WHERE WE START The Nasdaq 100 cash index closed Tuesday at 30,276.81, down 331.32 points, or 1.08 percent. Tuesday's cash range was 30,081.06 to 30,480.40. The December NQ contract settled at 30,613.25. Overnight, NQ held a quiet band of roughly 220 points. The high came in near 30,736. Our two data feeds disagree on the exact low, so we treat the 30,510 to 30,575 shelf as the floor of that band rather than quoting one print. Then the 8:30 inflation report landed and NQ jumped about 145 points, to roughly 30,758, up about half a percent on the session. That pushed price through the overnight high. So we open above the top edge of the overnight band, with that band now sitting underneath us as the first area of support. Overhead, the 52-week high at 31,094.75 is the next marked level, about 340 points away. WHAT IS ACTUALLY MOVING THE TAPE Inflation came in cooler than economists expected. Core PCE, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure, rose 3.0 percent over the past year against a 3.3 percent forecast, and 0.2 percent for the month. Headline PCE was 3.4 percent against 3.7 percent expected. This matters because the market has been pricing the risk of a Fed rate hike in October, not a cut. Yesterday the 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.30 percent, its highest since 2007, and the 30-year reached 5.62 percent, the highest since 2002. That is what sold stocks on Tuesday. This morning the 10-year has eased to about 5.23 percent and the 30-year sits near 5.60 percent. Odds of an October hike have dropped from about 71 percent earlier in the week to near half, helped along by New York Fed president John Williams saying there is no need for urgency. So today's tape is a relief move in bonds feeding a relief move in stocks. HOW WIDE THE DAY SHOULD BE The VIX is near 15.8 this morning, down from a close of 16.04. The VIX is the market's estimate of how much the S&P 500 will move over the next year, stated as a percent. To turn that annual number into a single day, we divide by the square root of 252, the number of trading days in a year. That gives about 1.00 percent for one standard deviation. Applied to NQ near 30,750, that is about 306 points.