Economy & Markets Sunday, 4 October 2026 · AI-generated content, without human review

Weak US jobs data boosts Wall Street, but inflation in Europe rises to 3.8%

The slowdown in American employment in September eases fears of a new Fed rate hike and supports the markets, but in Europe a figure of the opposite sign emerges: rising prices are no longer limited to fuel alone.

Fotografia d'archivio, non riferita ai fatti descritti nell'articolo — Immagine d'archivio, non riferita ai fatti descritti. Foto di Colwyn Davis su Pexels

The rise in European stock markets reported this morning now has a precise cause, arriving from across the Atlantic. According to the Associated Press, the US economy created around 29,000 jobs in September, compared with 133,000 in August: a sharp slowdown that has scaled back expectations of a new monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve.

Wall Street’s reaction was immediate. Over the week the S&P 500 gained 0.7%, the Dow Jones 0.5% and the Nasdaq 1.2%, moving closer to record highs. Ten-year Treasury yields, however, remain at elevated levels: they rose back to 5.28%, a sign that the bond market is not yet taking a shift in US monetary policy for granted.

In Europe, the effect of the US data was felt on the same indices already rising this morning, but alongside this boost there is now an element complicating the picture: inflation in the eurozone has risen to 3.8%. According to analysis by S&P Global cited by Il Messaggero, rising prices are no longer confined to fuel alone, an indication that broadens the scope of pressures on consumer prices and that the European Central Bank will have to take into account in its upcoming assessments on interest rates.

In terms of indices, the Stoxx Europe 600 closed the week up 0.75%, at 631.35 points. Among individual markets, Frankfurt led the gains with the Dax up 1.24%, followed by Paris with the Cac 40 at +0.79%. More contained increases were seen in Milan, where the Ftse Mib rose 0.49%, in Madrid with the Ibex 35 at +0.4% and in London, where the Ftse 100 stopped at +0.32%.

The picture emerging from recent hours thus shows two markets responding to the same impulse — the slowdown in American employment — with differing intensity and for partly diverging reasons: on Wall Street the data mainly fuels expectations of steady rates, while in Europe it adds to inflation that, according to the cited analysis, is widening its base beyond energy. Treasury yields at 5.28% remain the figure to watch in the coming days, as an indicator of how genuinely convinced the US bond market is that the monetary tightening has ended.

Oil nears 100 dollars, European stock markets still up

Brent is climbing back toward 100 dollars a barrel amid tensions in the Middle East, after falling below the 100 mark during the session, but European stock markets still closed in positive territory.

European markets moved along two tracks today, telling different stories about the same phase. The first concerns energy: Brent, after falling to as low as 99.2 dollars a barrel during trading, closed at around 100 dollars, driven by the ongoing tensions in the Middle East. The recovery from the intraday low confirms just how sensitive the oil market remains to every shift in the region’s geopolitical picture.

The second track, the equity one, tells a different story. In Milan, the Ftse Mib gained 0.49%, in Paris the Cac40 rose 0.8%, in Frankfurt the Dax climbed 1.2%, and in London the Ftse100 added 0.3%. All the main European markets closed in positive territory, despite the tense context on energy markets. This apparent divergence between signals — oil rising, stock markets still positive — shows that equity investors did not translate, at least in this session, geopolitical pressures into widespread selling on the indices.

What remains to be considered is the quality of the information available on this trading day. The news currently comes from a single source (Borsa Italiana, via market agencies picked up by Quotidiano Nazionale); no independent confirmation is available. This is a significant limitation for a subject — the performance of oil and stock indices — where data is normally released in real time by multiple financial information providers and should therefore be relatively easy to cross-check.

The picture that emerges, with this caveat in mind, is one of a day in which markets priced in the same underlying tensions unevenly: fully on the energy front, with Brent’s recovery toward 100 dollars; almost not at all on the equity front, where all the main European indices remain higher. A configuration that signals, for now, a resilience in equity investor confidence greater than that shown on commodity markets.

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