Market Open: Stocks Mixed, Jobs Beat Expectations, Inflation Slows • 9/30/26

CNBC Business News update market open. I'm Jessica Ettinger. Wall Street popped out of the gate higher but turned mixed after better than expected inflation and jobs data on this final day of September trading and of the third quarter. Only the NASDAQ's on pace for a winning month. For the year, the major averages are all higher. The Dow's up 6% year-to-date, the S&P 500 index up 12%. The NASDAQ is up 15% so far this year. For this morning, the Dow's down 17 points led lower by shares of United Health. The S&P 500 index is up 21 points, the NASDAQ up 139 points. Micron shares are off about a half percent. It reports quarterly results after the closing bell. Bond yields were ticking lower as the economic data were released today. Lighter than expected inflation numbers in the personal consumption expenditures report. Overall PCE rate of price increases for August 3.4%. Prices rose but slower than July when the rate was 3.7%. Of course, the Fed's target for US inflation is 2%. The pre-pandemic rate of inflation for 2019 was just 1.8%. More jobs than expected were created last month in the new ADP payroll report at 90,000. >> Goods sector doing well, 31,000. Service sector also doing okay, 59,000. And then good distribution across business sizes. And then by sector, you know, the same characters I keep coming up. You have education health services surging ahead with 55,000. That's more than half of the gains. Leisure and hospitality picking up the rest of it but declines in financial activities. >> That's CNBC's Steve Liesman. The yield on the 10-year note hit its highest yesterday since 2007 sending mortgage rates to their highest in almost 3 years. The average rate on a 30-year fixed home loan hit 7.58% according to Mortgage News Daily. AI company executives have signed a non-binding pledge to proceed safely with developing their products at the White House yesterday. No sign of government regulation. Here's a take on the safety problem from the Paul Volcker senior fellow on international economics at the Council of Foreign Relations and Infinity Machine author Sebastian Mallaby on CNBC. >> It can be solved, but you need time to solve it. And the problem is that the industry is accelerating and building the the systems faster than they can think about the safety protocols. And that's precisely why OpenAI had to like slow everything down, tell all its best researchers to get on Zoom calls to discuss safety protocols instead. The the models accelerated past the safety measures. And that's what happens in a race dynamic with multiple labs and multiple countries fighting each other to stay ahead. >> A little less pain at the pump today. The average price for a gallon of regular is down 4 cents from a week ago, according to AAA, sitting at $4.43 a gallon. Diesel, about 10 cents from its record high at $6.41 a gallon today. Trump accounts will start auto-enrolling millions of kids as early as tomorrow. Here's CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin. >> That could increase the number of children enrolled this year by more than 60 million. So far, 7 to 8 million American children have been signed up. The deferred investing accounts can include a one-time $1,000 deposit from the Treasury Department for kids born between 2025 and 2028. Now, other funds may be available for qualifying families. So far, with some research that showed it's been especially slow in terms of joining among low-income families. This has been something that has been a major concern about the program from the beginning. >> I'm Jessica Ettinger, CNBC.