Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq futures tread water as big bank earnings roll in

Over a piece of braised short rib at the NYC Marriott Marquis last night, I got to sit amongst some amazing business news journalists at the annual Knight Bagehot dinner and listen to a 20 minute chat between journalist Alan Murray and billionaire financier Ken Griffin at Citadel.

A lot of us in the room thought it was weird to see Griffin do the keynote fireside chat. A billionaire who got pulled through the mud during the meme stock craze waxing poetic on how articles about KKR's Henry Kravis in the WSJ when he was a teen inspired him to become a hedge fund king? The eye rolls were plentiful in the room.

However, Griffin did give us journos some red meat at the end of the conversation.

“I know who I am voting for, and it won’t be with a smile on my face,” Griffin said.

I suppose that means Harris, but who knows!

Fri, October 11, 2024 at 1:40 PM GMT+1

Reuters has the details, and Kathy Jones at the Schwab Center for Financial Research has some quick analysis:

Fri, October 11, 2024 at 1:30 PM GMT+1

Tesla (TSLA) shares sank 6% pre-market Friday as investors reacted to the EV maker's robotaxi unveiling.

Elon Musk has lofty ideas about the future of Tesla's self-driving vehicles, and the recent event tested Wall Street's appetite for that vision. Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian reports that the event, "We, Robot," left investors wanting more.

Musk unveiled a $30,000 autonomous "Cybercab" arriving sometime in 2026. Tesla did not reveal its upcoming lower-cost “next-gen” model, which many analysts had expected, Subramanian reports. The sub-$30K next-gen EV will arrive later this year, Tesla has previously confirmed.

Tesla stock has been on a wild ride recently, rising on prior hopes for the robotaxi unveiling before falling after the company's third-quarter deliveries disappointed. Tesla shares are down 8% from last year.

Read the full story on Tesla's robotaxi debut here.

Fri, October 11, 2024 at 1:25 PM GMT+1

DETROIT (Reuters) — Chrysler parent Stellantis (STLA, STLAM.MI) confirmed on Thursday that CEO Carlos Tavares would retire at the end of his contract in early 2026 and announced major senior management changes as it struggles to turn around its lagging North American operations.

Fri, October 11, 2024 at 1:23 PM GMT+1

Reasonable quarter out of JP Morgan (JPM) this morning. Read more from our banking reporter David Hollerith.

I hopped on JPM's earnings media call and asked CFO Jeremy Barnum his views on housing post Fed rate cut. All in all, it didn't sound like a housing boom is taking shape with rates lower — but activity has picked up.

Here's what Barnum told me emphasis ours):

“What we did see, as you kind of would expect, is a pickup in mortgage applications and a tiny bit of increase in refinancings there, which, again, you would also expect. But it's worth noting, when it comes to mortgages, that all of the sequential and year on year changes are coming off a very low base, and it remains the case that the vast majority of the stock of outstanding mortgages right now in this country are below 6% with a lot of them still even below 5%. So it would take a really big rally in the long end of the yield curve to see a significant pickup in refinancing. The house view on home prices, you know, I think generally you've got a tension there between possibly a slightly weakening economy that should create a little bit more supply, there's a little bit more construction, but there's generally a housing shortage in this country. So the housing market seems to me is still a little bit stuck, I would say.”