Stocks and U.S. Treasurys fell Friday after a weak jobs report added to speculation about the Federal Reserve’s plan to taper its bond-buying program. September was the slowest month for job growth this year, with just 194,000 jobs added compared to consensus estimates for a half-million, signaling a slowing of the labor market recovery and perhaps complicating the Fed’s decision on when to begin scaling back monetary support. Inflation concerns pushed long-term interest rates higher, with the benchmark 10-year yield rising to 1.61% after adding 15 basis points on the week. But the three major stock market indexes finished modestly higher for the week, recovering from steep early losses after the U.S. Senate agreed to raise the debt ceiling for at least a few more weeks 


Top Sectors last Week:

  • Energy Sector (ETF: XLE) up 5.07%
  • Financials Sector (ETF: XLF) up 3.33%
  • Industrial Sector (ETF: XLI)  up 1.78%


Interesting news this week:

  • Affirm (AFRM) Shares Gain on Its Partnership With Target:  Shares of Affirm Holdings (AFRM) rose following its tie-up with retailer Target Corporation (TGT). The partnership will allow customers shopping at the Target stores to avail the company’s BNPL services. The news cheered investors and added credence to this buy now pay later company’s business model. The partnership with the retailer will firm up Affirm’s position in the burgeoning and highly competitive BNPL space. Shares of the company rallied 22% after the news of partnership with Target surfaced. Recently, Affirm tied up with the e-commerce leader Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) whereby the former will provide its instalment payments services to the latter on purchases valued at $50 or more.
  • Charlie Munger’s Firm Doubled Down on Its Alibaba Investment: Warren Buffett ‘s longtime partner Charlie Munger has disclosed that a firm that he chairs nearly doubled an investment in the Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding . Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, is also the chairman of Daily Journal, and provides the firm with investing expertise. Daily Journal publishes newspapers and websites covering California and Arizona, and produces information services; it also owns large stakes in stock, with a portfolio valued at $225 million as of Sept. 30. Daily Journal disclosed last week in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it owned 302,060 American depositary receipts of Alibaba at the end of September, which means it bought 136,740 ADRs in the third quarter.
  •  Electric-vehicle maker NIO shares have lost over 30% of their value during last few months. “but all bad things must come to an end” — notes Goldman Sachs analyst Fei Fang. In Fang’s opinion, it’s now time to buy some Nio stock. Why now? The next six months, argues the analyst, will see “strong volume expansion” at Nio as the company: Introduces its ET7 electric sedan in China (expected to go on sale in Q1 next year) and Enters the Norwegian electric car market internationally. 


The Calendar

Economic reports due out include updates on job opening expectations, retail sales, manufacturing, import/export prices and a key read on inflation with the September consumer price report due out.


Earnings this week:


Tuesday, October 12: Fastenal (FAST) and Sleep Number (SNBR).

Wednesday, October 13: BlackRock (BLK), Delta Air Lines (DAL) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM).

Thursday, October 14: Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), Domino’s Pizza (DPZ), Morgan Stanley (MS), Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), U.S. Bancorp (USB) and Alcoa (AA).

Friday, October 15: Goldman Sachs (GS), PNC Bank (PNC) and Truist (TFC).

IPO’s This week:

AvidXchange (AVDX), GitLab (GTLB) and IHS Holding (IHS) are expected to fire off their IPOs next week. There is also likely to be an increased focus on Allbirds (BIRD), which has already had some investor buzz around it ahead of the public debut. The sustainable lifestyle brand, known for its on-trend shoes, is looking to raise $100M from the offering. San Francisco-based Allbirds intends to use the proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, and possibly to acquire businesses, products and services. Also nect week, the quiet period expires on Dutch Bros. (NYSE:BROS). The coffee chain stock has been a high flier since its IPO last month.