Last night and this morning, as this year's third-quarter earnings season for US stocks started with a strong "opening red", the three major indices all closed higher. On the verge of completing the second consecutive year of a bull market, the S&P 500 index set a new record for the 45th time this year, and for the first time in history, it broke through the 5800-point mark.

As of Friday's closing, the S&P 500 index rose by 0.61%, reaching 5,815.03 points; the Nasdaq index increased by 0.33%, reaching 18,342.94 points; the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed by 0.97%, reaching 42,863.86 points, also setting a historical high.

In fact, looking back at the starting point of this bull market for the S&P 500 index—October 13, 2022—it's not hard to see that the US stock market was in a rather turbulent state at that time. Before that day, the index had been falling intermittently for nearly 10 months, and the September CPI announced that day exceeded expectations, reaching 8.2%, triggering a new wave of dives, which directly locked in a 75 basis point aggressive rate hike by the Federal Reserve a month later.

However, with a collective surge in financial stocks, the US stock market experienced a historically rare violent reversal on that day. The S&P 500 index plummeted 2% at the opening to 3,491 points, then rebounded by over 4%, and finally closed above 3,600 points.

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A day later, JPMorgan Chase led Wall Street's financial giants to deliver third-quarter reports that could only be considered satisfactory, and the new round of the US stock market bull market started to wobble on its way.

We now know that the Federal Reserve added another 150 basis points before ending the entire rate hike cycle, and it waited a year before starting to cut rates, during which there was almost a systemic banking crisis caused by too rapid rate hikes. At the same time, the capital boom triggered by the advent of ChatGPT has not stopped to this day, often causing concerns about "too concentrated gains."

Coincidentally, local time Friday was also the day when the 2024 US third-quarter earnings season began. Just as traders were worried that rate cuts would weaken bank profits, JPMorgan Chase reported unexpectedly strong net interest income, Wells Fargo's net interest income decreased, but disclosed that the decline in the fourth quarter would be smaller than expected. The world's largest asset management company, BlackRock, announced that its assets under management had risen from $10.6 trillion to $11.5 trillion in just three months.

Affected by this, JPMorgan Chase closed up 4.44% on Friday, Wells Fargo rose 5.61%, driving the KBW bank stock index up 3.97%, reaching a new high in two and a half years. BlackRock rose 3.63%, continuing to set a new historical high for its stock price.

Driven by the overall market sentiment, Chinese concept stocks also continued to rise overnight. The Nasdaq China Golden Dragon Index rose strongly on Friday, starting from a nearly 1.5% drop at the opening, and finally closed up 0.91%, rising for the second consecutive trading day.

Performance of popular stocksU.S. tech giants continued to see mixed performances, with Apple down 0.65%, Microsoft up 0.12%, Amazon up 1.16%, META up 1.05%, Google-A up 0.72%, Tesla, which just held a Robotaxi launch event, down 8.78%, Nvidia down 0.01%, and Intel up 1.46%.

Chinese concept stocks continued their upward trend. As of the close, Alibaba was up 0.79%, Tencent ADR was up 0.98%, Pinduoduo was up 2.25%, JD.com was up 1.41%, NetEase was up 0.3%, NIO was up 0.4%, Li Auto was up 0.67%, XPeng Motors was up 1.97%, Jinko Energy was up 4.21%, Beike was up 4.04%, Futu Holdings was up 3.59%, and EHang was up 2.71%.

Other news:

**JPMorgan Chase claims U.S. economy has achieved a soft landing in a conference call**

At the JPMorgan Chase Q3 earnings conference call held on Friday, Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum told analysts that consumers continue to spend and large companies are confident, which is the economic state that the Federal Reserve has been hoping to achieve. Barnum said, "These results are consistent with a soft landing, which is very consistent with this moderate economic condition."

Meanwhile, CEO Jamie Dimon, sitting beside him, continued to emphasize risks, stating that his concerns about macroeconomic issues and geopolitical risks remain as strong as ever, including the increasingly intense conflicts in the Middle East and the record-high debt of the U.S. government.

**Tesla's stock plummets 8% after launch event, Uber emerges as a winner**

The "AI and robotics company" Tesla held a launch event on Thursday evening, unveiling products such as the autonomous taxi (Cybercab) and autonomous van (Robovan). However, due to the lack of technical details and highly vague market timing (compounded by Musk's frequent "jumping of tickets"), the company's stock closed down 8.78% on Friday. In the meantime, ride-hailing platform Uber closed up 10.81%, and Lyft was up 9.59%.

**Boeing to lay off 10% of workforce, 777X model's first delivery delayed until 2026**

Facing a protracted strike and increasingly severe cash flow shortages, Boeing announced plans to lay off about 10% of its workforce to deal with the crisis. CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a memo to employees that the layoffs would include executives, managers, and regular employees. As of the end of 2023, Boeing had a total of 171,000 employees. Ortberg also announced that the first delivery of the already delayed Boeing 777X model would be further postponed until 2026.【Eli Lilly CEO Says Weight Loss Drug Expected to Be Approved in Japan Next Year】

Eli Lilly's Chief Executive Officer, David Ricks, stated on Friday that the weight loss drug Zepbound is anticipated to receive approval in Japan by the middle of next year. Previously, Japan has already granted approval for the injection of tirzepatide, a drug with the same active ingredient, for the treatment of diabetes. Eli Lilly expects that following the approval of the weight loss drug, the company will continue to collaborate with Tanabe Mitsubishi Pharmaceuticals for distribution in the Japanese market.