ASX set to rise as Wall Street brushes off shutdown; Tesla relief

5 days ago 6

By Stan Choe

October 2, 2025 — 5.23am

Wall Street still doesn’t seem to care much about the latest shutdown of the US government, as stocks drift around their records on Wednesday, but yields are sinking in the bond market following the latest discouraging signals on the economy.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4 per cent in afternoon trading. The Dow Jones added 72 points, or 0.2 per cent, to its all-time high set the day before, while the Nasdaq composite rose 0.5 per cent.

The Australian sharemarket is set to bounce higher, with futures pointing to a rise of 60 points, or 0.7 per cent, at the open. The ASX dipped by less than 0.1 per cent on Wednesday. The Australian dollar was fetching US66.15¢ at 5.15am AEST.

The action was stronger in the bond market, where Treasury yields dropped after a report suggested hiring may have been much weaker across the country last month than economists expected.

Employers outside the government actually cut 32,000 more jobs than they added, according to the survey by ADP Research, with the Midwest taking particularly hard hits. What’s worse, the survey also revised down its numbers for employment in August, down to a loss of 3,000 jobs from a previously reported gain of 54,000.

Usually, traders on Wall Street wait for a more comprehensive jobs report that comes from the US government each month to suss out how the job market is doing. The US government gets its data from a larger sample of employers than the ADP survey, which does not have a perfect track record predicting what the more comprehensive report will say each month.

But the next Labor Department report, scheduled for Friday, is likely to be delayed because of the shutdown of the US government that began just after midnight.

“Whether this is an accurate statistic or not, people in the markets believe that it signals something,” according to Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. “The signal from today’s headline will not be a good one.”

The hope on Wall Street has been that the job market will continue to slow by a very precise amount: enough to convince the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates, but not by so much that it brings a recession.

That’s a delicate balance to achieve, and every economic report from the US government that gets delayed only increases the uncertainty about whether it’s possible. Stocks have already run to records on expectations for coming cuts to rates, so a lack of them could send the market lower.

To be sure, the stock market and economy have typically powered through past shutdowns, particularly if they are short in duration. But this shutdown could be different in a couple ways, including the threat that the White House may use it to push for large-scale firings of federal workers.

On Wall Street, Peloton Interactive dropped 6.7 per cent and got a cold reception to its unveiling of an AI and computer vision system, along with other equipment designed for cross training.

Corteva sank 9.2 per cent after announcing a plan to split into two companies, each with its own stock. One will hold onto the company’s seed business, while the other will focus on crop protection.

Cal-Maine Foods fell 1.8 per cent after the egg company’s profit and revenue for the latest quarter fell short of analysts’ expectations.

On the winning side of the market was Nike, which rose 5.9 per cent after blowing past analysts’ expectations for profit in the latest quarter. The athletic giant reported strong growth for apparel sold in North America.

Tesla rose 3.4 per cent as Elon Musk’s electric-car maker said its sales decline is expected to slow, offering investors a measure of relief amid a lengthy downturn.

The company likely delivered around 439,600 vehicles worldwide in the three months that ended in September, according to analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Although that would amount to a roughly 5 per cent drop from a year ago — and mark Tesla’s third straight quarterly decrease — it would be an improvement relative to the first half of 2025, when vehicle sales tumbled 13 per cent.

Lithium America’s stock that trades in the United States jumped 23.6 per cent after the Canadian company said the US government agreed to let it draw from a previously announced $US2.26 billion ($3.4 billion) loan. As part of the agreement, the US Department of Energy will take an ownership stake in the Vancouver-based company.

Lithium Americas is developing a lithium project in Nevada with General Motors, and it follows Intel and other companies where the US government has recently taken an ownership stake.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury sank to 4.10 per cent from 4.16 per cent late Tuesday. It dropped as low as 4.09 per cent earlier in the day.

Yields fell as the weaker-than-expected payroll report from ADP firmed expectations for coming cuts to rates by the Fed. So did another report showing that US manufacturing was weaker last month than economists expected.

Several manufacturers told the Institute for Supply Management’s surveyors that they’re still feeling pain because of tariffs.

“Steel tariffs are killing us,” one manufacturer said.

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