Monday, September 29, 2025
Pre-market futures are nicely in the green this morning, so much so that they look to open at fresh all-time highs. After a positive trading day Friday, the Dow is up another +208 points at this hour, the S&P 500 is +36 and the Nasdaq +175 points. The small-cap Russell 2000 is +15 points currently.
We embark on another Jobs Week, starting Tuesday with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for August. By Wednesday morning we’ll see private-sector payrolls from Automatic Data Processing ADP, Thursday is Weekly Jobless Claims and Friday the Employment Situation report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Within the specter of these new jobs numbers, we do see a bit of risk with market indexes trading at all-time highs. Perhaps labor market data has already been baked into expectations, but the fact remains that only 40K private-sector jobs in the ADP report and 45K non-farm payroll jobs in the BLS are anticipated. This, in effect, would amount to negative jobs growth if we factor in the large number of Baby Boomer and Generation X retirees per month. A weak labor market does not forecast great things for the overall economy.
In the largest leveraged buyout (LBO) in history, video game giant Electronic Arts EA is set to go private for $55 billion. Its new owners will be Saudi-based PIF, Silver Lake Partners and Affinity Partners, which is headed by Jared Kushner, the senior advisor from President Trump’s first term (as well as his son in law). EA — the maker of Madden football, Battlefield, Need for Speed and more — is priced for the buyout at $210 per share.
Later this morning, August Pending Home Sales are projected to come in “unched” from the previous month, after a fall of -0.4% in July. In fact, Pending Home Sales have posted negative numbers year over year in six of the last seven months. Thus, a 0.0% post this morning would be something like progress.
Pending Home Sales have been no stranger to negative monthly headlines, even prior to the Covid pandemic. But upon the Great Reopening, which sent inflation soaring and caused the Fed to ratchet up interest rates, these home sales numbers plummeted to -36.8% in October and November of 2022. These figures can only truly be expected to get back up above water consistently once interest rates come down far enough for mortgage rates to lower significantly.
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