Trading Week Wrap Up! - 09/18/26

What a week. The Federal Reserve is hiking rates again, inflation remains stubborn, Washington is rewriting the rules for digital assets, Bitcoin is moving, and the Magnificent Seven are starting to tell very different technical stories. On today's TraderMerlin, we're wrapping up one of the more consequential trading weeks we've seen recently and connecting the dots between monetary policy, inflation, technology, crypto and the trades I'm personally watching. The biggest story was clearly the Federal Reserve. The Fed raised rates 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00%, marking its first rate hike in more than three years. But the quarter-point increase itself isn't the important part. The important question is: Is this one hike—or the beginning of another tightening cycle? That question became even more important after the latest inflation numbers. August CPI rose 0.4% for the month and 3.4% year-over-year, while producer prices increased 0.4% for the month and 5.4% over the past year. Inflation isn't dead. And if prices continue pushing higher, the Fed may have more work to do. Meanwhile, the digital-asset world had a massive week of its own. The CLARITY Act ran into trouble in Washington, the battle over stablecoin yield and community-bank deposits intensified, and the SEC rolled out its new Innovation Exemption, opening the door for certain tokenized U.S. stocks to trade onchain through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools. Crypto isn't just sitting on the outside of traditional finance anymore. The infrastructure is beginning to merge. We'll break down: The Fed – Why rates went higher and what could come next Inflation – What CPI and PPI are telling us about the road ahead Digital Assets – CLARITY, stablecoins, SEC/CFTC developments and tokenization Bitcoin & Cryp