As of 8:30am CT on Tuesday, September 29, Wall Street is catching its breath. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were up roughly 0.2% and 0.1%, while Nasdaq 100 futures added about 0.3%, a modest bounce after all three major indexes started the week with losses (Investopedia).
The real story is in the bond market. The 10-year Treasury yield, which sets the tone for everything from mortgages to credit cards, eased to about 5.21% after closing Monday at 5.24%, a new 19-year high, and after touching 5.274% intraday, the highest since June 2007 (Investopedia, Barron’s). That brief pause matters because the yield’s relentless climb is what knocked stocks down on Monday. Traders now see a 70% chance the Fed raises rates at its late-October meeting, up from 55% a week ago, according to CME FedWatch (Investopedia).
Oil is offering some relief too. Brent crude fell about 1% to $96.82 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate dropped roughly 1% to $91.67, as Saudi Arabia ramped up exports through its critical East-West pipeline (Barron’s). There was even a flicker of diplomacy: Al Jazeera reported, citing Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, that Tehran held indirect talks with the U.S. through Qatari mediators in New York (Schwab Network). The war in the Middle East is nowhere near resolved, but markets will take any sign of progress.
Overnight, Asia was mixed. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.60% while China’s Shanghai Composite rose 0.18%. Europe caught a bid in the afternoon, with the STOXX Europe 600 climbing 0.62% and London’s FTSE 100 up 0.42% (Barron’s).
Elsewhere, gold futures ticked up about 0.5% to $4,187 an ounce, and bitcoin climbed around 0.8% to $84,035, rebounding from Monday’s low near $82,500. The VIX, Wall Street’s fear gauge, fell 1.4% to 15.85 after an 8% jump on Monday, and the dollar index edged up 0.11% to 101.304 (Schwab Network, Barron’s).
What to watch next: Wednesday’s August personal consumption expenditures report, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, will show whether price pressures are spreading beyond energy, as UBS chief investment officer Mark Haefele noted (Barron’s).
In premarket stock action, the AI trade was finding its feet after Monday’s selloff. Nvidia gained about 0.9%, extending a winning streak after Monday’s $150 billion boost to its share buyback plan, while Marvell, Micron, and Broadcom each rose roughly 1%. Summit Therapeutics jumped as much as 24% after AstraZeneca announced a $2 billion investment in the cancer-drug developer (Barron’s, Investors.com).
For now, the market’s message is simple: one calm morning does not make a trend, but after Monday’s rough open, calm is welcome.
