Daily PA Wrap

Risk came off almost everywhere Wednesday instead of rotating into safety: the S&P 500 fell 0.22% to 7,801.77 and the Nasdaq 100 slipped 0.21% to 31,160.08, the Russell 2000 dropped a sharper 1.31%, Bitcoin fell 2.66% to $83,281.67 and gold slid 1.24% to $4,135.20 — four different asset classes moving the same direction on a day breadth was ugly, 136 advancers against 359 decliners, and the VIX ticked up to 15.08. Caterpillar was the single worst stock in the index, down 5.75%, dragging Industrials to the bottom of the sector table at -2.09% alongside GE Vernova (-3.12%) and Deere (-3.80%); Materials followed at -1.49% as Newmont fell 2.45%. Health Care was the lone pocket of strength, up 1.08% on Eli Lilly's 2.70% gain and Moderna's 4.81% pop, with Consumer Staples (+0.16%) the only other sector in the green.

Bloomberg (paywalled) tied the slide to oil prices firm enough to revive inflation worries and Fed-hike risk; CNBC pointed to bank stocks retreating on fears that higher yields choke off lending; TheStreet flagged investors sitting on their hands ahead of the Fed's own meeting minutes. The Fed's own priced path backs the hawkish read regardless, climbing from 3.89% this month to 4.30% by next March — the same repricing gold's 1.24% drop looks to be riding.

Our take: Health Care and Staples holding up while Caterpillar and gold both got hit says this wasn't a growth scare — it's a rates scare, hitting anything priced off cheap money or a weaker dollar. Credit's calm — HY OAS still near 3.03% — is the tell: spreads are usually the first place a growth story breaks, and they didn't.

The Fear & Greed gauge slipped to 44.6 ('fear') from 47.2, with investors bracing for the Fed's meeting minutes, per TheStreet — sentiment souring a notch before any new data even lands.

New lows (19) outpaced new highs (8) for the first time in a while, and trend health slipped with them — just 29.1% of the index sits above its 50-day average, 46.6% above its 200-day.