October 6tht Market Overview

Happy Tuesday

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both hit record highs today. Chipmakers led the way, and a calmer bond market gave them room to run.

I like this market a lot more when bonds aren't fighting it.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. S&P 500 Hits a Record on a Narrow Rally 
   
   The S&P 500 hit its first record high since August 13, with tech doing most of the lifting. Since that peak, only tech and energy have gained ground among the 11 sectors. Small caps lagged today. That's a lot of weight on a handful of very big names.
   

2. Power Stocks Rally on Google's Nuclear Deal 
   
   Google signed a 20-year deal to buy 890 megawatts of nuclear power from Constellation Energy $CEG. Constellation will spend more than $4.3 billion upgrading 11 of its reactors. It's the biggest deal yet to get more power out of plants that already exist. Talen Energy $TLN led the rest of the power group higher.
   

3. Marvell Guides Far Above Wall Street Marvell Technology 
   
   $MRVL expects about $20 billion in revenue in fiscal 2028, ahead of the $18.17 billion analysts wanted. The bigger news was fiscal 2031: $70 billion to $90 billion, versus Wall Street's $47 billion. Companies don't put out numbers like that unless they like what customers are telling them. The stock has more than tripled this year.

Market Overview

Index Performance

Stock Spotlight

AMD $AMD ( ▲ 2.8% )  
got a price target hike to $800 from $575 at Citi. The bank says AI agents made CPUs the new bottleneck, and sees that market hitting $300 billion by 2030.

Ciena $CIEN ( ▲ 14.23% )  
led AI infrastructure stocks higher as buyers came back to the buildout trade. Nebius $NBIS wasn't far behind.

Seagate Technology $STX ( ▼ 9.58% )  
went the other way, falling hard a day after helping lead Monday's tech rally. Western Digital $WDC fell too as investors rethink how much storage makers really earn from the data center boom.

Big Name Updates

Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 0.14% )  
is closing in on a $6 trillion market value after Monday's first record close since May.

SpaceX $SPCX ( ▲ 1.12% )  
got a buy rating and a $230 price target from Goldman Sachs. Goldman thinks Wall Street is lowballing its AI business.

Skydance $SKYD ( ▼ 3.68% )  
closed its $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, putting HBO Max and Paramount+ under one roof. The stock slipped again and is down about half from a year ago.

Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B ( ▲ 0.25% )  
disclosed it bought about 2.4 million shares of Lennar $LEN. Buying a homebuilder while high rates squeeze housing is a very Berkshire move.

Other Notable Company News

Novavax $NVAX ( ▼ 11.94% )  
gave back some of Monday's gains after the World Health Organization said plague risk is low. Moderna $MRNA fell with it.

Becton Dickinson $BDX ( ▲ 0.06% )  
agreed to invest $19 billion in the U.S. in exchange for tariff relief from the Trump administration.

Intercontinental Exchange $ICE ( ▲ 0.89% )  
owner of the NYSE, launched gold futures in London. More than $180 billion in gold trades there every day.

JPMorgan Chase $JPM ( ▲ 0.17% )  
CEO Jamie Dimon said cyber risk "went up 10-fold" after Anthropic's Mythos model. He still expects AI's upside to be huge.

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Sector Watch

Bond Market

The global bond selloff took a breather. The 10-year yield came off Monday's highest close since 2002, and Italian and French yields fell even more.

Policy Watch

Fed

The Fed raised rates in September, and the minutes from that meeting come out Wednesday. Friday's soft jobs report already has traders betting less on another hike this month.

Fiscal & Trade

The trade deficit hit $105.6 billion in August, the widest since March 2025 and above the $102 billion forecast. We imported more crude oil, gold and chips.

Diesel is still the sore spot.

• Tankers are moving nearly as much crude out of Hormuz as before the war, but barely any diesel.

• The national average hit a record $6.53 a gallon late last month, and $8.44 in California.

• With midterms four weeks out, Trump is reaching for cheaper dyed diesel and another oil stockpile sale.

International

• Middle East crude exports topped prewar levels on four days in late September, despite tanker attacks near Hormuz. That's a big reason Brent has held around $100.

What to Watch

The AI company quietly automating every Walmart distribution center. 
23 billion in orders on the book.

It's just one of seven names in this free MarketBeat report.

Fuel Costs on Earnings Calls

PepsiCo $PEP and Delta Air Lines $DAL both report this week. Listen for how much high fuel costs are eating into their profits.

Equal-Weight S&P 500

The equal-weight S&P 500 ETF $RSP treats every stock the same. It fell over the past month while the regular index rose. If it starts making new highs too, this rally gets a lot sturdier.

Thanks for reading - you are now the more informed 🙂

- John

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