JPMorgan Chase & Co

With the first round of Brazil's presidential election taking place Sunday, Wall Street is gearing up with starkly different market predictions depending on the outcome of the neck-and-neck race between 80-year-old leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and 45-year-old right-winger Flavio Bolsonaro. In short, if Bolsonaro wins, Wall Street expects a rally in the country's bonds, currency and stocks. Kalshi markets now show Bolsonaro favored to win 60% to Lula's 39%, though prediction markets are prohibited in Brazil and may not reflect local sentiment. JPMorgan analysts say that if Brazil enters another period of reform, interest rates could decline to their neutral level, 6% in real terms and 10% in nominal terms, and they would be thinking about MSCI Brazil upside potential between 21% and 41%, with the forward P/E moving from a current 8.6 to as high as 13.3. JPMorgan also calls the currency outcome bimodal, with USD/BRL moving to 5.50 if Lula wins and 4.90 if Bolsonaro wins.

Simply Wall St's updated fair value estimate for Valterra Platinum has moved from ZAR 1,344.81 to ZAR 1,373.14, with the revision accompanied by split analyst commentary on the stock. On the bullish side, Berenberg keeps a Buy rating with a 7,500 GBp price target, RBC Capital maintains an Outperform rating with a 7,200 GBp target, and Jefferies starts coverage with a Hold rating and a ZAR 1,250 target, citing expectations for improving fundamentals and higher EBITDA while waiting for a better entry point. On the bearish side, Barclays cuts Valterra Platinum to Underweight from Equal Weight with a ZAR 1,260 target, pointing to valuation and limited upside to current volume guidance, while JPMorgan keeps an Underweight rating even after lifting its target to US$67. The model update also shows the projected ZAR revenue decline moderating from 4.92% to about 4.13%, the expected net profit margin easing from 20.56% to about 19.70%, the future P/E multiple shifting from 21.4x to about 22.4x, and the discount rate edging higher from 18.73% to about 18.84%.

Banks and financial institutions on Wall Street increased AI-related hiring by 49% this year compared with 2025, reaching 139,819 positions. The fastest-growing skill was Agent Orchestration, which appeared in job postings up 1,721%. Data from Draup, an enterprise hiring analytics firm, compiled exclusively for CNBC, also found rising demand for AI agent development tools, with LangGraph up 679%, LlamaIndex up 291%, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation, or RAG, up 259%. AI governance roles also grew strongly, with postings mentioning Responsible AI up 657%, AI Governance up 394%, and AI-related Risk Management up 359%. Meanwhile, Generative AI manager positions command a median base salary of about 190,000 dollars a year, or roughly 6 million baht a year. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, has spoken of a Huge Redeployment plan, a major reshuffling of staff to adapt to how AI is changing the nature of work.

JPMorgan said in a note Thursday that excesses in equity positioning and leverage have returned, which could act as a headwind for stocks in the fourth quarter. Strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote that elevated equity positioning and leverage have re-emerged, albeit to a lesser extent than last June and July, posing some challenge to equities into Q4. The bank had noted at the end of July that an earlier deleveraging phase had unwound most previous excesses, but two months on it finds several of those measures have rebounded. Leverage through U.S. equity futures is said to be back near its highs for the year, and JPMorgan's broader positioning indicator appears to have peaked in September after reaching levels seen in January and in August 2025. Panigirtzoglou added that short interest in SPY is bottoming out after hitting a record low in early September, short positions in semiconductor ETFs have normalized, and momentum traders have begun rebuilding long positions in the Nasdaq, Kospi, Taiwan and Nikkei, though not to previous extremes. JPMorgan flagged margin account leverage as the biggest vulnerability, saying it remained very elevated in August and barely changed through the summer deleveraging, even as the bank believes the tech and AI complex still has fundamental support, pointing to rising memory prices, higher capital spending forecasts for hyperscalers and holding AI computing prices.

Third-quarter quarter-end portfolio adjustments appear to have been far larger than in a typical year, driven by a sharp drop in bond prices and stock markets trading near record highs. Jordan Jackson, a global market strategist at JPMorgan, said this quarter's rebalancing is shaping up to be among the largest ever. According to a report published by Goldman Sachs this week, U.S. pension funds alone are expected to sell 33 billion dollars of equities and shift the proceeds into bonds around quarter-end to return to their target allocations. Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, noted that the slump in U.S. Treasuries has created the most attractive investment opportunity in decades, while stocks look considerably overvalued. Michael Gates of BlackRock said the firm has been rebalancing in some areas, increasing allocations toward equity and bond sectors it sees as offering lower risk and greater upside heading into year-end.

Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan have both initiated coverage of Nordic online brokerage and savings platform Nordnet, taking opposing views on whether its growth prospects justify its valuation. Deutsche Bank started with a hold rating and a SEK360 price target, saying the shares, trading at about 20 times estimated 2027 earnings and roughly 30% above the peer average excluding Nordnet, already price in much of its growth. J.P. Morgan began at overweight with a SEK401 target, raising its 2027-28 forecasts for brokerage, fund commissions and net interest income to about 8% to 9% above company-compiled consensus. Deutsche Bank forecasts annual EPS growth of about 15% over 2025-28, while J.P. Morgan sees about 14% annually over 2026-30, helped by increased cross-border trading and related foreign-exchange fees. On third-quarter estimates, Deutsche Bank expects transaction-related net income of SEK667 million and net income of SEK927 million, while J.P. Morgan expects transaction income of SEK712 million and net profit of SEK947 million. Nordnet had about 2.5 million customers and SEK1.374 trillion in savings capital at the end of June 2026.

JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs assess that crude oil export volumes from the Middle East are likely to recover to pre-war levels, though risks remain. JPMorgan said crude shipments have recovered to 17.5 million barrels per day, or 98% of pre-war levels, while shipments of refined products such as diesel and gasoline stand at 3 million barrels per day, or 58% of pre-war levels. Measured on a 10-day average over the past five days, overall oil shipment volumes stand at 89% of 2025 levels. Shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have returned to their late-June peak of nearly 13 million barrels per day, led by exports from Saudi Arabia, which has restored about half of its exports through the East-West Pipeline to Red Sea ports after attacks earlier in the month. Goldman Sachs said oil exports from the Persian Gulf, including a rise in covertly shipped oil, reached 23.3 million barrels per day over the past week, close to the 2025 average, and assessed that the global oil market was broadly balanced in September. Saudi Arabia's exports more than doubled in September and were above the 2025 average, while Brent crude is on track for a third consecutive monthly gain, expected to rise about 14% in September.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has proposed a sweeping new free trade agreement between the United States and Europe aimed at countering China's economic power. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Monday, Dimon urged the U.S. to push Europe toward major economic and military reforms in exchange for negotiating what he called a "big, beautiful economic and free-trade agreement." He said the pact could extend to other democratic nations including Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines, calling such trade ties "an economic and geopolitical game changer" that would let the U.S. and its allies "set the global rules on trade." Dimon argued that a Europe able to mobilize capital, scale innovative companies and generate stronger growth would be a more capable security partner and a stronger counterweight to China, and he outlined three pillars of U.S. global leadership: military strength, economic dominance and a renewed commitment to American values. He set a goal of 3% annual U.S. growth, estimating that achieving it over the past two decades would have raised GDP per capita by $20,000, and warned that economic fragmentation now extends beyond tariffs to investment policies, regulations and World Trade Organization rules.

JPMorgan cut its third-quarter delivery forecast for Tesla to 482,000 vehicles from 516,000, citing weaker demand in the U.S. and China. Shares of the electric-vehicle and energy-storage maker fell about 1.3% to $352.68 around 10:12 a.m. ET Tuesday. Tesla reported 480,126 deliveries in the second quarter, so JPMorgan's revised figure would put the next quarter barely above that level. At $352.68, the shares sit 5.46% above the chart's GF Value of $334.43. Friday's delivery report will put the vehicle operation back under the microscope, with investors watching what Tesla spent on incentives to reach those volumes.

Wall Street expects Tesla to report third quarter deliveries of 463,000 vehicles, according to Bloomberg consensus, a sequential decline from the second quarter and a 6.8% drop from the 497,000 units delivered a year ago. The report, likely to hit the wires on Friday, follows the company's decision to delay its Roadster reveal, originally slated for Thursday, October 1, to October 15 because of severe weather conditions that made an outdoor event impossible. JPMorgan's Rajat Gupta wrote to clients that overall EU registrations tracked roughly negative 9% year over year, with strength in France and Germany offset by declines in the UK, Italy and Spain, while China's July-August wholesale volumes including exports rose 19% year over year, comprising exports up 92% year over year and estimated domestic retail sales down 21% year over year. JPMorgan lowered its own third quarter estimate to 482,000 units, citing weakness in China and the US. Tesla said at the end of the second quarter that FSD subscriptions hit 1.48 million, a 56% jump from a year ago, and positive feedback on supervised FSD may have helped US sales. The Information reported that the reveal event could include a demonstration of a limited-edition version equipped with cold-gas thrusters developed with SpaceX, which could include some form of hovering or flying capability.

JPMorgan Chase issued a series of callable senior unsecured fixed- and step-up-rate notes totaling several tens of millions of US dollars in late September 2026, while declaring a US$168.16 per-share dividend on its Series CC fixed-to-floating preferred stock payable in early November. The funding and capital-return moves came as investors weighed how emerging AI agents might affect the bank's deposit base and its broader push into AI tools and collaborations, including an Nvidia safety initiative. JPMorgan's investment narrative projects $224.5 billion in revenue and $67.8 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 6.4% yearly revenue growth and a $4.2 billion earnings increase from $63.6 billion, with a $373.86 fair value estimate implying 11% upside. Some of the lowest-estimate analysts assume earnings reach only about US$65.8 billion by 2029 with margins compressing, and the key near-term swing factor is whether upcoming results show any AI-driven pressure on deposits or funding costs.

Costco Wholesale Corporation reported fourth-quarter results on September 24 that beat expectations, with net sales up 11.2% to $93.9 billion and earnings of $6.75 a share, and the stock rose 2.93% to close at $922.77. Comparable sales rose 9.4% companywide and 10.7% in the United States, while digitally enabled sales grew 19.5%, the fastest-moving part of the business. The sixteen-week quarter closed a fiscal year in which net sales reached $297.2 billion, and Costco finished the year operating 939 warehouses worldwide. Earnings included a non-recurring benefit of $0.15 a share from tariff refunds, so excluding that the quarter was still ahead of expectations but by less than the headline suggests. At least eight research firms lowered their price targets the following day, led by Truist, which cut its target to $955 from $1,011 while keeping a Hold rating, and Bernstein, which trimmed its target by a single dollar to $1,143 from $1,144 while keeping an Outperform rating; JPMorgan cut to $1,015 from $1,100 and stayed Overweight. The cuts centered on slowing membership growth rather than the quarter itself, and the day was not one-directional, as HSBC upgraded the stock to Buy and DA Davidson raised its target to $1,040. Costco earned $20.76 a share across the fiscal year, leaving the stock trading near 44 times what the business actually produced, with the average Wall Street target still above $1,045.

JPMorgan Chase joined Nvidia's effort to develop shared, open-source safety tools for AI agents on September 28, a collaboration that puts the bank at the table as companies work out how to give AI agents more freedom without losing control. Shares slipped about 1.0% to $339.675 at 10.28am ET. JPMorgan has plenty riding on that question, with a 2026 technology budget of about $19.8 billion and an AI Employee Assistant already rolling out across the firm. Nvidia announced no purchase commitment, investment amount or deployment timetable for the collaboration. The price sits 10.17% above GuruFocus's $308.31 GF Value estimate, leaving investors to weigh the bank's AI ambitions against what they already pay for the stock, though joining this effort by itself adds no measurable earnings.

JPMorgan Chase & Co expects the Bank of Thailand to raise its policy rate three times in 2027, by 0.25% each time, starting in the first quarter of the year, which would push the policy rate up from its current level of 1% to 1.75% by the end of 2027. That forecast runs counter to analysts at other financial institutions, who expect the Bank of Thailand to hold the rate at 1% through 2027 to support a Thai economy struggling to expand by more than 2%. JPMorgan continues to expect Thailand's economy to grow 2.5% in both 2026 and 2027, above the Bank of Thailand's estimates of 2.3% and 1.8% respectively. It also nudged up its forecast for Thailand's headline inflation slightly to 2% for 2026 and 2.5% in 2027, citing higher oil costs and broad-based price pressures. JPMorgan expects Thai inflation to breach the Bank of Thailand's 1% to 3% target range this month and to accelerate to around 4% in the first quarter of 2027.

JPMorgan analysts said on the 28th that the recent correction in global AI-related trading has improved investors' positioning and made valuations more attractive, which could encourage investors to re-enter the market, particularly in semiconductor stocks. In a report, they noted that tech may not return to past peak levels, but the underlying scenario remains positive and there are many investment opportunities within the AI-related sector. They said investor positioning in the AI space has been cleaned up and valuations have fallen sharply across most areas, while capital expenditure is likely to remain solid despite recent slowdown concerns. On semiconductor stocks, they maintained a bullish outlook citing strong fundamentals, price increases through 2027, and supply-demand tightness expected to persist until 2028, while keeping a cautious stance on software stocks, assessing that AI growth continues to leave the sector's long-term outlook uncertain.

With Treasury yields climbing this week to their highest levels since 2007, companies reliant on debt are poised to see their borrowing costs rise, making the already historic AI infrastructure buildout even more expensive. JPMorgan Chase estimated in June that $4.1 trillion in AI-related debt will be issued through 2030, and borrowers now face a 10-year Treasury yield near 5.17%, up about 1 percentage point since the start of the year. Japan's SoftBank, a principal provider of capital for AI projects, raised $11.1 billion in a junk-bond sale this week, with yields as high as 9.75% for the 7-year tranche. CoreWeave has warned in its SEC filings that as of June, every 100-basis point increase in rates could result in a $30 million jump in its interest expense based on its outstanding floating rate debt, while Oracle's stock slid this week following a Bloomberg report that it sent a force majeure notice tied to its New Mexico data center project, dubbed Project Jupiter. Despite the pressure, KBRA's Andrew Giudici said he does not see a major impact on borrower demand, and American Compute CEO Bernie Margulies said borrowers remain eager to secure financing even at higher costs, especially those with commitments from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Bitcoin broke above $86,000 on September 21, climbing to its highest level in about eight months. Behind the move is a three-stage chain: renewed inflows into U.S. spot ETFs, an improving regulatory and macroeconomic backdrop, and large-scale liquidation of short positions. Analysts at JPMorgan Chase said that if hedging trades targeting ETFs decline, Bitcoin could receive stronger price support than gold. After a sharp correction from its all-time high of about $126,000 set in October 2025, Bitcoin has now recovered to around $86,000, but it remains roughly 30 percent below that record peak. It also emerged that U.S. President Trump purchased between $51,000 and $100,000 worth of Strategy shares in July.

Polymarket wagers on the failure of major banks including Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. are drawing scrutiny from Washington officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The contracts remain a tiny piece of the prediction market's offshore platform, which says it bans Americans from trading, but they have raised concerns among bank regulators and lawmakers on Capitol Hill who worry the bets could grow in volume and eventually help fuel a real-world bank run. Wagers on individual bank failures total just a few hundred dollars in many cases, though volume in some contracts ranges into the thousands of dollars for firms like Deutsche Bank AG and Wells Fargo, and recent trades tied to banks failing by the end of this year have attracted $76,000 in overall volume, while an earlier set of wagers focused on failures by July saw $591,000 in trading. Officials inside the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. expressed concern in recent weeks when the contracts were highlighted to senior staff at an internal meeting, questioning whether there was any legitimate commercial or investment benefit and whether the agency's internal ethics restrictions were strong enough to prohibit insiders from trading on the platforms, though officials ultimately decided existing ethics rules were strong enough. FDIC Chairman Travis Hill said at a private fireside chat in March that although prediction markets could be a very useful tool for monitoring, he is worried about people using the platforms to speculate on the timing of bank failures. Polymarket Chief Legal Officer Neal Kumar defended the markets as aggregating information typically available only to the most sophisticated financial institutions, while Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana called the bank-failure wagers in poor taste, former FDIC head Sheila Bair warned they introduce dangerous incentives, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, called the contracts reckless.

J.P. Morgan says $115 billion could flow into India's stock market as global investors seek to hedge their crowded AI exposure. The investment bank argues India, which makes up about 12% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, is emerging as a safe haven for those looking to diversify away from AI earnings power, citing fiscal and monetary policy aligned with steady economic growth. Rajiv Batra, head of Asia and co-head of Global Emerging Markets Equity Strategy at J.P. Morgan, said that when investors go looking for non-AI exposure, India increasingly becomes the default choice. J.P. Morgan noted that small- and mid-cap Indian companies led the expansion with earnings growth of at least 25% for six to seven consecutive quarters, followed by double-digit earnings growth at large-caps over two quarters, and that foreign investors are starting to buy shares in e-commerce, hotel, mining and healthcare sectors. The bank flagged oil as the biggest risk, saying Brent crude above $85 per barrel would begin to drag down economic growth, and it is also tracking global interest rates and El Niño for possible monsoon disruption and renewed inflation. India's economy expanded by 7.8% in the April to June quarter.

JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth sees Meta Platforms' eclectic new AI hardware lineup as part of a much larger AI platform that could address a market worth tens of trillions of dollars. Meta plans to offer more than 100 glasses across Ray-Ban, Oakley and Meta by year-end, targeting the more than 2 billion people who already wear glasses, and has shifted Reality Labs toward wearables designed around Muse and personal superintelligence. The lineup spans a hearing-enhancement feature in the U.S., the Muse Charm keychain device Zuckerberg called a "joyful little device" that is expected to ship in December, and Meta VR Glasses, described as a "private cinema" at roughly 100 grams and expected in spring 2027 for $1,299. Anmuth says Muse is already reaching millions of people and could eventually become a personal agent for billions, with JPMorgan expecting Meta to eventually monetize transactions between users, businesses and AI agents through fees or commissions. Direct Muse monetization remains limited today, and the bigger test for investors is whether Meta can turn the collection of products into a single AI ecosystem capable of expanding the company beyond advertising.