Newsletter · · Ashutosh Agarwal

The Fed Hikes and Issuers Start Pulling Deals as Anthropic Delays Its IPO - The Capital-Markets Reopening - Week of September 22, 2026

The Capital-Markets Reopening for the week of September 22, 2026. Podcast synthesis on the Fed's first rate hike in three years and a 10-year yield back above 5%, Bank of America's Brian Moynihan saying issuers are holding back deals, Goldman's M&A boss calling 2026 the biggest M&A year ever, Anthropic delaying its IPO to November, over $300 billion of AI debt issuance, and the SEC's green light for tokenized stocks.

The Capital-Markets Reopening

Week of September 22, 2026: The Fed Hikes and Issuers Start Pulling Deals as Anthropic Delays Its IPO

Week of September 15 – September 22, 2026

TL;DR

  • The waiting is over: the Fed raised interest rates on Wednesday, its first hike in three years, and told us more are coming. A "quarter-point" hike (0.25%, one-quarter of one percent) took the Fed's benchmark rate to a range of 3.75%–4%. The vote was unanimous (all 12 voting members), and 16 of the 18 policymakers now expect at least one more hike before year-end. New Fed chair Kevin Warsh was blunt: "inflation remains elevated," financial conditions are not "restrictive," and "today's action starts to show that we're serious about this" (Closing Bell, September 16; The Rundown, September 17). The 10-year Treasury yield, the interest rate that quietly prices every deal, pushed back above 5% for the first time since 2007, and bank stocks had their worst day since February (Prof G Markets, September 17).
  • You could already see the hike bite the deal machine. On the day, Goldman Sachs fell 4–5% intraday and financials were the worst-performing sector after energy. Most telling: Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan said out loud that "as rates and rate volatility increased, a lot of issuers have held back in some of the deals they were planning to transact in." In plain English, companies are pausing bond and stock sales because borrowing got pricier and choppier (Bloomberg Surveillance, September 16). That is the reopening's first real speed bump in months.
  • The biggest deal on the calendar hit the brakes: Anthropic delayed its record-breaking IPO. The AI company that was, just last week, reportedly getting bigger (up to $100 billion raised at a ~$2 trillion valuation, with Nvidia lined up to anchor it) has now pushed its stock-market debut back to November. The reasons: it wants to show off strong third-quarter numbers first, and there is a new "gray cloud over AI" (The AI Daily Brief, September 21; Elon Musk Podcast, September 20). Goldman and Morgan Stanley lead it, so the marquee fee event of the year just slipped a quarter.

What's new

Where a speaker actually runs the business being described, we flag them as an operator/insider; everyone else is an analyst, economist, journalist or commentator. Items are ranked by what's most useful for a trading book.

1. The Fed hiked, hawkishly, and signaled it isn't done. This is the master variable for every one of our names. For months this newsletter framed the reopening as a story that would eventually be helped by falling rates. That door didn't just stay shut; it swung the other way. On Closing Bell, "Closing Bell Overtime: Fed Cut, Warsh's Presser Sends Stocks Lower" (September 16), CNBC's Steve Liesman (journalist), reporting from the room, laid out the specifics: a unanimous 12-0 hike to 3.75%–4%, with Warsh saying "today's policy action will support a timelier return to the committee's 2% goal" and, the line that spooked markets, "so we removed a dose of accommodation." That is Fed-speak for rates still aren't high enough to slow things down, so expect more. The dot plot (the chart where each policymaker marks where they think rates should go) showed 16 of 18 members penciling in at least one more hike this year; Liesman put the odds at 51% for October and 89% for December. The two-year Treasury yield jumped 13 basis points (0.13%) and the 10-year climbed back over 5%. Financials were the second-worst sector, "with Goldman Sachs leading the way lower." On Moody's Talks, Inside Economics, "Hikes and Haircuts" (September 18), the economists noted the market is now pricing "two to three additional hikes over the following 12 months." Why it matters: every IPO, bond and buyout is priced off the cost of money, and the cost of money just went up and is expected to keep going. The reopening is now happening into a tightening cycle, not out of an easing one.

2. The clearest sign the hike is already hurting the deal pipeline came from a rival bank chief: issuers are pulling deals. This is the single most actionable read-through of the week. On Bloomberg Surveillance, "Instant Reaction: Fed Chair Kevin Warsh on Fed Policy" (September 16), the hosts flagged that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan (operator/insider, at the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference) had said "as rates and rate volatility increased, a lot of issuers have held back in some of the deals they were planning to transact in," and that Bank of America had given "difficult guidance" on the back of it. The same episode noted Goldman "drop in some four or five percentage points this afternoon." The counterpoint, also from that Barclays conference: CNBC's Leslie Picker (journalist) reported that Goldman CEO David Solomon (operator/insider) and other bank bosses were still talking up "CEO confidence being strong, boding well for mergers and acquisitions, capital markets as well, and loan demand holding up" (Closing Bell, September 16). Why it matters: here is the fault line drawn in one place. The CEOs say the deal appetite is there, but the moment rates and volatility spiked, real issuers hit pause. Watch fourth-quarter issuance volumes for who's right.

3. Goldman's own M&A boss: "this is the biggest M&A year in the history of the world." The best operator voice for our names this week came on Odd Lots, "A Goldman M&A Banker Helped Bring the Olympics to Los Angeles" (September 19), featuring the veteran Goldman Sachs M&A banker who chaired the effort to bring the 2028 Olympics to Los Angeles (operator/insider). His headline claim: "this is the biggest M&A year in the history of the world. Biggest year by far. We expect the M&A market to be much bigger than it was at the peak," the previous peak being 2021. Two details a trading book should write down. First, the mix has shifted: "for the past several years, 40% of the M&A market has been selling companies that were owned by private equity sponsors. 40%. This year, that's 30%." That means ordinary companies buying each other (especially for AI and semiconductor capabilities) are now driving deals, not just private-equity firms cashing out. Second, on the durability of it: "the bias on the part of corporate boards and decision makers is to be pro-deal... But I don't think we see it as something that lasts forever. You have to take advantage of it when it's there." He also sized real corporate AI adoption soberly: only about 2% of companies have reported an actual earnings impact from AI, though 20–30% have started implementing it. Why it matters: this is Goldman's franchise telling you the fee harvest is not just intact but historic, while quietly warning the window is open now and won't stay open forever, which is exactly the tension a rate hike sharpens.

4. Anthropic's mega-IPO, the biggest fee event on the board, got delayed to November. The freshest and most consequential change to the pipeline. On The AI Daily Brief, "The State of the AI Debate" (September 21), host Nathaniel Whittemore (commentator) relayed reporting from the Wall Street Journal and The Information that Anthropic "will not, in fact, go public this month or next as originally planned," pushing the debut to November. The stated reason is not the AI-safety scare (the delay was reportedly decided before CEO Dario Amodei's essay calling for an industry slowdown) but a desire to show strong third-quarter financials first; the company has not yet begun the "roadshow" meetings with analysts that usually precede an IPO by about a month. The numbers leaking out: Anthropic went from spending "$2.30 for every dollar in revenue" a year ago to "slightly profitable on that basis" now, claims gross margins above 80% once you strip out revenue-sharing deals and the cost of training its models, and says it's on track for $100 billion of annualized revenue by year-end, up from $65 billion at the end of July. But skeptics note that profitability may be "short-lived" once new data-center costs land, and the IPO paperwork will show investors the unadjusted numbers for the first time. Former Nasdaq executive Karen Snow (ex-operator/pundit) captured the mood: the Anthropic IPO "went from being a no-brainer to not being a no-brainer... there's a bit of a gray cloud over AI right now." Why it matters: Goldman and Morgan Stanley lead this listing, the largest ever contemplated. A one-quarter slip doesn't kill the fee, but it pushes it out of 2026, and it signals that even blue-chip IPO demand has gone wobbly exactly as rates rose.

5. The debt market told the real story of the AI boom: over $300 billion borrowed this year, and the cushion is thinning. On At Any Rate, "Key Takeaways: European Leveraged Finance Conference 2026" (September 17), J.P. Morgan's credit strategists (analysts, at a competitor) reported from their 10th annual conference in London that there has been "over $300 billion of issuance" of AI-related debt across markets so far this year, "primarily U.S., primarily hyperscalers" (the giant cloud companies). U.S. high-yield bond issuance, the riskier "junk" end of the market, is up 60% year over year on the back of that AI financing wave. But the tone was cautious: spreads (the extra yield investors demand over safe government bonds) are "very tight," the cushion is "relatively limited if we're in for a prolonged period of volatility," and "a large or growing portion of the index spread is dominated by a relatively small number of stressed credits." Their framing of the mood: the question has shifted from "is high yield attractive?" to "where are we paid for assuming the risk within high yield?" And a warning worth keeping: when bond markets get "disorderly," "spreads, rates correlations going to one," meaning everything sells off together. Separately, on Brew Markets, "Novo's Next Act & What Happened to Nike?" (September 21), the hosts (commentators) flagged Japan's SoftBank issuing "$11 billion in debt to fund its latest round of investment in OpenAI," "the largest corporate bond issuance in Japanese history," with SoftBank shares up 8% on the news. It is another example of the "circular lending" powering the AI trade, where money borrowed to invest in AI eventually needs the AI valuations to keep rising to be paid back. Why it matters: the financing engine behind the reopening is running hot and generating real fees, but the professionals who buy this debt are getting pickier and less protected, precisely the corner Morgan Stanley flagged last week as where cracks would show first.

6. A quiet regulatory bombshell for the exchanges: the SEC cleared the way for tokenized stocks. On The Rundown, "Fed Kicks Off New Hiking Cycle, SEC Greenlights Tokenized Stocks" (September 17), host Zaid Admani (commentator) reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission "just cleared a path for tokenized stocks to trade legally in the U.S." A tokenized stock is a digital token on a blockchain that stands in for a real share; it can trade around the clock with near-instant settlement. The SEC is doing this through a "five-year innovation exemption," and, importantly, holders must get the same rights as normal shareholders (dividends, voting), while companies get 30 days to object before a token version of their stock can trade. Why it matters: this is the regulatory green light the whole "tokenization" theme has been waiting for, and it lands squarely on the long-run strategies of both our exchange names. It is the rule change that turns ICE's and Nasdaq's tokenization bets from optionality into something they can actually build on in the U.S.

The debate

The core question hasn't changed: is this a durable, multi-year reopening of capital markets, or a fragile head-fake? What changed this week is that the thing everyone was waiting for, the Fed, finally showed its hand, and it was hawkish. So both sides have firmer footing.

The durable case. The deal engine is not just running, it's historic. Goldman's own M&A boss calls this "the biggest M&A year in the history of the world," bigger than the 2021 peak, and increasingly driven by real companies buying each other rather than private equity cashing out (Odd Lots, September 19). A Morgan Stanley M&A co-head says the pipeline went "from talking about green shoots to actually seeing the plants now" (Squawk on the Street, September 15). Bond markets have absorbed over $300 billion of AI borrowing this year, with high-yield issuance up 60% (At Any Rate, September 17). And a hike is not all bad for our diversified names: rising rates and the volatility around them are fuel for the trading desks Goldman and Morgan Stanley run. History even helps: on The Rundown (September 17), the host noted that across the last six Fed hiking cycles since 1994, the S&P 500 is up 6.7% on average (median 10.7%) twelve months after the first hike.

The fragile case. The tailwind everyone assumed, a rate cut, became a headwind, and the damage is already visible, not hypothetical. Bank of America's CEO says issuers are pulling deals as rates and volatility rise (Bloomberg Surveillance, September 16). Bank stocks had their worst day since February, Goldman down 4–5% on the day (Prof G Markets, September 17). The 10-year yield is back over 5%, the market is pricing two to three more hikes over the next year (Moody's Talks, September 18), and the credit pros say their cushion is thin and getting thinner (At Any Rate, September 17). And the trophy deal that was supposed to crown the year, Anthropic, just slipped to November amid a "gray cloud over AI" (The AI Daily Brief, September 21).

My read. The most useful voice this week was Robert Armstrong of the Financial Times (journalist) on Prof G Markets (September 17), and his line is the one to carry: on AI borrowing costs, "25 basis points is not going to change a decision right now. 75 probably isn't going to change a decision, but it's going to be one factor in the decision down the road... interest costs don't matter until they do." That's the whole reopening in a sentence. The deal machinery is not in question; Goldman's and Morgan Stanley's own bankers told you it's historic. What's in question is the price of money, and this week we learned it's rising and expected to keep rising. That reinforces the posture we've favored: lean toward the diversified franchises (Goldman, Morgan Stanley) that get paid to underwrite and to trade, because the same hike that pressures deal financing feeds their trading floors. Be more cautious on the pure advisers (Evercore, Moelis), whose fees only land when deals actually close and whose clients' math gets harder every time debt gets pricier. The one thing that would flip my read: if fourth-quarter issuance volumes hold up despite Moynihan's warning, the durable case wins. If issuers keep pulling deals, the head-fake camp was right.

Stocks in play

  • Goldman Sachs (GS). Bull: the best-covered name, and structurally strong. Its own M&A boss calls this the biggest M&A year ever, bigger than 2021, with strategic (non-private-equity) buyers now driving deals (Odd Lots, September 19); CEO David Solomon was talking up strong CEO confidence and deal appetite at the Barclays conference (Closing Bell, September 16); and it co-leads the (now-delayed) Anthropic IPO. Rate volatility is also fuel for its trading desks. Bear: the stock fell 4–5% on the Fed day and led financials lower; higher rates raise the cost of the leveraged deals that pad the fee pool; the Anthropic fee just slipped to November. Catalyst / number to watch: fourth-quarter trading revenue (does rate volatility lift it?); fourth-quarter M&A and underwriting volumes against Moynihan's "issuers holding back" warning; Anthropic roadshow timing.
  • Morgan Stanley (MS). Bull: a genuine operator voice: a Morgan Stanley co-head of M&A said the pipeline moved from "green shoots to actually seeing the plants now," with boardroom M&A "very much top of mind" and big deals "much more likelihood than there would have been three or four years ago" (Squawk on the Street, September 15); co-leads Anthropic; and, like Goldman, its trading arm benefits from the volatility a hike brings. Bear: the same rate pressure on issuance; the Anthropic slip; and last week's own caveat (lower-quality issuers softening) now looks prescient given the credit-market caution this week. Catalyst / number to watch: wealth-management net-new-asset flows at the next print; equity-issuance appetite into year-end; Anthropic timing.
  • Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). Bull: the SEC's five-year exemption for tokenized stocks is a real structural positive for the exchange's data-and-listings franchise and its tokenization ambitions (The Rundown, September 17). Bear: the 10-year yield back over 5% keeps its mortgage-technology unit chained to a frozen housing market. Catalyst / number to watch: any ICE response to the SEC tokenization ruling; transaction-versus-recurring-data revenue mix.
  • Nasdaq (NDAQ). Bull: the SEC tokenized-stock exemption plays directly to Nasdaq's blockchain/tokenization strategy (The Rundown, September 17); wearables maker Oura filed its IPO at an $11 billion-plus valuation, adding to the listings pipeline (Citeline Podcasts, September 16). Bear: the listings pipeline leans heavily on giant AI names, and this week the marquee one (Anthropic) slipped to November while the AI-IPO mood soured; a former Nasdaq executive herself called the Anthropic listing "not a no-brainer" anymore (The AI Daily Brief, September 21). Catalyst / number to watch: which venue Anthropic and the other autumn AI IPOs choose; listings and market-data revenue trends; any Nasdaq move on tokenization.
  • Evercore (EVR). Bull: structurally, the boutique adviser benefits from the historic M&A backdrop Goldman described. Bear: a pure adviser with no trading or lending cushion is the most exposed of our names to a hawkish Fed; success fees only land when deals close, and the cost of clients' deal math just rose. Catalyst / number to watch: advisory backlog and managing-director productivity at the next print; any sign the sponsor-exit logjam is breaking.
  • Moelis (MC). Bull: the same pure-play advisory exposure, plus genuine restructuring optionality: if a hawkish Fed and strained AI debt ever tip borrowers into distress, restructuring advisers get busy. Bear: with no trading or lending ballast at all, Moelis is the most rate-sensitive of the seven, and a hiking Fed is the opposite of what a fee-only advisory model wants. Catalyst / number to watch: any shift in revenue mix toward restructuring; the first real sign of a sponsor-M&A thaw.
  • Jefferies (JEF). Bull: its leveraged-finance-plus-advisory mix gives it direct exposure to the record AI debt calendar (that $300 billion-and-counting), and its off-calendar fiscal quarter (ending in late August) usually makes it the group's earliest read on fees. Bear: it sits right in the path of any lower-quality-issuer or AI-debt strain that a rate hike aggravates, exactly the thinning cushion J.P. Morgan's credit team described this week. Catalyst / number to watch: its fiscal third-quarter earnings, expected in late September: the group's leading indicator, and the next hard data point on the whole reopening.

Read-throughs

  • Macro / rates, the master variable, now confirmed (GS / MS / JEF / EVR / MC). The Fed hiked, signaled more, and pushed the 10-year yield back over 5% (Closing Bell, September 16; Prof G Markets, September 17). Diversified franchises (GS, MS) get a partial offset from trading; pure advisers (EVR, MC) and leveraged-finance-heavy JEF feel the financing squeeze most directly. The tell to watch is whether issuers keep pulling deals, as Bank of America's CEO warned they've started to.
  • Investment-banking fee pool (GS / MS / JEF). Still the strongest structural signal: Goldman's M&A boss calls 2026 the biggest deal year in history, and the mix has shifted toward strategic buyers (private-equity sellers down from 40% to 30% of the market) (Odd Lots, September 19). The engine is intact; the question is whether a higher cost of capital slows the top of the funnel over the next quarter.
  • Debt and leveraged finance (JEF / GS / MS). Over $300 billion of AI-related borrowing this year, U.S. high-yield issuance up 60%, but spreads tight and the cushion thinning; the market's question has flipped to "where are we paid for the risk?" (At Any Rate, September 17). SoftBank's record $11 billion Japanese bond to fund OpenAI is the "circular financing" poster child (Brew Markets, September 21). Jefferies is the most direct beneficiary and the most exposed if the lower-quality end cracks.
  • The AI-IPO pipeline (GS / MS / NDAQ). The single largest fee event, Anthropic, slipped to November, and the broader AI-IPO mood soured on a "gray cloud" of safety worries and softening usage data (The AI Daily Brief, September 21; Big Technology Podcast, September 19). Rival OpenAI, meanwhile, is chasing a $1.5 trillion private valuation (double its prior $730 billion) rather than going public. For Goldman and Morgan Stanley, the fee is delayed, not dead; for Nasdaq, the venue prize is still up for grabs.
  • Exchange listings, data and tokenization (ICE / NDAQ). The SEC's five-year "innovation exemption" for tokenized stocks is the concrete regulatory catalyst both exchanges have been positioning for (The Rundown, September 17). Near term, though, plain old listings volume from the AI-IPO wave is the bigger swing factor, and that wave just lost some momentum.
  • Named deals and filings this week. The live megadeal is Paramount's ~$110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (originally struck in February). California and 11 states sued in July on antitrust grounds; this week Paramount CEO David Ellison threatened to pull the studio out of California entirely (a leaked county report pegged the hit at $21 billion a year and 58,000 jobs), while the Department of Justice pressed the courts to make the states post a bond to cover the deal's delay costs (Elon Musk Podcast, September 17). By the weekend, settlement talks had advanced fast: Paramount is offering a $1.5 billion California production commitment, a promise not to leave the state or sell its studio lots, and a penalty if it fails to make 30 movies a year; a ticking fee of roughly $650 million per quarter to Warner shareholders starts October 1, giving Paramount every reason to close quickly. Paramount Skydance (PSKY) rose ~5% and Warner Bros. jumped ~11% on the news (The Rundown, September 21; Brew Markets, September 21). This is a marquee fee-and-financing event. Also this week: wearables maker Oura filed its IPO at an $11 billion-plus valuation (Citeline Podcasts, September 16).
  • Regulatory / antitrust backdrop (deal approvals). The Paramount–Warner fight is the clearest live test of how hard states can block a big merger, and the DOJ's move to force states to post a bond could reshape the calculus for every future antitrust challenge (Elon Musk Podcast, September 17). A cleaner, faster path through antitrust is good for the advisory fee pool; a messier one raises the risk premium on every announced deal.

What changed vs. last week

Last week's issue (covering September 8–15) landed on a clear setup: the reopening machinery was firing, but the whole thing was waiting on Wednesday's Fed meeting, where the market had moved to "almost fully priced" for a hike. The open question was whether the dot plot would say "one hike then cuts" (thesis intact) or turn genuinely hawkish (real test). We also flagged the Anthropic mega-IPO getting bigger, with Nvidia lined up to anchor up to $10 billion, and a new banking-AI tie-up between OpenAI, Morgan Stanley and Evercore. Here's what actually changed:

  • The Fed question resolved: hawkish. Last week it was "will they, and what will the dots say?" This week they hiked, unanimously, and the dots said 16 of 18 members want at least one more this year, with markets pricing two to three more over 12 months (Closing Bell, September 16; Moody's Talks, September 18). The "one hike then cuts" scenario we hoped would keep the story intact did not materialize; this was the hawkish outcome.
  • The reopening's first visible wound. Last week the hike's damage was hypothetical. This week it's on the tape: Goldman down 4–5% on the day, banks the worst sector, and Bank of America's CEO stating outright that issuers are holding back deals as rates and volatility rise (Bloomberg Surveillance, September 16).
  • Anthropic reversed course, the biggest single change. Last week the raise was ballooning to ~$100 billion at ~$2 trillion with Nvidia anchoring. This week it slipped to November, with the company wanting to show Q3 numbers first and a "gray cloud over AI" hanging over the whole listing (The AI Daily Brief, September 21; Elon Musk Podcast, September 20). Same lead banks (Goldman, Morgan Stanley), but the trophy fee is now a 2026-year-end-or-later event, not an imminent one.
  • New this week: hard debt-market data, a record Japanese bond, and a regulatory catalyst for exchanges. J.P. Morgan's leveraged-finance conference put a number on the AI borrowing wave ($300 billion-plus YTD, high-yield up 60%) (At Any Rate, September 17); SoftBank issued Japan's largest-ever corporate bond ($11 billion) to fund OpenAI (Brew Markets, September 21); and the SEC greenlit tokenized stocks in the U.S., a structural positive for ICE and Nasdaq (The Rundown, September 17).
  • The Paramount–Warner saga went from quiet to loud. A megadeal, Paramount's ~$110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition, dominated the deal news, swinging from an exit-threat standoff to advanced settlement talks in a matter of days (Elon Musk Podcast, September 17; The Rundown, September 21).