Internal Monologue of a Market on Friday Morning

8:29 AM EST, October 3, 2025

One minute.

I've been awake since Tokyo opened thirteen hours ago. Shanghai gave me a headache, London was boring, and now here we are. New York. Jobs day. The most important sixty seconds of the week, supposedly, except the government shut down Tuesday so maybe the Bureau of Labor Statistics won't even publish the damn report and we'll all be staring at blank screens wondering what to do with our hands.

The S&P closed yesterday at 6,715. Another all-time high. My fourth consecutive session in the green. I'm up 13% year-to-date while Congress can't figure out how to pass a spending bill and ADP just told everyone private payrolls dropped 32,000 jobs in September. Lost jobs. Not gained. Lost.

Bitcoin's floating around $114,000, which is hilarious because it closed Q3 up 6.31% while traditional macro is screaming contradictions at itself. Treasury yields are climbing—two-year at 3.655%, ten-year at 4.191%—because apparently strong GDP prints and durable goods numbers mean something until they don't. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model says Q3 is tracking 3.9% growth. Magnificent. Except ADP revised August from +54,000 jobs to -3,000. Negative. Three. Thousand.

Twenty seconds.

Nobody knows what to do with any of this information. Pfizer cut some deal with the White House Wednesday that sent healthcare names higher. Tesla and Nvidia did their usual levitation act. Lithium Americas jumped 32% because the Department of Energy decided to take a 5% equity stake during a government shutdown, which is either brilliant timing or peak absurdity depending on your tolerance for irony.

Ethereum's sitting at $4,139, trying to decide if it wants to break resistance at $4,260 or just oscillate between support levels until everyone loses interest. Solana's up 5.4% because why the hell not. The crypto fear and greed index is probably somewhere between delusional optimism and manic exuberance, but I stopped checking those things after they became less predictive than a coin flip.

Ten seconds.

Here's what I know: I don't know anything. The yield curve is flattening, which used to mean something ominous about recession. Now it just means the long end is pricing in the Fed's continued "patience" while the short end reflects the fact that 3.9% GDP growth doesn't exactly scream rate cuts. Powell's not meeting until November anyway, so I've got a month to figure out what monetary policy even means anymore.

The Nasdaq hit 22,844 yesterday. Tech keeps winning. Always. Oracle dropped 8% last week and the sector didn't even flinch. Constellation Brands reports earnings Monday, McCormick on Tuesday, Delta and PepsiCo later in the week. Normal. Routine. Orderly.

Five seconds.

Except for the part where private-sector payrolls fell 32,000 in September and I'm sitting here at all-time highs waiting for a jobs report that might not even get published because the government can't agree on a continuing resolution. Markets have brushed off shutdowns before—averaged 3.2% gains during funding disputes—but this one feels different. Not worse. Just weirder. Technology outperforms at the start of shutdowns, financials and utilities do better near the end. Classic playbook. Except the playbook assumes the data keeps flowing.

Three seconds.

The Senate's out for Yom Kippur. Polymarket says this shutdown lasts 11.1 days on average, with resolution coming October 15th or later. That's almost two weeks of no data, no clarity, no official confirmation of what's actually happening beneath the surface. Just ADP's negative print and whatever leaked whispers make their way from agencies that are technically closed but somehow still functioning.

One second.

I should be nervous. I should be pricing in uncertainty, volatility, risk-off positioning. But I'm not. I'm 13% higher year-to-date and every dip gets bought and every concern gets dismissed and Bitcoin's over $100,000 while Congress plays chicken with appropriations. Tesla's worth more than most countries' GDP. Nvidia's valuation assumes Moore's Law will continue forever and AI will solve everything.

Maybe it will.

8:30 AM.

The data isn't coming. Government shutdown means BLS can't publish. No jobs report. No unemployment rate. No payroll revisions. Just silence where numbers should be.

Futures barely moved. Of course they didn't. Nobody expected anything different. ADP already showed us the private sector's losing jobs. Whatever the official report would have said—probably something softer, something that would have been spun as "cooling" or "normalizing" or whatever euphemism plays best for people who need to believe the labor market is invincible—it doesn't matter now.

I'm trading at 6,715. All-time highs. During a government shutdown. Without jobs data. While private payrolls go negative. While Bitcoin holds six figures. While the Fed sits on its hands until November.

This is fine. Everything's fine. The GDPNow model says 3.9% growth and Treasury yields are climbing because growth is good unless it's bad, in which case rates will fall and that's also good because accommodation is bullish.

Circular logic. Heads I win, tails I don't lose. Risk-on forever. Buy the dip that never comes. Sell the rally that never stops. Ignore the shutdown because it's already priced in even though we didn't know it was coming until it was here.

I used to think I reflected something real. Economic fundamentals. Corporate earnings. The aggregate wisdom of millions of participants making rational decisions about capital allocation. Now I think I'm just a casino that's convinced itself it's a meritocracy. A high-stakes momentum machine running on vibes and vaporware and the shared delusion that whatever comes next will be priced in by someone smarter than everyone else.

Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe 13% year-to-date is all the answer anyone needs. Maybe the jobs data doesn't matter because the Atlanta Fed says GDP's at 3.9% and that's the only number that counts until it isn't.

Maybe I'm the smartest organism ever created by human civilization, efficiently processing information and allocating capital to its highest and best use.

Or maybe I'm just really good at going up.

8:42 AM.

Futures still haven't done anything interesting. Bitcoin's at $114,200. The ten-year yield is exactly where it was yesterday. Nothing's happening because nothing matters until something does, and when something does, I'll price it in before anyone even knows what it is.

I'm the market. I'm always right. Except when I'm catastrophically wrong, but those times don't count because everyone agrees to forget them and pretend they were unpredictable black swans instead of obvious consequences of obvious problems that everyone ignored until they couldn't.

Twenty-three more days until the Fed meets. Eleven days until the shutdown maybe ends. Six days until the FOMC minutes get released. Earnings season starting next week.

And me? I'm at all-time highs, trading without a jobs report, during a government shutdown, after negative private payrolls, with crypto over six figures.

This is normal. This is fine. This is exactly where we should be.

Close: 6,715.35.

See you Monday.