Good morning. One week until Election Day. Yesterday the S&P 500 rose 0.7%. Both the Russell 2000 and equal weight lagged with both up 0.4%. Consumer Discretionary, Industrials and Tech led as the AI trade rebounded, while Comm Services was the main laggard with telecom and media/entertainment names lower. The tech bounce came as AI funding news painted the tape, including META’s $95B equity raising plans (which could include NVDA, AMD and AVGO taking a collective $5B piece) and SPCX’s $40B raise. Anthropic’s S-1 officially dropped as well. Speaking of, after the close AVGO, BAC, BX, C and MS announced a $63B financing plan to support Anthropic’s leasing of AVGO (+3% pre-market) AI chips. The package is part of a previously announced agreement. In more tech news, MSFT offered buyouts to 60K employees, about 25% of its employees. There was also a big deal announced in the Energy patch as EQT plans to acquire Range Resources for ~$13B. Brazil got waxed after Lula’s surprise election win.

S&P futures are trading higher and moved to their best levels after Iran's Supreme Leader had called for meeting conditions to end the war. That comes after Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani officials held talks with Iran yesterday. Among earnings, WHR is down 7%, noting soft industry demand in North America along with a 7% price increase, and a 10% increase in Latin America. while JBLU is up +10% after falling 10% yesterday as the company works with restructuring advisors. GLW and UPS are slightly higher. RCL is up over 5%, reporting solid booking trends into 2027. Cruise line peers are higher as well. TSMC (flat) is reportedly planning to increase CoWos prices- a primary GPU manufacturing technology- by ~20%.

Brent crude is modestly lower on the back of the latest Iran peace hopes. European gas is down a bit after hitting almost €98 yesterday. Precious metals continue to slip with gold down slightly but other metals down 2-3%. Copper is higher with Freeport-McMoRan (flat) reporting this morning. Ag is mostly lower, following through on yesterday’s Brazil-triggered weakness, though soy is bouncing. Bitcoin and Ether are flat to slightly higher.