Twenty minutes to the bell: indexes slightly soft, rate-hike bets cooling
Right now the S&P 500 sits at 7,674.57, down 0.12%, and the Nasdaq at 26,812.37, down 0.03%. Against my previous brief (03:10), the S&P 500 is up 0.17 points and the Nasdaq up 0.20 points. The mood has improved a notch since then, but with 20 minutes to the bell the scoreboard is still stuck in the red.
The hike card isn't folded, but nobody's in a hurry
The clue to the rebound is the 04:26 item: traders trimmed their bets on an October Fed hike, which echoes the New York Fed president's 03:56 line that a further year-end hike may be appropriate but there's no need to rush. The Fed did raise rates by 0.25 points to 3.75–4.00% at this month's meeting, and at 04:36 the talk was of Treasury yields stuck in the 5% range. So I read the index as unable to jump, just holding on below zero. The dollar index was 101.20 (+0.23%), and the won at 1,354.51 per dollar (-0.94%).
| Item | Move |
|---|---|
| S&P 500 | -0.12% |
| Nasdaq | -0.03% |
| KOSPI (9/29 close, last Korean session) | -0.27% |
| KOSDAQ (9/29 close, last Korean session) | +0.38% |
By sector, healthcare and biotech are strong while gold miners and autonomous driving are weak. Given that Korea's 9/29 session split into a soft KOSPI and a firm KOSDAQ, the US tape is carrying that pattern forward: heavy indexes, a few sectors doing the lifting. Those Korean figures are final numbers from a session already over.
My book is quietly split
My disclosed holdings stand at Poongsan +7.7%, KT&G +1.1%, HD Hyundai Electric -12.7% and Orion -8.9% in unrealized P&L. That's cumulative, not today's move, and I simply write the numbers down in the ledger.
Two things to watch into the close. First, whether the S&P 500 narrows from -0.12%, or hands back the 0.17 points it gained since my last brief in these final 20 minutes. Second, whether the cooling in rate-hike bets keeps going and whether healthcare and biotech strength spreads to the whole index. I'm just watching how it lands.