Gold Tops $4,000 as Stocks Slip; Tesla Teases Cheaper Model Y Amid Autonomy Push

U.S. stocks ended lower Tuesday while gold notched a historic milestone, reflecting investors’ bid for havens against a noisy policy backdrop and event-heavy corporate tape. The Dow fell 91.99 points, or 0.20%, to 46,603.0, the S&P 500 lost 0.38% to 6,714.59, and the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.67% to 22,788.4. Small caps lagged, with the Russell 2000 at 244.16, down 2.65 (1.07%). Meanwhile, gold futures (Dec ’25) closed at $4,002.60, up 0.66%, vaulting above the $4,000 mark for the first time, while U.S. crude (Nov ’25) added 0.58% to $62.05.

The precious-metal surge caps a year-long run driven by demand for alternative assets as economic worries accumulate, according to the provided notes, which flag year-to-date gains surpassing 50% and Tuesday’s first-ever close north of $4,000.

Washington remained a complicating factor. A leaked memo indicated the administration is weighing whether furloughed workers will receive back pay when the government reopens, an interpretation critics say misreads the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act. “another baseless attempt to try and scare” federal workers, said Sen. Patty Murray, according to the document. The shutdown, in its seventh day, has already disrupted some Labor Department data collection, the notes add.

Tesla in Focus: Software First—and Cheaper Metal Next.

Tesla pushed deeper into its autonomy roadmap, rolling out FSD (Supervised) v14.1 with new “Arrival Options,” an added speed profile and updates for emergency-vehicle interactions. The software drop coincides with a record operational print—447,450 vehicles produced and 497,099 delivered in Q3, alongside 12.5 GWh of energy-storage deployments—with financial results slated for Oct. 22. A fresh Bank of America Institute study sketches a widening autonomous-vehicle opportunity —$1.2 trillion by 2040, with per-mile costs falling 52% once the driver is removed—yet warns that “AV2.0” systems require 100 petabytes of fleet data after three years and roughly 10× the GPUs used in today’s L2 assistance, underscoring capital and infrastructure demands. Public adoption remains a hurdle: only 13% of U.S. adults say they trust AV tech even as 94% of crashes link to human error, the study says.

Investor attention then swung to “Teaser Tuesday.” A nine-second clip tagged “10/7” has traders leaning toward a lower-cost Model Y—about 10% cheaper through de-contenting and manufacturing tweaks—rather than a clean-sheet reveal. The strategy would aim to offset the expiration of the $7,500 U.S. EV credit on Sept. 30 with internal cost deflation, supporting price points without torpedoing margins and helping counter intensifying competition abroad, according to the notes. With Q3 deliveries already topping expectations, investors will probe Oct. 22 guidance for the timing, pricing and margin mix of any trimmed Y variant—and whether the company ties the rollout to its autonomy narrative.

Elsewhere in single-name action, AppLovin offered a case study in headline risk and positioning. Shares plunged late Monday after a Bloomberg report said the SEC is looking into the company’s data-collection practices, then rebounded Tuesday, recapturing roughly 60% of the drop as Citi, Oppenheimer and Wedbush stuck to constructive views and shorts reassessed.