Risk assets bounce as China GDP surprise lifts sentiment

After a bruising week, markets remembered how to go up. Stocks rebounded from last week’s carnage, with AI and semiconductor names leading the charge on gains of 4% to 7%. China supplied the second shot of espresso. The country posted 4.5% third-quarter GDP growth, beating expectations and giving traders one more reason to lean back into risk. Crypto joined the rally, at least for a while. Bitcoin briefly touched $83K before drifting lower, part of a late fade that hit every major token. The numbers behind the bounce Bitcoin traded near $82K at last check. That puts it up 1.3% over 24 hours, though still down 1.3% over the past seven days. So one good day roughly erased the week’s damage on paper, but not quite. Think of it as getting back to the starting line, minus one shoe. Ethereum held above $2,400, with a 24-hour gain of 1.1%. That makes it the laggard among the large caps, trailing Bitcoin’s move by a small margin. Solana did the heavy lifting. SOL climbed past $104 and posted a 2.4% gain over 24 hours, the strongest showing among the majors tracked here. XRP edged toward $1.30, rounding out a session where everything moved in the same direction. Then everything gave a bit b...