This Week
Continuing the trend of the last few weeks, markets were once again focused on the Federal Reserve and artificial intelligence (AI) bubble concerns.
After weeks of Fed officials focusing on inflation fears, this week saw two voters (Waller and Williams) support a December cut due to the soft labor market. And despite a headline gain of +119k jobs in September, there’s still cause for concern. The unemployment rate rose to a 4-year high (of just 4.4%), and the economy saw (small) net job losses in June and August. So, December rate cut odds have rebounded to 70% from just 30% earlier this week.
On the AI front, Nvidia had strong Q3 results – nearly 60% YoY earnings growth plus $500 billion in sales commitments through next year. That was enough to alleviate all AI worries… for about 18 hours.
For the week, the Nasdaq-100® is down 3% (blue line), while 10-year Treasury yields fell almost 10bp to 4.05% (black line).
Next Week
Here’s what I’m watching next week:
- Producer Price Index on Tuesday
- Retail Sales on Tuesday
- Jobless Claims on Wednesday