Youth Finance First
28th September -09th October
Tell me about the past two weeks.
Research By : Aarav Singh
Two weeks that open with the bond market holding stocks hostage and close with the S&P 500 a hair from a record anyway. The index bottoms at 7,651.54 on September 30, then climbs 2.2% in four sessions to a record close of 7,818.93 on October 6, finishing the period at 7,811.54, up 0.9% since the last recap. The Nasdaq adds 1.1% to 27,366.17, while the Dow slips 0.3% to 51,655.01. The catalyst is a September jobs report that lands with a thud: 29,000 payrolls against roughly 90,000 expected, unemployment up to 4.2%, wages up just 0.1%, and 60,000 jobs shaved from prior months. October hike odds collapse from about 70% to under 20% within a week, though the minutes released October 7 show all 19 officials backed September's hike and most still want another by year-end. Futures price December at roughly 84%, so the hike flagged last time is delayed, not cancelled.
Treasuries, unimpressed by any of this, keep misbehaving. The 10-year touches a 24-year high of 5.33% on October 5, up from 5.18% last recap, before settling at 5.24%; the 30-year reaches 5.70%, and across the Atlantic the 30-year gilt tops 6% for the first time since 1998.
Last recap's forecast of drifting oil gets a rude correction. Trump rejects an Iran deal on September 28, Brent settles at $102.25 on October 2, spikes to nearly $109.80 intraday on October 8, and closes the period at $104.72, about 7% above where it left off. WTI barely budges at $91.85 against $92.41. Hurricane Isaias, which shuts in roughly 63% of Gulf of Mexico output, supplies fresh drama, though Trump's pledge not to attack Iran before the November 3 midterms takes some of the edge off Friday. Delta captures the pass-through, missing third-quarter earnings at $1.72 a share against $1.89 expected and slashing full-year guidance to $5.10-$5.60 from $6.50-$7.50 on a $4.25-a-gallon fuel assumption.
Disclaimer: Educational and Informational Purposes Only
The AI trade suffers its second wobble in four weeks. September's trigger was a safety essay; October 8's is arithmetic. The Financial Times reports OpenAI's annualized revenue is nearer $50 billion than the $70 billion circulating among investors, a gap attributed to rival accounting methods. The Nasdaq drops 1.25% that day, Nvidia sheds 2.94%, Broadcom 4.35%, Micron 4.79% and Oracle roughly 5%, while IT services names like Accenture rally 6%. The Nasdaq recovers 0.64% on Friday. Meta, last recap's winner, holds most of its Muse gains near $728, though reports of Amazon blocking Muse shoppers hint that agents will meet resistance.
The standout loser is precious metals, which reverses the resilience noted last time. Gold, shrugging at a hawkish Fed around $4,321 on September 25, falls to $4,140 by October 2, a 3.4% weekly drop, and $4,121 on October 7. A 1.3% bounce Friday to about $4,190 still leaves it roughly 3% lower. Silver is worse, near $60.68 and down about 16% over the month as speculative longs flee. The culprit is the one thing bullion hates: real yields at 24-year highs and a firm dollar, which turn a non-yielding asset into a costly hobby despite a war and $100 oil.
The winner arrives courtesy of Elon Musk. On October 8, SpaceX agrees to buy Grain Management's nationwide 800 MHz low-band spectrum, positioning Starlink Mobile as a direct challenger to the carriers. On Friday T-Mobile falls 13.3%, AT&T 9.8% and Verizon 8.7%, while tower owners soar on the theory that anyone building a network needs a landlord. Crown Castle jumps 15.6% in one session and 17.85% on the week to $79.64, with American Tower up 9.3% and SBA 7.3% on the day.
Into late October, the September CPI on October 14 decides whether December is merely probable or inevitable, and a hot print would revive hike odds ahead of the October 27-28 meeting. Oil hinges on whether Trump's pre-midterm restraint on Iran holds and how quickly Gulf output returns after Isaias, while yields above 5.2% keep capping gold and richly valued tech. Apple's October 13 event and the first wave of bank earnings test whether the AI scare is a blip, and Meta reports October 28, the same day the Fed decides.
28th September -09th October
Tell me about the past two weeks.