It’s…Time! (© Bruce Buffer). After all the commentary and analysis we’ve listened to and read since January, we’ve finally made it to every fan’s favorite day of the year- Stephen Miran’s Senate confirmation hearing. Also Week One of the NFL season kicks off tonight. Just like fans of the New York/New Jersey football teams, markets are showing mild enthusiasm. Yesterday the S&P ended up 0.5%, but that was really all Alphabet and Apple following the antitrust court ruling. Most other indices ended with slight losses and needed a late day rally to get there. Today however gains are being spread more equally, with the S&P 500, equal-weight and Russell 2000 all up around 0.5%. Growth and Value are also performing about equally. Consumer Discretionary is leading. Amazon is providing a lot of the lift but homebuilders and retailers are also trading higher. Energy, Industrial and Financial sectors are also outperforming. Meanwhile, Utilities are bringing up the rear as the only sector down. Real Estate, Materials and Tech are also flirting with negative territory, but the declines are modest. Employment data was the main course this morning. The ADP Employment Report, which has taken on some more importance given the recent BLS controversy and tomorrow’s payroll data, showed private employers added 54k jobs in August. That was below the 65k consensus and about half as much as July’s 106k increase. Challenger job cuts and weekly claims data were also released. Despite all of this data, Treasury yields haven’t really moved all that much, down about 2-3bp across the curve.

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