This’ll be a pretty slow week on the data front, at least in the US.

There’s virtually nothing of note on the docket save home sales figures covering September and flash reads on S&P Global’s PMIs. Readers should note: The week after this one’s going to be a veritable barnburner: Occasionally, NFP week’s bevy of top-tier releases line up with key quarterly macro updates (including ECI and GDP) and big-“tech” earnings. That’s the case during the week beginning October 28 which, for good measure, also includes the Treasury borrowing estimate and QRA. So, steel yourself. You have one week to prepare.

Although the US mega-caps won’t report for another week, there’ll be no shortage of earnings releases in the days ahead. So far, reporting season’s going ok, but it’s (far) too early to say anything definitive. “Q3 earnings season has kicked off, with the earliest reporting firms clearing the low bar set by consensus estimates,” Goldman’s David Kostin remarked, noting that out of the five-dozen or so companies who’ve reported so far, half beat by more than one standard deviation. That’s slightly above average.

Equities are runnin’, dammit. As the simple figure below shows, the S&P’s coming off a sixth consecutive weekly gain.

Remember the growth scare and the great yen carry unwind? How about the aftershock in early September? No? You don’t remember any of that? That’s ok. Neither do stocks.

This is why you stay invested. Buy and hold. Is a pullback imminent? Could the S&P “plunge” 5% this week? Sure. Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is that anyone who tells you they’ve made a career of strategically playing for equities downside is a liar. Full stop.

There are no “professional market timers.” There are failed day traders, though. You can find them wearing orange aprons in the light fixture aisles at Home Depot.

That said, I’d be remiss not to note that if you believe US shares are likely to rally into year-end, and you don’t believe stocks go up in a straight line, then at some point, probably soon, stocks will slip. As noted above, there are a lot of potential banana peels on next week’s cartoonishly crowded docket.

On the rates side, there’s a growing chorus on Wall Street “warning” of red sweep peril for duration. In layman’s terms: Trump’s bearish for bonds given his no-cares approach to… well, to everything, now that you mention it, but in this case to fiscal policy.

As discussed at some length in the latest Weekly, Trump’s unfunded tax cuts, heedless approach to deregulation (i.e., “Is it a regulation? Ok, well get rid of it.”) and determination to squeeze EM-style growth from the world’s most developed economy at a time when that economy’s already predisposed to running hot, could make bonds a “bad own,” as one popular strategist put it.

As the figure shows, 10-year yields are on the upswing, with the 200-day just overhead.

The “red sweep risk” talking point invariably throws Wall Street’s cognitive dissonance into stark relief. As well-off white men perched near (but not quite at) the top of America’s pyramidal caste system, I dare say most analysts and strategists will be voting for Trump. And yet they know, as generally intelligent people, that there are risks involved.

I still, for the life of me, don’t understand what’s “wrong” with telling the truth. For a lot rich white people in America, the truth is this: “Look, the guy’s plainly a Looney Tune. I know that. What do you take me for? I’m not buying his NFTs and his golden high tops, but I’m voting for him, because unlike the gullible rednecks who vote for him too, I vote for my economic self-interest.”

If that’s you, two things. First, just say it. Tell the truth. Second, tap into your Wall Street social circle and professional network to get a first-hand account from folks who’ve dealt directly with Trump as a client and as a borrower. See what they say about the guy. I’ll just leave that there.

As far as the bear case for bonds and “red sweep” trepidation goes, it’s starting to feel pretty “consensus” to me, not from a positioning perspective necessarily, but from a narrative point of view. I don’t think any kind of “sweep,” let alone a “clean” one that’s decided on Election Day or early the next morning, should be anyone’s base case or anywhere near anyone’s base case.

BMO’s Ian Lyngen, a reliable voice of calm in an otherwise anxious macro cacophony, walked through the technicals. “The 200-day moving-average in 10s remains a bearish beacon at 4.170% and in the event of another leg lower, this will be our target as well as a potential inflection point for dip-buyers,” he wrote, adding that “even if the 200-day initially fails to hold as support, we anticipate otherwise sidelined buyers awaiting an opportunity to add duration exposure to get involved before 4.25% [given that] global central banks are in rate-cutting mode, and while the FOMC is poised to downshift to a quarter-point cadence in November, policy rates are heading lower, a dynamic that has effectively created a ceiling for yields in a selloff.”

Ian could be a hostage negotiator, or one of those cops who talks people off ledges. If you ever reach your personal limit with this cruel, unforgiving world of ours, just read a strategy note from BMO’s US rates team. You’ll come away thinking it’s all going to be ok. (They have a podcast, by the way. It’s free. If you’re interested, you can check it out here.)