Stocks hold steady despite weak labor data and tech selloff

Wall Street is dragging a whole zoo through fire and somehow still running laps. Despite Trump’s import tariff drama, the Bureau of Labor Statistics botching job numbers, and Nvidia nosediving 8% in seven days, the S&P 500 is still up 10% year-to-date, less than 1% from an all-time high. That’s sheer stubbornness dressed as a bull.

The mess started with Friday’s jobs report. Expectations were crushed. Forecasts saw 66,000 jobs coming in August. Reality brought just 22,000. That collapse dragged the three-month average payroll gain down to levels usually seen right before a recession.

It looked like bear bait, and the bears snapped. But instead of a collapse, the market just rotated. Former winners fell, 2025 underdogs got a shot, and the engine kept moving.

Nvidia falls, IPOs crumble, and Bitcoin bleeds

Nvidia, the biggest damn stock in the market, is down 8% and has officially dipped below its 50-day moving average, despite a strong earnings quarter. Bitcoin followed, dropping 10% from its August high, breaking through its own trendline.

This is happening in the worst historical month for equities. September has a track record of wrecking portfolios, and it’s living up to that rep.

Then came the IPO disasters. Some of the most hyped names in tech are barely limping. Figma, Circle, CoreWeave, Chime Financial, and Bullish all got smoked. Every single one is down 40–60% from their day-one peaks.

These weren’t small names either, they were the ones everyone chased on listing day. Now, they’re just wreckage. Despite the wreckage, the market isn’t dead. Friday showed it. Stocks jumped right after the jobs number hit, then sold off, then recovered again.

The S&P barely slipped. The game hasn’t changed. Bad news just feeds more bets on Fed rate cuts. That jobs miss lit up bond traders. Treasury yields crashed, rate-sensitive names rallied, and traders jumped back into Broadcom, which popped after a strong earnings report.

Broadcom’s run isn’t random. In the last two years, its stock has gained 283%, while Nvidia’s is up 244%. They now share the weight of AI momentum with Alphabet and Apple, while Nvidia and Microsoft get sidelined. Together, Broadcom and Nvidia control 10% of the S&P 500. So this shift matters.

Fed caught between weak jobs and sticky inflation

The garbage jobs report stirred doubts about economic growth. It forced analysts to change their tune. Bank of America, which had been predicting no cuts in 2025, suddenly forecasted two Fed cuts before year-end.

Not just because of the jobs data, but also because Fed Chair Jerome Powell keeps focusing on labor weakness over inflation, which still feels pressure from Trump’s tariffs.

That report isn’t even clean. The low numbers aren’t entirely about layoffs. Foreign-born workers are dropping off. The aging U.S. population is shrinking the labor pool. So, even small job gains now mean more than before. It may only take 50,000 new jobs a month to keep unemployment steady, way down from past assumptions.

GDP growth still looks fine. Why? Capital spending, a strong services sector, wealth-driven consumption, and massive federal deficits are keeping it afloat. That’s why markets aren’t panicking. Even in the job data, some saw a silver lining: prime-age employment ticked up. Bulls took that and ran.

And history says when the Fed cuts after a six-month pause, stocks usually rally hard. That’s the bet again. But the real economy could use a breather.

Ned Davis Research dropped a new index, Main Street Financial Conditions, which uses real home prices, loan access, and more. It shows that real-world financial strain is way worse than what Wall Street metrics suggest. If Powell loosens up soon enough, the recent drop in mortgage rates, plus cheaper oil, might ease some of that pressure.

But there’s still the question of valuation. Bulls haven’t gone wild yet. No euphoric blow-off top. Investor exposure is full, and the dip-buying habit hasn’t died. But strategists aren’t betting big either. Most year-end targets for the S&P 500 are barely above current levels. That says plenty.

The forward price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 keeps hitting resistance around 22.5, and the Nasdaq 100 P/E keeps getting rejected at 28. These numbers have stopped rallies cold more than once in this nearly three-year bull run.

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