Daily newsletter · Fri 16 Oct 2026
 | Sharespective Wall Street, before morning tea | Daily newsletter Fri 16 Oct 2026 |
 Wholesale Heat Plus: Rocket Lab pushed its Neutron rocket back to 2027, and its shares fell 6.64%. |
Good morning, and welcome to Friday. Wholesale prices in America rose 1.3% in September, the biggest monthly jump since March 2022. The Dow responded by climbing 556.21 points, or 1.08%, to 52,177.69.
The S&P 500 added 0.33% to 7,744.06. The NASDAQ Composite spent the morning in the red and scraped out a 0.08% gain. Healthcare shares hit a record as money kept moving out of technology.
In company news, FMC fell 30.53% after the crop chemicals maker cut its September-quarter revenue forecast to between US$65 million and US$125 million, blaming unsold stock held by its distributors. Elsewhere, Penske Automotive rose 8.84% to US$212 after agreeing to be taken private by Penske Corporation and Mitsui. Finally, Nike gained 5.21% as investors moved into retailers.
Hot data, cool heads.
Market snapshot
S&P 500 7,744.06 ▲ 0.33% | | NASDAQ 26,713.03 ▲ 0.08% | | NZX 50 13,832.80 ▲ 0.53% |
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ASX 200 8,719.73 ▼ 0.09% | | Rocket Lab US$55.25 ▼ 6.64% | | TSMC US$422.25 ▼ 1.80% |
| ECONOMY |
US wholesale prices jumped 1.3% in September, and bond yields fell anyway
America's producer price index, which tracks what businesses charge each other, rose 1.3% in September. Economists expected 0.5%. Over the year, wholesale prices are up 6.3%.
So why did the bond market shrug? Petrol did most of the damage. Wholesale petrol prices rose 20.3% in the month, and energy accounted for about 80% of the rise in goods prices.
Traders read that as an oil shock rather than a broad one. On Wednesday, CME FedWatch put the chance of a Fed rate rise on 28 October above 40%. By Thursday afternoon in New York it was below 30%.
The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 5.09%, from 5.19% on Wednesday. John Williams, president of the New York Fed, said he had no reason for now to think the Fed needs to do more.
Shoppers kept spending. Retail sales rose 0.8% in September against 0.3% expected, though spending at petrol stations jumped 6.4%. Strip out fuel, cars, building materials and restaurant meals, and sales rose just 0.1%.
The short version the inflation is arriving through the petrol pump, and so is the slowdown. I'd watch that 0.1% more closely than the headline from here, because Americans paying more for fuel have less left for everything else. |
| SPACE |
Rocket Lab pushed its Neutron rocket back to 2027, and its shares fell 6.64%
Rocket Lab, founded in Auckland, fell 6.64% to US$55.25 on Thursday. After Wednesday's close, it said Neutron, the much bigger rocket it is building to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9, will not fly until 2027.
The fault is in a dome. Rocket Lab found voids, small air pockets, in the carbon-composite dome that caps the first-stage propellant tank. Chief executive Peter Beck said the flaws did not necessarily mean the dome would fail in flight.
He would not take the chance anyway. "Possible success isn't our standard," Beck said. The company now expects to assemble the first stage in the March 2027 quarter and set a launch date after that.
The timetable has slipped before. When Neutron was unveiled in 2021, the target was a first launch in 2024. That became 2025, then the end of this year.
Thursday's trade was rough. The shares fell as much as 16% to US$49.69 before recovering, after losing 7.85% in Wednesday's session.
The long view Beck has chosen a later date over a riskier first flight, and for a rocket company that is a defensible trade. The next marker is the first stage, due to be assembled in early 2027, and every date Neutron has been given so far has slipped. |
| CHIPS |
TSMC made a record profit and raised its sights, and its shares still fell 1.8%
TSMC's American-listed shares fell 1.80% to US$422.25 on Thursday. Hours earlier the chipmaker, which builds processors for Nvidia and Apple, reported a record September-quarter profit of NT$763.06 billion, up 68.7% on a year earlier.
The forecast was even better. TSMC expects between US$52.3 billion and US$54.3 billion of revenue in the December quarter. At the midpoint that is about 14% more than in September, and chief executive C.C. Wei said demand for AI accelerators remains strong.
The spending keeps growing too. TSMC plans to put between US$60 billion and US$64 billion into new capacity this year. Finance chief Wendell Huang said spending from 2026 to 2028 will be significantly higher than in the previous three years.
The gross margin slipped 1.3 points to 66.4% as the newest 2-nanometre chips ramped up. Huang expects the factories abroad, including Arizona, to shave 3 to 4 points off it within a few years.
The shares opened sharply lower and fell as much as 5.3% before recovering. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell for an eighth straight session.
Food for thought Monday's edition said TSMC's outlook would show whether AI money keeps coming. For the next three months, it plainly does. Our read is that investors now doubt the borrowers further down the chain, and a supplier's order book cannot settle that. |
Newsworthy numbers
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25.5 the New York Fed's gauge of factory conditions in New York State for October, its strongest in five years and up from 7.6. New York's factories seem to have missed the inflation report. | | US$190.4 billion new money Charles Schwab's clients brought in during the September quarter, a record. They also opened 1.2 million brokerage accounts. |
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73,600 part-time jobs Australia lost in September, according to the ABS. Full-time jobs rose by 34,300. | | 199,000 Americans who made new claims for unemployment benefits last week, 1,000 more than the week before. Continuing claims fell to 1.71 million. |
Worth a read
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01 | This chart tells you everything you need to know about the downturn in property prices — Hal Pawson of UNSW on Australian home values, down 5.2% from their March peak. Even a 15% fall would only take prices back to early 2024 levels. |
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02 | How Nashville hot chicken took over the world — Danny Jensen on a Tennessee speciality now served at about 2,400 restaurants worldwide. Dave's Hot Chicken has nearly 500 franchise locations, up 58% on 2025. |
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03 | QLD supermarket says cash up 30% after offering discount linked to card surcharge ban — David Adams on Forrest Beach Supermarket, which now gives 2% off for cash. That is more than the 1.5% it pays on an average card sale. |
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04 | Mysterious Brain Activity Under Anesthesia Challenges What We Know About Consciousness — Sameer Sheth's Baylor College of Medicine team recorded single neurons in anaesthetised patients. Their brains still sorted nouns from verbs and predicted the next word of a story. |
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05 | How Tree Rings Challenged the Myth of American Wilderness — M.R. O'Connor's New Yorker piece on the fire scars inside old trees. They show Indigenous people were burning and shaping North America's landscape long before Europeans called it wild. |
Wrapping up
Australia's jobs figures have cooled talk of a Reserve Bank rise on 3 November, Melbourne Cup Day. Markets put the chance at about 30% before Thursday's release and under 20% after it. The decision lands at 4.30pm in Auckland and 2.30pm in Sydney.
General Motors reports before Tuesday's open in New York, which is 11.30pm Tuesday here. With American petrol up sharply, demand for its trucks and SUVs is the line to watch. IBM follows after Wednesday's close, with software growth the number to look for.
The Aussie fell about 0.8% after Australia lost 39,300 jobs in September, taking USD/AUD up to 1.45. USD/NZD was little changed at 1.78.
The 150th Caulfield Cup runs tomorrow. Good luck in the office sweep.