Friday, October 2, 2026 Opening bell

Jobs miss badly, futures jump, yields slide

Overnight

Wall Street closed Thursday with small gains, the S&P 500 up 0.20% to 7,666 and the Dow up 0.04% to 50,927, helped by the 10 year Treasury yield easing to 5.248% after a run at multiyear highs. Overnight was heavier in Asia, where Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 2.6% to 23,972.29 in its first session back from the National Day holiday and Japan's Nikkei 225 slipped 0.94% to 68,309.46, while Europe rebounded this morning with the STOXX 600 up 0.9% to 632.77. Then the September jobs report landed at 8:30am Eastern and reset the mood, with payrolls rising just 29,000 against the roughly 90,000 economists expected, pushing US stock futures sharply higher.

What to watch

The jobs report is the whole day. Unemployment rose to 4.2% from 4.1% and the July and August figures were revised down by a combined 60,000, so the labor market looks weaker than it did an hour ago, and traders have shifted to expecting the Federal Reserve to leave interest rates where they are at its October meeting instead of raising them again. The thing to watch after the open is whether the rally holds, because weak hiring is only good news for stocks while it still reads as a reason not to hike and not yet as a slowdown, and oil is worth a glance too after Brent gave back more than 2% this morning following Thursday's 4% surge.