Three index records on AI, yields near 5.3%, Fed minutes at 2 p.m.

The S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite and Dow all closed at record highs on Tuesday on another rally in chip and networking stocks, while the 10-year Treasury yield ended near 5.27%, a touch below Monday’s 24-year high. At 2:00 p.m. ET the Fed publishes the minutes of the September meeting that raised rates for the first time since 2023, an hour after a 10-year Treasury auction tests demand at these yields.

Three records, led by chips and networking gear

The S&P 500 rose 0.58% to a record close of 7,818.93, the Nasdaq Composite 0.45% to a record 27,599.79, and the Dow 0.49%, or 253.38 points, to 51,521.28, per CNBC. In our feed, the S&P 500 fund SPY rose 0.55%, the Nasdaq-100 fund QQQ 0.46% and the Dow fund DIA 0.48%. The small-cap fund IWM fell 0.72%, the only one of the four index funds to decline.

Cisco (CSCO) rose 4.54% to $117.94, the largest gain among the 100 stocks and funds we track, and Broadcom (AVGO) 3.67% to $375.81. AMD (AMD) gained 2.80% to $649.42, a fresh high, per Yahoo Finance. Palo Alto Networks (PANW) added 3.23%. Nvidia (NVDA) traded as high as $243.37 during the session but closed up just 0.14% at $239.24; it was again the busiest stock in our feed, with 100.9 million shares changing hands, and Yahoo Finance put its market value near $6 trillion.

Further down the market, optical-networking maker Ciena (CIEN) rose 13.88% to $443.66 in our movers feed. Investing.com tied the move to Marvell’s analyst day, where management projected the market for data-center interconnects growing to about $65 billion by 2030, and to Nokia’s chief executive telling CNBC that customers would build data centers twice as fast if capacity allowed. Marvell rose 5.81% and Nokia 7.55%, per Investing.com, and Evercore ISI upgraded Ciena to Outperform, per GuruFocus. The same demand story explains Cisco and Broadcom: all three sell the equipment that connects AI servers to each other.

Not every chip name joined. Intel (INTC) fell 3.18% to $112.50 on 101.6 million shares, the weakest of the 100 names in our feed, and traded as low as $112.00. That extends Monday’s drop after Elon Musk confirmed talks to bring Taiwan Semiconductor into the Terafab venture Intel had been expected to supply; we found no new company-specific news for Tuesday. Applied Materials (AMAT) fell 2.21% and Micron (MU) 1.73%.

The bond market has not blinked

The 10-year Treasury yield ended Tuesday near 5.27%, down from Monday’s 5.31% close, which was its highest in 24 years, per Yahoo Finance. The 30-year ended near 5.64% after breaching 5.7% during the session, per Yahoo Finance. The long-dated Treasury fund TLT, which rises when yields fall, added 0.22% in our feed, consistent with a small easing rather than a reversal.

The Fed raised its target range by a quarter point to 3.75%–4.00% on September 16, a unanimous 12–0 vote and the first increase since July 2023, per Admiral Markets. After Friday’s jobs report showed September hiring slowed more than expected, investors scaled back expectations for another increase at the October 27–28 meeting, per Investing.com. Today’s minutes are the first detailed look at how much support a further hike had inside the committee before that report.

This is where the data and the narrative diverge. In our feed, 70 of the 100 stocks and funds we track rose on Tuesday, so the day itself was broad among large companies. But Yahoo Finance noted that only about 25% of S&P 500 stocks trade above their 50-day moving average, and the Russell 2000 fund fell while the big indexes set records. Index-level records are resting on the AI names; a 10-year yield above 5% is the counterweight, and today’s auction shows whether buyers turn up at that price.

Google’s nuclear deal lifts the power producers

Constellation Energy (CEG) rose 12.12% to $300.16, Talen Energy (TLN) 12.33% to $373.04 and Vistra (VST) 10.72% to $160.48, all in our movers feed. Google signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation that funds equipment and efficiency upgrades at nuclear plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, adding 890 megawatts of capacity to the PJM grid, per 24/7 Wall St. and Benzinga. Vistra and Talen are not parties to the deal; they sell into the same market, and a 20-year bid for firm power from a hyperscaler was read as support for their fleets too.

The move reached the rest of the nuclear supply chain. Uranium-enrichment company Centrus Energy (LEU) rose 8.74%, radiation-measurement maker Mirion Technologies (MIR) 9.07% and power-plant builder Argan (AGX) 8.30% in our movers feed. Among the large utilities we track, NextEra Energy (NEE) gained 2.10% and Duke Energy (DUK) 1.60%.

Genomics names sold off hard

The losers side of our movers feed was almost entirely life sciences. Twist Bioscience (TWST) fell 18.57% to $166.92, 10x Genomics (TXG) 17.64% to $80.66, Ginkgo Bioworks (DNA) 17.05% to $12.41, Alamar Biosciences (ALMR) 15.69%, Tempus AI (TEM) 13.86% to $71.96, NeoGenomics (NEO) 13.76%, Schrödinger (SDGR) 11.35%, GRAIL (GRAL) 11.07%, Absci (ABSI) 10.93% and Adaptive Biotechnologies (ADPT) 9.93%.

Yahoo Finance reported that ARK Invest sold 90,713 Twist shares worth about $18 million, alongside smaller sales of 10x Genomics, and noted the two stocks had been up roughly 533% and 499% for the year before Tuesday. No catalyst was identified for Tempus. The selling reached large-cap tools makers too: Thermo Fisher (TMO) fell 2.98% to $656.58, a day after rising 3.35% on a JPMorgan endorsement, and Abbott (ABT) lost 1.94%. The health-care fund XLV slipped 0.17%.

Two of the largest moves in our feed remain unexplained: ArriVent BioPharma (AVBP) fell 46.84% to $15.14 on 19.7 million shares, and Option Care Health (OPCH) rose 32.58% to $31.01 on 65.1 million shares. We could not confirm a reason for either before publication.

Overnight

South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.16% to 6,860.73 by late morning in Seoul as foreign investors sold a net 1.16 trillion won of shares; SK Hynix dropped 2.09% and Samsung Electronics 0.28%, per Invezz. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was roughly flat at 70,685.22, per Invezz. Mainland Chinese markets are closed for the National Day holiday.

Brent crude is trading near $101 and WTI near $90 this morning, per Trading Economics, after recovering on Middle East supply concerns on Tuesday. The gold fund GLD rose 0.72% in our feed. US stock futures were little changed early Wednesday, per Trading Economics.

What to watch today

Weekly EIA crude oil inventories at 10:30 a.m. ET, with Brent near $101, per IC Markets.
A 10-year Treasury note auction at 1:00 p.m. ET; the previous auction’s yield was 4.834%, per Investing.com.
Minutes of the Fed’s September 15–16 meeting at 2:00 p.m. ET, per Investing.com. The next meeting is October 27–28.
August consumer credit (the Fed’s G.19 release) at 3:00 p.m. ET, per the Fed’s release calendar.
No large companies report before the open. Levi Strauss and Applied Digital report after the close, per Earnings Whispers.
The 10-year Treasury yield, which ended Tuesday near 5.27% against Monday’s 5.31%.
Mainland Chinese markets, which remain closed for the holiday.

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.