Daily newsletter · Tue 6 Oct 2026
 | Sharespective Wall Street, before morning tea | Daily newsletter Tue 6 Oct 2026 |
 Bids and Ballots Plus: Brazil's shares in New York jumped 12.5% after a surprise first-round vote. |
Good morning, and welcome to Tuesday. The NASDAQ Composite closed at a record 27,477.31 on Monday, up 1.05%. The S&P 500 added 0.66% to 7,773.95, and the Dow managed 0.18%.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to about 5.31%, and during the day it touched its highest level since 2002. A survey of service businesses showed the prices they pay still rising. The day's biggest moves came from a takeover in Boston and an election in Brazil.
In company news, SpaceX rose 7.63% to US$171.09, its highest close since June, after Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas called the shares cheap ahead of the next Starship flight. Elsewhere, Nvidia gained 2.12% to US$238.90, its first record close since May, as chip stocks led the NASDAQ. Finally, C.H. Robinson fell 10.76% after agreeing to buy freight broker RXO for about US$5.8 billion.
Nobody told the bond market.
Market snapshot
S&P 500 7,773.95 ▲ 0.66% | | NASDAQ 27,477.31 ▲ 1.05% | | NZX 50 13,699.02 ▲ 0.14% |
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ASX 200 8,686.40 ▲ 0.05% | | PTC US$192.26 ▲ 33.49% | | Moderna US$203.21 ▲ 6.95% |
| DEALS |
Schneider Electric is paying US$22.6 billion for PTC, and its own shareholders took fright
Schneider Electric, the French maker of electrical and automation equipment, agreed on Monday to buy PTC for US$205 a share in cash. That values the Boston software company at US$22.6 billion, a 42.3% premium to Friday's close of US$144.03.
So what does PTC actually sell? It makes software that manufacturers use to design a product and keep track of it from the drawing board to the scrapheap. The trade calls it product lifecycle management. PTC has more than 30,000 customers and employs over 7,000 people.
PTC closed 33.49% higher at US$192.26. That leaves a gap of almost US$13 to the offer price. The deal is not due to complete until the third quarter of 2027, and it still needs PTC's shareholders and the regulators to approve it.
Schneider's own shares fell more than 9% in Paris. It will borrow up to €17 billion and sell about €6 billion of new shares to pay for PTC. Share buybacks are on hold for 2027 and 2028.
Chief executive Olivier Blum wants €250 million a year of cost savings by the third year. He is also promising €800 million of extra revenue from selling the two companies' products together.
What to watch that US$13 gap. If it narrows over the coming months, the market expects the deal to close on time. If it widens, investors are worrying about the regulators or the timetable. I'd take that more seriously than anything either company says. |
| EMERGING MARKETS |
A surprise first-round vote sent Brazil's shares in New York up 12.5%
The iShares MSCI Brazil ETF, a New York-listed fund holding 59 Brazilian companies, rose 12.54% to US$42.98 on Monday. Nu Holdings, the digital bank, gained 13.03% to US$15.18.
It started with Sunday's presidential vote. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, won 47.03% of valid votes in the first round. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took 45.16%, and the polls had Lula finishing first.
At home, the Ibovespa rose 7.70% to a record 206,911.89. That was its first close above 200,000. The real strengthened past five to the US dollar, from about 5.21 on Friday.
Bolsonaro is running on tighter spending, privatisations and lower taxes. Brazil's government debt and budget deficits are large, and investors want someone to bring them down.
Neither candidate is free of scandal. Bolsonaro is under investigation for money laundering over the collapse of Banco Master, which he denies.
The open question the runoff on 25 October. Polymarket made Bolsonaro an 82.5% favourite before a vote was counted, so Monday was the polls catching up with the betting. Between now and then, Brazilian polls will move these shares more than anything the companies report. |
| BIOTECH |
Moderna is up almost 600% this year on cancer data nobody has seen in full
Moderna rose 6.95% to US$203.21 on Monday. Through Friday's close the shares were up 594% for the year.
The bet is on a cancer vaccine. Intismeran is a personalised vaccine, developed with Merck and given alongside Merck's immunotherapy drug Keytruda. In August the two said a Phase 3 melanoma trial had met its main goal.
Patients on the combination went longer without the cancer returning than patients on Keytruda alone. Nobody outside the companies has seen by how much.
The full results arrive at the ESMO cancer congress in Madrid on Saturday 24 October, in the Presidential Symposium, the meeting's top slot. Sydney's Georgina Long presents them at 3.30am Sunday in Auckland and 1.30am in Sydney.
There is a second buyer before then. Moderna joins the Nasdaq-100 on Friday 9 October, replacing Warner Bros. Discovery, which is being absorbed by Paramount Skydance. Funds that track the index have to buy the shares whatever the data says.
Our view the share price already assumes a big benefit. On 24 October we'll see how wide the gap between the two groups of patients really is, and a narrow one would leave a lot of this year's gain looking early. |
Newsworthy numbers
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US$95.4 billion Foxconn's revenue for the September quarter, up 47% on a year earlier and well ahead of forecasts, on demand for AI hardware. | | 74 the prices index in the ISM's September survey of American service businesses, up from 72.6. The headline index slipped to 54.9. |
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0.3% the rise in the Melbourne Institute's monthly inflation gauge for September, its slowest in three months. | | NZ$45.3 million what Health New Zealand is paying Fisher & Paykel Healthcare for 13 hectares at Drury, for a future South Auckland hospital. |
Worth a read
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01 | ACT pledges removing tax on KiwiSaver earnings — David Seymour would stop taxing KiwiSaver returns and end government contributions for members whose employers already pay in. ACT puts the cost at $2.4 billion over four years. |
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02 | The AI boom is making the world's cheapest smartphones disappear — Kinling Lo on memory makers steering chips to data centres. Oppo's sub-US$100 phone shipments in Southeast Asia fell 96%. |
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03 | Youth hockey's biggest landlord says it's in it for the long haul — Bill Meincke on Black Bear Sports Group, which runs 49 ice rinks and lost money in 2024 and 2025. Utilities alone cost up to US$400,000 a rink each year. |
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04 | 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Georg Nagel and Peter Hegemann for work on optogenetics — Jackie Flynn Mogensen on how a light-sensing protein from a pond alga became an on-off switch for brain cells. Early trials are using it to restore some sight. |
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05 | You can see nothing of You Can See Everything — Chris Schulz on Nathan Fielder's 174-minute Elizabeth Holmes documentary, which opens on 16 October with no New Zealand cinema booked. |
Wrapping up
Futures put an October Fed rise at about 22% this morning, up from about 17% when Monday's edition went out. A rise by December is still priced at better than 75%.
Levi Strauss reports after Wednesday's close in New York, which is Thursday morning here. Its full-year forecast is the line to watch, since the holiday quarter does much of the work for a jeans maker.
USD/NZD rose to 1.79, its highest since November 2025. USD/AUD was steady at 1.44.
Welcome back to work, Sydney and Brisbane. See you tomorrow.