By Alexa LoMonaco,Jeff Nash
Publication Date: 2026-10-03 15:06:00
Stocks ended on a high note Friday after the monthly jobs report delivered the Goldilocks number investors wanted — not strong enough to stoke inflation, but not weak enough to raise recession fears. Still, the gains weren’t enough to push all three major averages into positive territory for the week. The Dow posted a weekly loss of 1.26%, while the S & P 500 dropped 0.3%, as the recent usual suspects of elevated oil prices and rising long-term bond yields pressured many parts of the market. Only the Nasdaq managed to eke out a gain of 0.45%, led by — what else? — demand for all things artificial intelligence. Club stock Nvidia hit an all-time high on Friday for the first time since May, while CrowdStrike , Palo Alto Networks and AMD also all rose to all-time highs. Here’s a closer look at the three developments that drove the action in our portfolio last week. Bad news is good news Sometimes a weak economic number is just what it takes to get stocks rising again. September’s nonfarm payrolls report showed the U.S. economy added 29,000 jobs last month, with unemployment rising to 4.2%. That was well below the Dow Jones consensus of job growth of 84,000 and an unemployment rate of 4.1%. But it was just soft enough to raise the likelihood that the Federal Reserve would hold interest rates steady at its late October meeting, rather than raise them. That was also the takeaway from Wednesday’s cooler-than-expected August personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price…
