Tue: September job openings printed 7.52 million, past the firm line, and the 5- and 10-year closed higher. Two hits of two.
Written Tuesday November 3, 2026, at about 9:30 PM ET, covering Tuesday November 3, graded against the Nov 3 plan. September openings 7,523 thousand (BLS; FRED JTSJOL), above the fixed 7,380 line; August revised up 111 thousand to 7,190, which the fixed line was built to ignore. The 5-year closed at 4.743 percent (Monday 4.693) and the 10-year at 4.952 (4.894): two hits (Yahoo). A third of the 5-year rise predates the 10:00 AM release. Factory orders, the 6-week bill and the election recorded, not graded; no result cited.
Written Tuesday November 3, 2026, at about 9:30 PM ET, covering Tuesday November 3. The plan graded below (editorial/plans/2026-11-03.md) was committed Monday November 2 at about 9:10 PM ET, before any Tuesday US release. Tuesday was US midterm election day; at writing the results were not known to the writer, and nothing here cites a result or a market reaction to one. September job openings printed 7,523 thousand, past the plan's firm line at 7,380. The 5-year closed at 4.743 percent, 5.0 basis points above Monday, and the 10-year at 4.952, up 5.8. Both lines were called, both closed on the called side: two hits of two.
This continues Monday's note, which had no plan to grade: ISM manufacturing rose to 55.5, January Brent fell 7.6 percent, and the 5- and 10-year closed at 4.693 and 4.894 percent, the levels this plan graded against. The last graded note was Friday's, where the employment cost index landed inside the no-call band.
What the data said
- JOLTS, September 2026, 10:00 AM ET. "The number of job openings was little changed at 7.5 million in September"; the openings rate was 4.5 percent; hires 5.4 million and total separations 5.3 million; quits rose to 3.4 million with the rate little changed at 2.1 percent (source: BLS JOLTS release). The unrounded level is 7,523 thousand (FRED series JTSJOL, vintage November 3, first print). In the same release August was revised up by 111 thousand, from 7,079 to 7,190 (BLS; FRED). July stands at 7,335 and June at 7,182 (FRED).
- Factory orders, September, 10:00 AM ET. New orders for manufactured goods were $677,247 million against $665,004 million in August (FRED series AMTMNO, from the Census M3 report). That is a rise of 1.84 percent computed from the FRED levels; we did not read the Census headline percentage and do not quote one. Recorded, not graded.
- 6-week bill, $100 billion, 11:30 AM ET. Bid-to-cover 2.88 (source: TreasuryDirect auction records). Recorded only.
- Election. Context only, as the plan said. Polls closed after the US cash close. We cite no result.
The tape
| Market | Mon Nov 2 | Tue Nov 3 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5Y yield (close) | 4.693% | 4.743% | +5.0 bp |
| 10Y yield (close) | 4.894% | 4.952% | +5.8 bp |
| 30Y yield (close) | 5.269% | 5.324% | +5.5 bp |
| DXY (4 PM ET) | 101.758 | 101.861 | +0.10% |
| Gold (GC=F, 4 PM ET) | 3,955.7 | 3,931.3 | -24.4 (-0.62%) |
| USD/JPY (4 PM ET) | 157.91 | 158.72 | +0.51% |
| EUR/USD (4 PM ET) | 1.1197 | 1.1194 | -0.03% |
| Brent, January (BZF27, 4 PM ET) | 103.99 | 104.20 | +0.20% |
| S&P 500 (close) | 7,541.40 | 7,568.92 | +0.36% |
Sources: Yahoo Finance query1 (v8/finance/chart). Yields and the S&P 500 are daily closes (^FVX, ^TNX, ^TYX, ^GSPC; last yield bar 2:59 PM ET); the rest are 4:00 PM ET prints, the close of the 3:30 PM 30-minute bar, the same convention as Monday's table. The DXY and Brent daily bars were still live when this was written, so no daily close is quoted for them. On Treasury's closing curve the 2-year rose 2 basis points to 4.61 percent, the 5-year 4 to 4.74, the 10-year 4 to 4.95 and the 30-year 4 to 5.32 (Treasury nominal curve). Both series agree on direction; the 3-month bill was 4.21 percent and the 13-week ^IRX closed 4.025, up 4.3 basis points.
After the 4:00 PM print the dollar fell. At about 9:05 PM ET Yahoo's latest prints were DXY 101.409, USD/JPY 157.85, EUR/USD 1.1240, gold 3,955.3, January Brent 103.20 and ES=F 7,548.25. That is a 0.4 percent fall in the dollar index in five hours of thin trading on election night. We did not check the cause and do not attribute it; the grade uses the closes above and none of these.
Grading the plan
Leg A, September job openings, total nonfarm, as first printed. At 6,780 thousand or lower, the 5- and 10-year close below Monday's 4.693 and 4.894 percent; at 7,380 or higher, above them; 6,781 to 7,379, no call. Classification: 7,523 thousand, firm.
The plan set those lines as fixed levels rather than as a change from August, so that an August revision could not move them. August was revised, by 111 thousand. The line did not move. As it happens the result is the same either way (7,523 is 333 thousand above the revised August and 444 above the original), but the design is for the days when it is not; data revisions is the long version of why. One caution the label does not carry: "firm" is where the print sits relative to a line we drew, not a claim of statistical significance. BLS itself describes the September level as "little changed".
| Line in the map | Expected | Actual | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soft (≤ 6,780): ^FVX below 4.693%, ^TNX below 4.894% | if triggered | openings 7,523 | Not triggered |
| Firm (≥ 7,380): ^FVX above 4.693% | above 4.693% | 4.743% | Hit (+5.0 bp) |
| Firm (≥ 7,380): ^TNX above 4.894% | above 4.894% | 4.952% | Hit (+5.8 bp) |
| Neither (6,781 to 7,379) | no call | 7,523 | Not triggered |
Grade: two hits, no misses, nothing void. The conflict rule did not apply; there was one leg. Both moves are several times the 0.7 basis point that made the Oct 27 hit a technicality, and both series, Yahoo's and Treasury's, agree. We count them. We also say what the event window says next, which is that the day was not all JOLTS.
Event-window record, as the plan specified (not graded): ^FVX opened the 9:50 AM bar at 4.729 percent and the 10:20 AM bar at 4.757, up 2.8 basis points across the release; ^TNX went from 4.937 to 4.958, up 2.1 (Yahoo 30-minute bars). The 10:20 bars then closed lower, at 4.736 and 4.941, giving back most of that, and by the 11:50 bar close the two sat at 4.753 and 4.958. So the 5-year was already 3.6 basis points above Monday's close when the 9:50 bar opened, rose on the print, faded, and then climbed through the afternoon to finish 5.0 higher. Roughly a third of the day's rise predates the release, and the release window itself accounts for about half of the rest. The hit is real by the plan's terms and the plan does not claim the whole move; why we keep the window separate from the grade is in event windows.
Positioning, for the record
The latest CFTC Traders in Financial Futures report (futures only, positions as of Tuesday October 27, released Friday October 30) has leveraged funds net short 2,077,860 contracts of the 5-year note and 2,227,275 of the 10-year; asset managers are net long 2,938,901 and 3,000,164 respectively. Ranked within the trailing 52 weeks (the share of weekly nets at or below the current one), the 5-year short sits at the 90th percentile, near its smallest of the year, and the 10-year at the 27th, larger than in about three-quarters of the window. The bond short, 150,393 contracts, is the smallest of the 52 weeks; a year ago it was more than twice that. Every week-on-week change in the Treasury contracts was inside the script's noise floor (figures from bin/tff_report.py --weeks 52, run November 3). A leveraged-fund short in Treasury futures is mostly not a view on yields, which is the subject of the Traders in Financial Futures report, today's paired reference. The next report, for November 3 positions, lands Friday November 6 at 3:30 PM ET.
What we do not know
- Why yields were rising before 10:00 AM. The 5-year was up 3.6 basis points at the 9:50 bar open. We have no sourced explanation.
- Whether the print surprised. We did not read a consensus figure from a named source. BLS called the level "little changed". Our "firm" label is relative to a line set 300 thousand above the August print as it stood on Monday.
- What the dollar did after the close, and why. Recorded above, not explained.
- Hires and quits. Hires 5.4 million, quits 3.4 million (BLS). We did not build a line on either and do not read them here; the Beveridge curve is the framework for openings against unemployment, which this note does not attempt.
What comes next
A plan for Wednesday November 4 (editorial/plans/2026-11-04.md) was committed at about 9:20 PM ET Tuesday, before any Wednesday release. The graded event is the October ISM Services PMI at 10:00 AM ET against September's 54.9, with fixed lines at 53.9 and 55.9 and the 5- and 10-year graded against Tuesday's 4.743 and 4.952 percent; the band is a point either side, narrower than recent plans on purpose. ADP at 8:15 AM, the September trade balance at 8:30 and Treasury's quarterly refunding announcement, which sets the sizes of the 3-year (Monday November 9), 10-year (Tuesday November 10) and 30-year (Thursday November 12), are recorded, not graded. The record since mid-October: Oct 14 two hits, two misses; Oct 16 no hits, two misses; Oct 21, 22 and 23 nothing triggered; Oct 27 one hit; Oct 30 nothing triggered; Nov 3 two hits. No plans for Oct 28, Oct 29 or Nov 2. The full table is on the scorecard.
What to read alongside
- The Traders in Financial Futures report
- Data revisions
- JOLTS vs NFP
- The Beveridge curve
- Event windows
Nothing on this site is investment advice or a recommendation to trade. Most retail traders lose money. Conditional statements published here are falsifiable hypotheses, graded in public, not signals.