After ten to four

The deeper account

At half past eight on Wednesday the Commerce Department published the personal consumption expenditures price index for August, the inflation measure the Federal Reserve prefers. It had risen 3.4 percent on a year earlier, down from 3.7 in July and below the 3.7 economists had expected; without food and energy it had risen 3.0 percent, against 3.3 expected, and two tenths of a percent on the month, against three. A day after John Williams of the New York Fed had said there was no need for urgency, traders cut the chance of a rate rise at the October meeting to 37 percent, from 50 the day before. The ten-year Treasury yield fell to 5.20 percent on the report and then climbed back through the day to 5.29, above Tuesday's 5.26 — by TheStreet's account its highest since 2002 — and the thirty-year rose to 5.64.

The S&P 500 opened at 7,688.99, 18.15 points above Tuesday's close, and that opening price held as the floor of the day for six hours: the index did not trade below it until 15:37. It made its high, 7,722.88, at 10:55, up 52.04 points, and spent the afternoon easing — to 7,697.73 by 13:20, to 7,692.77 by half past three. At 15:49 it stood at 7,682.61, still 11.77 above Tuesday. In the minute from 15:50 it fell 8.67. At 15:54 it went below Tuesday's close for the first time, steadied for four minutes around 7,667, and then lost 12.51 points in the last minute of trading. The settled close was 7,651.54: down 19.30, and lower than every price printed during the day. Of the 390 minutes of the session, 384 had closed above Tuesday's close; the six that did not were the last six.

Ten minutes before four is when the closing auction begins to show itself. Under the exchanges' rules, orders to buy or sell at the close must be in or cancelled by 3:50; from then on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq publish the imbalance — how many more shares are waiting to be sold at the close than bought, or the other way round — and accept new closing orders only on the side that would offset it. What was in Wednesday's auction nobody published and this page cannot see. The calendar is known: it was the last session of a quarter in which stocks had risen 2.03 percent and the long-bond fund had fallen 10.0, and funds that keep fixed proportions of each must sell the one and buy the other to get back to them. On Monday Goldman Sachs had estimated that American pension funds alone would sell about $33 billion of stock as September ended, larger than ninety-eight percent of its estimates since 2000. TheStreet called the last hour "a sharp final-hour selloff" and named "a possible quarter-end pension rebalance"; the Associated Press put the turn down to reports that the economy had been stronger in the spring than first thought, which kept yields high.

In the feed's complete record of 30-minute bars, 142 sessions since 10 March, only 29 July lost more in its last half hour than Wednesday's 41.20 points, and no other day that finished lower lost as much as twice its whole decline in that half hour. One other session, 1 July, was above the previous close at half past three and below it at four. Wednesday's last ten minutes took the whole of the day's fall and 11.77 points besides.

Underneath the index the day was worse than it looked. Only one of the eleven sectors rose — technology, up 0.64 percent, which is about two fifths of the index by weight — and five fell more than one percent, staples worst at 1.53. The equal-weight fund fell 0.71 percent against the index's 0.21. The Dow fell 443.87 points to 50,906.05, with twenty-three of its thirty members lower and Goldman Sachs and Caterpillar the heaviest; the Nasdaq Composite rose 63.52 to 26,861.06. Both reconcile exactly with this book's Tuesday closes. Jabil fell 10.03 percent after a quarter that beat expectations; Mattel fell 4.24 after its chief executive resigned; Hewlett Packard Enterprise rose 3.90 after raising its revenue forecast, and MongoDB 3.39 after adding $1 billion to its buyback, two sessions after its chief executive left for Meta. Fair Isaac fell another 4.11 percent and Carnival gave back 2.27. Micron reported after the close. Brent crude rose 1.9 percent to $98.03. The VIX finished at 16.34, from 16.04.

So the quarter ends. The index finished September 34.60 points lower, its third losing month in four, and the third quarter 152.18 points higher, up 2.03 percent; for the year it is up 806.04, or 11.77 percent. The week, with two sessions to go, is down 91.87. September's payrolls are due on Friday.

Two honest notes. This page does not know what was in the closing auction or who sold into it; it says what the rules are, what Goldman Sachs estimated and what the wires suspected. And the closes shown for individual companies and funds are the feed's official closing prints; the index close is the settled 7,651.54.

In the photograph it is ten to four on a clear afternoon at the end of September, on a stone promenade beside a river in an old city, and the man in the grey suit is making giant soap bubbles with two sticks and a loop of rope. He has just drawn out the longest of the afternoon, longer than he is tall twice over, shining magenta and gold and green in the low sun, and he has tipped his head back to watch it go. At its far end, in the same instant, it has begun to burst: the film is tearing back toward him, and the end of it is already a spray of glitter falling over the water. He is looking right at it, and he is still smiling.