Good Afternoon. On November 3, 1956, CBS aired The Wizard of Oz on U.S. television for the first time. The broadcast brought the 1939 film into living rooms across the country. Few homes had color TVs, so many viewers missed Oz’s famous burst of color.

—Rosie, Wyatt, Evan & Conor

In this edition

Supplied by StockTwits. ONEQ tracks the Nasdaq Composite; IEF holds U.S. Treasury bonds; GLD tracks gold. These three references are ETFs.

The read: Big tech helped offset Apple’s drop on Tuesday. The S&P 500 gained 0.4%, even as most of its stocks fell. The Nasdaq rose 0.8%, while the Dow slipped 0.4%. A few large companies can steer the broad market, even when most shares head the other way.

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Apple’s sales hit a September-quarter record. Its next quarter comes with a more costly parts list.

Sales rose 12% to $114.5 billion in the quarter ended September 26. The iPhone set a September-quarter sales record, while Services reached a new high. Apple brought in $28 billion in cash from its business.

Apple expects a 45%–46% gross margin in the holiday quarter, down from 47.9%. That’s the share of sales left after the cost of goods and services, before other costs.

Pricier memory chips and Siri AI spending weigh on that outlook, AP reported. More phones sold won’t always mean more kept from each sale.

There’s a wrinkle in the comparison. Tariff refunds added about one percentage point to the latest quarter’s gross margin. Some of the gap reflects that one-time boost.

Apple’s holiday sales will have to carry a higher chip bill. Its forecast already allows for less kept from each sales dollar.

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💼 More job openings, with a measurement caveat

Employers had more jobs to fill in September. Openings rose to 7.5 million from a revised 7.2 million in August. But the Labor Department called that little changed, given the survey’s margin of error. An open role is still a job to fill, rather than someone already hired.

Hires totaled 5.4 million, also little changed. More workers quit, with that count reaching 3.4 million. These are September figures. They don’t tell us how many jobs were added in October.

💊 Pfizer’s growth is hiding outside COVID

Pfizer’s main business is growing as its COVID sales shrink. Third-quarter sales were nearly flat at $16.6 billion. Sales grew 7% when its two main COVID drugs and changes in exchange rates were stripped out. That helped offset the drop in COVID sales.

Pfizer raised its 2026 sales forecast to $62 billion–$64 billion, up $1.5 billion at the midpoint. Profit still fell 8% to $3.24 billion in the quarter. A better outlook doesn’t mean every part of the latest quarter improved.

⛽ Full refineries fuel a profit jump

Marathon Petroleum’s plants ran at 100% of their crude-processing capacity in the third quarter. Profit reached $7.4 billion, up from $1.4 billion a year earlier. The gap between fuel prices and crude costs widened. That meant more earned from each barrel.

Marathon returned $3.3 billion to its owners during the quarter. Its board also approved another $5 billion to buy back shares. Those buys can take place in the future; the money hasn’t all been spent. Marathon can pause them as needs change.

For the first time, Palantir earned more from U.S. companies than from the U.S. government.

Sales to U.S. companies jumped 148% to $984 million in the third quarter. U.S. government sales reached $953 million. Total sales nearly doubled to $2.31 billion, with net profit of $1.13 billion.

The full value of new deals rose 6% to $2.92 billion. That’s the value over each deal’s life, not this quarter’s sales. It assumes clients use their options and don’t end deals early.

Sales already earned and newly signed deals tell us different things. One growth rate can’t stand in for the other.

Palantir expects about $2.65 billion in fourth-quarter sales. Its filings warn that clients can end many deals, even without a breach of contract.

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Australia’s central bank raised borrowing costs again, even as its economy showed signs of slowing.

The Reserve Bank of Australia lifted its cash rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.85%. The vote was 6–3. Three members wanted to leave it at 4.6%.

The bank now expects inflation to stay above 3% over the coming year. It doesn’t expect inflation to return to the top of its 2%–3% target range until late 2027, about nine months later than it previously forecast.

Fuel costs are part of the problem. The bank also cited pressure from demand at home and rising technology costs linked to AI investment.

Higher rates are expected to weigh on housing and household spending. The bank’s new forecasts also show unemployment rising more than it expected in August. Bringing prices under control still comes with a cost.

🛒 Shopify’s merchants keep the checkout busy

Shopify’s merchants handled $119 billion in orders in the third quarter. That’s the value sold through its platform, rather than its own sales. Shopify’s sales grew 32%. Cash left after spending on long-term assets came to 22% of sales. The Canadian firm expects sales growth in the low 30s again in the fourth quarter.

🇨🇭 Swiss prices rise faster as fuel costs climb

Swiss prices rose 1.5% from a year earlier in October, up from September’s 1% pace. Higher heating-oil, petrol and diesel costs drove the rise. A price gauge that leaves out volatile items, such as energy, stayed at 0.5%. The broader rate remains within the Swiss central bank’s 0%–2% range.

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🥸 Dad Joke of the Day

Q: What kind of shoes do ninjas wear?

A: Sneakers.

📖 Vocab Word of the Day · Margin compression

Margin compression: A drop in the share of sales left as profit. It can happen when costs rise faster than the prices a business charges.

In a sentence: Apple expects margin compression next quarter as memory chips and Siri AI add costs.

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