Bitcoin Breaks $50k and US Nonfarm Payrolls Are Up 194k

Bitcoin and Etherium staged strong rallies this week. BTC was up over 15% from Sunday’s close through Wednesday’s high. ETH has also rallied as well. ETH was up over 20% since the end of September into as of the high on Wednesday.   

Tesla Ordered to Pay $137 Million to Former Worker

Tesla was ordered to pay $137 million in damages to a former contract elevator operator because the company turned a blind eye to racial taunts and offensive graffiti.

David Oppenheimer, a clinical professor of law at Berkley Law stated, “I believe that’s the largest verdict in an individual race discrimination in employment case.”

See Tesla’s blog post on the topic here.

Natural Gas Prices Soar

UK and Dutch Natural Gas futures were up over 60% in trading on Monday and Tuesday. Natural Gas prices have increased over the past few weeks due to supply issues and fears of a cold winter in the northern hemisphere.

On Tuesday, Natural Gas futures jumped to the highest settlement price in 12 years at $6.31 per MMBtu. On Wednesday, the same contract closed down .63 to $5.68.

Why the almost 10% move down in Natural Gas prices? On Wednesday, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, promised to send more natural gas to Europe. As soon as the announcement was made, Natural Gas began selling off. There are global concerns on the impact of a cold winter in the northern hemisphere.

For instance, China is desperately trying to get energy supplies to care for its citizens and to keep business and factories operating. At the end of September there were power use restrictions in at least 20 regions and provinces in China.  

Deadlock in DC

On Tuesday, the S&P 500 staged its largest reversal since February on news that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced plans for a short-term debt ceiling increase that would last until December. McConnell pledged to not filibuster an extension into December and Democrats would put a dollar amount on the increase to the national debt. This will give legislators time to come up with a longer term solution. The S&P 500 was down as much as 1.3% on Wednesday and ended up closing up .41%.  

US NonFarm Payrolls Up 194k in September

The Labor Department released the all important monthly non-farms payroll number for September Friday morning. The increase in jobs came in at 194,000 compared to the 500,000 jobs that were expected, and the unemployment rate came in at 4.8% in September vs 5.2% in August. There was a decline in government jobs by 123,000 and private payrolls increased by 317,000. The non farms payroll was a disappointment and many are looking to see if the disappointing number will affect the Fed’s timeline on tapering.

Affirm (AFRM) Shares Skyrocket

Shares of AFRM were up on Wednesday on news that the buy now pay later company forged a new partnership with Target (TGT). Buy now pay later services are quickly replacing traditional layaway plans at retailers. Affirm had an existing partnership with Walmart and announced a partnership with Amazon (AMZN) in August. Shares of AFRM closed at 119.13 at the end of September and traded up to a high of 138.8 on Wednesday when the partnership was announced.  

Facebook Suffers Massive Outage

Shares of Facebook (FB) went down early this week on news of an outage and whistleblower. On Monday, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram were down for several hours. According to the New York Times, over 2.76 billion people use at least one Facebook product each day. The outage interrupted the daily routine that many people around the world use to communicate, consume the news and conduct business. Shares were down 4.9% in trading on Monday.

About the Writer

My name is Allen Spence and I have been working in the retail brokerage industry for over 16 years. I joined Alpaca in March of 2021 as a Brokerage Operations Consultant. Before joining Alpaca I have worked in a retail branch environment, call center for active traders, and spent over seven and a half years as the team lead on an equity trading desk for a large regional broker dealer. I’m excited to be at Alpaca helping bring the markets to investors worldwide. I live in Florida and enjoy traveling and spending time with my family.

About Alpaca

Alpaca is a globally distributed financial technology company that is democratizing global access to financial markets starting with our API-first stock brokerage. Alpaca offers commission-free stock trading via API, a suite of developer APIs for brokerages, advisors, and startups, as well as a market data API.

Securities brokerage services are provided by Alpaca Securities LLC (“Alpaca”), member FINRA/SIPC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of AlpacaDB, Inc. Technology and services are offered by AlpacaDB, Inc.

This article is solely for informational purposes only. Alpaca does not recommend any specific investments or investment strategies. Investments in securities involve the risk of losses and past performance does not guarantee future results. Before investing you should carefully consider your investment objectives, time horizon, and overall risk tolerance as well as the information stated in the product offering prospectuses.