Thursday, November 5, 2026
The Associated Press has called both chambers of Congress for Democrats, so a Republican President will face a Democratic Congress from January. Stocks rallied on Wednesday. Large tax and tariff bills now look less likely, and the outgoing Congress still has to fund the government by 11 December.
Americans vote on Tuesday for all 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats and 36 governors. In the 12 months after each of the 19 midterms since 1950, the S&P 500 rose 18 times, by this publication's count of Robert Shiller's index data. The exception was 1986, when it was flat. Past returns do not predict future ones, and no result is known yet.
Seven core OPEC+ members kept their December oil production targets unchanged at an online meeting on Sunday 1 November, Reuters reported, citing the group. Most Gulf members are still pumping below their targets because of the Iran war. All 21 members meet on 29 November to set 2027 quotas.
The Bank of Japan held its policy rate at 1.25 per cent on Friday 30 October by an 8-1 vote and said underlying inflation is now "generally consistent" with its 2 per cent target, a first since the target was set in 2013. One board member wanted 1.5 per cent. The bank will also sell its ETF holdings more than twice as fast from January.
Christine Lagarde will step down as president of the European Central Bank after its February policy meeting and leave on 7 February 2027, she said on Thursday 29 October. Her eight-year term would have ended in October 2027. No successor has been chosen.
Exxon Mobil earned $15.4 billion and Chevron $9.9 billion in the third quarter, the companies said on Friday 30 October. Chevron's profit was almost three times its year-earlier figure. Refining and fuel sales supplied nearly half the combined total, while both companies produced less oil and gas than a year earlier.
Caterpillar's sales rose 17 per cent to $20.7 billion in the third quarter and adjusted profit was $7.20 a share, the company said on Thursday. Its order backlog reached a record $78 billion, up about $38 billion from a year earlier. It expects construction equipment volume to fall modestly in the fourth quarter as dealers shrink their stocks.
The Federal Reserve kept its target range at 3.75 to 4 per cent on Wednesday by a 10-2 vote, with Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack voting for a quarter-point increase. On Thursday the government reported growth of 3.4 per cent in the third quarter and core PCE inflation of 3.1 per cent in September. The next decision is due on 9 December.
Ares Capital, the largest listed business development company, agreed on 26 October to buy MidCap Financial Investment Corporation, which is managed by an Apollo affiliate, for about $10.88 a share in cash and stock, a total enterprise value of about $2.6 billion. The price is a 30.1 per cent premium to MFIC's last close but below its preliminary net asset value of about $12.86 a share. The deal needs MFIC shareholder approval and is expected to close in the first half of 2027.
Brazil's Ibovespa fell as much as 17 per cent on Monday, 26 October, and trading was halted for 30 minutes, after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Sunday's runoff with 51.79 per cent of valid votes. It closed down 13.88 per cent, and the dollar closed up 8.25 per cent against the real.
Lazard said on 22 October that adjusted net revenue rose 11 per cent to $805 million in the third quarter, with advisory and asset management both up. Adjusted earnings fell 36 per cent to 36 cents a share as the adjusted compensation ratio rose to 69.9 per cent from 65.5 per cent. The firm's long-term target is 60 per cent or below.
Texas Instruments said on Wednesday 21 October that third-quarter revenue rose 28 per cent to $6.06 billion and earnings rose 77 per cent to $2.62 a share. It guided fourth-quarter revenue to $5.80 billion to $6.30 billion, a midpoint level with the third quarter. Trailing 12-month free cash flow was $8.42 billion, including $1.10 billion of CHIPS Act incentive proceeds.
Tradeweb Markets said on Monday 19 October that it will buy Trumid Holdings, an electronic corporate-bond trading platform, for about $1.97 billion: $1.75 billion for the business and about $220 million for tax assets. About $1.89 billion is cash. Closing is targeted for the first half of 2027 and needs regulatory approvals.
Steel Dynamics said on 19 October that third-quarter net income was $756 million, or $5.26 a share, on net sales of $6.5 billion and record shipments of 3.8 million tons. The average external steel price rose $102 a ton from the second quarter to $1,400. The EPS was below the $5.34-$5.38 range the company gave on 17 September.
Valero Energy reports third-quarter results on Thursday 22 October. The consensus estimate on Nasdaq's earnings calendar is $21.23 a share, against $12.54 adjusted in the second quarter and $3.66 a year ago. Nothing has been reported yet.
Russia resumed diesel export loadings at the Baltic port of Primorsk this week, and the first reported cargo, about 40,000 metric tons, is heading to Morocco, not the United States. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said U.S. deliveries need a contract, a vessel and two to three weeks. AAA put U.S. diesel at $6.32 a gallon on Sunday, against $6.23 when the Treasury licensed Russian diesel on 9 October.
The PHLX Semiconductor Index fell 3.8 per cent on Friday 16 October, its eighth straight losing session, a streak it last matched in October 2008. The iShares Semiconductor ETF has lost 16 per cent since 6 October but is still up about 64 per cent in 2026.
Charles Schwab said on Thursday 15 October that third-quarter net revenue rose 17 per cent to a record $7.17 billion and adjusted earnings rose 29 per cent to $1.69 a share. Revenue came in a hair under the $7.19 billion consensus, and the shares closed down 2.7 per cent.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh told the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok on Friday 16 October that he does not prejudge meetings, and called AI probably the most consequential economic change of his lifetime. The Fed decides on 28 October after raising rates to 3.75 to 4 per cent in September.
BlackRock reported on Wednesday 14 October that it ended the third quarter with $15.5 trillion in assets and took in $205 billion of net new money. Revenue rose 19 per cent to $7.75 billion. Diluted earnings were $10.57 a share, or $15.93 as adjusted, and most of the gap is one non-cash charge tied to its own share price.
ASML reported record third-quarter net sales of €11.7 billion on Wednesday 14 October, toward the high end of its guidance, with a gross margin of 57.5 per cent. It guided fourth-quarter sales to €14.2 billion to €15.2 billion and 2026 sales to €44 billion to €45 billion. It does not disclose bookings, but its balance sheet moved.
Morgan Stanley reported third-quarter net revenues of $20.3 billion and earnings of $3.03 a share on Wednesday 14 October, up from $18.2 billion and $2.80 a year earlier. Equity revenue rose 41 per cent to $5.8 billion, while fixed income fell 7 per cent. Return on tangible common equity was 22.6 per cent, against 23.5 a year earlier.
Citigroup said on Tuesday 13 October that third-quarter net income was $5.2 billion, or $2.85 a share, on revenue of $23.8 billion, up 8 per cent. Return on tangible common equity was 11.5 per cent, down from 13.0 per cent in the second quarter.
Goldman Sachs reported third-quarter earnings of $17.01 a share on Tuesday 13 October, against an LSEG consensus of $13.02, on net revenue of $18.68 billion. Equities revenue rose 72 per cent from a year earlier to $6.44 billion, while fixed income was flat. Earnings per share were still 19 per cent below the second quarter.
JPMorgan Chase reported third-quarter profit of $15.3 billion, or $5.57 a share, on Tuesday 13 October, against an LSEG consensus of $5.85. Reuters said it was the bank's first profit miss since the fourth quarter of 2023. Excluding $658 million of losses on investment securities, the bank earned $5.75, still below the estimate.
Morgan Stanley reports third-quarter results at about 7:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday 14 October. The LSEG consensus, as cited by Reuters, is $2.94 a share against $3.46 in a record second quarter and $2.80 a year earlier. In September co-president Dan Simkowitz said "3Q is no 2Q." Goldman Sachs, reporting on Tuesday, showed revenue down 13 per cent from the second quarter in its comparable business.
TSMC's monthly sales figures, released on 8 October, put third-quarter revenue at a record of about NT$1.49 trillion, up about 51 per cent and above the top of its own guidance. It reports full results on Thursday 15 October, and analysts expect net profit of about NT$746 billion, a net margin near 50 per cent against 55.6 per cent in the second quarter. Fourth-quarter guidance has not yet been issued.
Goldman Sachs reports third-quarter 2026 results on Tuesday 13 October at about 7:30 a.m. ET, with its call at 9:30 a.m. ET. IG puts the LSEG consensus at $13.02 a share on $16.71 billion of revenue, and the StarMine SmartEstimate at $12.80. Nothing has been reported yet, and estimates for individual business lines differ by provider.
Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford won the 2026 economics Nobel on Monday for the microeconomic foundations of stabilisation policy. The Academy credits Woodford, among others, with proposing forward guidance. On 28 August Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said the practice "has overstayed its welcome."
ASML will announce third-quarter results on Wednesday 14 October and has guided to net sales of €11.0 billion to €12.0 billion. China was €2.9 billion, or 16 per cent, of first-half sales, against management's full-year expectation of about 20 per cent. The company stopped publishing bookings this year, so Wednesday's release will carry no order figure.
UnitedHealth Group will report third-quarter results before the market opens on Tuesday 13 October, with an analyst call at 8:00 a.m. ET. TipRanks and MarketBeat put consensus at $4.12 to $4.15 a share on about $111.3 billion of revenue; the company does not issue quarterly forecasts. Nothing has been reported yet.
Citigroup's head of US rates strategy told clients on Friday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is likely to reduce long-dated auction sizes and replace the money with Treasury bills, a change that would be announced on 4 November. The bank says the 20-year bond could be cancelled outright.
Brent settled at $104.72 and West Texas Intermediate at $91.85 on Friday, both higher on the day and the week. Early losses on President Trump's remarks about Iran were erased as more Gulf of Mexico output shut ahead of Hurricane Isaias, while attacks on tankers hit a wartime high.
The office commercial mortgage-backed securities delinquency rate hit 13.2 percent in August 2026, the highest level since at least 2019. About $39 billion of office CMBS matures in the next twelve months, and $13.9 billion of that is not yet distressed but already showing warning signs.
A $219 million construction loan for a partial conversion at 100 Wall Street, $113 million for a 25-story Magnificent Mile conversion in Chicago, and $44 million for a Boston office redevelopment closed in September and October. The conversion pipeline is moving from concept to concrete, backed by a combination of tax incentives and capital that has found its price.
The federal government paid $1.36 trillion in gross interest on its debt in fiscal year 2026, up 11.5 percent from the prior year and more than Washington sent the states for Medicaid. At $3.73 billion a day, the cost of carrying the debt has become a top-five budget line by any measure.
The blended net profit margin for the S&P 500 reached 13.4 percent in the first quarter of 2026, the highest reading since FactSet began tracking the metric in 2009. Analysts project it will climb further through year end.
Minutes of the Federal Reserve's September meeting show every participant supported raising rates to a range of 3.75 to 4 per cent, and most expect another increase by the end of the year. Tariffs, the main inflation story of 2025, are fading. Spending on artificial intelligence and energy are taking their place.
Gold settled at $4,113.80 on October 7, down 22.65 percent from its January record of $5,318.40. The metal has given back a fifth of its peak, and the forces that drove it there have not gone anywhere.
The Nasdaq and S&P 500 hit record highs this week even as the 10-year Treasury yield touched its highest level since 2002. Underneath the records, fewer stocks are doing the work, and high-yield credit spreads have widened since late September.
Shareholders in Blue Owl Technology Income Corp. asked to sell 39 per cent of the fund back in the third quarter, about $1.1 billion. The fund will buy back 5 per cent, so each request will be filled at about 13 per cent. At Blue Owl's larger credit fund, requests fell for a second quarter, to 16.8 per cent of shares. Across the two, investors asked for $4.2 billion.
Paramount Skydance priced $41.4 billion of secured notes on Wednesday to pay for Warner Bros. Discovery. On Thursday some of the new bonds traded at about 96 cents on the dollar, its existing bonds fell sharply and the cost of insuring its debt reached a 17-year high, Bloomberg reported. The deal is due to close on Tuesday, and the combined company will be called Skydance.
Brent crude averaged $114 a barrel in September, up from $71 in February. Natural gas at Henry Hub averaged $2.95 per million British thermal units, a few cents below September 2025, while buyers in Europe and Asia were paying $24 to $27. The United States is producing record amounts of gas, and its export terminals are already running flat out.
One of Australia's largest private credit managers wrote down three listed funds on Monday, by 2, 10 and 12 per cent, and said a clean audit was expected on Wednesday. On Wednesday the auditor said it was not ready. Metrics has now suspended redemptions and stopped publishing net asset values in the unlisted funds underneath. The share prices had been pointing at a lower number for months.
The Federal Reserve finalised two rules on Wednesday that put its stress test scenarios and models out for public comment every year and average banks' stress capital buffers over two tests. The Board says the changes should cut year-to-year swings in those requirements by about half without materially changing total capital. Governor Michael Barr says they will let banks optimise for the test instead of the risk.
The 30-year Treasury yield closed at 5.49 per cent on Friday, its highest since the Treasury resumed issuing the bond in February 2006, and the ten-year ended the week 21 basis points higher than it started. The University of Michigan's final September survey has year-ahead inflation expectations at 4.6 per cent, up from 4.0 per cent in August, and sentiment at 48.1.
Oura's amended S-1, filed with the SEC on 21 September, offers 50 million shares at $40 to $44. Only 13.5 million of them come from the company. Of the roughly $532.6 million the company nets at the midpoint, $526.4 million is earmarked for tax withholding on employee stock. Forerunner Ventures is selling its entire 28.7 million-share position and will own nothing on day one.
On Monday the S&P 500 rose 1.5 percent, the Nasdaq closed at a record, crude fell more than 4 percent and the ten-year yield slipped. The two-year Treasury yield, the maturity most tied to the Fed, closed at 4.76 percent, exactly where it was on Friday and its highest close since July 2024.
The ten-year Treasury settled at 5 percent on Tuesday, its highest since 2007. On Wednesday it fell, equity futures rose across the board, Brent gave up about 5 percent and gold dropped $35. A rate rise is supposed to make risk more expensive. This one was received as insurance against something worse.
The Federal Open Market Committee raised its target range a quarter point to 3.75 to 4 percent on Wednesday, its first increase since 2023, on a 12-0 vote. The statement says inflation remains elevated and promises the Committee "will deliver price stability." Twelve of eighteen officials expect another increase this year.
Fitch put the trailing twelve-month default rate across 1,300 private credit borrowers at 6.3 percent at the end of August, a record, with 14 default events in the month. Healthcare providers and industrial manufacturers are both running near 10 percent. On Wednesday the Federal Reserve raised the rate almost all of that debt is priced against.
On Monday the 10-year Treasury yield touched 5 percent for the first time since 2023. Brent neared $110 before settling back. Diesel set a record at $6.23 a gallon. Chip stocks fell almost 6 percent. By the close, markets put the odds of a Federal Reserve rate increase on Wednesday above 90 percent. Each of those has its own story. Together they describe one: the end of the assumption that the shocks of this year would pass on their own.
Chip stocks fell before Monday's open after the heads of Anthropic and OpenAI said the industry should slow the rate at which AI models improve. Nvidia was down 3 percent in premarket trading, Marvell and Arm 6 percent, and ASML 9.5 percent. The labs are mostly private. The public way to express a view on slower AI is to sell the companies that supply it.
Larry Ellison adopted a plan in June to sell up to 50 million Oracle shares. It surfaced in Oracle's quarterly filing on Friday, worth about $7.5 billion after a 16 percent fall in the stock. On Saturday Oracle said he had cancelled it and had no other plans to sell. The rules are designed to make an insider's sale uninformative. The cancellation was not.
Brent settled near $108, the highest in nearly four months. West Texas Intermediate rose above $104 after surging almost 7 percent, closing above $102 for the first time since May. This desk asked yesterday whether traders would price the president's stated end date. They have answered, and the answer is no.
Brent closed above $100 on Wednesday for the first time since May, and the same afternoon the US president said the war would end immediately after the 3 November election. A forward curve pricing an open-ended disruption has to guess at duration. It has now been given a date to disagree with, which is not the same as being given the truth.
Fed funds futures put the chance of a quarter-point rise at the September meeting at about 59 percent. Three months ago the same market was arguing about the size of a cut. Brent above $100 and the ten-year at its highest close since 2023 are the reason, and an energy shock is the one shock a central bank cannot fix.
Mortgage balances fell by $74bn in the second quarter, to $13.1 trillion. Households do not usually retire debt when the alternative uses of cash pay this well, and the composition of who is paying and who cannot refinance explains more about the housing market than any measure of affordability.
The funds rate has sat at 3.5 to 3.75 percent while the 30-year Treasury reached 5.31 percent last month, its highest in 19 years, and the 10-year went to levels last seen in 2023. A governor says he is inclined to hold. The long end is not arguing with him. It has stopped listening.
Moody's puts expected ultimate recoveries on first-lien middle-market loans at about 68 cents, against a long-run average in the high seventies. Between 90 and 95 percent of broadly syndicated issuance now carries no financial maintenance covenant. Those two facts are the same fact.
Credit secondaries volume went from about $6bn in 2023 to roughly $11bn in 2024 and is expected to top $18bn for 2025. Quality stakes change hands at 95 to 99 percent of net asset value. That is either evidence the marks are right, or evidence that only the defensible ones get offered.
Hyperscalers and related issuers have sold about $225bn of bonds this year by S&P Global's count, on pace for a record. Capital spending now runs at roughly 94 percent of operating cash flow against 40 percent in 2023, and the paper being issued is long — matched to a useful life the issuers estimate themselves.
One account of second-quarter results says conditions have begun to stabilise. Another, from a review of filings by 44 business development companies, says portfolios moved further below cost. Ares Capital's non-accruals rose 15 percent to $708m. The reports do not contradict each other; they describe different derivatives of the same line.
The ten-year Treasury reached its highest yield since November 2023 on Wednesday. On the same day Japanese ten-year debt passed 3 percent for the first time in thirty years, German yields hit a fourteen-year high and British yields an eighteen-year one. Four governments with four different problems do not usually move together.
A head of state posted an AI-generated video of explosions at the world's most important oil export terminal. There was no other evidence of an attack. For anyone pricing oil, the question is no longer whether it happened but what it costs to find out.
The chair of the Financial Stability Board has written to the G20 about artificial intelligence. Half the letter describes a familiar credit event wearing new clothes. The other half describes something the system has not priced at all.
Around forty lenders funded one Sydney developer, and each carried its own view of what the loans were worth. An insolvency does not create the loss. It supplies the first price anyone is obliged to accept.
Capital markets have become the reinsurer of last resort for storm and quake risk, and the spread on a cat bond is now a cleaner read on climate exposure than anything in an insurer's filings.
Closed-end funds routinely trade below net asset value and mostly stay there. The persistence is the interesting part, because arbitrage cannot close a gap with no mechanism to force it.
Credit ratings lag the market by design, which would be harmless if so many mandates were not written to act on them. The lag is priced in; the forced selling is not.
An addition to a major index obliges a large and predictable set of buyers to act on a known date. That predictability is the whole opportunity, and the whole problem.
Shareholder meetings were a scheduling exercise for decades. Rising opposition on pay, board composition and auditor tenure has made the outcome uncertain enough to require actual campaigning.
Corporate bond ETFs now supply much of the liquidity that dealer balance sheets used to. The mechanism works well and has been tested mainly in conditions that were not the hard case.
Vehicles offering private-market exposure with periodic liquidity have gathered enormous sums from investors who have never needed to leave. The gate is the product, and most holders have not read it.
Private funds promised distributions on a timetable that stopped being met. The secondary market has grown from a distressed corner into the mechanism by which investors get money back at all.
A large stock of corporate debt issued at generational lows is coming due into a market priced very differently. The refinancing is available; what has changed is what it costs and who it is available to.
Sell-side coverage of companies below a billion dollars has thinned to almost nothing. The consequence is not merely obscurity — it is a measurable discount that persists regardless of what the business does.
Lending out the shares a fund holds has offset fees for years and rarely appears in the conversation about cost. As balances grow, the question of who keeps the proceeds is getting harder to leave unasked.
Fund launches have been outpaced by closures for the first sustained stretch in the product's history. The survivors reveal what the proliferation was actually for.
The asset class that ate corporate lending is maturing. What it built while growing is now permanent market structure.
Share repurchases are running at a substantial pace again, and the companies doing them have learned to explain themselves. Disclosure has improved faster than the underlying discipline.
The sleepiest corner of American finance is being dragged into the present by electronic trading, better disclosure and a generation of buyers who expect both.
Broad market index funds have become substantially less diversified than the word index implies. Institutional allocators are reworking mandates written when the assumption held.
The meme-stock cohort did not disappear when the fever broke. It aged into the most financially engaged retail generation in decades, with the account balances to show it.
Futures markets have spent the summer walking back easing expectations, and portfolio managers are adjusting duration, credit and cash accordingly.
After a long drought, public listings are returning in cautious single file. The companies going first are teaching everyone else the new rules.
After a decade in which payouts read as an admission of exhausted ambition, companies and investors have rediscovered the discipline of cash returned.