Nasdaq Hits Fresh High

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Rob Black (0:11)

The NASDAQ, in record territory, even as civic conductors are falling, the Dow is lower and the S&P 500 is rising. So a little bit of mixed markets because there is a lot going on in the markets right now. Tech is doing its thing and communications is helping as well. Leading the S&P 500 Civic conductors not so much helping today.

A lot of bettors are now starting to bet against the Treasury. The iShares 20 plus year Treasury bond ETF, also known as TLT, has attracted $4.9 billion in inflows this year. Investors or speculators, maybe, traders are expecting an imploding Treasury market has supercharged flows in a long bond exchange fund as investors are now starting to bet that this fortunes will eventually reverse. Certainly most investors who are buying these are looking for yields to come down so that obvious prices go up and they actually make more than just the coupon investment. It's interesting to play that kind of bet. It's not my thing.

But we certainly feel like the month of September, things got supercharged. The S&P 500 is up, as is the NASDAQ, 4 tenths of 1% and 7 tenths of 1% each. Meta Platforms is doing a nice thing today, up 2.4%. It continues to enjoy that status of the markets of MegaCap, darling in recent weeks, ever since the release of its MEWS AI agent. Strength today is being seen in non-sink connector tech and MegaCap stocks. Participation in the broader market has improved considerably since the open, when things looked a little bit dreary.

Treasury yields remain elevated even as oil prices retreat this morning. I suppose we should talk a little bit about that. Ten-year Treasury sits at 5.32%.

The VIX is at a very unmotivated 15 rating. Gold is not doing much leadership on the inflation front, sitting at $4,166 an ounce. Bitcoin is quiet this morning, sitting at $85,252 up $17.

Fairly quiet, in my opinion. Not a lot of corporate data this week. In fact, I would refer to it as very light, meaning we're probably gonna come up with some random things to talk about. Historically, the last three months of the year are the best on Wall Street. But if you drill down a little bit deeper, it's the last, basically, it's November, December in the last two weeks of October where the action gets improving. Citigroup is upgrading Harley-Davidson Hogg to buy from Neutral today, saying a turnaround is imminent. Microsoft is getting an upgrade to buy over at Melios Research. They're saying that Microsoft is the responsible parent in the AI room.

Estee Lauder is getting bumped up to over weight from Equal Weigh at Barclays. It's a random day.

I'm seeing Morgan Stanley downgrade to AutoNation, Bank of America upgrading DraftKings. Not a lot for me to hang my hat on. But the Nasdaq hits a fresh all time high as traders are eyeing yields. Three AI agents were giving $500 a day to trade stocks and make as much as money as they can and they had to close out their position after three days. Claude won up 2.9% in those three days. Jim and I up 9 tenths of a percent. Chad's GPT up 7 tenths of a percent. Those are hardly returns to which day job over. But it shows you, I think, one of the areas that people are going to misuse AI. They're going to get themselves in trouble. AI sounds so confident in everything it says. Live longer but pay more than new typical drug.

Its median price is $250,000 per year. A six-fold increase from 39,000 median in 2008 Remember, a median is half the drug sold above, half the drug sold below.

Recently approved breakthrough pancreatic cancer drug, Rasenuk, prices at $480,000 per year. The key, mindless prices are the amount drug companies charge for a new drug before rebates or insurance discounts. On this day, in 1947, President Harry Truman delivered the first ever televised presidential address. It was not the last one, nor are we gonna put the genie back of that bottle anytime soon. Last week was interesting. Oil fell about 1%. The jolts, the PCE and non-farm payrolls all came in weaker than expected. You would think the markets would have had a great week, but the bigger story was the bond market and the Treasury sold off hard enough to push the 10 and 30-year yields back to the levels that we haven't seen since 2002

Stocks also known as equities were relatively flat despite that move, with AI infrastructure continuing to provide support. The SOX Semiconductor Index gained 3.7%, although market breadth deteriorated further. We're hearing a lot about that. With only about 25% of the S&P 500 stocks now trading above their 50-day moving average, the market internally is getting weaker, which is typically something you keep an eye out for if you're worried about downdrafts in the market. The non-farm payroll number on Friday was 29,000. It was expected to be 90,000. The dollar finished Friday down about 16 cents, but was still roughly 96 cents up for the week. These are big surges in the dollar and yields.