Review & Preview: In a Shutdown Vacuum, Stocks Rise Again

Oct 03, 2025 18:05:00 -0400 by Alex Eule | #Markets #Review & Preview

No News Is Good News. It was the first Friday of the month, which means the market should have been preoccupied with the latest monthly jobs report. But with the federal government in the third day of its shutdown, most economic data releases are on pause.

For the market, no news was good news. The S&P 500 rose again on Friday; it has been higher in each day since the shutdown began Wednesday, and it’s now up in six consecutive session.

My colleague Paul La Monica reports that investors just “aren’t sweating the government shutdown.” He notes that Wall Street’s fear index, the Cboe Volatility Index, remains in the mid teens, “a muted level that hardly suggests” panic.

In the meantime, investors are expecting another rate cut later this month, along with a strong round of third-quarter earnings reports. Paul writes:

The combination of healthy earnings gains and the expectations of more monetary policy easing could juice stocks further in the fourth quarter, regardless of when and how the dysfunction in Washington, D.C., finally resolves itself.

For the week, the S&P 500 rose 1.1%, ending Friday at another record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the week with its own sixth-straight gain. It was also up 1.1% on the week. The Nasdaq Composite posted a weekly gain of 1.3% though it slipped 0.3% on Friday as investors seemed to take some profits in Big Tech names.

Tech investors might have been listening to a rare Jeff Bezos talk in which the Amazon founder said we might be in an AI-driven bubble—even if it’s the good kind of “industrial bubble,” reports my colleague Angela Palumbo.

“When people get very excited, as they are today about artificial intelligence, for example, every experiment gets funded,” Bezos said. “Every company gets funded—the good ideas and the bad ideas—and investors have a hard time, in the middle of this excitement, distinguishing between the good ideas and bad ideas.”

Bezos, added, that AI is hype still justified. “AI is real, and it is going to change every industry.”

Palantir Technologies, a pioneer in AI software, was the S&P 500’s biggest loser on the day, falling 7.5%.

Company

Last

Chg

Chg%

Dow Jones Industrial Average

46,694.97

-63.31

-0.14%

S&P 500 Index

6,740.28

24.49

0.36%

NASDAQ Composite Index

22,941.67

161.16

0.71%

Market Data as of

The Hot Stock: Humana +10.6%
The Biggest Loser: Palantir Technologies -7.5%

Best Sector: Utilities +1.2%
Worst Sector: Consumer Discretionary -0.6%

Created with Highcharts 9.0.1Friday, Oct. 3Index performanceSource: FactSetAs of Oct. 7, 4 p.m. ET

Created with Highcharts 9.0.1Oct. 7-1.0-0.8-0.6-0.4-0.200.20.40.6%Dow industrialsS&P 500Nasdaq Composite

This Weekend’s Magazine

Photo: Photograph by Tadd Myers

The Calendar

Next week will be light on data on the economic and earnings front. But it’s the calm before the storm, as third-quarter earnings season kicks off on Oct. 14, with several of the big banks reporting results.

The Federal Open Market Committee releases the minutes from its mid-September meeting on Wednesday, while the University of Michigan releases its Consumer Sentiment survey on Friday.

Constellation Brands announces earnings on Monday, followed by McCormick on Tuesday. Delta Air Lines and PepsiCo release their results on Thursday.

—Dan Lam

What We’re Reading Today

Join Barron’s Live on Monday. Barron’s Lauren Rublin and Ben Levisohn talk with Denny Fish, a portfolio manager on the Global Technology and Innovation Team at Janus Henderson Investors, about the best investment opportunities in the tech sector.

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