Markets in Minutes

GOOD MORNING, Asian equities opened the week higher as chip stocks rallied, oil fell and the expected Donald Trump-Xi Jinping meeting became the next market catalyst. The move is not an all-clear. The 10-year Treasury yield is still around 5%, oil remains above $100 and AI is now also a trade, economic-security and policy story. This week, markets will have to read rates, energy, AI capital and US-China policy together. MARKETS | TLDR The S&P 500 rose 0.2% to 7,650.50 at Friday's close, the...

GOOD MORNING, Oil rose, Treasury yields broke above 5%, and AI spending came under a tougher market test ahead of the Fed's rate decision. MARKETS | TLDR U.S. stocks closed lower: The Dow closed at 52,093.11, down 0.63%; the S&P 500 fell 0.45% to 7,585.73; and the Nasdaq dropped 0.78% to 25,981.57. Oil and energy moved higher: WTI rose 4.4% and Brent gained 2.9%, while the S&P energy sector was the session's exception, up 2.3%. Treasury yields broke above 5%: The benchmark yield reached its...

GOOD MORNING, U.S. markets are closed for Labor Day, but the setup for the shortened week is already getting harder to ignore. August payrolls came in far stronger than expected, oil is back near $100 as Gulf tensions flare, and rate-hike risk is rebuilding just before the week's inflation data. The counterweight is AI: chip stocks surged across Korea and Japan, showing investors are still willing to pay for growth even as the macro backdrop gets less forgiving. MARKETS | TLDR U.S. jobs came...

GOOD MORNING, Wall Street went into the long weekend with a familiar problem getting harder to ignore: the economy is still strong enough to keep the Fed hawkish, while the energy shock is still adding inflation pressure. August payrolls blew past expectations, yields jumped, stocks slipped, and then U.S.-Iran clashes escalated again on Saturday around oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz. With U.S. markets closed Monday for Labor Day, this week’s real test is inflation: PPI Thursday, CPI...

GOOD MORNING, Friday gave markets a cleaner message than they wanted: the U.S. economy is still strong enough to keep a September Fed hike alive, while the oil shock is becoming harder to dismiss as temporary noise. Payrolls beat expectations by a wide margin, Treasury yields jumped and stocks slipped. Then Saturday brought another escalation around the Strait of Hormuz, with U.S. and Iranian forces targeting vessels near Iran. U.S. markets are closed Monday for Labor Day, so the next real...

GOOD MORNING, Friday gave investors a classic “good news is bad news” session. August payrolls came in nearly three times stronger than expected, pushing Treasury yields higher and putting a September Fed hike firmly back in play. The S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq all finished lower. But one corner of the market refused to follow the macro script: semiconductors jumped 3.4%, helped by another round of evidence that hyperscalers are still writing enormous checks for AI infrastructure. The tension...

GOOD MORNING, Wall Street finally got relief from the rates trade. Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he could support holding rates steady in September if inflation keeps cooling, cutting near-term hike odds and pulling Treasury yields lower. Stocks responded immediately, with the Nasdaq leading a broad rebound. But the bigger signal came from where investors chose to take risk: megacap tech and AI names. Nvidia announced a nearly $13 billion deal for Hugging Face, Snowflake surged after...

GOOD MORNING, Wall Street finally caught a break Wednesday, but not because the macro problem disappeared. The 10-year Treasury yield eased only slightly from its latest highs and Brent crude still finished above $95. That was enough for investors to rotate back into risk, with Nvidia up more than 3% and all four major U.S. equity indexes closing higher. Then Broadcom added a bigger signal after the bell: it now sees AI chip revenue reaching roughly $115 billion next year and doubling again...

GOOD MORNING, September opened with macro back in control. Renewed U.S.-Iran fighting pushed oil sharply higher, global bond yields climbed to multi-year highs and the odds of another Fed hike jumped. The Nasdaq fell more than the Dow as higher discount rates hit long-duration growth hardest. But the AI spending cycle did not disappear with the selloff: after the close, Dell raised its full-year outlook again on record AI-server demand. That leaves investors with a familiar but increasingly...

GOOD MORNING, The AI boom passed another earnings test last week, but markets finished Friday trading the Fed instead. Chair Kevin Warsh used Jackson Hole to defend a fixed 2% inflation target and warn that the central bank still has work to do if price pressures do not cool fast enough, pushing short Treasury yields and the dollar higher while tech and small caps fell. Then Sunday brought a fresh U.S.-Iran exchange around the Strait of Hormuz. AI demand still looks strong; the next question...