Oil above $100, two wars, a split Federal Reserve, and doubts over AI spending are hitting stocks at once. Veteran New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) floor trader Peter Tuchman says he cannot tell which force will move the market next.
The S&P 500 fell 1.8% on Friday, and CME FedWatch priced 72% odds of a December rate hike, which would make borrowing costlier for listed companies.
Which Forces Are Pulling on Wall Street at the Same Time?
Tuchman ran through the list. He named oil, interest rates, the US confrontation with Iran, and the Russia-Ukraine war, which he said has returned to a heightened level of aggression.
He added AI spending, a trade he said has split into subsectors, from hyperscalers, the largest cloud computing companies, to data-center builders.
Hedge funds are another moving part. Many are up 10% to 15% this year, Tuchman said, and may close positions in November to protect those gains.
Yet when he recorded the video, he said the S&P 500 sat less than 2% below its record high.
“We’ve seen every possible thing happens in this market whether it’s tariffs whether it’s oil whether it’s a war whether it’s two wars right whether it’s the yield whether it’s bonds whether it’s AI…The market has so many moving parts,” he said.
How Much Does $100 Oil Really Cost the US Economy?
Tuchman said oil climbed about $40 a barrel after the US and Israel attacked Iran, peaking near $120.
By his math, that $40 climb took an economy growing at 4.5% down to slow growth.
“…the inflationary implications of hundred-plus dollar a barrel oil are massive,” he said.
Apollo Global Management sees the damage differently. Economists led by chief economist Torsten Slok estimated in March that a lasting move to $100 oil trims US growth by about 0.1 percentage point.
The same model lifts headline inflation by roughly 0.7 point. Apollo credits the smaller growth hit to the US being a net oil exporter and to gains in energy efficiency.
What $100 Oil Means for the Fed’s December Decision
On October 28, the Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate at 3.75% to 4% and said in its statement that inflation was still elevated.
Two officials, Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, voted for a quarter-point hike instead. Tuchman also pointed to the handover from Jerome Powell to Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.
“We switched Fed chairs… We’ve seen, uh, them go from an interest rate cutting cycle to an interest rate raising cycle. Caught everybody off guard,” he added.
The Nasdaq Composite closed October down about 5.2%, its worst month since March 2025. Reports tied Friday’s sell-off to rising oil, weak tech earnings, and December hike bets.
Tuchman also lists AI spending among the forces he cannot rank, a theme he has tied to AI’s supply chain winners.
The October jobs report lands Friday. It gives the Fed fresh data before December, after two officials voted for a hike in October.
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