“I call them fun coupons” - Jordan Belfort Jerome Powell at the next rate cut meeting…
The S&P 500 just broke another record… not because the economy’s humming, but because traders are straight-up begging Jerome Powell to spoon-feed them a September rate cut. Weak job numbers hit the tape this morning, and Wall Street’s Pavlovian response was to bark “new highs!” like addicts chasing the homeboy Walter White.
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The receipts are as follows: The S&P 500 ripped 0.8% to a fresh high at 6,502.08. The Nasdaq added 0.98% to 21,707.69. Even the Dow dragged itself up 350 points to 45,621.29. The big driver of course was bad job data that wasn’t too bad. ADP showed private payrolls up just 54,000 in August… way off the 75,000 forecast and less than half of July’s 106,000. Jobless claims ticked up to 237,000 and ISM services surprised to the upside. Translation: hiring is slowing, layoffs are creeping, and suddenly Powell’s September cut looks locked. Fed futures now price a 97% chance he blinks. And all God's children said “Amen”...
As a result, stocks levitated. Traders are now looking for payrolls on Friday to hit the sweet spot… a.k.a, weak enough to guarantee a cut, but not so weak it screams recession. This my friends, is what I call the dumbest game of chicken imaginable… everyone begging for softness without collapse.
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Meanwhile, individual cards were on a heater. Amazon surged +4.2% and dragged the tape higher, while Apple (+0.55%), Meta (+1.57%), and Microsoft (+0.52%) floated just enough to clinch the Nasdaq’s happy ending. Ciena spiked +23.20% on earnings, Gap reinvented itself as a beauty brand (+6%), and Salesforce got knifed -5% for guidance that didn’t live up to the cult.
In the end, today was core market psychology at its finest. We’re breaking records while the labor market frays. At its peak in 2022, there were two job openings for every unemployed worker. Now we are at 1:1. Meaning, the “free pass” era is dead. And yet, Wall Street calls that bullish. New highs, fueled by job-market decay, packaged as “resilience.” Records built on rot. Bring on those fun coupons baby! Until next time, friends…
At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft as mentioned in the article.
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