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Markets spent most of the holiday-shortened week digesting the June FOMC meeting, which delivered the outcome investors expected on rates but not necessarily on forward guidance. The Fed left its policy rate unchanged at 3.50%-3.75%, yet the updated dot plot carried a noticeably more hawkish tone. Policymakers raised their inflation projections, and nearly half of FOMC participants now expect at least one rate increase before year-end, a meaningful shift from earlier expectations that centered around cuts. The initial reaction was risk-off, with equities selling off following the statement and press conference as investors recalibrated the path of monetary policy.

Outside of the Fed, geopolitical developments remain fluid. Weekend headlines surrounding tensions in the Middle East briefly pressured equity futures and supported energy prices, but the market's reaction was relatively contained. The conflict no longer appears to be the primary driver of market movement. For now, investors seem more focused on the economic implications of higher-for-longer rates than on geopolitical tail risks.

Equities started the week soft and extended their weakness overnight Monday into Tuesday, adding to the cautious tone and suggesting near-term momentum may be softening. Treasury yields have also moved higher since the Fed meeting as markets price in a greater probability of future tightening, with the next two meetings now firmly in focus.

Looking ahead, Thursday's PCE inflation report will be the key macro event of the week and could either reinforce or challenge the Fed's hawkish stance. On the earnings front, Micron's report should provide an important read-through on AI infrastructure demand and broader semiconductor spending trends.

Key market moves this past week:

Not an exhaustive list — just a few I’m watching closely for potential market impact.

Micron is trading around $1,075, with a 52-week range spanning roughly $103 to $1,213. The stock is up more than 700% over the past year. Earnings are due Wednesday after the close, and the setup looks familiar: near all-time highs, expectations stretched, and a crowd that has already decided the business is exceptional.

The business actually is exceptional. Micron is the only U.S.-based manufacturer of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), the architecture powering every major AI GPU running today. Hyperscalers have committed more than $725 billion in AI data center CapEx this year. That spending eventually runs through memory. Q3 revenue guidance is $33.5 billion, up from $23.86 billion last quarter. The Street is modeling $19.72 in EPS, above Micron's own guide of $19.15.

Here is the part I keep coming back to. Last quarter, Micron delivered the biggest numbers in company history, and the stock sold off anyway. The business beat. The guidance was strong. The tape did not care. That is what happens when expectations get fully priced in before the print. Broadcom taught us the same lesson just a few weeks ago.

Now the stock has roughly tripled since the last report. Implied volatility is elevated heading into Wednesday, and the expected move sits around 12%.

I’m not trading into this one. What I want to see is how the stock reacts to the print.

If guidance pushes the stock cleanly through its all-time high and it holds, I’ll look at selling a put spread to define my risk on the long side. If the print triggers a sell-the-news reaction, I’ll wait to see where it finds support before stepping in.

The business case is not the question. The price is.

Last Thursday, more than 2 million people packed various parts of Manhattan to watch the New York Knicks parade up Broadway for the first time in 53 years. Confetti. Floats. Finals MVP Jalen Brunson. The kind of day a city waits decades to experience.

I'm a (currently sad) Bulls fan. Which means for most of my childhood, the Knicks were the team standing in the way. Patrick Ewing grinding it out in the Garden. Pat Riley's defense. Jordan carving through all of it anyway.

Despite being a kid, I watched those series rooting hard against New York.

So I wasn't expecting to feel anything looking at those parade photos.

But I did.

What Brunson did in this series is worth sitting with.

In Game 5, he scored 45 points, nearly half of his team's offense, on the road in an elimination game. He closed it with an 11-foot floater to put the Knicks ahead for good. A 45-point performance in a road championship clincher has only happened twice in NBA history. The other was Michael Jordan in 1998.

Here's the thing, though.

Nobody would call Brunson the most talented player in the league. Wembanyama exists.

And yet Brunson outplayed him in the series that mattered most.

Not because he's more talented. Because he's become the complete, optimized version of exactly what he is. A player who gets harder to stop as the game gets bigger. A player who doesn't need a highlight reel to win. A player who has spent years eliminating the gap between his potential and his execution.

That's a different kind of edge.

And it maps directly to how I think about trading.

The biggest mistake I see retail traders make, and one I sometimes struggle with myself, isn't picking the wrong stock. It's trying to trade someone else's setup.

They watch YouTube. They see a strategy working for a different personality, a different risk tolerance, or a different time horizon and try to copy it without the context that makes it work. The result is a strategy that doesn't fit and a trader who second-guesses every signal.

The best trades I've made have come from setups that match how I actually think and manage risk. Not the most sophisticated approach. The one that fits.

And it's not just trading.

The people I've watched stall out professionally usually aren't the ones lacking talent. They're the ones spending energy trying to play a role that isn't theirs. Chasing credentials that don't compound on what they already do well. Expanding into lanes that dilute the thing they're actually good at.

It shows up at home, too.

A lot of people try a morning routine that worked for someone else and abandon it by February. The people who figure out their actual best hours and build around them, whether that's 6 a.m. or 10 p.m., consistently outperform the people still fighting their own biology trying to force a framework that doesn't fit.

That's the whole game.

Brunson didn't try to become Wembanyama.

He became the ceiling of Jalen Brunson.

That's the whole thesis.

I know what it feels like, at least a little, to wait for a title. The Cubs ended 108 years of frustration in 2016. I was 30. It had never happened in my lifetime.

That kind of wait changes how you experience the win.

What I saw in those parade photos wasn't just a celebration. It was what happens when a person, a team, or a city commits to doing the work the right way for long enough.

Your edge doesn't have to be the loudest one in the room.

It just has to be yours.

Executed completely.

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Hitting the Bid content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The information contained is not, nor is it intended to be, trading or investment advice or a recommendation of any security, futures contract, digital asset or alike. I may hold a position in the trading vehicles discussed. Trading and investing contains risk. All investors should evaluate their own risk tolerance, financial situation, and investment duration before entering any trade or investment.