Stocks holding on to most of yesterday's gains. Interest rates are flat. Crude oil breaks $89.

Stocks went out on a high yesterday, defying the September reputation of the worst month of the year.

Energy continues its strong run: The XLE ETF is up 1.3% on higher crude prices, now up 3.5% for September, 12.6% for 3Q23, and 9.1% YTD. Energy remains attractive on a fundamental basis; consider Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), the largestoil company, has only a 9.3X P/E (5.3X EV/EBITDA) and a 3.2% dividend yield.

While the push for green energy, especially electric vehicles, has some investors concerned
about the long-term prospects for oil demand, the shift away will likely take much longer than hoped and will require a significant increase in electricity demand whose base load is still best served by natural gas generation.

Today is Apple 's (NASDAQ:AAPL) rollout of new iPhones, iPads, watches, headphones, etc. There are certainly questions regarding the slowdown in their upgrade cycle as after the move to 5G and high pixel cameras, an increasing number of consumers are not motivated to replace their phones for incremental improvements in processing speed, battery life, even better cameras, etc.

Their phones are"good enough", especially when budgets are tight. We've seen the same slowdown in PC upgrades. Apple is down 1.6% today before the presentation, down 6% in September following the China call for state
employees to not bring iPhones to work, but still up 41% YTD primarily from multiple expansions.

Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) is down 12.2% today (+32.8% YTD), after a slight miss on the top and a small beat on the bottom for its first fiscal quarter, due to weaker guidance. Their comments on the cloud markets have pulled down other players in that sector, another sign of cooling expectations of AI enthusiasm.

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As the trading day continues stocks have given back all of yesterday's gains and then some with only the Dow in the green. So far, however, this September is still doing a lot better than historical trends.

A"cursed" portrait of a little girl that has twice been returned to a charity shop for being"haunted" has been sold for more than £1,680 ($2090) in an online auction. Source: Sky News. See the full story here .