The Morning 10
Nasdaq - a record close in the worst month of a midterm year, right after the bulls gave up
- 1 Nasdaq Composite 27,122.09, +2.26%, the first record close since 2 June (27,093.90), clearing it by 28.19 points; Monday's intraday high 27,183.93 against an all-time intraday high of 27,190.21
- 2 The turn came six days after the bulls capitulated: Yardeni cut his year-end S&P 500 target to 7,900 from 8,400 on 16 September and said proceed with caution; the index has risen 2.82% since and is 1.71% from that reduced target
- 3 The leadership ladder: cyber 0.04% below its 52-week high and cloud 1.2% below, against software 9.2%, the semiconductor funds 11.3% and 14.7%, and the memory basket 24.3% below theirs
- 4 The weakness is not in technology: the Nasdaq 100 ex-technology cut fell 0.11% on the week and sits 7.07% below its high, the equal-weight S&P fell 0.60% and the Dow 0.28%, all while the Nasdaq 100 gained more than five percent
- 5 Meta +11.34% to $741.25, its best day in thirteen months, after the Muse agent reached No. 1 on Apple's US App Store and Wells Fargo raised its target to $796 from $640; Meta Connect opens Wednesday
- 6 The tilt to watch is the agentic end leading the complex: ARKK 2.08% below its 52-week high after an 8.66% week, against robotics 14.12% below and memory 24.3% below - unconfirmed, and the thing to test rather than assume
- 7 The CPU complex led the single-stock tape: Arm +17.19% to $322.97 and about a third on the week, Intel +12.40% to $122.07, AMD +10.04% to $615.95 and within a fifth of a percent of its 52-week high, Qualcomm +9.22% to $194.12
- 8 Our reading that the rate increase may have preserved the bull market by keeping the yen carry trade alive is so far holding: the Bank of Japan raised on Friday and the yen weakened again anyway, to 157.59 from 157.05
- 9 Asia would not follow: Seoul opened 2.20% higher at 7,161.61 on a 350.7% memory export print, traded down to 6,986.27 and closed at 7,051.26 (+0.62%); the Taiex rose 0.17% with TSMC down 0.81%; Tokyo is shut for the second of three days
- 10 No follow-through overnight: S&P futures 7,835.75 and Nasdaq futures 30,796.50 are within a rounding error of Monday's close; bitcoin 85,281 is 1.7% below its Monday close and gold down a second day; Meta Connect and Cintas Wednesday, BlackBerry, Costco and Trump-Xi Thursday, Micron on the 30th