Wall Street halted Thursday's violent slide (a completely unsuccessful end to October, with the S&P500 erasing 100% of its monthly gains in a single session) and started November on a moderately positive note.

The gains could have evaporated as the hours went by, given the heavy fall in the interest-rate markets, with a symmetrical surge in yields from 1.45pm onwards, towards the worst levels seen since July 4.

In the end, the Dow Jones climbed +0.7% to 42,052, the S&P500 +0.4% to nearly 5,729 and the Nasdaq Composite (-2.8% the previous day) rebounded +0.8% to 18,240... held back slightly by Apple (-1.3%) in the wake of brilliant but unsurprising results.

The Nasdaq-100 (+0.7%) was driven upwards by Intel (+6.8%) and Amazon (+6.2%), not forgetting Atlassian with +19% (only $36 bn in 'capi' and $31 bn the previous day), but the index was handicapped by PayPal's -2.6% and AMD's -1.5%... and of course rates which only fell to rise again in the following hours.

The deterioration in yields has no apparent logical link with the NFP report: the US '10-yr' is down +10.3 bps to 4.39% (+15.5 bps over the past week), the '30-yr' is up +10.5 bps to 4.58%... and the '2 yr' up +12 bps on the week to 4.213% (August 1st level).

Such tension is inconsistent with any of the figures published earlier this week, and even less so with the 'NFP'. According to the Department of Labor (DoL), the US economy generated only 12,000 non-farm jobs in October, instead of 113,000 (median consensus).

The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%, in line with expectations, while the labor force participation rate stood at 62.6%, and average hourly earnings rose by 4% year-on-year.

In addition, non-farm payrolls for the previous two months were revised, from 159,000 to 78,000 for August and from 254,000 to 223,000 for September, for a total revision balance of -112,000 for these two months.

"The labor market undoubtedly suffered from a number of ups and downs in October", warned Oddo BHF at the start of the week. But no one was expecting a 95% drop in job creation, which means that the figure is very 'skewed' and will certainly be revised upwards significantly next month... or so predicts Joe Biden, who was quick to make a reassuring statement on the subject.

Another eagerly-awaited figure is the US manufacturing PMI (calculated by S&P Global): it rose slightly in October, to 48.5 from 47.3 the previous month, but remains below the 50 threshold which marks the boundary between expansion and contraction in the sector's activity.

S&P Global points out that production and new orders fell less sharply last month, while inflationary pressures weakened, and the recent hurricanes caused delays in supply chains.

Published separately, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) index paints a less rosy picture of the US manufacturing sector, contracting to 46.5 for the past month, compared with 47.2 in September.

The behavior of T-Bonds does indeed seem to reflect an outcome quite different from what the mainstream media, mostly pro-Democrat, have been anticipating for weeks, i.e. a victory for the Democratic candidate, favored by a female vote that is overwhelmingly in her favor.

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