US stocks rose on Wednesday after the US government entered its first shutdown in seven years, putting hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in output at risk. Meanwhile, key ADP jobs data showed private payrolls declined in September, widely missing estimates but helping to virtually cement bets on near-term rate cuts.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) advanced 0.4% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) increased 0.5% after both began the session in the red. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) was up 0.2%.

The major gauges turned positive after a sluggish morning and after stocks closed out their strongest third quarter since 2020 on Tuesday.

Wall Street largely shrugged off the expected economic impact of the government shutdown, at least for now. The longer it lasts, the greater the likely hit to growth, as the fallout reaches the businesses that rely on the federal government's daily output.

The shutdown comes at a potentially perilous time for the economy, as the ADP's monthly employment report — in especially high focus Wednesday — showed private payrolls unexpectedly declined last month. The private sector lost 32,000 jobs, the report said, missing expectations for a gain of over 50,000.

That report likely spurred further bets on coming interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, however. Around 99% of bets are on a cut later this month, and expectations for a December cut — now at about 87% — also saw a big jump.

In Washington, agencies will now implement contingency plans and send hundreds of thousands of workers home, amid warnings from President Trump that "a lot" of firings are to come.

Markets are watching the developments closely. Among the agencies whose work is set to be frozen is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which gathers and reports economic data key to Federal Reserve policy decisions.

The BLS was set to release the September jobs report on Friday. But the nonfarm payrolls update is likely to be delayed, as BLS plans to "completely cease operations" with just one full-time employee kept in post.

The shutdown isn't the only Trump policy push in focus on Wednesday, which marks the promised implementation of 100% tariffs on a range of pharmaceutical products and 25% duties on heavy-duty trucks.

Intel (INTC) stock popped 6% on Wednesday after a Semafor report said the chip maker is in early stage talks to bring AMD (AMD) on as a customer for its foundry business.

It is not clear how much of AMD’s chip business would be manufactured by Intel, should a deal materialize.

AMD designs its processors, but currently relies primarily on Taiwan-based TSMC for production

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) climbed over 3% on Wednesday and briefly topped $118,000 in afternoon trading as investors saw the crypto as benefiting from seasonal tailwinds and the uncertainty surrounding the government shutdown.

Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferré reports:

October has historically been bitcoin's strongest month, rising in 10 of the past 12 years, according to Compass Point Research, leading many in crypto markets to refer to the month as \\"Uptober.\\" Seasonality also favors the fourth quarter, with the token gaining in four of the past five Q4 periods.

That performance often follows September weakness, but this year bitcoin closed out the month 4% higher, therefore \\"raising the bar for October gains,\\" Compass Point analyst Ed Engel wrote on Tuesday.

Volatility in recent weeks briefly pushed bitcoin toward $108,000 before markets bounced back. Engel argued that \\"false downside breakouts often provide a bullish setup, particularly ahead of a seasonally strong October.\\"

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi writes:

Union Pacific (UNP) CEO Jim Vena is all in to pitch the biggest deal of his career to investors — and to President Trump.

\\"It's such a compelling story. It's good for America. It really is. We're one of the few industrial countries that doesn't have a railway transportation system that can be seamless from one end to the other,\\" Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena told me at Ford's inaugural Accelerate Pro summit in Detroit on Tuesday.

Union Pacific is the largest auto carrier west of the Mississippi. It's also eyeing a major transformation for its next 100 years of hauling freight.

The company said in July it would acquire Norfolk Southern (NSC) for a stunning $85 billion. If the deal goes through, it would create America's first transcontinental railroad. The combined companies — which would be led by Vena at least through 2028 — would connect over 50,000 route miles across 43 states from the East Coast to the West Coast.

The company plans to formally file papers for the deal with the Surface Transportation Board (STB) by late October. It will need the STB's approval, which would come if the companies can convince it that the deal enhances competition and doesn't crush it.

Read more here.

Conagra Brands (CAG) stock moved 3% higher on Wednesday after the snack and packaged foods producer slightly beat Wall Street's low expectations, boosted by refrigerated and frozen segments.

Still, the company posted lower revenue and profit year over year as Americans continue to pull back from buying snacks. Revenue declined by 5.8% to $2.63 billion, while adjusted earnings per share declined by 26.4% to $0.39. Both were slightly higher than the Street forecast, per Bloomberg data.

The company reiterated its fiscal 2026 guidance and expects organic net sales to be down 1% to up 1% from fiscal 2025. Adjusted earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $1.70 to $1.85.

\\"The consumer is certainly not out of the woods yet,\\" CEO Sean Connolly told investors on the earnings call. \\"We're still seeing value-seeking behavior. We still have to deal with inflation and tariffs.\\"

CFO David Marberger said the company is seeing inflation pressure this quarter for proteins like \\"beef, pork, turkey, and then, to some extent, eggs.\\" He added that the company still expects a 3% impact on inflation from tariffs this year.

Volume growth overall fell 1.2%, less than the 1.45% drop Wall Street expected. Refrigerated and frozen volume returned to growth, up 0.5%, for the first time since the fall of last year, driven higher by refrigerated whipped toppings, pudding, canned tomatoes, hot dogs, frozen meals, and desserts.

Its protein snacks — with items like the Slim Jim meat snacks — are also seeing momentum.

\\"Slim Jim right now is tracking really well,\\" Connolly said. \\"That's a very positive sign.\\"

Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger reports:

The Supreme Court is letting Lisa Cook remain as a Federal Reserve governor before hearing arguments in January about whether President Trump has the authority to remove her from her post.

The decision is a setback for Trump, who has been pushing for Cook's immediate firing and trying to put his own stamp on the nation's central bank.

His Justice Department on Sept. 18 filed an emergency request to lift a federal judge's order that blocked Trump from removing Cook for mortgage fraud allegations.

Cook has urged the Supreme Court last Thursday to reject Trump’s effort to fire her, arguing it would harm central bank independence and disrupt financial markets. Cook was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

Read the full story here.

Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian reports:

Ford’s (F) US sales surged in the third quarter, led by its trucks and electrified vehicles. Ford said it was the seventh consecutive month of sales gains for the automaker.

Ford reported total sales of 545,522, up 8.2% compared to a year ago. Ford sales of pickups like the F-Series, Ranger, and Maverick, combined with its vans, jumped 7.4% to 313,654 units sold, with F-Series trucks up nearly 13% year to date.

Not surprisingly, Ford had its best EV sales ever for the quarter, as buyers rushed to purchase electric Mustang Mach-E SUVs and F-150 Lightning pickups.

Ford EV sales hit a record 30,612 in the quarter, up 30.2%, led by the Mach-E hitting 20,177 units sold, up a robust 50.7%. Ford said the F-150 Lightning hit a Q3 record 10,005 pickups sold, up nearly 40% and making the best selling EV pickup in the US, topping Rivian’s (RIVN) R1S and Tesla’s (TSLA) Cybertruck.

Ford shares rose more than 1% in midday trading.

Read more here.

Investors on Wednesday were pricing in 100% chances of the Federal Reserve easing interest rates at its next policy meeting in October, according to CME Group.

During the previous trading session, investors were betting on roughly 96% odds of a rate cut from the central bank.

The greater confidence in the Fed's next move followed the release of weaker-than-anticipated private employment data. The latest data from ADP on Wednesday showed US private employers shed 32,000 jobs in September, while economists had expected those employers to add 51,000 jobs.

Treasury yields fell on Wednesday as investors bought the safety of US bonds amid the first government shutdown in nearly seven years.

The 10-year yield (^TNX) fell nearly four basis points to 4.11%, while the 30-year yield (^TYX) dipped three basis points to 4.7%, before both rebounded slightly.

The government shutdown that began Wednesday has clouded the Federal Reserve's path to interest rate cuts with uncertainty, delaying the release of a key report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The bureau's monthly report that had been slated for release Friday shows the unemployment rate and number of new jobs created during the previous month, and it is closely watched by investors and policymakers to gauge the health of the US economy.

Meta (META) shares fell nearly 3% Wednesday morning, extending a recent downturn in the stock. Shares dropped 1.2% during the previous trading session and have fallen more than 9% from record high of $790 in August.

On Tuesday, Nvidia-backed (NVDA) data center operator CoreWeave (CRWV) reported signing a $14 billion deal with Meta for the Instagram parent company to access its supply of Nvidia's new Blackwell AI server systems. The move raised questions among some analysts about why Meta would rent access to Nvidia's chips rather than buying them for its own data centers.

Meta on Tuesday also announced that it plans to acquire Rivos, a chip startup founded by former Google (GOOG) and Intel (INTC) executives and chaired by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. The move could boost Meta's own in-house chip efforts as Nvidia's Big Tech customers — most notable Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon (AMZN) — have worked to expand their custom chip offerings.

In other news, Meta said Wednesday it will recommend ads to users based on their AI chats starting in December.

Other Mag 7 shares traded mixed Wednesday. Google and Microsoft fell around 1%, while Nvidia and Apple (AAPL) rose fractionally. Tesla (TSLA) gained 3%.

Shares of the AES Corporation (AES) soared 15% at the market open on Wednesday after the Financial Times reported that BlackRock's (BLK) Global Infrastructure Partners is nearing a $38 billion deal to buy the utility.

GIP, which owns stakes in London’s Gatwick airport and pipeline networks in the US and Middle East, is set to complete the takeover in the coming days in one of the largest infrastructure acquisitions of all time, according to the FT.

AES operates several power plants across the US and in other nations and is seen as benefiting from the surge in energy demand from the data centers owned by Big Tech giants. Though the stock has had a choppy 2025, as renewable energy has fallen out of favor in US policy. Year to date, shares are up just 2%.

BlackRock shares were down around 1% at the open on Wednesday.

Reddit (RDDT) stock fell as much as 8% in early trading Wednesday, extending a 5% decline from the previous trading session amid new data that showed the use of its content in leading AI chatbot ChatGPT had plummeted in mid-September.

Reddit content was cited in just 2% of ChatGPT responses on Tuesday, much lower than the 9.7% of ChatGPT responses that cited Reddit the same day last month, according to data from AI search engine tracker Promptwatch. At its peak in September, Reddit was cited in more than 14% of ChatGPT answers.

Read the full story here.

US stocks pulled back on Wednesday at the open.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led losses, dropping around 0.4%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) slid 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell around 0.1%.

The declines come after the US government began its first shutdown in almost seven years and an ADP report showed private payrolls unexpectedly declined in September.

Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi and Francisco Velasquez report:

Ford (F) CEO Jim Farley says US buyers aren't interested in $75,000 electric vehicles — and the automaker doesn't want to keep living in Tesla's (TSLA) shadow.

\\"We've learned ... people are not willing to pay [a] $30,000 premium for that big battery on a [$50,000], $60,000 utility,\\" Farley told Yahoo Finance at Ford's Accelerate Pro conference in Detroit, Mich. \\"But they're willing to buy a $30,000 EV if they save $2,000 a year compared to gas costs.\\"

Farley's comments underscore the challenges Ford faces as it pushes further into EVs. While global EV demand grows, price sensitivity is shaping which models will succeed.

The CEO said the automaker has been \\"No. 2 to Tesla for three years\\" and is taking lessons from that experience to better align with consumer demand.

Read more here or watch the full interview with Ford CEO Jim Farley.

Job creation in the labor market continued to lose momentum in September across most sectors, ADP reported on Wednesday.

New data showed that private employers shed 32,000 jobs in September — missing Wall Street estimates for 51,000 jobs created, according to analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

The biggest decline was in the hospitality field, which lost 19,000 jobs, though several sectors reported job losses. The bright spot continues to be education and health services, which gained 33,000 jobs in September.

A government shutdown has heightened the significance of the private payrolls report, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics will not publish the all-important monthly jobs report during the stoppage. As my colleague Hamza Shaban notes in today's Morning Brief (see the blog below), the hole left by that missing data is expected to complicate the Federal Reserve's policymaking.

Read more here.

Even before the latest threat of a government shutdown, policymakers and economists flagged a shift toward using more private data to get a picture of the US economy, writes Yahoo Finance's Hamza Shaban.

He reports in the takeaway from today's Morning Brief:

Of all the ways a government shutdown can disrupt the economy, market watchers should be aware of one in particular: an absence of critical new data.

Right alongside furloughs and a pause in operations is the interruption of crucial work product, including the data that central bankers, corporate executives, analysts, and investors rely upon to interpret the economy and make decisions about money. ...

But even before the latest threat of a government shutdown, policymakers and economists have signaled a shift toward using a wider variety of data sources, such as private-sector data from ADP’s private payrolls, out Wednesday morning.

Those data holes — or at least the labor market ones — are getting filled.

In a speech last month, Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller, who is in the running to become the next chair of the central bank, said he uses ADP figures to assess the labor market, which he sees as continuing to deteriorate.

And after US private payroll numbers published by ADP earlier in the summer also appeared to catch the weakening in the labor market before the government revised its own data, Waller’s approach seems particularly canny.

Read more here.

Cal-Maine Foods (CALM) stock dived 7% in premarket trading on Wednesday after its strong fiscal first quarter results were not strong enough to clear Wall Street analyst estimates.

The US's largest egg producer recorded $4.12 per share in profit, compared to the average estimate on the Street of $5.10 per share, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Revenue of $922 million — a 17.4% increase year over year — was short of the $952 million expected.

The company noted that powerful consumer trends, like the growing demand for protein and focus on health and wellness, have supported US egg consumption. While bird flocks remain below their historical levels due to bird flu, Cal-Maine said supply is recovering.

Cal-Maine has worked to expand its specialty egg and prepared food offerings in recent quarters. Specialty egg sales, which made up nearly a third of Cal-Maine's overall sales, rose 10.4% to $283.5 million. Prepared foods, such as pre-cooked egg patties and omelets, also saw significant growth. The segment grew 839% year over year to $83.9 million versus $8.9 million in fiscal 2025.

The government shutdown is likely to push back the release of the jobs report and inflation data for September — closely watched not just by the Federal Reserve, but also Social Security recipients, note Yahoo Finance's Emma Ockerman and Kerry Hannon.

They report:

The longer the shutdown stretches on, the bigger a deal it will be for those awaiting the data. September’s initial jobs data has already been collected and essentially just needs someone in the government to hit publish, Oxford Economics chief US economist Ryan Sweet told Yahoo Finance.

While there’s “never a good time for the government to shut down,” the current moment is especially inopportune, he said. The Federal Reserve, which cut rates in September, is closely monitoring the health of the labor market and meets again in late October.

“The Fed is always setting monetary policy in a data fog, but then it just thickens when you’re not getting the employment numbers,” Sweet said.

Meanwhile, a shutdown could also delay the release of September’s inflation data, set to be announced Oct. 15, as well as the subsequent 2026 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security benefits.

“While Social Security payments themselves are not affected by a shutdown, a delayed or inaccurate COLA announcement could create uncertainty for tens of millions of retirees and beneficiaries who depend on the adjustment to keep pace with rising living costs,” said Shannon Benton, executive director of The Senior Citizens League.

Read more here.

The dollar (DX-Y.NYB) is heading for its longest losing streak in a month in an echo of past shutdowns.

Bloomberg reports:

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index slipped for a fourth day, down 0.2% to a one-week low. The greenback weakened against all of its Group-of-10 peers, with the yen leading gains to climb to a two-week high.

History shows shutdowns typically weigh on the greenback, a pattern echoed in options markets. Risk reversals — which measure the gap in demand between bullish and bearish trades — are signaling further downside risks over the next month.

Any fall in equities (^GSPC) and a rally in Treasuries (^TNX) may be modest but “the one market where we would not look to fade the market move is FX,” said Mohit Kumar, chief European strategist at Jefferies, who expects dollar weakness to persist.

The duration of the shutdown matters, as the longer it lasts the greater the pressure on the dollar. The greenback has already slumped this year to the lowest since 2022 as unpredictable policy making under President Donald Trump, escalating deficits and pressure on the Federal Reserve’s independence worry investors.

Read more here.

Economic data: MBA mortgage applications (week ended Sept. 26); ADP private payrolls (September); S&P Global US manufacturing PMI (September); ISM manufacturing PMI (September); Construction spending (August); Wards total vehicle sales (September)

Earnings calendar: RPM International (RPM), Acuity (AYI), Levi Strauss (LEVI), Conagra Brands (CAG)

Here are some of the biggest stories you may have missed overnight and early this morning:

The US government has entered its first shutdown in 7 years

Shutdown: Private economic data to take on a bigger role

Why a shutdown delay to jobs and inflation data matters

How a government shutdown will affect your money

What to watch in markets as US government shuts down

Tesla hikes US lease prices after tax credit expires

Dollar extends losing streak as US government shutdown begins

Samsung, SK Hynix to supply chips to OpenAI's Stargate project

Gold surges to record as shutdown boosts havens

US takes 5% stake in Lithium Americas, stock spikes

Bristol Myers, Takeda to pool data for AI-based drug discovery

Here's a look at some of the top stocks trending in premarket trading:

AES (AES) stock jumped 13% before the bell after the Financial Times reported that BlackRock (BLK)-owned Global Infrastructure Partners is nearing a $38 billion deal to buy utility group AES in what would be one of the largest infrastructure takeovers of all time.

Wolfspeed (WOLF) rose 3% before the bell after soaring 50% the day prior following the news the chipmaker had exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy with significantly less debt on its balance sheet.

Sunrun (RUN) stock rose 4% in premarket trading on Wednesday. The group recently announced the launch of its first vehicle-to- grid power plant.