Early Look

Thursday, October 2, 2025

The party looks to continue on Wall Street as U.S. futures are pointing to a higher open, looking to build on the prior day gains while stocks surge in Asia and Europe as well. The S&P 500 closed at a record high on Wednesday, rising a 4^th straight day supported by tech and healthcare gains while markets remain hopeful that a U.S. federal government shutdown would be brief and have little impact on the economy. Stock markets opened lower on Wednesday as the S&P 500 was down -0.5% at its lows before ending the day +0.35% at a new record. The index’s move higher was led by a boost in health-care stocks, and you guessed it, technology stocks as semiconductors made new all-time highs (NVDA). Treasuries rallied as ADP private payroll data fueled expectations for additional Fed rate cuts despite the first government shutdown in nearly seven years. In Asian markets, The Nikkei Index jumped 385 points to 44,936, and the Hang Seng Index jumped 431 points to 27,287 while the Shanghai Index was closed (from 10/1-10/7) for Golden Week holidays. In Europe, the German DAX surged 311 points to 24,424, while the FTSE 100 is up 11 points to 9,457. European stocks rally to a new record on a boost for tech with optimism bolstered by OpenAI raising funds to value the firm at $500 billion. A great start to Q4 after a fantastic Q3 for major U.S. averages where the S&P 500 posted its best third quarter since 2020 +8.4%, the Nasdaq its best since 2010 rising +12.7% as September defied seasonality with outsized gains. The Dow Junes industrial Average rose +5.2% in Q3 and a record close, and the Russell 2000 +11.6% in Q3. A relentless buying spree in US equities dominated quarter-end pension rebalancing, overwhelming projected net selling, according to the trading desk at Goldman Sachs.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 43.15 points, or 0.09%, to 46,441.10
• The Nasdaq Composite gained 95.15 points, or 0.42%, to 22,755.16
• The Russell 2000 Index advanced 5.87 points, or 0.24% to 2,442.35

• 8:30 AM ET                  Weekly Jobless Claims…est. 223K
• 8:30 AM ET                  Continuing Claims…est. 1.932M
• 10:00 AM ET                Durables Goods M/M for August
• 10:00 AM ET                Factory Orders M/M for August…est. +1.4%
• 10:30 AM ET                Weekly EIA Natural Gas Inventory Data
• ***all subject to change due to the government shutdown

• Earnings After the Close: none

• Fed’s Goolsbee said he is increasingly concerned about inflation going the wrong way; nervous about assuming inflation will be transitory; hopes tariff impact on inflation will be transitory; economy is strong, can lower rates significantly but has cautious approach.

• Starbucks (SBUX) increases quarterly cash dividend to $0.62 from $0.61.
• Stellantis (STLA) reported late Wednesday its first quarterly growth in the U.S. this year, with new car sales up 6% in the period saying its Jeep, Chrysler, Ram and FIAT brands all saw sales growth.

• Axalta Coating (AXTA) downgraded to In Line from Outperform at Evercore IS
• Celanese (CE) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup with a $53 tgt while the firm downgraded Olin (OLN) to Neutral from Buy with a $25 price target.
• Honeywell (HON) said it divested all of its legacy Bendix asbestos liabilities, as well as certain non-Bendix asbestos liabilities, to Delticus, an institutionally capitalized corporate liability acquisition platform. Honeywell and Delticus contributed approximately $1.68B in cash, as well as certain insurance assets related to these legacy asbestos liabilities, to the newly established structure.
• TransDigm Group Inc (TDG) announces Kevin Stein retires as President and CEO.
• Williams Companies Inc (WMB) said it will invest $3.1B in power projects and projects expected to complete in first half of 2027.

• Bullish (BLSH) announced the upcoming launch of crypto options trading expected on October 8, bolstered by a consortium of day-one trading partners.
• Commercial Bancgroup (CBK) set to begin trading Thursday, under the ticker symbol “CBK”. Late Wednesday, CBK and some of its backers sold ~7.2 million shares at $24 apiece in an upsized IPO for $172.2 million (had initially marketed ~3.7 million shares between $25.75 and $27.75 apiece).

• Bolt Biotherapeutics (BOLT) to reduce workforce by 50%, while issues an update on the ongoing Phase 1 dose escalation study of BDC-4182, a Boltbody ISAC clinical candidate targeting claudin 18.2, a clinically validated target in oncology.

• Apple Inc. (AAPL) has hit pause on a planned overhaul to its Vision Pro headset to redirect resources toward a more urgent effort: developing smart glasses that can rival products from Meta Platforms Inc. (META) – Bloomberg.
• Bentley Systems Inc. (BSY) will replace Western Union Co. (WU) in the S&P MidCap 400, and Western Union will replace Mr. Cooper Group Inc. (COOP) in the S&P SmallCap 600 effective prior to the opening of trading on Monday, October 6. Rocket Companies Inc. (RKT) acquired Mr. Cooper Group.
• Nebius Group (NBIS) shares rise after Bloomberg revealed more details on its previously announced deal with Microsoft (MSFT) including access to >100,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs; includes using $NBIS’ data centers to run large language models; Microsoft investing $33B in neoclouds (Nebius, CoreWeave, Nscale, Lambda) to ease the AI crunch. https://tinyurl.com/yrhmhck4
• In Tower stocks, RBC Capital downgraded American Tower (AMT) to Sector Perform from Outperform (tgt to $220 from $260) based on lower relative implied upside versus peers, adding that commentary from the big three tower companies through Q3 has been relatively muted as it related to carrier activity. The firm upgraded Crown Castle (CCI) to Outperform from Sector Perform, positive on the company’s tower-only focus and potential for cost extraction as well as buybacks.