Business
The U.S. government shutdown means investors are flying blind when it comes to high-quality data—and they like it that way
- The U.S. government shutdown has halted federal economic data collection, leaving investors without official employment or inflation figures. Despite flying blind, markets remain upbeat as stocks near record highs. Gold fell sharply. And Q3 earnings estimates look strong, boosted by AI investment.
S&P 500 futures were up marginally this morning after the index closed flat yesterday, near its all-time high. Markets in both Europe and Asia were up or flat this morning, too. Gold, the traditional safe-haven asset which has gained 55% year-to-date, lost 5.3% yesterday—its biggest decline in five years.
In other words, investors appear to be shifting from risk-off positions into risk-on mode.
One interesting aspect of this is that the ongoing U.S. government shutdown will likely prevent Bureau of Labor Statistics from collecting the October data on employment and inflation, according to Ronnie Walker and his colleagues at Goldman Sachs.
That would mean investors are currently flying blind when it comes to high-quality macroeconomic data—and they appear to be enjoying the view.
“The collection and release of nearly all federal economic data is postponed until after the government shutdown ends. The potential impact of the shutdown on the quality and availability of the October employment report and CPI depends on what data can be collected retroactively,” Walker wrote in a note to clients.
“The shutdown appears most problematic for the quality of the CPI. While the use of alternative data means that prices can be collected retroactively for series that make up 10-20% of the basket, the vast majority of CPI price quotes are collected by hand and are collected roughly evenly across the calendar month,” he said.
Among the BLS’s options would be to attempt to collect the data retroactively, to estimate the data, or to simply leave a hole in the data—which would affect economists’ ability to correctly calculate averages for a range of data series.
Private data surveys aren’t as good, according to Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen at Pantheon Macroeconomics: “The absence of official data during the federal government shutdown is shining a brighter spotlight on the monthly business and consumer surveys. Some of these surveys contain indicators which are well correlated with the official data on employment, prices, wages and capex, but they generally fall down as guides to GDP.”
In the absence of data that might throw cold water on the party going on in stocks right now, Q3 earnings reports are likely to lift stocks further.
Dubravko Lakos-Bujas and his team at JPMorgan estimate that the S&P 500 earninugs will grow by 12% once all companies have reported. “U.S. companies should continue to deliver superior earnings growth supported by a robust AI investment cycle, ongoing deficit spending, and a still resilient consumer. We anticipate S&P 500 will deliver another quarter of double-digit earnings growth (~12%), driven by above-trend growth from the AI 30 companies (3Q25 consensus: 14%) and rebounding growth for S&P 470 (3Q25 consensus at ~4% vs. 2024 at -0.4%).”
Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:
- S&P 500 futures were up 0.11% this morning. The index closed flat in its last session.
- STOXX Europe 600 was flat in early trading.
- The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.83% in early trading.
- Japan’s Nikkei 225 was flat.
- China’s CSI 300 was down 0.33%.
- The South Korea KOSPI was up 1.56%.
- India’s Nifty 50 was flat before the end of the session.
- Bitcoin was flat at $108K.
