The first trading day of October arrived with Wall Street trying to shake off a September that could not decide what it wanted to be. As of 8:30am CT, U.S. stock futures were modestly higher, with technology once again doing the heavy lifting, according to Schwab Network’s premarket readout.
September’s scorecard tells the story of a market pulled in two directions. The S&P 500 slipped 0.45% for the month, the Dow fell 4.3%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 dropped 5.4%. But the Nasdaq-100 jumped 3.2%, a reminder that investors have kept their faith in the biggest tech names even as the rest of the market wobbled (Schwab Network). Yesterday was a preview of that split: the Nasdaq managed a small gain while the Dow and S&P 500 fell under renewed pressure from the bond market (Investopedia).
Overnight in Asia, the tech bid showed up in force. Japan’s Nikkei jumped more than 3%, South Korea’s KOSPI reversed early losses to gain 1.7%, and Taiwan’s benchmark rose 0.8%, all riding the coattails of strong earnings from U.S. chipmaker Micron (Reuters). Not every corner of the region joined in: Australia’s ASX 200 underperformed with every sector in the red, and markets in mainland China and Hong Kong were shut for the National Day holiday (Newsquawk). South Korea also caught a political tailwind, with President Trump unveiling plans for $200 billion in South Korean energy investment in the United States as part of the deal that cut auto tariffs from 25% to 15% (Newsquawk).
Europe looked grumpier. European stock futures slid about 0.75% in early trading (Reuters), after a downbeat Wednesday close: the Euro Stoxx 50 lost 0.83% to 6,268, Germany’s DAX fell 0.74% to 25,211, and France’s CAC 40 dropped 0.89% to 7,965 (Newsquawk).
India had a rough session too. The Sensex fell 571 points, or 0.79%, to 71,909.70, and the Nifty slipped 0.88% to 22,421.95, with auto stocks leading the losses and the rupee sliding to a two-month low of 96.3150 per dollar (The Hindu BusinessLine).
Back home, the premarket tape had its own characters. Accenture surged 18.61%, Cognizant jumped 7.07%, and IBM added 5.55% to lead the advancers, while Moderna fell 3.32% and CrowdStrike slipped 1.42% (Schwab Network). Two tech stories are doing most of the talking: Micron delivered a blowout quarter, forecasting revenue above expectations and lifting customer commitments under long-term supply agreements to $32 billion from $22 billion in June, though the shares still dipped about 1% premarket, a sign of how much good news was already priced in after the stock tripled this year (Reuters). And Alphabet advanced 2.3% after announcing its new Gemini 4 flagship AI model overnight (Reuters).
Commodities are keeping everyone honest. Oil futures are up about 1.4% to near $92 a barrel (Schwab Network), with Brent crude topping $100 as U.S.-Iran peace talks stall (CoinCentral). Gold sits near $4,210 an ounce and Bitcoin trades around $83,900 (Investopedia), while the dollar index is up 0.41% at 101.861 and the VIX hovers around 16.5 (Schwab Network).
What to watch next: whether tech’s momentum can spread beyond the usual suspects, and whether the bond market, which has been the real boss of this market for weeks, finally loosens its grip. More on that in our next piece.
