2 Phone Companies Lost 8% on a Deal Nobody Has Signed Yet

The Dow Lost 653 Points and the Nasdaq 100 Lost 1. This Market Falls 1 Index at a Time. Thursday was the Nasdaq’s turn, 482 of Friday’s Dow points have no reason filed, and oil settled at $103.27

Thursday the Nasdaq 100 fell 2.90% and the Dow finished twelve points higher. Friday the Dow fell 653 points and the Nasdaq 100 fell one. Not one per cent. One point, on an index at 28,957, which is a rounding error with a press pass. Two sell-offs in two sessions and they have not overlapped once, which is how the S&P 500, which owns both, came to fall 0.52% on Friday and look bored doing it.

Correction. Friday’s edition did not report money leaving the Nasdaq for blue chips. Readers who saw that sentence elsewhere should return it; the blue chips would like it back.

It is not writing the mirror image today either, for the reason it gave on Friday: it cannot see money move. What it can see is one index falling per day, and a reason filed for neither.

The Dow’s 1.23% fall was its largest of the fourteen sessions since 6 October, and only a quarter of it happened at the open. The rest, 482 points, went between the bell and the close. The only stamps inside that window are two scheduled prints, a PMI at 13:45 UTC and a sentiment survey at 14:00, and this book holds no intraday path to test either against the leg, so no cause is named for it.

LOST. 482 Dow points. Last seen 13:30 UTC Friday, heading south. Answers to nobody. No reward; the committee meets Wednesday.

One Dow name does carry a stamp that precedes its own gap: American Express, down 3.68% after results and a 5% workforce cut at 11:34 UTC, with 85.1% of its move in the gap and scoped to itself. This book holds no Dow divisor, so it will not tell you what that was worth in points.

The loud story was telephones. A report that SpaceX is talking to tower companies about 80,000 US cell sites hit the wires at 04:26 UTC, nine hours before the bell. AT&T lost 7.96% on 99.8 million shares, nearly double Thursday’s. T-Mobile lost 7.71%. Crown Castle and American Tower, who own the masts, rose 9.06% and 4.08%. Nothing is signed and nothing is filed, and two phone companies fell 8% on a deal nobody has signed yet. The clock lets the report be a cause; the filing cabinet does not, so it sits in the read block below under a heading that says speculation.

Oil did the rest. December WTI settled 103.27, up 3.82%, December Brent 116.72, and energy was the only one of eleven sectors up more than half a per cent. Every one of the fourteen Treasury tenors rose or stood still. The 2s10s spread was 31 basis points on Thursday and 31 on Friday. Fourteen floors, one lift.¹ Gold spot closed 3,994.00, six dollars under a round number, and spent the afternoon finding out which side of it the headline lives on.

¹ The 20-year has been the top floor for 31 sessions and today’s Macro Edge has the receipts. All fourteen buttons were lit on Friday and the car still stopped at 20.

One receipt. Friday’s letter refused to call Thursday’s high yield move a spread widening because the issuer’s figure was a day old. The figure is in: 297.81 basis points from 287.23, a 10.58 basis point widening on the day the chips fell 6.79%. The refusal was right on Friday and the number is right today, which is the only order those two are allowed to happen in.

The One That Mattered

The one number is a pair: the Dow fell 1.23% and the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.00%, a 1.23 point divergence on Friday after a 2.92 point divergence on Thursday, when the Dow was the one standing still. Two indices, two sessions, two falls, no overlap. This letter cannot see money move, so it will not tell you where it went. It can see that three quarters of Friday’s Dow fall has no cause on file, that oil settled above 103, and that the curve moved as one block without changing shape.

Oil settled at $103.27 and the 20-year closed at 5.37%, so is the bond market pricing the barrel or the committee? We went down the rabbit hole in today’s Macro Edge. https://antivestor.com/macro-edge

Stock Market Edge

The Dow Fell 1.23%, the Nasdaq 100 Fell 1.16 Points, and the Curve Moved as 1 Block A 4.53 point sector spread, a 31st session of the 20-year on top, and a Monday premarket inside the normal band

Premarket snapshot:

On the 07:45 to 07:50 UTC capture bar, read twice on all four December contracts, S&P futures were 7,672.75, up 0.17% on Friday’s close, Nasdaq futures 29,106.75, down 0.04%, Dow futures 52,565, up 0.33%, Russell futures 2,793.5, up 0.32%. The Globex session so far ran 7,651.75 to 7,698.50 on the S&P contract; equity volatility read 19.63 against a 19.45 close. The Dow contract is 0.67 points short of the 1.00% overnight line. Nasdaq futures sat within a rounding error of Friday’s close across a 01:57 UTC Musk post on neoclouds; nothing is attributed to it.

Sector rotation:

Three of eleven higher, eight lower. Energy 2.60%, technology 0.49%, real estate 0.12%. Staples 1.92% lower after rising 3.31% on Thursday, communication services 1.78%, discretionary 1.66%. Spread 4.53 points, past the 4.00 line, on tier-2 proxies that partition the S&P 500. New York counted 973 advancers to 1,691 decliners and Nasdaq 1,909 to 2,894, both below one, so the breadth shot filed on 9 October closed without a fourth straddle: three in ten filed sessions against a falsifier of fewer than three, a hit, with the ledger’s own asterisk, because the window omits Monday 12 October. The semiconductor proxies rose 0.53% and 0.74%, 0.21 points apart, above the 0.10 line of the 21 October shot.

Earnings or guidance:

Speculation follows. None of it is a retrieved cause. The SpaceX cell-site report is stamped 04:26 UTC. AT&T’s gap was 55.25% of its 7.96% fall and T-Mobile’s 66.86% of its 7.71%, so the report precedes the majority of both and passes the clock. It is still one outlet reporting talks that nobody present has confirmed. Elsewhere: LKQ fell 22.47% after a preliminary quarter, withdrawn guidance and a chief executive change stamped 12:00 UTC, 85.35% in the gap, named and scoped to LKQ. SLB rose 7.08% after results at 10:50 UTC, but only 11.68% of that was the gap, so it is not named.

Cross-asset nuance:

Eleven of fourteen Treasury tenors rose and three held: the 2-year 4.69%, up 4 basis points; the 10-year 5.00%, up 4; the 20-year 5.37%, up 5, top of the curve for a 31st consecutive session; the 30-year 5.33%, up 4; 2s10s 31 unchanged. The flash composite PMI printed 57.6 at 13:45 UTC and Michigan sentiment 48.0 at 14:00 UTC, after 66.04% of the S&P 500’s move was in the gap. Bond volatility fell 3.30% to 103.32 on a session every tenor rose or held, and no cause is named for it; the dollar closed 101.75, up 0.13%. Gold spot closed 3,994.00, down 0.74%, low 3,975.48 on the 23 October spot session, as oil and the dollar rose; no cause is named. High yield fell 0.06%, investment grade 0.41%, long Treasuries 0.49%. Monday: December WTI read 101.25 on the 06:00 UTC bar, down 1.96%, and 100.84 on the 09:05 UTC bar, down 2.35%; December Brent 114.90, then 114.56. Speculation follows. None of it is a retrieved cause. A Sunday statement that there would not be a strike on Iran today, first on the wires at 02:44 UTC Monday, precedes every Monday read held. Today is the operative word.

Crypto Market Edge

3 Lower Marks, 1 Blank Cell, and a Table That Ate 2 Days Bitcoin 80,047.76 on the Sunday mark, ether 2,326.97, Friday’s flow rows held provisional

Price snapshot:

Bitcoin closed 81,086.26 on Friday’s 23:59 UTC mark, down 0.33%, then 80,781.44 on Saturday and 80,047.76 on Sunday, 1.60% below Thursday, with a Saturday low of 79,162.65. Ether closed 2,384.60 on Friday and 2,326.97 on Sunday, down 2.52%. The Monday 06:00 UTC bars read 80,018.78 and 2,317.47. Bitcoin went through 80,000 on Saturday and has been standing outside the number since.

Flows and positioning:

US spot bitcoin funds netted minus 137.9 million dollars on Friday’s row, IBIT minus 110.3 million and FBTC minus 31.8 million, with one issuer cell blank, so the row is provisional and nothing is marked on it. Ether funds netted plus 4.4 million with one cell blank, also provisional. Thursday’s complete rows stand at minus 635.6 million and minus 110.6 million. Both blanks are the VanEck product.

Leadership and rotation:

Gross absolute ether issuer flow was 4.4 million dollars against a 20.0 million scorability floor, so Friday does not score for the shot filed on 20 October: three scorable sessions in, two of the three falsifier sessions it needs to die, and a quiet day is a day it survives by default. On the boards at the 07:38 UTC capture, bitcoin’s canonical sentiment read 36, bearish, on a 684,889-watcher base and ether’s 20, extremely bearish. One token made the all-asset top 25, at rank 20. The rest of the top 19 was not crypto.

Catalysts and roadmap:

The flow table’s earliest row moved from 5 October to 7 October, two trading sessions in one edition after a stall, so the erosion this book stopped predicting has resumed at double speed, which is what things do once you stop predicting them. Cumulative totals are frozen at 57,251 million dollars for bitcoin and 12,748 million for ether. Strategy reports on 29 October and its sale count moves on a filing or not at all. The committee’s statement lands at 18:00 UTC on Wednesday; this book prints the relay’s direction, a hold, and not its number.

TL;DR

• Friday the Dow fell 1.23% and the Nasdaq 100 fell 1.16 points, a day after the Nasdaq fell 2.90% and the Dow held; 73.76% of it is unexplained.
• AT&T lost 7.96% and T-Mobile 7.71% on the session a 04:26 UTC report of SpaceX cell-site talks circulated; the mast owners rose 9.06% and 4.08%.
• December WTI settled 103.27, up 3.82%, December Brent 116.72, up 3.14%, and energy was the only sector proxy of eleven up more than half a per cent.
• All fourteen Treasury tenors rose or held, the 20-year topped the curve for a 31st session at 5.37%, and the 2s10s spread finished unchanged at 31 basis points.
• Bitcoin marked 80,047.76 on Sunday, 1.60% below Thursday, with Friday’s fund row at minus 137.9 million dollars provisional on one blank cell.

Fun Fact

AT&T Trades Under a Single Letter One of a handful of one-character tickers still listed on the New York Stock Exchange

AT&T’s ticker is simply T, a single letter, which is why a company of that size can be searched for and missed in the same keystroke. Citigroup trades as C and Ford as F, so Friday’s telecom session was, on the tape, a one-letter affair.