JD Durkin: Eric Criscuolo, Market Strategist here at the Big Board, kicks us off. Happy quad expiration.
Eric Criscuolo: Yes. Happy S&P rebalance. I’m surprised that, wow, look at the numbers ticking up. Now we’re nearing 4 billion here. It’s going to be a big, big close in the last 90 seconds.
JD Durkin: So what do you look for? What do you see on a day like this, knowing that this is going to be one of the biggest trading-volume days of the year?
Eric Criscuolo: Yeah. So, well, first of all, everyone knew that coming in, right? So this is definitely not a surprise to anyone in the markets. But, you know, a lot of times this is like a big reset for the market where positions get reset.
People start looking into the next quarter or the next month, and just, you know, where traders hedge their positions is going to change, kind of like a refresh.
Now, whether that means a refresh to new highs or whether that means a refresh to test, you know, some low levels, some support, we’ll see. We continue to be stuck in this range of 7,800 to 7,600 on the S&P. I know we’ve talked about this a lot, but that’s basically—we’ve just been treading water in this range for about two months now, testing support, bouncing off it.
JD Durkin: Let’s talk about volatility in yields. What are you seeing, some of those other big pressure points? The bond market is telling us a lot of information. We’ve got oil that’s remaining stubbornly high. These are all things the Fed had to contend with on Wednesday.
How do you see those things having played out the last few days and your expectations moving forward?
Eric Criscuolo: Yeah, it’s been crude oil, it’s been rates and it’s been AI. That’s been the theme for the market for the past several months. It’s going to continue to be the theme.
Rates moving higher, oil moving higher, that’s bad for stocks. We saw oil pull back a little bit today, but we saw rates move higher, right? We basically had a lot of volatility coming into the FOMC meeting. Rates jumped the next day. They came back in. Today, they went back up.
So, you know, I think traders are trying to figure out where they want to settle things again. We’re going to get a lot of repositioning right after today, heading into the end of September, into October.
But then we’re going to have to contend with election season. We’re going to have to contend with maybe some, you know, some ways that politicians are going to try to get votes. We’re going to see some announcements, probably. I have no idea what they’re going to be. There’s going to be a lot of horse trading. I think you’ve been in that world a little bit, so you know what we may see.
So it’s just going to be maybe less volatility from the financial news sector, more volatility from the political news sector. Politicians making promises before the election.
JD Durkin: So I’ve heard. What else happens? You flagged this for me earlier today. It’s a big one. Thursday of next week, the 24th, Trump-Xi White House state dinner. And you’ve got several high-profile AI CEOs, including Sam Altman, set to attend. Could be a market-moving event, I assume, because you never know what the president could say, especially as he’s standing up there alongside Xi Jinping.
Eric Criscuolo: Yes. And you have to remember, too, that we don’t know exactly who’s going to be at the—or at least I haven’t seen the final list—who’s going to be at the dinner.
But a lot of those CEOs were kind of, we have to slow down AI. No, we don’t. We have to speed it up. So there could be some, maybe a food fight here and there with, you know, with who’s going to be at the table. It’s going to be interesting.
JD Durkin: Yeah, absolutely. Before I let you go, what are you looking for next week? Obviously, this is the point of the week on a Friday I talk with you and you’re like, hey, we’ve got earnings, we’ve got data. We don’t have a lot of that coming up next week. What are you looking for, for a relatively quiet week on that front?
Eric Criscuolo: We’re going to see how commodities react. Obviously, again, like we talked about, oil, very important. The UNGA is going to be happening as well. You know, nobody really expects any breakthrough in the Iran situation from that, but we’re going to get a lot of political news, a lot of geopolitics coming from there.
So basically, what is oil going to do? What are rates going to do? And then just kind of see where equities resettle after this giant expiration day. And, you know, does it unlock some positions to move higher, or do we start to retest the lows again?
JD Durkin: At least we have the Giants playing on Monday Night Football.
Eric Criscuolo: We do have—and we are in first place.
JD Durkin: The Giants, so far undefeated on the season. I don’t want to jinx anything, but they are playing the Rams Monday night.
Eric Criscuolo, a good friend of mine, good friend of ours on the show. We’ll see you again soon. Always a pleasure. Have a great weekend.
