September 29th Pre-Market Brief

Good Morning

After a rough Monday, we are seeing a much calmer open. Tech is leading and oil is backing off, but bond yields haven't budged from their highs.

Yields and oil are still the thing driving pinning this market.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. A Fed Voter Is Starting To Agree With Bond Traders

Bond traders are betting on four rate hikes over the next year. Most Fed officials had planned on just one more this year. On Monday, Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who votes on rates, said the job market can handle more. If other voters agree, rates stay high longer, and mortgage rates are already at their highest since April 2024.

2. A Diesel Export Ban Could Raise Gas Prices

Diesel is near a record $6.53 a gallon, and Trump says he's "thinking very seriously" about banning exports to bring it down. Kpler says that would keep about 1.2 million barrels a day at home, and Gulf Coast storage could run out of room. Refiners say they'd cut production instead, so gasoline and jet fuel would get scarcer and more expensive. That's more inflation at the exact moment the Fed is fighting it.

3. AI Spending Is Ignoring The Slowdown Talk

Anthropic's leaked IPO filing spends nearly a third of its pages warning about AI risks. The same filing plans $518 billion in spending on cloud and computing over the coming years. Chip stocks sold off on slowdown fears, but Anthropic tripled its computing spend last year. Slowing down AI and buying fewer chips are two different things..

Market Overview

Today’s Sponsor

The ice cream shop that makes money when it's cold

28 Wishes sells ice cream in Los Angeles. Below 70°F, sales fall about 20%. The weather is out of their hands. Rent isn't.

So the owners started putting about $20 a day into Kalshi weather markets, taking the cold side. The days that keep customers away now pay something back.

This is hedging. Big companies have done it for decades, buying protection against bad weather, fuel spikes and rising rates. It used to take a broker, a trading desk, and an order size no corner shop could meet.

Kalshi opens it up. Contracts on weather, fuel prices, inflation, tariffs and regulation, starting at a few dollars. Take a position on the outcome that would hurt you. If it hits, the payout softens it. If it doesn't, the contract expires and the good month was the point.

See how other owners are doing it at Kalshi.com/hedging

Stock Spotlight (pre-market)

Fair Isaac $FICO ( ▼ 19.51% )  

getting hit hard premarket after housing regulator Bill Pulte put rival VantageScore on equal footing with FICO at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two mortgage giants will now price loans off a single grid, so a VantageScore gets the same terms as a FICO score.

uniQure $QURE ( ▲ 2.3% )  

getting crushed premarket after its gene therapy for Huntington's disease missed its main goal in a four year study. The treatment slowed the disease compared with an outside group of patients, but not by enough to rule out chance.

Summit Therapeutics $SMMT ( ▼ 0.83% )  

sharply higher after AstraZeneca $AZN ( ▼ 0.26% ) agreed to buy $2 billion of its stock. AstraZeneca will also partner with Summit on trials for two of Summit's cancer drugs.

Cboe Global Markets $CBOE ( ▼ 1.85% )  

higher premarket after locking in its exclusive right to list S&P 500 index options, its flagship product, for 25 more years. Fees stay the same this year, and Cboe says the new terms starting in 2027 will barely dent revenue growth.

CarMax $KMX ( ▼ 1.15% )  

higher premarket after second quarter profit and sales easily beat estimates. The used car dealer earned $1.16 a share on $7.88 billion in revenue, against expectations of 73 cents and $7.09 billion.

AMD $AMD ( ▼ 3.61% )  

up premarket after agreeing to buy Fei-Fei Li's AI startup, World Labs, for $8.2 billion. World Labs builds AI that simulates 3D environments, and Li, one of the field's best known researchers, joins AMD as chief scientist.

What to Watch

Job Openings (10:00 AM ET)

Economists expect employers had about 7.2 million open jobs in August, slightly fewer than in July. A number at or above that backs Cook and keeps an October hike the most likely outcome.

White House AI Lunch (12:30 PM ET)

Speaker Mike Johnson has already ruled out a pause on AI development. The next question is whether Washington requires safety testing before new models launch. Florida's attorney general asked a court Monday to require outside-approved safeguards before OpenAI builds new models.

Want to Know about this years upcoming IPO’s?
MarketBeat did an excellent job on this free IPO guide on IPO’s happening this year

Today’s Sponsor

Can Robotics Make Regenerative Farming Scalable?

Greenfield Robotics is on a mission to give farmers alternatives to herbicide-dependent weed control. BOTONY is the beginning of a broader robotic farming system designed for a wider range of applications in the field.

The Reg A+ offering is now live for investors who want to be part of what comes next.

Invest in Robots Replacing Herbicides

^{This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. Please read the Offering Circular and related disclosures before investing. This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment.}