Pre-Market Report – Thursday 8 October: US markets slip on Fed minutes - SPI down 53 - Firmus has gone 'Softus '- Gold and resources to fall

Dow Jones closed down 341 points or 0.66%, 51.180. Fed minutes out last night showed everyone, everyone on the Federal Reserve Board was in favour of a rate rise.

NASDAQ down 61 points or 0.22%, 27.539. And the S&P 500, similar performance.

0.22, 17.7802.

The Russell 2000, though, was the worst, down 1.3%, 37 points to 27.93.

The VIX volatility index picked up ever such a smidge, 0.5% higher or 0.1%.

Fifteen point eight.

Still very much in complacent territory.

Stocks semi index down one point two percent and the mag seven down a point three.

Once again, we saw U.S. bond yields going higher.

Thirty year yields five point six seven four up one point six basis points tens.

5.288 up 0.7 basis points.

The twos 4.771 down 2.8 basis points.

They did have a treasury auction of around $39 billion worth of 10 year notes.

which went off relatively well.

But the 10-year Treasury note reached its highest level since April 2002.

And spare a thought for those people in the US taking out a new mortgage.

A 30-year fixed mortgage rate is now 7.63% in the US.

We did see the US market coming off as a result of those higher bond yields.

Higher borrowing costs would limit the artificial intelligence build-out.

CrowdStrike fell almost 5%.

Palo Alto Networks and Meta lost more than 3% and 2% respectively.

So it is looking as if those bond yields, those higher bond yields, do have a little bit of an impact on some of those tech stocks.

At times, we are still on the precipice of US earnings.

And of course, US earnings are forecast to rise 30%.

But before you all get carried away, that is very much skewed to the big end, the AI end of town.