, sits at 3.75-4.00%, and goes into its October 27-28 meeting with one-year inflation expectations at 4.7%.