Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving money and markets.
Equities are grinding higher this session after a softer-than-expected jobs report took some air out of Federal Reserve rate hike fears. The S&P five hundred is up roughly two thirds of a percent, the Dow adding close to nine tenths, with traders reading the weak labor data as a signal the Fed has less runway to tighten further from here.
Shifting to tech, Palantir is bouncing back after a rough June, with at least one analyst arguing the company holds a genuinely differentiated position in the enterprise AI space. The argument is that Palantir's data infrastructure isn't easily replicated, and as government and corporate AI contracts accelerate, that moat becomes increasingly valuable to the market.
And on the regulatory front, the Federal Reserve has issued a fresh enforcement action against Small Business Bank while simultaneously announcing it is terminating existing actions against BNP Paribas and its affiliated entities, along with Community Bankshares. The BNP terminations suggest those institutions have satisfied outstanding compliance requirements to the Fed's satisfaction, a meaningful clearing of the books for one of Europe's largest lenders operating on American soil.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
