MARKET AT 7
Good evening. Wall Street just proved that bad news for workers can be great news for stocks: a dismal US jobs report torched the case for another Fed rate hike, and the Nasdaq celebrated with a fresh record. Half a world away, a bigger industrial deal and a fresh front in the Iran war remind you it's never just one story.
In tonight's newsletter:
Weak jobs report sends Wall Street, Nvidia to record highs
Yemen offensive, Hormuz standoff keep oil near $102
Schneider Electric buys PTC Inc for $22.6 billion
ASX rises on Wall Street boost, NSW holiday caps gains
NZX 50 falls 0.2% despite more stocks rising than falling
Weak jobs report sends Wall Street and Nvidia to record highs
The US economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, far short of the roughly 88,000 to 90,000 economists expected, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1%, the Labour Department's delayed report showed Friday.
Traders cut the odds of an October Fed rate hike to 16% from 64% a week earlier, Yahoo Finance reports. The S&P 500 rose 0.73% to 7,722.72, the Dow added 0.49% to 51,176.96, and the Nasdaq jumped 1.19% to a record 27,190.86, with Nvidia touching an all-time high of $237.88 after a $150 billion buyback expansion, Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance report. Source: Yahoo Finance, 2 Oct 2026 → · Source: Bloomberg, 2 Oct 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
A bad month for workers made for a great week for anyone holding Nvidia stock. That gap is precisely why ordinary people distrust markets that claim to reflect the economy.
Yemen offensive, Hormuz standoff keep oil near $102
Brent crude held near $102.33 a barrel, and WTI eased 0.3% to $90.85 on Monday, barely moving even as Saudi-backed Yemeni forces launched a nationwide offensive against Iran-backed Houthis, CNBC reports.
Presidential Leadership Council chairman Rashad al-Alimi said the push followed the "exhaustion of de-escalation efforts", while Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, repeated that the Strait of Hormuz, shut since late February, won't reopen until seven Iranian conditions tied to the Islamabad Memorandum are met.
OPEC+ held its November output target unchanged from September levels despite the standoff. Source: CNBC, 5 Oct 2026 → · Source: Profile News, 4 Oct 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
The price barely moved. The war didn't go anywhere either.
Schneider Electric buys PTC Inc for $22.6 billion
Schneider Electric agreed to buy US engineering software maker PTC for $205 a share in cash, a deal worth $22.6 billion and a 42.3% premium on PTC's last closing price, Gurufocus reports.
PTC builds product-lifecycle and augmented-reality software for manufacturers, and Schneider plans to fold it into its energy-management arm to sell factories one system instead of two. The deal, Schneider's largest acquisition to date, is expected to close in the third quarter of 2027. Source: Gurufocus, 5 Oct 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
A 42% premium over Friday's close is the market pricing in genuine strategic value, not a bargain-bin raid.
ASX rises on Wall Street boost, NSW holiday caps gains
The ASX 200 added just 9 points, or 0.10%, on Monday after trading as much as 0.62% higher intraday, with a New South Wales public holiday cutting volume through the session, Market Index reports. Codan rose 1.9% and Monadelphous added 1.8% on Wall Street's Friday tailwind, while Droneshield fell 3.3% and Wisetech dropped 2.8%. Iron ore's slide, down roughly 13% since mid-May, continued to weigh on miners. Source: Market Index, 5 Oct 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
Not every session needs a take. A holiday and a Wall Street tailwind cancelled each other out, and that's genuinely the whole story tonight.
NZX 50 dips 0.2% despite more winners than losers
New Zealand's benchmark slipped 0.2% on Monday even though gainers outnumbered decliners 44 to 40, interest.co.nz reports. Serko led the winners, up 2%; Hallenstein Glassons and Scales Corp led the fallers, both down 2%. The index is down 1.3% over five trading days and 2.1% over the month. Source: interest.co.nz, 5 Oct 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
Breadth said optimism. The index said otherwise. When the losers are bigger companies than the winners, the index wins that argument every time.
QUICK HITS
Gold climbs back above $4,160 as the dollar wobbles. Spot gold traded near $4,166.88 an ounce on Monday, up 0.64% on the day but still below Friday's $4,216.80 close, as a stronger US dollar offset cooler Fed-hike odds.
Our take: Gold's fighting the dollar harder than it's fighting the Fed tonight, and the dollar's winning the early rounds.
Bitcoin climbs near $86,400, extending its recovery. Bitcoin traded around $86,445, up roughly 1.9% over 24 hours and extending its climb off September's lows near $75,000, though it remains capped below resistance around $88,000.
Our take: Seven weeks off the bottom and it's still stuck at the same ceiling. Recovery, not breakout.
Brazil's election heads to an October 25 runoff. Flávio Bolsonaro took 47.03% of Sunday's first-round vote to President Lula's 45.16%, with neither clearing 50%, Rio Times Online reports. Friday's Ibovespa close of 192,114.55, up 2.63%, happened before the vote. Brazil's own market hadn't opened for Monday's session as this went to print, so how B3 actually reacts is still unknown tonight.
Our take: Three weeks is a long wait when the margin is two points. Expect noisy swings before 25 October.
Those are your 5 minutes for tonight; see you at the same time tomorrow. - Miko Santos