The stock market kicked off the historically tough month of September on a rocky note as Wall Street speculated about the magnitude of the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate decision. Initially, the S & P 500 and Nasdaq hit all-time intraday highs Friday morning as investors digested a slower-than-expected August jobs growth . The weak data bolstered the case for the central bank to cut rates 25 basis points later this month, and as many as two more similar moves before year-end. The 10-year Treasury yield dropped below 4.1% to its lowest level since April. The “bad news is good news trade” was on. Shortly after the open, however, the market reversed lower as those rate cut hopes were overshadowed by concerns about the pace of the slowing labor market. Nonfarm payrolls increased by just 22,000 last month, versus the 75,000 expected, while July was revised up to a still tepid 79,000, and June was revised to show a loss of 13,000. While the S & P 500 and Nasdaq each closed Friday’s session slightly lower, both still managed to post gains of nearly 0.3% and more than 1%, respectively, for the week. .SPX .IXIC 5D mountain S & P 500 and Nasdaq 1 week Jim Cramer was not bothered by the market swings, saying Club name Home Depot is about to go even higher. “That’s what you buy right here, right now,” he said on Friday. Lower borrowing costs should be a catalyst for Home Depot shares because its business is heavily tied to a recovery in the housing sector. Home Depot stock has already been on the upswing since mid-June as rate cut expectations ramped up through the summer. Jim thinks the bond market might actually cooperate this time when the Fed starts cutting rates again — unlike last year, when bond yields, and subsequently mortgage rates, rose after 100 basis points of Fed rate cuts. So far, it looks promising, with the national average on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropping by 16 basis points to 6.29%, its biggest single-day drop in more than a year. It wasn’t just monetary policy on the minds of investors. Corporate earnings were, too, including two of our holdings: Salesforce and Broadcom . The biggest earnings story of the week was Broadcom. Shares of the custom chipmaker gained over 9% on Friday after a blowout quarter the night before. Wall Street celebrated Broadcom’s upbeat guidance, CEO Hock Tan’s revelation about $10 billion in custom AI-related orders from a new customer, which analysts speculated might be OpenAI, and Tan saying he’s staying on as CEO “at least” through 2026. For the week, Broadcom was our biggest gainer, up 12.6%. AVGO YTD mountain Broadcom YTD “Broadcom’s great quarter, solid guide, and the CEO remarks on the call all pointed to sustained strong demand for artificial intelligence semiconductors and networking solutions, housed in the company’s AI solutions segment,” Zev Fima, a portfolio analyst for the Club, wrote in Thursday evening’s earnings analysis. “VMWare, the software giant Broadcom bought for $69…
Read More: How Fed rate cut hopes clashed with slowing jobs growth