Was Thursday the bottom? That’s the question Stock Trader Network’s Chief Market Strategist Dennis Dick is working through on PreMarket Prep this morning after yesterday’s oil-led rally sent the S&P 500 to its best day since April.

Bulls are getting an early test before the bell as October’s CPI came in a tick hot at 8:30 a.m.—rising 0.4% on the headline and 0.3% on Core, both above expectations—giving traders an excuse to take some early profits in the AI rebound. Meanwhile, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) remains under pressure after The Information reported overnight on how Jensen Huang’s yearslong ties to Megaspeed’s Alice Huang helped enable Nvidia chip sales into China.

Anthropic (ANT) officially kicked off its IPO roadshow this morning—with a planned livestream featuring CEO Dario Amodei and JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) chief Jamie Dimon—offering 825 million shares between $70 and $78 apiece ahead of next week’s targeted debut.

Silicon Valley giants are buying $26 billion worth of Class N stock directly in the offering. Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Nvidia are each putting up $10 billion, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) is in for $2.5 billion, Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), Micron (NASDAQ: MU), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are each taking $1 billion, and TSMC (NYSE: TSM) is chipping in $500 million.

Here is what else is moving under the radar this morning:

• Elon Musk tweeted early-morning claiming that Starlink’s software is “also very well suited to training super intelligence,” planting another flag in the distributed AI compute race.
• Lucid (NASDAQ: LCID) secured a $1.75 billion liquidity boost from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to help bankroll its turnaround.
• Redwire (NYSE: RDW) won a $40 million NASA contract to demonstrate roll-out solar power for a Moon base, while Firefly Aerospace (FLY) signed a multi-launch agreement with Synspective for up to 10 missions.

STN Desk Takeaway: As our STN Market Conditions put it this morning, a clear night has given way to a “partly cloudy sunrise.” Crude oil (NYSE: USO) continues to slide on Middle East de-escalation momentum, and while a warm CPI print and Nvidia’s ongoing headline risk are testing yesterday’s bounce.