US Market Wrap 24 September: The Nasdaq Ekes Out a Gain as the 30 Year Yield Touches a 2004 High

By The Edge Research Team

The Dow fell for a third straight session on Thursday, per the network’s closing entry, and the rest of the board barely moved while the bond market did the day’s work. The 30 stock index slid 161.61 points, or 0.31 percent, to 51,349.98, the S&P 500 ticked 0.02 percent lower to 7,704.13 and the Nasdaq Composite eked out a 0.01 percent gain at 26,939.37, per the entry, figures our 20:21 GMT capture matches exactly, with the Russell 2000 down 0.11 percent at 2,835.57. The Treasury’s own par curve printed its repricing again: the 10 year rose 7 basis points to 5.18 percent and the 30 year 7 to 5.47, on our subtraction against Wednesday’s rows, after the network’s entry had the 30 year touching 5.475 percent intraday, a level it said had not been seen since June 2004. Stocks came off their session lows, per the entry, after a Reuters report, as carried, that negotiators in New York are considering a phased end to the conflict, and Brent closed above the 106 dollar line.

October firms to 71 percent as the Fed stops signaling

The rates channel carried the session, on the entry’s own account. Fed funds futures put the likelihood of another increase at the October meeting near 71 percent, per the CME FedWatch tool as carried, against roughly 55 percent a week ago, and the day’s Fed voices framed the move without committing to it: New York Fed President John Williams said in London it is a reasonable way of thinking to expect another increase by year end, adding “But we have to see. We’re going to collect the data and do what we did between July and September”, per Reuters as carried, while Philadelphia Fed President Anna Paulson, a week after the quarter point move took the funds target range to 3.75 to 4 percent, said conditions may warrant “some modest further tightening”. The deeper argument reached the wire in one line from RSM’s Joseph Brusuelas, in the network’s account of the new chairman’s dilemma: “The Fed is underestimating what’s going to be necessary to restore price stability”, with the firm’s modeling showing even a 5.5 percent 10 year yield leaving core inflation stuck near 2.4 percent, while Citigroup’s Andrew Hollenhorst countered that the rise has been in real yields as investors price higher policy rates, and UBS’s Jonathan Pingle wrote that no chairman has leaned on market signals as strongly as Kevin Warsh. Across the Atlantic the Swiss National Bank held its rate at zero, the day’s outlier, with traders pricing a December hike near even odds, per the network. And the politics of the price of money ran through Washington: the Senate voted down, 49 to 50, a war powers resolution on the war, per the network, on a day the same report put gasoline at 4.48 dollars a gallon nationwide per AAA, with the midterms less than six weeks away.

The Magnificent Seven carry a flat tape and Oracle pays for its letter

The dispersion under the flat headline indexes was the equity story. The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF rose 0.8 percent on the day and is up more than 5 percent on the week, per the blog, on a session where four of the eleven S&P 500 sectors closed higher on our count, communication services 1.92 percent the leader with health care up 0.65 and energy 0.43, against utilities, materials and consumer staples all near 1 percent lower at the bottom of the table. In single names, the moves the blog reported through the session ran wide: Oracle slid 4 percent after Bloomberg, as carried, reported it sent a force majeure notice on a New Mexico data center project developed by a Blue Owl Capital unit, with the company telling the network “Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule”; MGM Resorts tumbled more than 9 percent after Barry Diller’s People withdrew its proposal, Diller saying “We didn’t feel the mix was coming together in the way we had hoped”; Darden shed 6.6 percent premarket on results in line with estimates and revenue just shy; BlackBerry added 2 percent on a second quarter beat; Charles River Laboratories jumped 5 percent on reaffirmed guidance toward the upper end of its ranges; and Nebius advanced more than 6 percent after Bank of America lifted its revenue expectations, analyst Tal Liani citing long duration hyperscaler contracts. The barrel reached the close as a written fact: Brent gained 3.4 percent to close at 106.60 dollars with WTI settling 2.7 percent higher at 94.61, per the network’s oil report, and the closing entry tied the pullback from the session’s highs to the phased deal report while noting oil prices and bond yields remained elevated. Costco was expected to report after the bell, and Presidents Trump and Xi were expected to meet at the White House on Thursday for talks on trade, artificial intelligence and the war, a meeting the network’s analysts framed as a cautious summit likely to yield few major deliverables.

Top gainers

Closes of Thursday 24 September 2026 from the vendor feed, authoritative pull at 20:21 GMT with an index only confirmation pull at 20:22 GMT identical, ranked by change; the Nasdaq Composite close matches the network’s written closing figure exactly, and every change reconciles against Wednesday’s closes as carried in the feed.

Top losers

Top losers, same session and capture as the gainers table, stacked shallowest to deepest; the S&P 500 and Dow closes match the network’s written closing figures exactly, and the Dow’s third straight decline is the network’s own frame.

S&P 500 sectors

Top 3 and bottom 3 of the 11 S&P 500 sectors, closes of Thursday 24 September 2026 from the vendor feed at the same 20:21 GMT capture, ranked; four sectors higher and seven lower on our count at the close.

US Treasury par yield curve

Daily par yields from the US Treasury’s own page, read after the close with the 24 September row posted; changes are ours by subtraction against the 23 September row, which matches our published curve exactly.

Commodities

Carried verbatim from our Commodities Wrap of 24 September 2026 on the basis it published: post settlement window snapshots at 18:52 GMT measured against Wednesday’s settlements as carried in the price feed, not the official settlements; the WTI row is the November 2026 contract as disclosed there, and the written figures the network’s report carried, Brent 3.4 percent higher to close at 106.60 dollars and WTI settling at 94.61, are cited in the prose above.

Instruments

One call at the same 20:21 GMT capture, fixed order; the VIX row is the session’s last print on its stated feed, a vendor snapshot rather than the official Cboe closing value, and the currency and crypto rows are snapshot levels on the vendor’s daily basis.

Asia reference

Carried whole from our Asia Market Wrap of 24 September 2026, closes of Thursday 24 September on the basis published there; the Nikkei 225 and Topix changes are measured against their 18 September closes, Japan’s final cash session before its three day closure, and South Korea’s market carried no session, shut for the first of two Chuseok holidays, so the Kospi carries no row and returns Monday 28 September.

Middle East reference

Carried whole from our Middle East Market Wrap of 24 September 2026, closes of Thursday 24 September on the basis published there, stacked gainers then losers; the Tadawul All Share row is Riyadh’s first session since Wednesday’s National Day closure, measured against its 22 September close as published there.

Europe reference

Carried whole from our Europe Market Wrap of 24 September 2026, closes of Thursday 24 September on the basis published there; the DAX row is the exchange’s official closing price, and the Stoxx Europe 600 and Euro Stoxx 50 rows are the feed’s prints at the administrator’s 18:00 CET dissemination close, checked against the administrator’s finals at our next capture.

Why it matters: the equity board went quiet and the argument moved entirely into the bond market, on our reading. A five index board that nets out to a 0.31 percent Dow fall and a 0.01 percent Nasdaq gain, on a day the par curve added another 7 basis points at the long end and October’s odds reached 71 percent on the entry’s own figures, reads as a market that has stopped debating direction and started debating terminal: the day’s published dispute is Brusuelas’s five or six hikes against Hollenhorst’s real yields case, per the network, with a chairman the wire describes as letting the market guide him. The dispersion is the second tell: the Magnificent Seven up on the week while utilities, materials and staples sit at the bottom of the sector table is the shape of money paying duration costs and crowding into the few stories priced to outgrow them. Across everything we published today, the day’s best index is the Nikkei 225 at 0.76 percent higher and the worst the Shenzhen Component at 2.34 percent lower, on our count, with tonight’s board inside that range.

Outlook: Seoul stays shut Friday for Chuseok and returns Monday 28 September, Riyadh opens the new Gulf trading week after its first day back, and the Trump and Xi meeting at the White House, expected Thursday per the network, carries the trade and war files into the end of the week. For this board the open questions are whether the par curve holds a 5.18 percent 10 year into Friday and whether the phased deal report that trimmed the session’s lows survives the next headline; our Asia wrap takes Tokyo’s Friday session with Japan’s own 10 year at a 30 year high in our record.

Sources: US Department of the Treasury, CNBC, Reuters, The Edge.

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