Chips and Meta lift the Nasdaq to a record as new lows pile up
Arm rose 17%, Intel 12% and Meta 11% as the Nasdaq hit a record. Yet more S&P 500 stocks hit 52-week lows than highs, a split last seen in 1999.
Monday was the best day for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 since early August, and the Nasdaq Composite closed at a record, carried by chipmakers and Meta. The number worth sitting with is underneath: more S&P 500 stocks hit 52-week lows than 52-week highs, which CNBC says last happened in December 1999.
A record built on chips and one AI app
The Nasdaq Composite rose 2.26% to 27,122.09, its first record close since June 2. The S&P 500 gained 1.49% to 7,764.69, about 0.4% below its August 13 record, and the Dow added 0.71% to 52,054.19, according to investingLive and the Motley Fool. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 4.3%.
In our feed, the biggest large-cap gains were almost all chips. Arm (ARM) rose 17.16% to $322.90, Intel (INTC) 12.14% to $121.78 on about 190 million shares, AMD 9.95% to $615.52 and Qualcomm (QCOM) 9.29% to $194.23. AMD’s market value passed $1 trillion for the first time, per CNBC. Applied Materials (AMAT) gained 4.42%, Micron (MU) 2.77% and Nvidia (NVDA) 2.30%.
Meta (META) rose 11.34% to $741.25, adding more than $200 billion in market value during the session, per Benzinga. Yahoo Finance tied the move to a bullish Wells Fargo note and to Meta’s new Muse AI assistant reaching the top of Apple’s US App Store. Meta Connect, its annual conference, starts Wednesday.
The two stories are connected. Reports from Yahoo Finance and StockStory linked the jump in Intel, AMD and Arm to demand for server processors from AI agents, the category Muse belongs to, as well as to optimism about US-China talks on AI ahead of Xi Jinping’s state visit. Cloud and software names rode the same wave: Cloudflare (NET) rose 8.67%, Shopify (SHOP) 7.33% and Datadog (DDOG) 6.58%.
Where the day disagrees with itself
80 of the 100 stocks and funds we track rose. Only 20 declined. QQQ, which tracks the Nasdaq-100, gained 2.77%, while DIA rose 0.76% and IWM, the small-cap fund, 0.52%.
That looks healthy, but our feed is the largest companies, and the damage is further down. CNBC reported that more S&P 500 members hit new 52-week lows on Monday than new highs, with the index less than 1% from a record. The same pattern last appeared in December 1999. It does not say what comes next. It does say the index’s strength is concentrated in a small group of very large technology companies, and the average stock is not sharing in it.
Oil fell, and the sectors tied to it went with it
US crude fell 4.87% to $95.42 and Brent 3.68% to about $100.05, per investingLive, on hopes of a diplomatic end to the US-Iran conflict. The energy fund XLE lost 2.88%, Exxon Mobil (XOM) 3.20% and Chevron (CVX) 2.79%.
The defensive names fell too, as money moved toward growth. T-Mobile (TMUS) lost 1.73%, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) 1.52%, Coca-Cola (KO) 1.28% and NextEra Energy (NEE) 1.04%. UPS was the worst performer in our feed, down 4.35% to $94.75; we could not confirm a single cause for the drop.
Cheaper oil helped bonds. The 10-year Treasury yield slipped 4.5 basis points to 4.951%, per investingLive, and the long-bond fund TLT rose 0.68%. Bitcoin rose 7.10% to $86,915.
The Fed is still talking about hikes
The rally came with the Fed’s language pointing the other way. A week after the first rate hike in three years, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said rates “likely need to rise further,” Boston Fed President Susan Collins said she had pencilled in a second hike this year, and Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said persistent supply shocks could require higher rates, according to investingLive. Stocks rallied on lower oil and yields, but the people setting rates have not changed their message.
This morning: a pause
US stock futures were little changed early Tuesday, per Bloomberg. Asian markets mostly followed Wall Street higher: South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.6% to 7,120.25, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng nearly 0.6% to 25,185.26 and the Shanghai Composite 0.4% to 3,964.45, per AP. Tokyo was closed for a holiday and reopens Thursday. Oil edged back up, with US crude 0.43% higher at $96.19 and Brent 0.65% higher at $100.99, per AP.
In after-hours trading on Monday, Intel was at $123.85 in our feed, above its $121.78 close.
What to watch today
- Weekly ADP employment figures, 8:15 a.m. ET.
- Richmond Fed manufacturing index for September, 10:00 a.m. ET.
- New York Fed President John Williams, Fed Governor Philip Jefferson and Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin all speak today.
- The Treasury sells $78 billion of two-year notes at 1:00 p.m. ET.
- Earnings: AutoZone and Thor Industries before the open; KB Home after the close.
- API weekly oil inventories, 4:30 p.m. ET.
- Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington runs September 23 to 25, and Meta Connect starts Wednesday.
- Whether chip stocks hold Monday’s gains, and whether the 10-year yield stays below 5%.
Not financial advice. iTrading Buddy summarizes publicly available market data and news; every figure above is sourced from the reporting available before the US open on the date shown. Verify anything you act on.