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Off-the-charts stock market volatility is a sign we’re living financial history

The S&P 500’s daily ranges in each of the first three sessions of the week all rank in the top 35, based on data going back to 1982.

Luke Kawa

As any rabid “White Lotus” fan can tell you, it’s a common superstition that good and bad things tend to come in threes.

That’s what we’ve seen in the US stock market so far this week. It was a trifecta of exceptionally volatile sessions, with one relatively flat day, followed by one big loss, and capped off by the S&P 500’s largest daily gain since 2008 after President Donald Trump diluted most of his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days.

Monday saw a swing from a low of -4.7% to up as much as 3.4%, Tuesday from a high of 4.1% to down 3%, and Wednesday’s 10% daily peak came after a 0.7% intraday decline.

Those sessions all rank in the 35 biggest daily ranges for the S&P 500 based on data from Bloomberg going back to 1982, with Wednesday cracking the top five. To track the range, we measured the distance between the day’s high and low relative to the previous session’s closing price, in percentage points.

For context, the average daily range is about 1.2 percentage points, with the median at 1 percentage point.

If you scan through the dates on this list, you’ll notice that nearly all of them are associated with major economic and financial events, the kind that get memorialized in capital-letter terms for decades to come. Think Black Monday, Global Financial Crisis, Dot-Com Bubble, and so on. It’s a neat way to be able to appreciate the gravity of the present moment: we’re living financial history. 

And I suppose that any time our colleague David Crowther reminds us that volatility loves company, we should sit up a little straighter and listen.

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Opendoor surges on bullish options bets as traders look to potential real estate tokenization

Opendoor Technologies is surging on Friday amid bullish options bets and social media posts referencing unconfirmed rumors about the company.

The stock moved higher in the premarket session after the soft inflation report boosted stocks and briefly pushed long-term bond yields lower (positive for a real estate company). But the real gains came after the opening bell rang and options demand picked up.

As of 12:11 p.m. ET, roughly 664,000 call options have changed hands versus a 10-day average of about 364,000 for a full session.

What seems to be galvanizing members of the “$OPEN Army” is the potential for the company to pursue the tokenization of real-world assets, with Robinhood often bandied about as a potential partner in this endeavor.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

Opendoor bulls have often pointed to signs that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev appears to be fond of the company, from what appeared on-screen during a demo of a social trading feature at HOOD’s conference in Las Vegas in September to offering support to Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian in setting up an opportunity for retail shareholders to ask questions during the online real estate company’s next earnings call.

Opendoor is currently in a quiet period ahead of earnings, which restricts what type of announcements a company can make.

The call options seeing the most demand expire this Friday with strike prices of $8, $8.50, and $9.

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Beyond Meat gains amid slightly better-than-expected Q3 sales, positive commentary on legal issues

Shares of Beyond Meat built on their premarket gains after the plant-based meat seller reported preliminary Q3 sales a bit ahead of Wall Street’s expectations, before paring this advance after the market opened.

For the three months ended September 27, management said net revenue would be approximately $70 million. That’s in line with their guidance range of $68 million to $73 million, but Wall Street was expecting sales to skew toward the lower end of that range, at $68.7 million.

However, its anticipated gross margin of 10% to 11% is lower than analysts had been expecting (13.8%). That’s still the case even adjusting for expenses related to its downsizing of operations in China, which would have left margins around 12% to 13%, per Beyond.

Perhaps more importantly, the company provided positive commentary regarding arbitration discussions with a former co-manufacturer that appear to bring it closer to a resolution while limiting potential damages:

“As previously disclosed, in March 2024, a former co-manufacturer brought an action against the Company in a confidential arbitration proceeding claiming that the Company inappropriately terminated its agreement with the co-manufacturer and claimed damages of at least $73.0 million. On September 15, 2025, the arbitrator issued an interim award (the ‘Interim Award’) and found that the Company had a valid basis to terminate the agreement with the Manufacturer. The details of the Interim Award are confidential, and a final arbitration award has not been issued. Additional proceedings will be held to determine the award of attorneys’ fees, prejudgment interest and costs, if any, before a final arbitration award will be issued. On September 25, 2025, the Manufacturer filed a request with the arbitrator to re-open the arbitration hearing. On September 29, 2025, the Company opposed this request. On October 20, 2025, the arbitrator denied the Manufacturer’s request.”

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