Three headlines from this morning that I keep laying next to each other. Saxo’s note: bond yields at 24-year highs, euro sliding, Nasdaq at a record. Bloomberg: Wall Street profit heading past $90 billion, record bonuses likely. And a stray one from Bloomberg’s billionaire tracker: the only billionaires making money this year are in tech.

Read together, they describe an odd arrangement. Yields at levels not seen since 2002 are, among other things, a bill. Mortgages at 7.45%, diesel past $6, Starbucks closing 250 stores, Nike down 10% on a weak outlook. That bill is landing on nearly everyone who isn’t holding an AI stock, and the banks are the ones collecting. Volatility is good for trading desks, and a year when bonds crater, oil whipsaws and the Fed turns around mid-cycle is about as good as it gets for the people who make markets in all of it.

I’m not saying anyone planned it. It’s just that the plumbing pays whoever sits in the middle of it, and this year the middle has been very busy. A trader who spent September handling the biggest bond selloff in two decades is going to have a good December.

What I can’t quite square is the Nasdaq record sitting next to 24-year yields. Last weekend’s Bank of America line, that AI trades are the last line of defense for Treasuries, seems to be doing real work now. The index goes up, the bond market stays orderly, and everyone agrees not to look at what happens if the first one stops. Wall Street’s profit is partly a fee for holding that arrangement together.

Do the bonuses get paid in stock, I wonder, and which stock?

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