Mid-Week Risk Check: Fresh Prices, Updated Stops
Vol pops to 20 ahead of today’s Fed call. Some crypto longs hit their stops, NET turns active, and all eyes shift to Fortinet, Zenith Live, and Friday’s DOE ruling.
MID-WEEK RISK CHECK · Wed 18 June 2025
Macro snapshot
Quiet data and a soft May-CPI print kept the 10-yr anchored near 4.44% and the dollar heavy at DXY 98.88, yet pre-event hedging has lofted the VIX back to 20.1. The driver: today’s 2 p.m. ET FOMC decision and Powell’s presser. The Street expects no rate move but will parse the dot-plot for timing of any first cut. Equity rotation still favors networking hardware, power-management and cyber-security over mega-cap software; on-chain money stays parked in AI-compute, liquid-staking and BTC side-chain tokens ahead of next week’s tech upgrades.
Risk Gauge (vs. last Wednesday)
VIX: 20.05 (+3.27 pts)
DXY: 98.876 (–0.32)
10-yr yield: 4.355%
BTC perp funding: +0.010 % (flat)
Vol pop note: the jump back above 20 reflects hedging ahead of Friday’s quad-witching and next week’s macro data. Trailing stops stay in place, but be prepared for larger intraday swings, especially in high-beta names like NET and crypto alt-pairs. No stops were breached by the volatility move.