| Good morning. Oil prices keep rising, the yen and the pound sink and OpenAI raises $6.6 billion. Here's what's moving markets. — Sam Unsted Want to receive this newsletter in Spanish? Sign up to get the Five Things: Spanish Edition newsletter. US stock futures are sinking in line with declines seen across Europe, with Treasuries also falling slightly. Oil prices have continued their rise for the week, with sentiment driven by fears about the escalating conflict in the Middle East disrupting supplies. Jobless claims, factory orders and the ISM services reading are all on the slate as traders prepare for Friday's jobs report, while the Federal Reserve's Jeff Schmid, Neel Kashkari and Raphael Bostic are all scheduled to speak. (Read more on the jobs report and today's batch of data from Joe Weisenthal lower down.) The dollar is notching up gains against the yen and the pound, driven by shifting investor bets on the monetary policy paths in both countries. The yen slumped overnight after new Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said the economy isn't ready for another interest-rate hike. And the pound is sliding following comments from Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey on the possibility of a more aggressive cutting cycle, which has seen investors ramp up bets on reductions to come. OpenAI has raised $6.6 billion in new funding to give the artificial intelligence company a valuation of $157 billion and bolstering its push in the AI industry. Thrive Capital led the round, while Microsoft and Nvidia were involved too. That comes amid a warning from MIT economist Daron Acemoglu that AI can only do 5% of jobs and he doesn't see how it will live up to the hype. SoftBank's Masayoshi Son, however, thinks AI will be running households in a few years. Warren Buffett's spree of sales of Bank of America stock slowed for third straight round, fetching some of the lowest prices yet since the investor began a spree of liquidations in mid-July. This time he raised $338 million, down from an average of $750 million from the 13 rounds so far. Analysts think Buffett may be raising money for stakes in value stocks, picking out Japanese banks and insurance names as possible targets. A leading economist thinks China has room to ramp up fiscal support for the economy to the tune of $1.4 trillion in special debt, reflecting rising expectations in the country that Beijing will boost public spending as part of its blitz of recent stimulus measures. The sudden stock surge that those announcements have caused is also sucking money away from the rest of Asia in global portfolios. This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours. Good morning. It's day before Jobs Day. Right now the market sees a 25 basis point rate cut at the Nov. 7 meeting as the most likely outcome. However, there's still a substantial shot at a 50 basis point reduction. And if there's one thing that could decisively, or at least meaningfully, tip the scales over to 50 it would be more weakness in the unemployment data. Labor data has been mixed lately. Earlier this week, we got August JOLTS which showed that the pace of hiring and quitting continues to cool markedly. On the other hand, yesterday we got the September ADP report, and it came in at 143K, nicely above 125K. The only problem with the ADP report though is that it's the ADP report. Will leave it at that. Today we get Challenger Job Cuts (which tends to be noisy and is rarely a market mover) and Initial Jobless Claims (which have been very low, and which have contributed to the "low firing, low hiring" narrative). We also get the S&P Services PMI (which might give us some insight into labor markets) as well as ISM Services. So it'll be a good day for middle-shelf data to over-read. Tomorrow is the big one of course, when we get NFP, and expectations are for 150K new jobs and for the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.2%. Monthly wage growth is expected to cool to 0.3% from 0.4%. My guess would be that of all the numbers that matter, it's going to be that headline unemployment rate that moves the dial. The general view is that the pace of hiring is mediocre. The bigger open question is whether there's a growing pool of the population that wants to work, but simply can't find good opportunities. This was the story of the summer, and we'll start to learn whether it's the story of the fall as well. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on X @TheStalwart | 
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