Weekend brief: Brent ends the week at $116.72, the 10-year is back at 5.00% and the Fed decides Wednesday

U.S. stock markets are shut until futures reopen at 6 PM ET Sunday, so every market figure below is as of Friday’s close unless it says otherwise. The week ended with oil at a six-month high, the 10-year Treasury yield back at 5.00% and the Dow down more than 1% on the day. The Federal Reserve announces its decision on Wednesday.

Friday’s close

Index closes and oil settlements are from Yahoo Finance and match our Friday close story; yields are from the Treasury’s par curve. Weekly changes compare with the Oct. 16 closes in our last weekend brief and are our arithmetic. We did not pull week-earlier figures for gold or the 10-year.

Why oil matters more than usual for Sunday night

Brent’s $116.72 settlement is its highest since April 29, and Friday’s chart shows it 1.1% below that spring peak. CNBC attributed the rise to expectations of renewed U.S. action against Iran and continued Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia. A Bloomberg video headline on Saturday says oil markets are bracing for renewed Iran fighting, and a Reuters headline says the Saudi-led coalition reports intercepting Houthi ballistic missiles aimed at Saudi cities. We could not read either article, so we cannot add detail and treat them as headlines only. Our War Room brief has the confirmed state of each front.

Because the market is closed, any weekend development is priced in a single jump at the reopen rather than across a session. Against the board’s Saturday morning reading, WTI on the Chronicle board shows about $105.3, which is a quote on a thinly traded weekend feed and not a settlement; Friday’s $103.27 is the number to measure against.

Fuel is the channel into everyday business. Our Main Street piece works through what $116 Brent means for owner-operators, plow crews and grocers.

France: another weekend of protests

A Bloomberg video headline and a Financial Times headline say France deployed 70,000 officers for new protests today, and Reuters headlines a large security operation as marchers prepare. Bloomberg Economics also headlines that euro-area business activity cooled on weakness in France. These are headlines only. What we can confirm from our own reading is Moody’s decision this week to keep France at Aa3 with a negative outlook.

Rates, mortgages and bitcoin

The Treasury’s par yield curve shows the 2-year at 4.69%, the 10-year at 5.00% and the 30-year at 5.33% on Friday. The 10-year was 5.13% on Wednesday and 4.96% on Thursday. Freddie Mac’s latest weekly 30-year mortgage average, released Thursday, is 7.32%, down from 7.40% a week earlier. On a $400,000 loan, that 0.08-point drop trims the principal-and-interest payment by roughly $22 a month by our calculation, and a 10-year back above 5.13% would erase it. Bitcoin was $80,660 on Coinbase at 8:31 AM ET, down 1.2% over 24 hours; see today’s crypto prices.

The week ahead

Our economic calendar lists:

• Sunday, 6 PM ET: equity-index and gold futures reopen.
• Wednesday, Oct. 28: Fed funds target rate decision, forecast 3.875%. The current rate is 3.88%.
• Thursday, Oct. 29: initial jobless claims, forecast 200,000 against 194,000 previously. Amazon reports earnings that day, per our AWS story.
• Nov. 2 to 6: ISM manufacturing (prior 54.5), JOLTS job openings, ADP employment and nonfarm payrolls, with unemployment last at 4.2%.

We have not confirmed a full earnings list or Fed speakers for the week, so we leave them out.

Sources: U.S. Department of the Treasury, CNBC, Freddie Mac, Yahoo Finance, Coinbase, Chronicle economic calendar; Bloomberg, Reuters and Financial Times headlines noted as unread. This is market information, not investment advice.