CNBC Daily Open: Headwinds from Middle East, tailwinds from China

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Pedestrians holding Chinese flags outside a Chanel SA store on Nanjing East Road in Shanghai, China, on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024.

Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

What you need to know today

Geopolitical uncertainty
Major U.S. indexes all closed slightly above the flatline on Wednesday. Oil prices continued rising, helping energy stocks outperform. Nike fell 6.8% and Tesla lost 3.5%. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 inched up 0.05%. Defense stocks like Saab and Thales rose in response to the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

OpenAI’s $157 billion valuation
OpenAI has raised $6.6 billion in its latest funding round, putting it at a valuation of $157 billion. The round was led by Thrive Capital – which planned to invest $1 billion – and included participation from Microsoft, Nvidia and Softbank, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

Tesla’s deliveries missed expectations
Tesla stocks fell 3.5% after it reported deliveries that missed expectations. In the third quarter of 2024, Tesla delivered 462,890 vehicles, slightly below the 463,310 estimate compiled by FactSet StreetAccount. Tesla doesn’t report sales numbers for specific models or regions, so deliveries are the closest approximation to them.

More-than-expected private jobs added
The U.S. private sector added 143,000 jobs in September, according to a report by payrolls processing firm ADP. That’s more than the 128,000 predicted by economists polled by Dow Jones and higher than August’s upwardly revised figure of 103,000. It’s a sign that the labor market isn’t as flabby as some had feared.

[PRO] October’s volatility has begun
The S&P 500 moves an average of more than 1% in either direction each day in October, according to CNBC Pro analysis, based on FactSet data going back to 1950. And October is already living up to that reputation, writes CNBC Pro’s Fred Imbert. Here’s how one Wall Street analyst is preparing for the historically choppy month.

The bottom line

The nature of today’s globalized world means that the manufacturing process of one smartphone may take it to more places around the world than I will ever be.

It may begin with designing a blueprint in the U.S., sourcing minerals from China, manufacturing semiconductors in Taiwan, assembling the product in India and working with the European Union to meet standards.

But supply lines are so intricately connected that the moment one link in the chain snaps, the whole process can be interrupted.

That’s why the recent tension in the Middle East – already simmering for a year, now bubbling slightly more furiously – has weighed on investor sentiment across the world. The conflict’s effects are magnified because the region is the epicenter of oil production, and oil is, well, literally the fuel for the global economy.

Furthermore, producing oil is not like manufacturing a smartphone, in which a company can shift assembly to another country. Either there is or isn’t oil in the land. Oil suppliers are bound to where they are.

You’d expect that markets would have been shaken by that threat to the global economy. But all major U.S. indexes managed to close just a tad above the flatline. The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged, the Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a 0.09% gain and the Nasdaq Composite ticked up 0.08%.

Headwinds blowing from Middle East might have been tempered by optimism in China.

Lifted by Beijing’s recent announcement of economic stimulus, Chinese stocks have been on a tear. That’s caused U.S. exchange-traded funds that track Chinese stocks to rally, helping to keep the U.S. market afloat amid worries over the escalating Middle East conflict.

Indeed, U.S. stocks tend to benefit whenever the Chinese government unleashes economic stimulus and credit expansion, according to Ryan Grabinski, strategist at Strategas Securities.

Here’s the flipside of globalization: Negative developments in one part of the world may weigh down others, but positive ones will radiate optimism beyond their origin.