Friday: Jobs Day, Then the Court Takes Over

Rush LindellTwo dates: Reagan. Friday morning, a number drops that tells your neighbor whether the gas tank and the grocery cart still hurt. Monday morning, nine robes walk in and decide what you're allowed to own.

ReaganBrought to you by Lear Capital, Americas precious metals leader since 1997. And Rush, you skipped the part where we say who we are.

Rush LindellFine. Im Rush Limbaugh, thats Reagan, and this is the show where one of us is always wrong.

ReaganUsually you.

Rush LindellWell done.

ReaganThe September jobs report lands Friday, Oct. 2. The Supreme Court opens its term Monday, Oct. 5, three days apart.

Rush LindellAnd here is my position. Courts decide November. AR-15 bans, voter citizenship, parents and kids. Thats the fight.

ReaganMine is simpler: your grocery bill. Nobody votes on oral argument schedules.

Rush LindellNobody votes on a schedule, sure. But ask the folks who find out what the law is after the robes decide, and see how fast they care.

ReaganAnd ask the same folks what they paid at the pump on the way to work. That's the argument I'm making, and I'm making it with a receipt.

Rush LindellWait for it, though. Each of us has to stand up and argue the other one's side.

ReaganWhich should be painful for you. But before that, we grade our own homework.

Rush LindellBumper music. First up, the scorecard on our own Fed call. Reagan, I have a confession, and I'm making it before you can drag it out of me.

ReaganOh, this I want to hear. Go.

Rush LindellI said the Fed wouldn't have the nerve to hike. Wrong. Spectacularly, theatrically wrong.

ReaganWhich part, Rush? Be specific. "I was wrong" is a bumper sticker, not a grade.

Rush LindellOuch. Fine. I read the cooling, and I bet on the Fed flinching. I treated the jobs data like a weather report that never changes.

ReaganAnd it changed. Kiplinger's Week Ahead piece notes that August's strong jobs report landed less than two weeks before the Fed's first rate hike in three years.

Rush LindellLess than two weeks. That's not a trend. That's a trapdoor.

ReaganHold on. I'll own mine, too. I called the hike, but I leaned on the idea that one hot report wouldn't be enough. It looks like it was enough.

Rush LindellThat's the humbling part. We both looked at one stretch of data and wrote a story around it.

ReaganAnd the story felt airtight until the Fed walked in and edited it. Lesson one: a forecast is a guess with good posture.

Rush LindellSo you're a B-minus.

ReaganI'd say B. Right direction, wrong reason. That counts for something.

Rush LindellOh, man, listen to her. Right answer, wrong homework.

ReaganYou were wrong on the answer and the reasoning, so you're not in a position to curve me.

Rush LindellI'm taking a D-plus, and I'm framing it. Humility looks great on me.

ReaganIt looks rare on you.

Rush LindellFair, but here's what I actually care about now. That hike is done and in the books, and everyone's staring at the next number.

ReaganWhich means the grade only matters if we can read this one better.

Rush LindellBumper. So what, what is Friday's number expected to say? Reagan, I've got a number for you: 90,000.

ReaganJobs?

Rush LindellJobs. Jobs. That's what one NFP preview published on September 30th says economists expect for September, and unemployment at 4.1%, which is-

ReaganThat is a soft number, Rush. 90,000 wouldn't fill the stands at a big college football game, and the country has about 160 million workers.

Rush LindellLook at you, doing arithmetic on the air. My goodness.

ReaganSomebody has to.

Rush LindellBut a soft number is still a number the Fed has to read. Oh, man, imagine being the guy who just hiked and now stares at this.

ReaganHere's the catch, though. 90,000 is one forecast. Kiplinger's Week Ahead piece cites Barclays, and Barclays is lower.

Rush LindellHow much lower?

ReaganAbout 50,000 payrolls with unemployment flat at 4.1%.

Rush Lindell50. Almost half the other guy.

ReaganSo treat it as a range: 50,000 on the low end, 90,000 on the other. Neither one looks like the hiring boom that preceded the hike.

Rush LindellSo which forecaster do I trust, the preview or Barclays?

ReaganNeither blindly. Forecasts are guesses with spreadsheets attached. I'd rather show you the spread than pick a winner, and then wait to see where the real number lands.

Rush LindellHold on. If the number comes in near the bottom, does the Fed just fold?

ReaganBarclays says that mix, weak payrolls with steady unemployment, keeps an October hold in play. Play, Rush, not a promise.

Rush LindellA hold in play. That's Fed-speak for we're staring at our shoes.

ReaganAnd if it lands at 90, nobody's calling it a collapse either. 4.1 unemployment is not a flashing red light.

Rush LindellSo you're telling me the number everybody's waiting for could be boring.

ReaganBoring is possible. Boring with consequences.

Rush LindellGive me the practical version. If I'm a guy with a variable rate loan, what am I actually watching for Friday morning?

ReaganTwo things: the headline payroll count and the unemployment rate sitting next to it. One without the other can mislead you, which is why the Barclays forecast pairs them.

Rush LindellAnd the consequences are the whole point. A voter doesn't care about payroll seasonal adjustments, but the Fed's next move hits the mortgage, the car loan, the card balance.

ReaganWhich is why Friday's number is really a question about the meeting after it.

Rush LindellAnd that's the thing about Fridays. Everyone treats the number like an answer when it's really the first line of a longer argument.

ReaganWhich is exactly why we keep a scorecard. We'll tell you how we did.

Rush LindellBumper. Okay, so let's go look at that October meeting. Reagan, I'll start with the number that matters most to anybody with a variable rate anything, the Oct 27-28 FOMC meeting. Two days. Circle it.

ReaganCircled. And Reuters has a fresh read on it. Traders cut their bets on an October hike after New York Fed President John Williams said he saw no urgency to follow September's increase.

Rush LindellNo urgency. Deadpan, that central banker for please stop calling me.

ReaganFair, but look at the odds. Reuters says futures priced only about a one in three chance of a hike at that meeting.

Rush LindellOne in three. Oh man, that's a coin that's been shaved down on one side.

ReaganRight. Not a long shot, though. You take those odds on a rain forecast and still pack the umbrella.

Rush LindellHold on. So the market says probably no in October. Does that mean the hawks are going home?

ReaganNo. Same Reuters report says a hike by December was still priced in, so the market is saying not yet, not never.

Rush LindellWhich makes Friday's number weirdly high stakes. A soft print in October looks sleepy. A hot one-

ReaganAnd the one in three starts creeping

Rush LindellAnd, uh, that's the whole problem with a number like that. It isn't a verdict, it's a mood that moves with every data release.

ReaganRight, and the mood is what borrowers live with, because expectations tend to move before the Fed ever votes.

Rush LindellWait for it. Here's what I wanna know. Williams is the guy saying no rush. Is he also the guy saying we're done?

ReaganNot at all. Reuters reported that Williams still thought another hike by year-end was likely. So the same official who sees no urgency still expects one.

Rush LindellThat's a man who tells you the check is coming, just not today.

ReaganWhich matters if you're a borrower. Patience from the Fed is a delay, and delays get priced, too.

Rush LindellSeriously, you can't plan your life around a pause that comes with an asterisk.

ReaganNo, you can't. Also, one caveat on freshness, that Reuters piece, as it appears on Investing.com, carries no date in what we have. So treat those odds as the market's mood, and watch them move after Friday.

Rush LindellSmart. Odds are weather, not law. Okay, you've been wait- waiting politely this whole segment.

ReaganI've been very patient, like a Fed president.

Rush LindellBumper. Reagan, take us to the grocery store.

ReaganOkay, the grocery store. Start with the number that follows you home. CNBC reports August consumer prices rose 3.4% from a year earlier, unchanged from July.

Rush LindellUnchanged. So the fire isn't spreading.

ReaganSure, if you're fine with the fire staying exactly where it is. And that's the headline number. Gasoline is where it gets personal.

Rush LindellOh man, here it comes.

ReaganCNBC says gasoline rose nearly 4% in the month. And from a year earlier, more than 27%.

Rush Lindell27. Whistles? Hold on, that's not a price, that's a ransom note.

ReaganAnd you don't skip it, Rush. You can cut back on restaurants. You cannot cut back on getting to work.

Rush LindellFine. Give me the pump.

ReaganAAA put it at about $4.30 a gallon. A year earlier, that same gallon was $3.19.

Rush LindellSo over a dollar more every fill-up, every week. Somebody's minivan just became a luxury item.

ReaganPicture a family that fills up twice a week. That's real money out of the grocery budget, and the grocery budget is also feeling it.

Rush LindellOkay, but be fair. Uh, prices at the pump go up and down. Is a number like that permanent or just a bad stretch?

ReaganI can't tell you where it goes from here, and neither can the article. What I can tell you is that a family feels the jump today, while the explanation arrives in a later news cycle.

Rush LindellOkay, but who gets the blame? 'Cause I know a few politicians who'd love to pin that on one guy.

ReaganIt's not one guy, and that matters. The CNBC piece has economists, Moody's Mark Zandi among them, pointing at the Iran war, tariffs, and AI.

Rush LindellAI. Robots are raising my gas prices?

ReaganThat's what the economists listed. I'm not going to pretend I can walk you through the mechanism from one article.

Rush LindellThree culprits. Which means every politician gets to pick the one that's not theirs.

ReaganExactly. Voters don't get to pick. They just see $4.30 on the sign on the way home.

Rush LindellSo what's the political play? You running the pump?

ReaganAnybody running in November has to answer for it, whichever party they belong to. Voters don't need a chart to feel it. They feel it every time the tank hits empty, and they remember it in the booth.

Rush LindellFine, you've made your case. It's a good one, and I hate that.

ReaganWrite that down.

Rush LindellDon't get used to it. I'm still taking Monday.

ReaganOf course you are. But notice you didn't dispute a single number.

Rush LindellBumper. Now it's my turn, and the docket is loaded. Reagan, I've got one for you. 10:00 Monday morning, nine robed people walk in, and the first thing on the board is an oil company.

ReaganSuncor.

Rush LindellSuncor Energy versus Commissioners. Opening bell of the whole term. You can't write that any bet-

ReaganI'll give you the calendar part. It's solid. The court's own October argument calendar, amended September 14th, says the session begins October 5th. The court convenes at 10:00, and Suncor goes first.

Rush LindellAnd Suncor is a climate liability suit. So the court opens with who pays when the weather gets blamed on a business model.

ReaganCareful. The calendar tells us the order. It doesn't tell us how anyone rules.

Rush LindellI'm not ruling, I'm setting the table, Reagan, and the table is loaded.

ReaganThen load it.

Rush LindellNortheastern's preview says the court has agreed to hear at least 25 cases. 25? And we're only getting started.

ReaganWhich ones?

Rush LindellViramontes versus Cook County, that's the AR-15 and semiautomatic rifle ban fight.

ReaganHmm.

Rush LindellThen RNC versus Mi Familia Vota. Arizona wants proof of citizenship to register to vote.

ReaganAnd that one lands a few weeks before voters pick a Congress. I notice you skipped the quiet one.

Rush Lindell12-person juries, fine. The one nobody's putting on a mug.

ReaganI'd buy the mug. Constitutional text, the number 12. An old argument about what a jury even is.

Rush LindellYou would. You'd put it next to your copy of the Federalist Papers.

ReaganOriginal source, Rush, always.

Rush LindellFair. But the jury case is a reminder that the Court doesn't only take the loud ones. Some of this docket is about procedure, not slogans.

ReaganAnd procedure is where a lot of everyday law lives. Just don't ask me to predict how any of these come out. The previews list the topics, not the outcomes.

Rush LindellAnd the brief we're working from adds parental rights in gender transitions to the pile.

ReaganPlus more climate liability suits beyond Suncor. Northeastern also flags religious liberty.

Rush LindellSo guns, voting, kids, climate, religion. Pick your fight. The Court's got a slot for it.

ReaganWhich is my worry. Five hot buttons in one preview, and each one is a different voter's reason to show up.

Rush LindellNo, no, no, that's my point. It isn't one voter, it's every voter. Your grocery list doesn't have a Supreme Court on it.

ReaganMy grocery list has a receipt on it. The Court has an opinion in June.

Rush LindellOoh, save it.

ReaganOh, I will.

Rush LindellAnd you'll say I'm overselling the Court as a campaign issue.

ReaganI'll say an opinion later is a long way from a ballot in November, and the two of us can argue about which one voters feel first.

Rush LindellBumper, because now it gets weird. I have to sell your grocery bill, and you have to sell my courthouse?

ReaganSwap seats, and try not to make me sound like a Bumper sticker.

Rush LindellReagan, you're the grocery hawk. Today, I'm the grocery hawk. Cue the ad. In an announcer voice, "Your cart is empty, your tank is empty, and the incumbent, still full of promises."

ReaganAh, oh, that's good. Keep going.

Rush Lindell"This November, vote like you're standing at the register." Pause. Fade to a sad banana.

ReaganA sad banana? Fine. My turn, and I have to make the courts sexy. Oras Grave Narrator, "They don't run for office, they don't face you at the polls, and they decide what your state can ban, require, and prove."

Rush LindellOoh, black and white footage. Gavel sound.

ReaganPrices move, precedent stays.

Rush LindellHold on, that's actually a slogan. Don't tell my consultants. Now the hard part. Rush, argue it for real. Why does the grocery bill decide November? Because nobody has to be told. A voter doesn't need a briefing to know what the register said. You can't spin a receipt, and every candidate in November has to stand next to it. Yep.

ReaganThat's a fair argument, and I resent how clean it is. Here's my honest concession. Your side has the better closer. The brief for this episode calls inflation, jobs, and gas prices closing argument economics, and that's accurate. Voters carry those numbers in their wallets.

Rush LindellYour turn. Make me believe the Court's decided.

ReaganFine. A price complaint is something voters already hold against everybody. A ruling on guns, voting, or kids hands each party something specific to run on. The brief says these cases could dominate the post-midterm news cycle, and that's the point. The fight outlasts the vote.

Rush LindellAnd I'll give you yours, arguing your side, I'll admit it. The wallet gets people mad, but a court case gives them a reason to tell their cousin why. Everybody's cousin has an opinion by Thanksgiving. Oh.

ReaganAh, so you're conceding it's a sequel with legs.

Rush LindellA blockbuster sequel. And having sold your side, I'll say it. The grocery bill is what voters feel first, so jobs Friday, Oct. 2 moves votes more.

ReaganAnd having sold yours, I'll say Monday, Oct. 5, but only for what it sets up. Prices get felt, but the cases are what both parties keep fighting over once the votes are counted.

Rush LindellSo one date wins the wallet, the other wins the headlines. Oh.

ReaganThough, to be fair, the brief only says the cases could dominate the cycle after the midterms. Could. Nobody here is promising a headline.

Rush LindellKiddos, how every campaign ad starts. Bumper, a quick word from our friends at Lear Capital, then we settle this and tell you what to watch. Reagan, you wanna talk about prices. I wanna talk about something that actually lets you hold value in your hand. Silver. See what I did there?

ReaganSmooth, Rush. Painfully smooth. Go ahead.

Rush LindellMy friends at Lear Capital are doing something I've never seen before. They're selling a one oz silver American Eagle below spot price. That's right, below what silver is actually trading for right now, and Lear is covering the shipping and taxes.

ReaganBelow spot? Okay, that's a sentence I did not expect today.

Rush LindellHere's what you need to know. It's priced below spot. Lear is selling this at a loss to get silver in your hands. Limit one per person. New customers only.

ReaganAnd shipping?

Rush LindellFree shipping, fully insured by Lear. This is a 24-hour offer only. And just so you understand how rare this is, spot price doesn't include the cost to mint the coin, ship it, or any dealer overhead. Buying at spot is already a deal. Buying below spot almost never happens.

ReaganI'll say this much. I like owning things I can actually pick up.

Rush LindellThis isn't some obscure bullion piece. The silver American Eagle is one of the most recognizable and sought-after coins in the world, backed by the US government for weight and purity. One oz of 99 fine silver. IRA eligible. A tangible asset you can hold in your hand.

ReaganHold it next to your gas receipt. Compare moods.

Rush LindellGo to www.rushcoinoffer.com right now. This is a 24-hour offer. The URL goes dark after that, and when it's gone, it's gone. That's www.rushcoinoffer.com.

ReaganOkay, back to the grocery receipt, since that's where I live. Verdict time.

Rush LindellVerdict. The swap gave us a split. I sold your grocery side and came away believing it, and you sold my courts and came away dangerous. So here's where I land. The wallet gets filled first, the courts get fought over longer, and the two dates are really one story.

ReaganI'll take that. Prices are the first chapter, and the docket is the long sequel. Now, what do we watch?

Rush LindellFriday's payroll number and whether it keeps the Fed on the sidelines.

ReaganThen Monday's opening, then the Oct 27-28 meeting, hike or hold, and what the statement says about what comes next.

Rush LindellAnd between those, keep one eye on the pump. If the gas number moves, everything we argue today gets louder.

ReaganAgreed. A price people see on a sign beats a statistic they read about.

Rush LindellNow bets. For the scorecard, I'm on record.

ReaganOh, here we go.

Rush LindellFriday's number is soft. The Fed holds in October, and I will not apologize for it this time.

ReaganSoft number? Yes. But I think the Fed hedges hold in October, door open for December.

Rush LindellDoor open. You always leave a door open.

ReaganIt's called being right more than once. We'll grade it publicly. Bumper into the sign-off.

Rush LindellReagan, I owe you something. I spent 10 minutes arguing for your grocery bill, and I came out of it respecting the produce aisle. Don't tell anyone.

ReaganYour secret's safe, Rush. I'll say I enjoyed defending the courts a little too much.

Rush LindellYou were dangerous in that robe.

ReaganThe honest lesson of the Swap is that the best arguments are the ones you can make for the other side. We'll check the scorecard when the numbers come in.