Bob Doll of Crossmark Global Investments put the whole week in two sentences for the Journal. “Bond yields fell yesterday — stocks liked it. Bond yields are going up today — stocks don’t like it.” That is the entire relationship right now, and Friday was a day the bond market won on points without landing a punch.
The S&P 500 closed at 7,650.50, up 0.17%. The Dow lost 95 points to 51,682.64. The Nasdaq Composite added 0.39% to 26,522.55, lifted by a 2.78% rise in the PHLX Semiconductor index — Broadcom (AVGO) added 3%, Micron (MU) 3.9%, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) 2.7%. For the week the S&P lost less than 0.1%, the Dow 1.7% and the Nasdaq gained 0.7%. Volatile week, quiet finish.
What the digest table says that the headline doesn’t
The Journal’s trading diary is where this week actually lives. On the New York Stock Exchange, decliners beat advancers 1,828 to 923. New 52-week lows outnumbered new highs 182 to 29 — more than six to one. On Thursday, the day of the relief rally, that ratio was 151 to 99. On Sept. 4, the day the September letter was written, it was 90 to 47. Three readings, three weeks, one direction.
The closing Arms index — a comparison of advancing and declining issues against the volume behind each — printed 1.29 on the NYSE. Above one means selling pressure. On the Nasdaq it was 0.72, buying demand, which is the same story told from the other side: the money went to chips and it came out of everything that borrows.
The weekly sector table confirms it. Utilities lost 3.04% on the week, financials 2.35%, real estate 2.27%, the transports 2.66%. Health care gained 1.76% and technology 1.05%. The Dow Jones Utility Average closed at its 52-week low. On a week when the benchmark for long-term borrowing costs crossed 5% for the first time since 2007, the sectors that are priced off that benchmark were sold, and the index that owns very little of them barely moved.
The rates that did not go quiet
The 10-year yield ticked up to 4.995% on Friday after hitting a 19-year high earlier in the week. The 2-year rose to 4.741%, its highest close since July 2024, which is the part worth underlining: the front end is where the next Fed decision gets priced, and it went up on a day the stock market called quiet. Futures put roughly a 50% chance on another increase at the October meeting; most Fed officials project one more this year.
The corporate-bond table rhymes. The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury index yields 4.95%, the long-Treasury index 5.36%, the aggregate 5.32%, high yield 6.845%. Every one of those is at or within a few basis points of its 52-week high. The Journal’s own account credits the market’s resilience to earnings — FactSet has third-quarter S&P 500 profit growth at 28.9%, which would be the third straight quarter above 25% — and to an economy that keeps adding jobs. Both are real. Neither is what a bank or a utility is priced on.
Chris Brigati of SWBC gave the Journal the honest bear’s line: “It’s rare to have a single rate hike and then nothing going forward. I’d say we’re closer to the top than the bottom of the market in terms of the next three-month period or so.”
Our read
A week is a long time to hold two things in your head, so here they are in order. The index is fine: 1.9% below its Aug. 13 record, carried by earnings and by the one sector that keeps reporting them. The average stock is not fine: six new lows for every new high, and the rate-sensitive third of the market at or near 52-week lows. That divergence is not a prediction. It is a description of where the hike has landed so far, and it is the single pattern this desk has watched all month.
Nothing new was bought this week, on a rule written before it began. The rule did not change on Friday because Friday did not change anything the rule measures. What the week did do is settle where the next argument happens: the two weeks after the September expiry, the Micron print on the 30th, the jobs report on Oct. 2. The plumbing date has passed. The fortnight the September letter called the weakest of the year starts Monday.