It’s the last day of the month. Last day of the quarter. Last hours before a government shutdown. First day of MLB playoffs. The schedule kicks off at 1pm today with a Battle between the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland and Chicago (Detroit is under the Chicago Fed region), as the Guardians and Tigers battle it out. Boston in the Bronx at 6:08pm. Despite all the deadline and sports drama, it’s a relatively quiet day in the markets. The S&P 500 is trading back near the lows, down 0.2%. The equal-weight is underperforming, and small caps are even lower. Healthcare is the top sector with biopharma leading the way. President Trump held a press conference to provide pharma updates and released a Fact Sheet on Most Favored Nation drug pricing- a policy of bringing US drug prices to be inline with the lowest paid by other developed nations. There's been a lot of Pfizer news about manufacturing investments and drug pricing agreements driving the stock (and sector) higher. Meanwhile Energy, Discretionary, Comm Services and Financials are leading lower. A shutdown will curtail a lot of data releases, including the non-farm payroll report on Friday. For today, we’re getting government data while we still can. JOLTS job openings were essentially unchanged from last month and inline at 7.2M in August. The treasury curve is flattening with the 2y down 4bp and 30y flat. The credit concerns and cooling housing data are increasing rate cut expectations, which have moved from 90% yesterday to 96% currently. The US Dollar Index is down as well, looking at a third straight decline if that stays after failing to hold 98.

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