Investors Take Stock of Shutdown Talk: Stock Market Today
Whether we'll have a Jobs Friday this week depends on if we have a government shutdown in Washington.
During an otherwise quiet day for earnings and data, President Donald Trump was meeting with congressional leaders at the White House as the closing bell rang at the New York Stock Exchange Monday.
An iconic retailer will report its most recent financial results tomorrow, but if the president and the so-called "big four" from the House of Representatives and the Senate can't agree on a new budget bill by Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release the September jobs report on Friday.
The White House is making plans in case the federal government shuts down at 12:01 am Eastern Standard Time Wednesday. The major question for investors as the clock ticks is what does a government shutdown mean for stocks?
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As LPL Financial Chief Technical Strategist Adam Turnquist observes, "Government shutdowns introduce a new layer of uncertainty for markets, but fortunately, they tend to be short-lived and, as a result, have had minimal impact on the economy."
Turnquist explains that investors "have generally looked past budget-related disruptions, prioritizing corporate earnings, broader economic trends, and other key macroeconomic factors." He does, however, highlight the particular sensitivity of industries with heavy reliance on government contracts, such as aerospace and defense stocks and research-intensive biotech companies.
"These areas often experience short-term pullbacks due to funding uncertainty," Turnquist concludes, "but tend to outperform once government spending resumes."
A broad indicator of investor sentiment toward the U.S. relative to the rest of the world, the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) was down 0.2% at last check to 97.93, and has now shed 11.1% since hitting a 2025 peak of 110.18 on January 13.
At Monday's closing bell, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had added 0.5% to 22,591, the broad-based S&P 500 rose 0.3% to 6,661, and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2% at 46,316.
Going higher
Nvidia (NVDA, +2.1%) brushed up against a new 52-week intraday high and was No. 1 among the Dow Jones stocks, rising in the wake of new deals with ChatGPT developer OpenAI, Alibaba (BABA, +4.7%) and Microsoft (MSFT, 0.6%).
NVDA is up more than 35% so far in 2025, as demand for infrastructure to support the AI revolution shows few signs of slowing.
Chevron (CVX, -2.6%), meanwhile, went down deep as energy stocks put up the worst performance among the 11 sectors.
According to Reuters, the OPEC+ consortium of oil-producing countries is planning to boost production of crude oil in November. The per-barrel price of crude oil declined by 3.9%.
Nike (NKE, +0.4%) – the one notable name on this week's earnings calendar – was basically flat Monday but has bounced more than 30% off the post-Liberation Day 52-week low of $52.28 it hit on April 10.
Stifel analyst Peter McGoldrick thinks the iconic footwear and fashion brand might be about to just do it again. Management must continue to pump its product pipeline to reinvigorate demand, McGoldrick notes, though a "focus on performance innovation is the right strategy to restore appropriate lifestyle/performance balance."
Going public
Here's a new name with historic connotations and presidential connections destined for the updated list of hot upcoming IPOs: Fermi.
Fermi – named for Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born American physicist who created the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile – announced on September 24 a plan to offer 25 million shares of common stock at $18 to $22 per share and list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol FRMI.
The company aims to build four nuclear power plants as well as new natural gas plants, plus solar infrastructure to support 11 gigawatts of new electricity generation by 2038.
Fermi says the largest-of-its-kind nuclear project will be called the "Donald J. Trump Generating Plant."
Going private
Electronic Arts (EA, +4.5%) is being acquired in an all-cash, $210 per-share deal that values the communication services stock at approximately $55 billion.
A consortium including Silver Lake, Affinity Partners and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, will pay a 25% premium to EA's closing price on Friday to take the video-game maker private.
Wedbush analyst Alicia Reese downgraded EA stock to Neutral, or Hold, from Outperform, or Buy, noting the deal is likely to pass regulatory review given that the buyers' consortium has "a favorable standing with the current U.S. administration."
Going dark?
With questions about data integrity already on the rise, a data drought for the economic calendar would be among the first real and major consequences if the federal government shuts down.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is after all, an agency within the executive branch's Department of Labor.
And, according to a contingency plan released by the Labor Department on Friday, the BLS will shut down unless and until the federal government is funded again.
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