Stocks Rise After Inflation Slowed Last Month

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Rob Black (0:11)

The S&P 500, up one half of 1% this morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average flat. The NASDAQ up 1%, the Russell 2000 up one fourth of 1%. Sorry, I was having troubles figuring out its numbers. Ten-year treasure bonds, it's at 5.29%.

Gold is at $4191, up 12 bucks today. Bitcoin up $1,300 to $84,387.

Taking a look at the 30-year. Let's see where she's ticking at, 5.64%.

That feels a little, how should we say, pricey? The 10-year treasure bond, like I said earlier, 5.28%.

And those are good savings numbers. And there's a lot of conversation on Wall Street right now of should you be saving? One of the bigger stories leading the market today is Apple, up seven bucks to $336.

It still has to get above around 343 And it looks like it could. It's been putting in some good work. It's been pulling back a little bit less when it hits new highs. So it's got a nice base. Today there's news that Apple CEO John Ternes is got a different vision for the business. One that is different from the former CEO. Apple issued cautious revenue guidance for the current quarter in the last July, largely because the company is unable to source enough memory chips to meet demand. Its problem was former CEO Tim Cook expected to persist. Profit margins were also under significant pressure in the most recent quarter compared with the preceding quarter due to those higher memory prices. Tim Cook said on his last earnings call that on the pricing front, we reluctantly raised prices. News today is, first and foremost, John Ternes is doing some layoffs and that could help offset some of the memory chip pricing pressure that Apple has absorbed. The company wants to avoid taking more significant price hikes into 2027 should the memory chip shortage rage on.

But there's talk about a new event coming up where they're going to introduce what's referred to as a Smart Home Hub at an October 13 event. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is going to unveil an all new Smart Home Hub designed to control devices throughout the home, serve as a digital calendar and reminder list, play music, make video calls and much, much more. The Hub, which can be mounted on a wall or placed on a counter with an accompanying stand, is designed to recognize users and provide them with a personalized content via voice or facial recognition. It will also take advantage of Apple's new Siri AI platform, which it launched in Beta earlier this month. Apple is also working on a secondary version of the Smart Home Hub featuring a robotic arm that lets the screen rotate 360 degrees. Home Hub would stand as the first new product category for Apple under CEO John Ternes.

I feel like a hub for me in my kitchen would be great because I do a lot of cooking. Something that happened during COVID was I started watching cooking videos for forms of entertainment as well as education. And I got pretty good at it. So Home Hub would be great for me because between five and seven, I'm usually in the kitchen looking at recipes, but my family could call me at the Home Hub, if you will, versus my phone where you get your hands older. But it feels like this would have been more useful in my life 10 years ago when the kids were small. But we'll see. And again, it's not always about me, but Apple's a big story today leading the markets higher up by 2.2%, $336, up $7. And it is my largest position. I know a lot of you own it sometimes because of me, sometimes because of your own choices, but you get the idea. We're starting to see some stress in the stock market. Nope, we're starting to see some stress in the housing market. Tricked myself there, huh? Higher mortgage rates. Mortgage rates are above 7%. A few months back they were at 6%. And 7% is having a chilling effect on home prices. More than one in five home sellers cut their houses asking price in September. That's the greatest share of price drops nearly four years when prices softened post-COVID. Home price is nationally up 1.9%.

And they're just marching higher. San Francisco median sales price was up 8.5% year over year. So why is San Francisco doing so well? AI millionaires. Or should I say SI millionaires? I'm not calling it superintelligence. I refuse.

SPEAKER_3 (5:07)

Refuse.

Rob Black (5:08)

This morning, the personal consumption expenditures price index for August increased at a 3.4% annual rate, down from 3.7% the month prior. That inflation slowing gave the markets a good chance to have a winning session today than get a little extra leadership from Apple. And we're having a nice day. Not everything's higher. We see Tesla's down $2.50 to $300. Oracle's down 2 cents. So it's not a broad AI endorsement this morning. Nvidia's up three. That's interesting after having a nice day yesterday, sitting at 230 What's Nvidia's high that it needs to take out? Keep in mind, we're moving into earning season, but they report late, about two or three weeks after the big tech companies do the hyperscalers. 52 week high on Nvidia, 236, so it's at 230 It's pretty close. Feels pretty excited right now.