The Nasdaq rose 1.05%. The 10-year Treasury yield stayed about 5.31%, near a 24-year high.
September’s weak jobs report lowered the reported odds of an October Fed rate hike. It did not bring the yield down.
Weak Jobs Changed the Rate Outlook
The Nasdaq closed at 27,477.31, and the S&P 500 rose 0.66% to 7,773.95.
September payrolls grew by just 29,000, against expectations of about 84,000 to 90,000. The prior two months were revised down by 60,000. Unemployment reached 4.2%.
The reported odds of an October rate hike fell to roughly 20%. December hike odds remained high. Three briefs from @fundstrat_direct and @cjstockpulse carried the view that softer inflation could let the Fed become less hawkish.
Tom Lee said Q3 earnings would probably grow almost 30%. He also said a market drawdown could come between mid-October and the midterms. That is his outlook. The high Treasury yield is already here.
Prices complicate the rate picture. Services activity grew in September, although the ISM index slipped to 54.9 from 55.4. Its prices-paid reading rose to 74.0, the highest since July 2022.
Brent settled at $100.32 after falling 1.9%. Higher Middle East crude exports on some days and a pledged G7 oil release were cited alongside that move. Weak hiring may have changed expectations for October, but the services price reading and oil price keep inflation in the conversation.
There had been an earlier warning in the Treasury market. The Financial Times described a $6bn Treasury buyback announcement, below analysts’ estimates of $8bn and $10bn. The 10-year yield rose to just below 4.86% after the announcement. The account said higher long-term yields raise borrowing costs for households and companies.
@clearvaluetax9382 warned of a U.S. debt crisis, citing national debt above $40 trillion and projected fiscal 2026 interest costs of $1.1 trillion. A separate X post pointed to 24-year highs in 10-, 20- and 30-year U.S. yields and asked how long before the global economy starts to break. Those are warnings, not outcomes.
Rates also entered the trade dispute. President Donald Trump said Bombardier must build in America to sell in the United States. Bombardier said it directly employs people in more than 20 states, has sites in 10 states and uses American-made aircraft components. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion of U.S. goods took effect.
Trump separately repeated a threat to stop trading with countries where the U.S. runs a deficit unless the Fed cuts rates. He said he wanted a U.S. interest rate of 1% or 0.5%, rather than 4%.
The next listed dates for the rate question are the September FOMC minutes on October 7 and September CPI on October 13.
Anthropic’s Commitments Put Usage in Focus
Anthropic reportedly has about $518B of compute commitments over the next decade. About 80% are fixed. The reported commitments include about $161B with Broadcom, $111B with Google and $110B with Amazon.
Its cash and short-term investments were reported at $20.3B at the end of 2025. That makes future usage and revenue central to judging the commitments.
@geopoliticaleconomyreport argues that AI spending and valuations have outrun the business. The speaker said Anthropic lost $42 billion on $4.6 billion of revenue in 2025. The speaker also cited an estimate of $600 billion in AI-related spending by Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon in 2026, along with debt issuance and stock-market concentration. That is the speaker’s bubble case.
Amit, citing The Information, said Microsoft was cutting internal Claude spending by more than a third and Meta’s Claude Code users had halved. He argued that Anthropic’s proposed $2T valuation could not be justified by its current business. Those claims sharpen the question of how much usage and revenue will support Anthropic’s spending.
Elsewhere in AI, an X post linked AMD’s overnight rise of almost 10 points to OpenAI’s new Jalapeño inference chips being deployed with AMD EPYC Turin host CPUs, each with 1.5TB of memory. Another post said TSM reached an all-time high; a commenter saw that as a sign of strong AI demand. A separate post said Nvidia reached an all-time high.
Power is in the picture as well. Two posts said Google and Constellation were reportedly nearing a billion-dollar nuclear power deal. One said a deal would add Google to Constellation’s customer list after Microsoft, Meta and Amazon.
Meta introduced Hatch, a personal AI agent app, internally. It has a free tier and monthly plans of $20 and $100. Meta says it can book appointments and fill out forms, and that it asks before sensitive actions. Users must opt out if they do not want Meta to use their interactions to train AI models.
Meta faces pressure to show returns on its AI investments. CNBC also reported that Meta recently agreed to a settlement of nearly $17 billion with a coalition of state attorneys general.
SpaceX, Nike and Chinese Internet Shares
SpaceX shares rose almost 8% on Monday. Morgan Stanley called them “cheap” and set a $300 target, about 75% above Monday’s $171.09 close.
Its analysts cited future AI products, Starship progress and more neocloud contracts. SpaceX had recently flown a crewed NASA mission and launched Google AI chips into orbit. Morgan Stanley pointed to the next planned Starship test and a third-quarter earnings report expected in late October as events to watch.
Nike’s first-quarter revenue fell 4%, and its outlook called for a high-single-digit decline. A @value-investing speaker said earnings of 1.25 would not cover the dividend. He saw Nike as potentially cheap against its peak income, but said he would not put it in his diversified portfolio because he could not judge when customer preferences might turn.
The same speaker cited Chinese internet business growth of 10-15%, Tencent at 14 times earnings and Pinduoduo at eight times earnings. He also raised variable interest entities, sanctions and Taiwan as risks. His view was that the opportunity was likely not for U.S. investors.
401(k) Balances and Contributions
Fidelity participants in their 30s averaged $75,200 in their 401(k)s. Those in their 40s averaged $156,800.
The reported average balance rose 10.5% from March through June. Average contributions, including employer contributions, were 14.4% of pay.