Traveling a bumpy road.

Early in the third quarter, markets moved ahead enthusiastically. However, the road got rougher later in the quarter as investors pondered inflation, oil prices, interest rates, and other economic concerns. Here’s a brief recap:

AI-related stocks drove stock markets higher

For the last three years, artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks have helped propel markets to new heights. That continued during the third quarter, reported Sarah Hansen of Morningstar, although momentum slowed as “a growing chorus of AI executives and researchers sounded the alarm on safety concerns for the rapidly advancing technology.”

Companies in many other sectors performed less well over the quarter. “Market breadth has narrowed once again, with two tech-heavy sectors, alongside energy, pacing overall gains for the past month. Everything else, including summer stalwarts such as healthcare, financials, and consumer staples, having been trading in the red,” reported Martin Baccardax of Barron’s in late September.

The bond market shifted gears

Yields on U.S. Treasuries rose to the highest levels in decades, reflecting persistent inflation, rising government debt levels, and a surge of corporate debt issued to support the buildout of AI. Jack Denton of Barron’s reported:

“The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose at the fastest pace this century in the third quarter, with much of the advance coming in late August and through September. The note’s yield popped from around the 4.6 percent mark to above 5.3 percent, the highest level in 24 years, sitting at 5.23 percent on Friday… Corporate bond yields have also followed benchmark Treasury yields higher.”

The Federal Reserve lifted rates

In September, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which is the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting committee, lifted the federal funds rate to cool inflation. After the meeting, Fed Chair Warsh stated:

“Our decision comes at a time when the American economy appears to be strengthening. New hiring, private-sector earnings, business capital investment—each of these markers has improved in recent months and is pointing in a good direction…Consider the geopolitical landscape of shocks and uncertainty, and you begin to appreciate the resilience of the U.S. economy… Yet, for more than five years, inflation has been running above target. The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long.”

Last Monday, the probability of another rate increase in October was above 70 percent according to the CME FedWatch tool. Then September’s better-than-expected inflation report and a worse-than-expected jobs report caused expectations to change dramatically. The chance that the FOMC will hold rates steady rose significantly.

The change gave markets a boost early on Friday, reported Connor Smith of Barron’s. For the week, though, only the Nasdaq Composite Index showed a gain. Yields on the longest maturities of Treasuries rose over the week.

S&P 500, Dow Jones Global ex-US, S&P GSCI Gold Index, Bloomberg Commodity Index returns exclude reinvested dividends. The three-, five-, and 10-year returns are annualized; and the 10-year Treasury Note is simply the yield at the close of the day on each of the historical time periods. 

Sources: Yahoo! Finance; MarketWatch; djindexes.com; U.S. Treasury.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. N/A means not applicable.

ACHIEVEMENTS SO SURPRISING THEY MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH, THEN THINK. The Ig Nobel Prizes were organized by the magazine, The Annals of Improbable Research, and recognize funny and thought-provoking scientific research. The 36th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony took place in Zurich, Switzerland, where the honorees received their awards from actual Nobel Prize recipients. (Only one scientist has ever won both an Ig Nobel and a Nobel prize.) This year’s Igs included the:

• Physics Prize rewarded an investigation into fluid dynamics that led to the development of a splash free urinal. “Splash-free Urinals for Global Sustainability and Accessibility: Design Through Physics and Differential Equations” was published in PNAS Nexus.
• Technology Prize was awarded to a study that broke new ground exploring whether mosquito proboscises could effectively be used as high-resolution printing nozzles. “3D Necroprinting: Leveraging Biotic Material as the Nozzle for 3D Printing” was published in Science Advances.
• Peace Prize recognized researchers who discovered that people value friends who behave viciously toward people they don’t like. “Sometimes We Want Vicious Friends: People Have Nuanced Preferences for How They Want Their Friends to Behave Toward Them Versus Others” was published in Evolution and Human Behavior.
• Chemistry Prize rewarded research that determined a single crystal of cockroach milk protein contains more than three times the energy of an equivalent mass of cow milk protein. “Structure of a Heterogeneous, Glycosylated, Lipid-Bound, in Vivo-Grown Protein Crystal at Atomic Resolution from the Viviparous Cockroach Diploptera Punctata” was published in the International Union of Crystallography Journal.
• Biology Prize went to innovators who “gently stepping on various parts of various venomous snakes — repeatedly, at various temperatures at various times of day — to try to learn what does and what does not induce a venomous snake to bite a human.” “Study of Defensive Behavior of a Venomous Snake as a New Approach to Understand Snakebite” was published in Scientific Reports and later retracted on concerns about the treatment of the snakes. The researchers confirmed they had been gentle with the snakes.

“All winners received a statuette (this year, a slab of blue cheese topped by a foot erupting with toadstools in honor of this year's broader theme of "fungi") and 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars. But that currency cratered years ago, so it isn't actually worth anything,” reported Ari Daniel of All Things Considered.

WEEKLY FOCUS – THINK ABOUT IT

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

— Albert Einstein, Physicist