Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch. Our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, October 1st I'm your host Kim Kahn. Our top story so far.

Iran is preparing to imminently launch a ballistic missile attack on Israel,

several news outlets reported citing a senior White House official, an attack would mark a significant

escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran, whose proxies include Hamas and Hezbollah.

The prospect of Mideast conflict escalation pushed commodities prices higher and equity prices lower along with yields.

Israel on Tuesday started a ground incursion on Lebanon with the Israeli military saying troops are seeking Hezbollah targets in the border area. Gold prices continue

to approach the record high as spot gold rose 1%. Crude oil erase losses after the reports.

W.T.I. jumped up 3.7% to above $70 per barrel.

Brent moved up 3.5%.

Brent had declined as much as 2.5% earlier in the day, with W.T.I.

down about 2.7%. U.S. stocks also sold off. The NASDAQ led the declines off

nearly 2 percent, while the S&P fell 1.2 percent and the Dow drops 0.7 percent.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell 7 basis points to 3.72 and the 2-year yield fell 5 basis points to 3.6%.

Looking to the U.S. economy, it's jolz time. The number of job openings in the U.S.

climbed to 8.04 million in August from 7.711 million in July,

significantly more than the 7.64 million expected.

The job openings and labor turnover survey also showed that the hires rate dipped to 3.3% in August

from 3.4% in the prior month, while the quits rate declined to 1.9% its lowest level since June 2020.

That's down from 2.1% in the previous month.

Economist Ernie Tagechee says,

the labor markets will not reflect the effects of rate cuts for a while.

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