Finance Evening | Oct 9: Dow Jumps Over 400 Points, Apple Cuts iPhone Orders, Delta Trims Guidance

📊 Today's North American Markets

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Tech Leads Stocks Higher; Dow Jumps Over 400 Points

Source: CNBC

U.S. stocks rose on Friday, supported by the tech sector as traders looked to rebound from a volatile week of elevated Treasury yields and oil prices as well as declines in the artificial intelligence trade. The Nasdaq Composite added 0.64% to end at 27,366.17. The S&P 500 climbed 0.59% to 7,811.54, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 423.31 points, or 0.83%, to close at 51,654.95.

Stocks reached their highs of the day after President Donald Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to supply diesel to both the U.S. and global markets. Oil prices closed marginally higher, with West Texas Intermediate near $92 a barrel and Brent above $104. SpaceX shares rose 1% after the Elon Musk-led company announced a deal to buy a nationwide spectrum portfolio, while AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile slid on competition worries; Verizon fell more than 9% intraday, on pace for its worst day in more than two decades.

Software and tech names advanced broadly: Palo Alto Networks gained 5%, CrowdStrike and Palantir rose 4% and 5%, Microsoft added 2% and Amazon 3%. Healthcare was another standout, with Merck and Gilead Sciences each up more than 2%. Despite volatility driven by 24-year-high long-dated Treasury yields, all three major averages were headed for weekly gains.

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Apple Falls on Report of iPhone 18 Pro Order Cuts

Source: Yahoo Finance

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro demand is reportedly slowing due to higher prices, forcing the company to tell its suppliers to cut back on component production for the phones. According to Nikkei Asia, Apple reduced orders for October by roughly 15% to 20% versus initial estimates. Apple stock declined more than 2.5% in early trade on Friday.

Like the rest of the tech industry, Apple is facing a severe shortage of memory and storage chips due to high demand from the AI data center build-out. That has forced makers of smartphones, laptops and gaming consoles to raise prices. Apple raised the price of its iPhone 18 Pro line by $100, to $1,199 for the iPhone 18 and $1,299 for the iPhone 18 Pro Max, and also increased prices on iPads and Macs.

Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management noted that lead times fell 31% for the iPhone 18 Pro but rose 1% for the iPhone 18 Pro Max, roughly in line with last year's iPhone 17 Pro lineup combined. Apple is also preparing to ship its $1,999 foldable iPhone Duo on Oct. 23, which could cannibalize sales of the iPhone 18 Pro.

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Delta Misses Q3 Estimates, Cuts Guidance as Fuel Costs Surge

Source: Yahoo Finance

Delta Air Lines reported third quarter results on Friday morning that missed the mark, as strength from its premium business could not blunt the effects of higher fuel prices. Delta subsequently cut its guidance, noting that its total fuel bill for the year would increase by $6 billion. For the quarter, Delta reported adjusted revenue of $17.58 billion, slightly below the $17.76 billion estimate, up 15.7% from a year ago. It posted adjusted EPS of $1.72 versus the $1.82 estimate, and adjusted net income of $1.134 billion versus $1.23 billion expected.

Delta said its Q3 performance was hit by $500 million in higher fuel costs than its July guidance. Its total fuel bill for the quarter hit $4.1 billion, up 62% from a year ago. The airline cut its adjusted EPS forecast to $5.10-$5.60 from $6.50-$7.50, with free cash flow guidance coming down to $2.5 billion from a range of $3 billion to $4 billion. CEO Ed Bastian said Delta expects a full-year pre-tax profit of roughly $4.5 billion while absorbing a $6 billion increase in fuel costs; CFO Erik Snell said simply, "All of it's fuel."

Delta's premium business grew 18% year over year in Q3, with loyalty and related revenue up 18% as well; American Express credit card remuneration grew 15% from a year ago, on track to exceed $9 billion for the year.

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Moderna Surges on National Cancer Vaccine Effort

Source: Yahoo Finance

Moderna stock popped 14% on Friday, reaching its highest level since January 2022, after The New York Times reported new details about an effort to accelerate cancer vaccine development. Investors saw the mRNA biotech company, in particular, as a beneficiary. Biotech stocks rallied, including Pfizer, BioNTech and Merck, while Novavax shares surged 15%.

According to the report, the initiative is a public-private partnership — similar to the effort that produced COVID-19 vaccines — involving the National Institutes of Health (NIH), its nonprofit arm, researchers, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, advocacy groups, other nonprofits and patients. Stacey Adam, a senior clinical officer at the NIH's foundation, told the Times she expects the program to launch in December. In 2024, the UK launched a similar program.

Unlike other vaccines such as the COVID-19 shot, cancer vaccines are designed to target cancer cells in patients who already have the disease. Moderna is viewed as a leader in the mRNA cancer treatment space; year to date, its stock is up 662%.

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Netflix Reportedly Plans to Cut About 5% of Staff

Source: Variety

Netflix is planning a major round of layoffs coming as soon as next week that would cut about 5% of its headcount, according to a report by Puck News citing anonymous sources. A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment, and it is not clear which departments would be most heavily affected. As of the end of 2025, Netflix said it had about 16,000 full-time employees, meaning a 5% reduction would eliminate around 800 jobs; roughly 68% of its workers, about 10,900, were located in the U.S. and Canada as of December.

Netflix's last major layoffs came in 2022, when it axed about 450 staffers following a net decline of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of that year — its first such drop in more than a decade. The company has made smaller cutbacks since, including letting go several dozen members of its global product team earlier in 2026.

Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at last month's Bloomberg Screentime conference that the company is growing — noting double-digit revenue gains in every region in Q2 — but that "We want to keep growing it faster." Netflix is scheduled to report third quarter 2026 earnings on Tuesday, Oct. 20, after market close.

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Wall Street Eyes the Bond Market's 'Term Premium' Surge

Source: Bloomberg

It is one of the least understood signals in the fixed-income world, but lately everyone on Wall Street is abuzz about what it means as it reasserts itself. It is known as the term premium — the extra payout that investors demand in return for the risks of owning 10-year Treasuries instead of just rolling over short-dated securities for the same amount of time. Over the past few weeks it spiked to levels not seen in over a decade and drove the latest leg of the bond selloff that has sent U.S. Treasury yields to a 24-year high.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari once likened the term premium to dark matter. Frank Rybinski, head of macro strategy at Aegon Asset Management, said: "There's multiple ways to calculate it, but they're all going higher. And what that tells me is that this move has staying power." There was no clear-cut catalyst: Barclays researchers said macroeconomic uncertainty, breakdowns in the usual stock-bond correlations, the rising supply of debt and fiscal worries could all be playing a role.

A New York Fed model shows the metric climbed around 40 basis points to about 0.98%, the highest since 2014 and more than enough to account for the nearly 30 basis-point rise in 10-year Treasury yields over that time. A structurally higher term premium could keep long-term interest rates elevated, preventing the market from rebounding from its slump.

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Krugman Says France May Be 'Too Big to Save'

Source: CNBC

Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman warned that France faces a potential debt crisis and may have become "too big to save" for the European Central Bank. Student protests over underfunding in education continue to rock France, as Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu struggles to pass a contentious 2027 budget seeking tens of billions of dollars' worth of fiscal consolidation.

Writing in a Substack blog post on Thursday, Krugman said France was on a "fiscally unsustainable path," facing mounting interest on its government debt while exacerbating its high debt-to-GDP ratio with large budget deficits; he argued a key issue is the country's failure to address its relatively low retirement age as the population ages. "France's reliance on the euro means that it's all too easy to see how this loss of confidence could turn into an ugly crisis... We saw this movie in 2009-2012," he wrote.

Former ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet told CNBC on Friday: "The ball is in the camp of the French government and parliament." He noted that if instability arises, the available instruments are numerous and have proven effective, including the European Stability Mechanism and, at the most extreme end, the ECB's Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI), finalized in 2022 and as-yet unused.

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U.S. Trucking Hit by Bankruptcy Wave as Diesel Costs Surge

Source: Fox Business

A string of trucking and freight companies filed for bankruptcy in September as rising fuel, insurance and other operating costs squeeze an industry that plays a critical role in moving goods across the U.S. At least eight transportation-related companies sought Chapter 11 protection during the month, according to bankruptcy documents reviewed by FOX Business, with one trucking company owner pointing directly to diesel and insurance costs — insurance being the biggest pressure.

Automotive expert Lauren Fix told FOX Business that the pressure from higher diesel prices extends far beyond trucking companies because nearly everything consumers buy must be transported at some point in the supply chain. "When gas prices go up or diesel prices go up, everything that goes from point A to point B is affected," she said, adding that costs ultimately reach consumers.

President Donald Trump moved this week to provide relief, temporarily allowing red-dyed diesel normally reserved for off-road use to be used on highways; Fix estimated the move could save drivers between 50 cents and $1 per gallon. The White House also said Trump reached an agreement with Europe to release 100 million barrels of refined diesel and crude oil from strategic reserves over the next four months.

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Fed Survey: Household Debt Strain Worst Since 2010

Source: CNBC

The ability of U.S. families to stay current on their debts worsened over the past three years, hitting levels not seen since the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve reported Friday. In the central bank's Survey of Consumer Finances, researchers found that while wealth disparities narrowed somewhat, the ability to meet debt payments deteriorated significantly. "Families were more likely to be behind on their financial obligations than at any point since the 2010 survey," the survey stated. In 2010, the U.S. was just emerging from what became known as the Great Recession.

According to the findings, the portion of families behind on loan payments at the end of 2025 soared from about 12% in the prior survey to nearly 20%, a gain of some 67%. Those behind by two months or more also accelerated, moving to more than 8% from 5% in 2022. Families with payment-to-income ratios greater than 40% jumped to 8.6%, up from 6.5% in 2022 and the highest since 2013.

At the same time, the net worth of higher earners soared, with those in the top income group seeing their median net worth rise 31%. Inflation-adjusted average net worth rose 7% to $1.24 million, though median net worth climbed just 2% to $215,900. Real median family income increased 7% but average income dropped 6%.

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Retail Investors Borrow on Margin as Debt Hits Record

Source: CNBC

Hy Luu, a 29-year-old engineering consultant, lives with his mother, Kim Nguyen, a 66-year-old retiree, in Houston. During a late night in May 2021, while researching how to obtain more capital to invest in Tesla shares, he discovered margin investing — borrowing money from a broker to buy securities while using existing investments as collateral. A year or so later, he had amassed more than $100,000 of margin debt.

In June, he exercised $165,000 on five Tesla call options and bought 500 shares at $330 per share, driving his borrowing to more than $156,000. After subtracting his debts, his net worth has climbed to more than $800,000 from negative territory seven years ago. He said he is "very close to becoming a millionaire," but stressed, "What I'm doing is risky. I don't recommend anyone do it."

Retail investors like Luu are borrowing more and more money to invest. Robinhood's margin book grew to a record $21.6 billion in the second quarter, up 127% year over year and 332% from the $5 billion seen in Q2 2024. Total margin debt hit an all-time high of around $1.5 trillion in June, per the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which incorporates data on both institutional and retail investors. Sam Huszczo, chief investment officer at SGH Wealth Management, put it bluntly: "That's greed."

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