Monday was one of those days when the bond market did all the talking and stocks had to listen. Wall Street started the week lower, finished lower, and handed the tech sector most of the bill, as Treasury yields pushed to levels not seen since before the financial crisis and a fresh round of corporate drama gave traders plenty to chew on.
The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite led the decline, closing down 0.9%. The benchmark S&P 500 fell 0.8%, and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.7%, according to the Wall Street Journal’s live market coverage. The losses capped a bruising month for the Dow, which is now down 3.2% in September, on pace for its worst September since 2023 and its worst month overall since March, Barron’s reported. The S&P 500 remains up 0.3% for the month and the Nasdaq is up 2.1%, a reminder that the AI trade has been doing the heavy lifting for months while the rest of the market sagged.
The villain of the session was hiding in plain sight on every screen: the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note settled at 5.241%, a fresh 19-year high, up from 5.18% on Friday, the Journal reported. Earlier in the day the bid yield touched 5.272% on an intraday basis, not only a 19-year record but close to a 24-year high. The 30-year yield climbed to 5.561%, the highest in 24 years. Driving the move is a market that has steadily priced in a Federal Reserve rate hike at the late-October meeting. Traders now see a 70% likelihood of a hike next month, up from 58% a week ago, per CME FedWatch data cited by Investopedia.
“Stocks are still seeking a path out of their latest consolidation,” Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing at E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley, said in written commentary, Investopedia reported. “Tech strength has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting for bulls lately, but the broader market hasn’t been able to gain much traction because of rising yields and oil prices.”
Oil stayed volatile. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, closed at $105.28 a barrel, up 0.9%, as traders reacted to conflicting headlines about U.S.-Iran negotiations, the Journal reported. One sign of tight supply: the front-month contract, which expires this week, is trading substantially higher than the December contract.
The day’s standout corporate stories were mostly bad news for individual names. Meta Platforms fell 4% after announcing a new business unit selling AI tools to companies and poaching MongoDB’s chief executive to run it, the Journal’s stocks-to-watch desk reported. MongoDB shares slumped more than 15% on the departure, which comes less than a year after Desai took the top job. Boeing fell more than 6% after a Journal article over the weekend said the jet maker had identified a 737 MAX software glitch that could cause an automated navigation feature to fail. Chip stocks, which have been among the market’s leaders this month, mostly fell: Intel and Micron were among the most actively traded shares, and Oracle dropped 3%, extending losses from last week as questions about a huge debt-fueled data-center project in New Mexico continued to hang over it.
One bright spot: Nvidia rose 2%, bucking the tech selloff after its board authorized a $150 billion increase to its share-repurchase program, a record that brings its total remaining authorization to $235 billion through fiscal 2028. Across the Atlantic, shares of British housebuilders Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey surged after the U.K. government said it would launch a program to help first-time home buyers, the Journal reported.
There was no meaningful after-hours action to rescue or worsen the picture. All eyes now turn to Tuesday’s data: the Case-Shiller home price index, consumer confidence, and the JOLTS job-openings report, followed by speeches from Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee and New York Fed President John Williams. Beyond that, Wednesday brings the August PCE inflation report and Micron’s earnings, and Friday delivers the September jobs report. In a market where every data point is being read as a signal on the next Fed hike, each one matters.
