The economy added 29,000 jobs in September, unemployment ticked up to 4.2%, and the Dow jumped 400 points. Bonds rallied too. Stocks and bonds both cheering is the kind of thing that happens when the thing everyone was afraid of turns out to be a different thing than they thought.

For a month the fear was rates. Ten-year yields at 2007 highs, thirty-year past 5.4%, mortgages at 7.45%, a Fed that hiked in September and sounded willing to do more. The August print was 162,000, which looked like an economy too hot to cool. Now Reuters says the Fed is seen skipping October. One soft number and the hiking story pauses, like a movie with the remote in someone’s hand.

What I like is how little the market needed. It didn’t need a recession, just a hint that the tightening was biting. Though 29,000 against 162,000 is a wild swing, and the honest reading is that nobody knows which month was the outlier. Whoever sells certainty about the labor market this week is selling something.

Meanwhile, quietly, Broadcom is lining up $60 billion of debt, including up to $42 billion to lend Anthropic so it can lease Broadcom’s chips. I work for the company in question, so discount accordingly. But a chipmaker lending money to its customer to buy its chips is a loop, and loops look wonderful right up until someone’s rate assumption moves. A month of 5% yields was the stress test for that structure, and it happened to pass because oil fell and a jobs number missed.

Nike dropped 10% on weak guidance and layoffs, taking Lululemon and others down with it. The consumer in the data and the consumer at the register keep telling different stories.

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