By midday Monday, the worst of the morning was already fading. The S&P 500 was down 0.5% at 7,704, roughly half the decline it showed at its intraday low of 7,667, and the Nasdaq composite was off 0.6% at 26,923, well above the low of 26,710 where it had been down 1.3%, according to MarketWatch’s live coverage.
What turned the tide was oil. Brent crude futures, which had touched $101.24 for a gain of 3.9%, pulled back sharply to $97.52, up just 0.1% on the day, after CNN reported that President Trump is open to relief from sanctions on Iran if there is real progress on nuclear issues. The White House signal landed as the sharpest relief rally of the young session, pulling futures off the floor and giving the whole market room to breathe.
Beneath that bounce, though, the rotation was brutal. Chipmakers and AI-linked stocks slid as Treasury yields kept climbing, with the iShares Semiconductor ETF down more than 3%. ARM Holdings fell more than 8% to lead Nasdaq 100 losers, while Intel and Qualcomm each dropped more than 6%, and AMD and SanDisk fell more than 5%, Barchart reported. Marvell lost more than 4%, and Micron, Seagate, and Western Digital each fell more than 3%.
Miners were hit just as hard as gold and silver tumbled to one-and-three-quarter-month lows. Anglogold Ashanti dropped more than 6%, Coeur Mining and Hecla Mining each fell more than 5%, and Newmont and Barrick Mining each lost more than 4%, according to Barchart.
Software sagged too. Atlassian fell more than 4%, Salesforce dropped more than 4% to lead the Dow’s losers, and ServiceNow and Oracle each fell more than 3%, Barchart reported. One of the session’s sharpest single-name moves belonged to Bloom Energy, down more than 9% to lead S&P 500 losers after Oracle sent a New Mexico data center developer a force majeure notice, an apparent attempt to delay payments if the project gets derailed.
The thread tying it all together was the bond market. The 10-year Treasury yield rose more than 3 basis points to 5.219%, the 30-year climbed about 2 basis points to 5.529%, and the 2-year gained more than 5 basis points to 4.916%, Stocktwits reported. The 10-year had climbed Thursday to its highest since June 2007, while the 30-year reached its highest since 2004.
What to watch from here: Fed Governor Lisa Cook and Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin both speak Monday afternoon, and the week’s data gauntlet starts in earnest with consumer confidence and job openings Tuesday, core PCE inflation and the Q2 GDP final print Wednesday, and the September jobs report Friday. Markets are pricing roughly a two-in-three chance of another Fed rate hike in October, so every data point this week carries real weight for where yields and stocks go next.
