Nasdaq Falls to 26,804, S&P 500 Drops to 7,688, Dow Sheds 191 Points as Oracle Tumbles 7% on Project Jupiter Notice

Thursday's session belongs to the bond market, and stocks are trading as a derivative of it. The 30-year Treasury yield touched 5.446%, its highest level since June 2004, and the 10-year note climbed to 5.15%, a mark not seen since July 2007. Those two prints set the discount rate for every long-duration asset on the board. The 2-year yield held flat on the day after printing a 2023 high of 4.897% earlier in the week, so the pressure sits at the long end of the curve, where term premium and inflation risk get priced.

This is the second straight day of damage. On Wednesday, the 10-year reached 5.135% at its peak, the largest single-session jump since April 7, 2025. A hot purchasing managers' survey, a weak Treasury auction and a rebound in crude lit the fuse, and the S&P 500 closed down 0.75%. Thursday picked up where Wednesday left off, with S&P 500 futures down 0.6% and Nasdaq 100 contracts off 1.1% before the bell.

By the 10:30 a.m. ET window, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat at 51,320.68, down 190.91 points or 0.37%. The S&P 500 traded 0.23% lower at 7,688, and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.49% to 26,804. The Nasdaq now sits more than 400 points under the record close it posted only two sessions ago.

The arithmetic behind the selling is straightforward. A 10-year Treasury paying 5.15% competes head-on with equities priced on AI cash flows that don't arrive in size until 2028 and beyond, and every basis point higher shaves the present value of those distant earnings. Growth stocks carry the most duration, so they take the biggest hit. That is the exact pattern on the screen: the Nasdaq underperforming, the Dow holding up better, and rate-sensitive corners of the market getting smoked.

Consumers are already paying for it. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 7.12%, the highest in more than two years, and that cost bleeds into housing, autos and anything bought on credit.

The problem for bulls is timing. Rates are climbing at the same moment the AI infrastructure trade produced its first real contractual crack, courtesy of Oracle. A market can absorb higher yields when earnings visibility improves. It struggles when the discount rate and the cash-flow story turn against it in the same morning, and that is the setup driving Thursday's tape. Every other headline, from Costco's report after the close to the Trump–Xi summit in Washington, is being filtered through a 10-year yield parked above 5%.

Index Scoreboard: Dow 51,320, S&P 500 7,688, Nasdaq 26,804

The starting point matters for reading Thursday's move. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 fell 58.61 points to 7,706.03, the Dow dropped 352.10 points to 51,511.59, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 308.24 points, or 1.13%, to 26,936.04. Small caps took the worst of it, with the Russell 2000 sliding 51.26 points, or 1.8%, to 2,838.66.

Participation on Wednesday was ugly. More than 72% of U.S. issues finished lower while barely a quarter advanced, and 10 of the 11 S&P sectors closed in the red, led by communication services, utilities and consumer discretionary. Inside the Dow, McDonald's dropped 4.89%, Alphabet lost 4.68% and Home Depot gave back 2.80%. On the other side, Salesforce gained 1.84%, Chevron added 1.38% and Boeing rose 0.95%. That mix tells the story in one line: energy and a handful of software names up, consumer and rate-sensitive names down.

The week's shape is a round trip. Monday delivered the best session for the Nasdaq and S&P 500 since early August. Tuesday pushed the Nasdaq Composite to a record close of 27,244, its second record in a row, while the S&P 500 finished flat and the Dow shed 185 points. Wednesday and Thursday have handed a big chunk of that back, and the S&P 500 is on track to wipe out most of its weekly gain.

On Thursday's mid-morning marks, the Dow sits at 51,320.68, the S&P 500 at 7,688 and the Nasdaq at 26,804. The Nasdaq's gap from its record now exceeds 1.6%. None of these are breakdown levels, but they are a clean rejection from the highs, and the index that led the rally is leading the retreat.

Small caps are the canary. The Russell 2000 carries the heaviest exposure to floating-rate debt and domestic financing costs, and it led Wednesday's decline. Russell 2000 futures traded at 2,847.20 overnight, down 13 points or 0.45%. With the 10-year above 5% and a second Fed hike increasingly priced for this year, the path back to the highs for small caps runs through lower rates first.

Volatility is waking up without spiking. The VIX traded at 16.26 in early indications, up 1.08 points or 7.12%. That is a move from complacency toward caution, not panic, and it fits a market grinding lower on a macro repricing rather than crashing on a single shock. The bid for protection is building at the margin, and if the 10-year pushes through 5.20%, that VIX print won't stay at 16 for long.

From Premarket to the Opening Bell: How the Session Built

The damage started overnight. S&P futures sat at 7,722.50, down 50 points or 0.64%. Dow futures traded at 51,617, down 256 points or 0.49%. Nasdaq futures stood at 30,454.50, off 310.25 points or 1.01%. The Nasdaq contracts were doing twice the damage of the Dow, a straight read-through from the Oracle headline and the long-end bond selloff.

Oracle set the tone before 8 a.m. ET, sliding 5.4% in premarket trade on the Project Jupiter news. Outside the AI complex, MGM Resorts dropped more than 9% after its $18 billion buyout proposal was withdrawn, and a batch of earnings reactions from Darden, TD Synnex and BlackBerry filled out the early movers list. Gold miners slipped as bullion traded at a one-week low.

The 8:30 a.m. data landed without drama. Weekly jobless claims came in under forecast, which confirmed labor-market strength but gave bonds no relief. Rates held their ground, and futures held their losses.

The opening bell brought a deeper first print. Shortly after 9:30 a.m. ET, the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.8%, the Dow had lost 182 points and the S&P 500 was off 0.5%. Sector leadership split along a clear line: Communication Services, Energy and Health Care outperformed, while Technology, Industrials and Consumer Discretionary lagged. Tech and Industrials carried the Oracle overhang, with Bloom Energy and Blue Owl sold alongside it.

One detail in the first half hour helped buyers step in. Treasury yields were bull steepening at the open, with the front end moving lower while long-end yields held steady. A softer 2-year eases some pressure on the rate-hike narrative, and dip buyers used the opening. By 10:30 a.m., losses had narrowed to 0.23% on the S&P 500 and 0.49% on the Nasdaq. Later in the morning, the Nasdaq was down 0.5%, the Dow off 167 points, or 0.3%, and the S&P 500 lower by 0.2%.

That trimming is the most constructive element of the session so far. The bid showed up in health care, energy and select software and cybersecurity names, while semiconductors and AI infrastructure stayed heavy. That is rotation, not accumulation. Money is moving away from the most rate-sensitive, capex-dependent names and into cash-flow-now businesses rather than into the index outright.

The 10:00 a.m. housing print added one more strong data point to the pile. Every upside surprise on the economy this week has landed on stocks as a negative through the rates channel, and Thursday is running the same script.

Oracle's Force Majeure Notice Cracks the AI Capex Story

Oracle is the biggest single drag on Thursday's tape. ORCL traded at $133.91, down 7.37%, a loss of more than $10 a share from Wednesday's close of $144.57. The trigger was a force majeure notice the company sent to the developer of its New Mexico data center campus, a move designed to shield Oracle from higher costs if the project runs late.

The contract detail is what matters. The campus, known as Project Jupiter, is scheduled to come online in 2028, and Oracle wants the right to defer payments if that date slips. The notice went to Stack Infrastructure, the Blue Owl Capital unit developing the site. The scale is enormous: a $165 billion AI campus rated at 2.45 gigawatts.

Oracle is not walking away. The company remains the site's anchor tenant and says the project is running on schedule and that its commitment to New Mexico is unchanged. The filing reads as Oracle staking out its legal position early rather than exiting.

The market isn't buying the reassurance, and the reason is power. The campus is designed to run on up to 2.45 GW of Bloom Energy fuel cells, and those cells need a 17-mile natural gas pipeline that has slipped from an August 2026 target to February 2027 after state land officials repeatedly refused right-of-way permits across trust lands. A data center without fuel is a stranded building. The force majeure notice is Oracle's first formal step toward pushing the cost of a delay onto someone else's balance sheet.

The financing stack raises the stakes. A group of 20 lenders put together an $18 billion loan package to fund construction, and Project Jupiter sits inside the Stargate program with OpenAI and SoftBank. The headline lands squarely on the flagship AI infrastructure build in the U.S.

Oracle's own numbers explain the violent reaction. The company carries $664 billion in remaining performance obligations, yet it burned $23.7 billion in free cash flow in its last fiscal year. That is a backlog being financed with borrowed money at a time when the 10-year pays 5.15%. Any slippage in the build pushes cash collection further out while financing costs keep climbing.

The chart confirms the pressure. ORCL has been in a downtrend since early January, and Thursday's drop drags it back to early August levels, erasing the late-summer bounce. For the broader market, Oracle is the weakest link in the hyperscaler chain, and on a day when rates are already punishing duration, the notice is being read as a warning shot for every supplier tied to multi-year AI construction.

Bloom Energy and Blue Owl Absorb the Second-Order Hit

The Oracle headline didn't stay contained. The two companies most directly tied to Project Jupiter are getting hit with Oracle. Bloom Energy traded at $257.25, down 6.52%, and Blue Owl Capital changed hands at $9.18, down 4.39%.

Bloom's exposure is physical. Its fuel cells are the planned power source for the campus, and the stock came into the session priced for flawless execution on AI power demand: BE is up 229.89% over the past year and trades at 57 times forward earnings. At that multiple, even a delay rather than a cancellation forces a repricing, because investors were paying today for deliveries scheduled across the next two years. If the gas pipeline doesn't arrive until February 2027, installation schedules move to the right, and so does revenue recognition.

Blue Owl's exposure is financial. The asset manager owns the developer and supplies the equity, while Oracle sits in the tenant seat rather than the borrower seat. Blue Owl says the notice does not alter the financial commitments behind the project. Shareholders are reading it differently, and the stock was already under heavy pressure before Thursday, down 46.06% over the past year. A $9 handle on a manager this exposed to data center real estate and private credit shows how quickly investors have flipped from paying up for AI-adjacent alternatives to discounting them.

The read-through extends past these two tickers. Private credit and project finance have been the plumbing of the AI buildout, funding campuses that hyperscalers lease rather than own. If a tenant the size of Oracle is building contractual cover for a delay, lenders on similar projects will push for tighter covenants, wider spreads or both. With Treasury yields at multi-decade highs, the base rate under all of that financing is already climbing. Two forces are pushing the same way: a higher cost of capital and a longer road to cash flow.

Not every AI-linked name is folding. CoreWeave picked up an upgrade to Overweight with a $125 price target on the strength of compute pricing, firm demand and premium short-term contracts. That contrast matters. The market is splitting AI businesses that sell compute today at premium prices from the ones whose revenue depends on multi-year physical buildouts clearing permitting, pipeline and financing hurdles.

That split is the one to track into October. Compute providers with signed, short-duration contracts collect cash now. Power, real estate and financing partners tied to 2028 delivery dates are exposed to the exact combination hitting the market Thursday: slower timelines and a higher discount rate.

Williams Puts Another Hike Before Year-End on the Table

The Fed backdrop is why the bond market refuses to give ground. New York Fed President John Williams said Thursday that one more rate increase before the end of 2026 is a reasonable expectation, lining himself up with market pricing. He framed it as data-dependent, saying the committee will gather information and repeat the process it followed between July and September, but he did nothing to push back on the hike narrative.

Williams also declared the era of explicit forward guidance over. That mirrors the stance of Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who has said the central bank will stop signaling its moves ahead of scheduled meetings. For markets, that removes a cushion. Without guidance, every data print carries more weight, and traders have to price the path themselves. That is a recipe for higher volatility in rates, and the 10-year's jump to 5.15% is the first installment.

The policy setting is already restrictive. The Fed lifted its benchmark rate by 25 basis points this month to a 3.75%-4.00% target range, its first increase since July 2023. The September vote followed a July hold that split 9–3, which shows how quickly the committee moved from debate to action. At the September meeting, 16 of 18 policymakers projected at least one more hike before year-end, and four saw room for two. The median projection doesn't return inflation to the 2% target until 2029.

Williams added two details that bond traders took seriously. He said downside risks to full employment have faded, and he described demand tied to artificial intelligence as very strong. Both remarks point the same way: a Fed that sees an economy running hot enough to justify more tightening. He also pointed out that September's hike came from a build-up of pressures rather than a single data shock, which implies the next move doesn't need a dramatic trigger either.

The median dot for the end of 2026 sits at 4.1%, which implies at least one more quarter-point move. With the October meeting approaching, every inflation and activity print over the next five weeks feeds directly into the odds.

For equities, the message is blunt. The Fed isn't coming to the rescue on valuation. Growth stocks priced for falling rates now have to justify their multiples against a policy rate heading toward 4.25% and a 10-year yield above 5%. That is the headwind behind Thursday's Nasdaq underperformance, and it won't lift until either inflation cools or the economy visibly slows.

PMI at 58.4 and Claims at 197,000: Data Too Hot for Bonds

The macro data this week has been strong, and that is exactly the problem for stocks. The S&P Global composite PMI for September rose to 58.4, with services at 58.7, showing business activity growing at its fastest pace in more than five years. It was the fourth straight month of expansion, and the survey flagged rising capacity constraints alongside faster growth in input costs. That combination tells the bond market the economy can carry higher real rates than anyone assumed a few months ago.

Hiring is running hot as well. The PMI survey showed employment rising sharply in September, with job creation at its fastest pace since June 2022. A labor market adding workers at that speed keeps wage pressure alive, and wage pressure is the piece of inflation the Fed watches most closely in services.

Thursday's weekly claims report confirmed the picture. According to the Department of Labor, initial jobless claims fell by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 197,000 for the week ended September 19, beating the 201,000 forecast. The prior week was revised up to 198,000 from 196,000, but claims remain pinned near 57-year lows. Continuing claims dropped to 1.719 million, well under the 1.745 million expected, with the prior reading revised down to 1.717 million.

That puts the labor market in a strange spot. Seasonal adjustment around Labor Day can distort September claims, but the direction across multiple data sets is consistent: layoffs are contained, hiring is accelerating, and continuing claims sit at their lowest since early 2024. There is no labor-market weakness here for the Fed to point to as a reason to pause.

The market reaction to the claims print was muted, and that silence says something. Traders already assume the jobs market is tight, so only a deterioration would shift expectations. A strong number simply locks in the hike path. That asymmetry is punishing for equities: good data pushes yields up, and bad data hasn't shown up to pull them down.

The inflation risk sits on top of the growth story. PMI price gauges at multi-year highs, crude back above $100 on Brent, and a labor market adding jobs at a four-year pace are the three ingredients that keep the Fed leaning hawkish. Until one of them breaks, the 10-year has little reason to retreat below 5%, and equity multiples have little room to expand. The economy isn't the problem for this market. The strength of the economy is.

New Home Sales Snap to 684,000 as Builders Cut Prices

The 10:00 a.m. housing print delivered another upside surprise. According to the Census Bureau and HUD, sales of new single-family homes ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 684,000 in August, up 6.4% from July's revised 643,000. Economists had penciled in a pace near 616,000 to 620,000, so the beat was wide. It was the strongest sales pace since the start of the year.

The detail underneath shows how the sales were bought. The median price of a new home sold in August was $393,700, up just 0.4% from July but 5.8% lower than August 2025. The average price fell 9.1% month over month to $478,700. Builders are clearing inventory with price cuts, mortgage rate buydowns, closing cost help and free upgrades, and buyers are responding to discounts rather than to affordable financing.

Year-over-year, the picture is less flattering. August's pace still sits 2.0% below the 698,000 rate from August 2025. July's original print was a 10.5% monthly plunge before its upward revision, so August looks more like a snapback than the start of a new uptrend.

Supply remains heavy. New homes for sale held at 483,000, unchanged from July, which equals 8.5 months of supply at the current sales rate. Anything above six months tilts the market toward buyers, and that leverage is showing up in builder pricing.

Regionally, the swings were sharp. Sales jumped 84.9% in the Midwest to 98,000 and rose 6.9% in the South to 451,000, which offset a 36.1% drop in the Northeast to 23,000 and a 15.2% slide in the West to 112,000.

For stocks, the print cuts two ways. Homebuilders can point to demand holding up even with the 30-year mortgage at 7.12%, the highest in more than two years. But falling prices and heavy incentives mean revenue per home is shrinking while input costs stay sticky, which squeezes margins. For the bond market, the report is one more sign the economy is absorbing tighter policy without cracking. That keeps pressure on yields, and yields are the variable driving Thursday's equity tape. A strong housing number in a market that fears rate hikes is not a buy signal. It is one more reason for the 10-year to stay above 5%.

Brent Back Above $105 as Hormuz and Red Sea Risk Escalates

Crude is the third leg of Thursday's inflation scare. West Texas Intermediate climbed 1.04% to $93.12 a barrel early in the session, while Brent rose 1.53% to $104.70 and later pushed past $105. November WTI futures traded as high as $94.58 overnight, up 2.63%. That reverses a six-session slide that had taken Brent below $100 earlier in the week.

The geopolitical backdrop is deteriorating. A senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader warned Thursday that Iranian forces and their Houthi allies in Yemen could answer any new U.S. strikes by opening a new front in the seven-month war, targeting energy flows in the Red Sea. The warning ties the Persian Gulf and Red Sea theaters together, putting both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab chokepoint in play.

The threat has teeth. A commercial vessel was hit in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, killing one crew member and forcing the evacuation of 27 others. The Antigua and Barbuda-flagged bulk carrier Cape Dao was the target, and Iran's Revolutionary Guard circulated video it said showed the aftermath.

Diplomacy is stalling. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the United Nations General Assembly that Tehran would never surrender and accused President Trump of a bullying approach, a day after Trump used the same forum to threaten to annihilate Iran. U.S. and Iranian officials did meet for three hours on the sidelines of the assembly, but hopes for a breakthrough faded overnight.

Domestic fuel policy is adding noise. Trump has signaled support for restricting diesel exports as pump prices climb ahead of November's midterm elections, and the oil industry warns that a ban would backfire and worsen the global fuel squeeze. Any export curb would widen the gap between U.S. and international product prices and scramble refining margins.

For equities, crude is a mixed input. Energy is one of the few sectors outperforming, and producers such as Antero Resources have caught a bid. But oil above $100 feeds straight into inflation expectations, which feed straight into the 10-year yield, which is pressuring every other sector. As long as Brent holds above $100, the Fed has one more reason to hike and the bond market has one more reason to sell. Crude isn't the lead driver of Thursday's selloff, but it is keeping the rate problem from easing.

MGM Resorts Drops 10% as Diller Pulls the $18 Billion Bid

The biggest single-stock loss among large consumer names belongs to MGM Resorts International, which tumbled 9.98% after Barry Diller's People Inc. withdrew its $18 billion proposal to take the casino operator private. MGM shares opened down 10%, and the premium built into the stock on the buyout hopes evaporated in one session.

Diller's explanation was short. He said the ingredients needed to complete a deal of this size didn't come together the way he had hoped, and that People Inc. would not pursue taking the company private at this time. He also said his confidence in MGM's future is intact, and he still holds 66.8 million shares. That stake keeps him the most important shareholder in the story, but without a bid on the table, the stock reverts to trading on fundamentals.

Those fundamentals face the same headwind as the rest of the market. Casino operators carry heavy debt loads, and a 10-year yield at 5.15% raises refinancing costs across the sector. Consumer discretionary was already one of the weakest groups on Wednesday, and a failed buyout removes the one catalyst that had been insulating MGM from that pressure. Red Rock Resorts had a different setup and held gains in the prior session, which shows the selling is MGM-specific rather than sector-wide.

Other deal and activist headlines moved stocks as well. Knife River rose 5% after activist Starboard Value built a substantial stake and pushed the construction materials company to improve margins or consider a sale. WillScot Holdings jumped 4.92% heading into a diversified industrials conference. Columbia Banking System added 2.39% after management stressed profitability over aggressive growth at a financial services conference.

On the downside, Integra LifeSciences lost 4.51% on concerns over remediation execution, sluggish sales growth and upcoming debt refinancing, a story that lands badly with yields at multi-decade highs. Viking Therapeutics upsized its stock offering to $225 million from $200 million and priced it at the low end of its range. TransUnion said its chief financial officer is stepping down. Delek US Holdings is selling $400 million in convertible notes due 2031, and Dropbox was cut to Sell.

The pattern across these movers is consistent. Stories with a hard catalyst, such as an activist stake or an upbeat outlook, are finding buyers. Stories that depend on financing, whether a leveraged buyout, a refinancing or an equity raise, are getting sold. That is what a 5% risk-free rate does to a market.

Earnings Tape: Darden Slips 6.6%, TD Synnex Sells the News, Everpure Rips

The morning's earnings reactions reinforced the market's unforgiving mood. Darden Restaurants, the parent of Olive Garden and LongHorn, dropped 6.6% after its fiscal first-quarter report. Earnings of $2.05 per share matched estimates, but revenue of $3.20 billion missed the $3.21 billion consensus by a hair. The company kept its full-year EPS outlook at $11.10 to $11.35 against a $11.28 estimate. The stock had closed near $213.68 and traded at $213.25 after hours on Wednesday, so the drop pulls it under the $200 line.

Darden's miss is small, but the context is not. McDonald's warned this week that high inflation and flat traffic will keep weighing on restaurants, and its U.S. same-store sales grew only 0.8% in the latest quarter. Investors are pricing casual dining for a consumer squeezed by 7% mortgages and $100 oil, and an in-line quarter isn't enough to hold the multiple.

TD Synnex delivered the clearest sell-the-news reaction of the day. The IT distributor sank 9% even after posting a record fiscal third quarter. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $5.68 against a $4.70 estimate, and revenue of $21.6 billion crushed the $18.91 billion forecast. Guidance was just as strong: fourth-quarter EPS of $5.65 to $6.15 versus $4.87 expected, and revenue of $21.8 billion to $22.6 billion versus $19.44 billion. The stock had traded at $289.42 after hours on Wednesday. When a beat of that size gets sold, positioning was already full, and the tape is telling traders to take profits rather than chase.

Everpure, the data storage company trading as P, went the other way. Shares gained 6.12% after its analyst meeting laid out 2028 revenue of $7 billion to $7.3 billion, well above the $6.19 billion consensus, along with a non-GAAP operating income outlook ahead of estimates. The company also reaffirmed fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $5.03 billion to $5.07 billion. Storage is one of the AI-adjacent niches still attracting buyers, a contrast to Thursday's selling in data center power and financing.

BlackBerry added 2% after its second quarter. Adjusted EPS of 7 cents beat the 4-cent estimate, and revenue of $163.3 million topped the $142.5 million consensus. Stitch Fix lost 16% after hours on Wednesday to $2.37 on weak first-quarter sales guidance, and H.B. Fuller posted EPS of $1.52 against a $1.46 estimate on mixed results.

The common thread is that guidance beats in AI-linked hardware and storage are being rewarded, while consumer names are being punished for anything short of a clean beat.

Meta Cools After an 11% Week, SpaceX and Fervo Stay in Focus

Meta Platforms slipped 2% in premarket trading after an 11% run this week built on excitement around its Muse AI agent. The stock closed Wednesday at $744.10, up 1.02%, with a market value of $1.90 trillion and a trailing P/E of 28.04. Its 52-week range runs from $520.26 to $770.60, and the shares have climbed 37% over the past month.

The pullback came after the company's Connect event on Wednesday evening. Meta unveiled $1,299 VR Glasses that weigh 100 grams, run on a tethered compute puck with a Qualcomm processor and ship in spring 2027. It also launched Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 glasses at $449, camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses at $349 shipping October 13, and the Muse Charm, a keychain device for the AI agent targeted for December with no price yet.

The monetization detail is what the market focused on. Muse will stay free for a large volume of tokens, and Meta plans to take a small fee on transactions completed through the agent. Muse is adding Mac computer use and shopping partners including Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Wayfair, Expedia and Instacart. More than 1,500 developers applied to build connectors within a week of the platform opening. Paid tiers already exist at $20 and $100 a month. That is a revenue model beyond advertising, and it is the reason the stock ran 37% in a month. A 2% dip after that move, on a day when the Nasdaq is under pressure from yields, is profit-taking rather than a verdict on the product.

SpaceX shares slipped 0.34% to $148.02 in premarket trading. The Pentagon has reportedly agreed to give the company exclusive access to the government's most classified space-tracking catalog in exchange for data from its star-tracking cameras. Starship Flight 14 is set for as early as September 28. The stock debuted at $135 on June 12 and hit a record $225.64 on June 16, so it now trades 34% under that peak.

Fervo Energy rose 8% in premarket trading after its Cape Station geothermal project in Utah delivered first power. Google has locked in 396 megawatts of capacity from the company, which raised $2.2 billion in its IPO. On a day when Project Jupiter's gas-dependent power plan is under fire, a geothermal supplier with a signed hyperscaler contract is exactly the kind of AI power story the market wants to own.

The split is clear. Power and platform stories with delivered milestones and signed customers are drawing buyers. Buildouts still waiting on permits are drawing sellers.

Trump–Xi Summit, Gold at $4,293, Bitcoin Under $84,000

The day's scheduled political event is the White House summit between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader's first U.S. state visit in 11 years. Ahead of the meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two countries agreed to extend their trade truce, known as the Busan Agreement, from November 10 to January 10. That leaves artificial intelligence competition, the Iran war and critical minerals as the main agenda items, and several top U.S. tech CEOs are set to join the leaders at a dinner Thursday evening.

Trump said he doesn't expect to put guardrails on AI during the summit, adding that superintelligence will be a major topic but he wants to leave the rules where they are. Expectations for a major announcement are low. Markets are watching for any movement on rare earth exports and chip restrictions. Chinese stocks didn't treat the truce extension as a win: the Shanghai Composite and the Hang Seng both closed lower Thursday.

Precious metals are sliding with the rate move. Gold futures fell 0.56% to $4,293 an ounce early in the session after touching $4,285, their lowest level since September 16. Silver dropped 1.50% to $63.99. A 5% 10-year yield raises the opportunity cost of holding a metal that pays nothing, and gold miners followed the metal lower, with Kinross Gold down 4% and Newmont and Iamgold each off 1%.

Crypto is trading as a high-beta risk asset. Bitcoin slipped under $84,000, down 2.42% to $83,819 in overnight trade, extending a 2% loss from Wednesday. The decline lines up with the rate-hike repricing rather than any crypto-specific headline, and it confirms that bitcoin is behaving like a long-duration growth asset rather than an inflation hedge in this tape.

The dollar is firm. The U.S. Dollar Index sits at a two-month high after Wednesday's jump to 100.80 on hawkish Fed bets and elevated yields. EUR/USD extended losses after breaking under 1.1390. USD/JPY pulled back from a three-week high and held near 158.00 as surging Japanese government bond yields lifted the yen and kept intervention risk in play.

Across asset classes, the picture is consistent. Stocks, gold, silver and bitcoin are all lower, the dollar and crude are higher, and long-dated yields sit at 19-year and 22-year highs. That is a textbook tightening-shock profile, and until the bond market stabilizes, the cross-asset pressure is unlikely to reverse.

Costco After the Bell and the Session Verdict

The last big catalyst of the day arrives after the close. Costco Wholesale reports fiscal fourth-quarter results after the bell, with a call at 5:00 p.m. ET. Consensus sits at $6.52 to $6.53 in EPS on revenue of $94.85 billion to $94.89 billion, up 10% from $86.16 billion a year earlier. The year-ago EPS was $5.87.

Much of the top line is already known. Fourth-quarter net sales came in at $93.9 billion, up 11.3%, with U.S. same-store sales up 10.7%, comparable sales ex-gas and currency up 6.7%, and digital sales up 19.8%. Full-year fiscal 2026 net sales reached $297.3 billion, up 10.2%. The report will turn on membership fees, renewal rates in the U.S. and Canada, the share of Executive members and gross margin under rising fuel and freight costs. Costco has beaten EPS estimates for five straight quarters, but the stock has fallen after its last several reports. At $895 and 45 times trailing earnings, it sits 18% under its peak, and any margin wobble gets punished with yields this high.

The session verdict for Thursday is bearish, with narrow leadership. The 10-year yield at 5.15% and the 30-year at 5.446% are driving the tape, and every strong data point, from 197,000 jobless claims to 684,000 new home sales and a 58.4 composite PMI, is reinforcing the case for another Fed hike before year-end. Williams said out loud what the market had already priced.

Oracle's force majeure notice on its $165 billion Project Jupiter campus added a cash-flow problem to the rate problem. ORCL down 7.37%, Bloom Energy down 6.52% and Blue Owl down 4.39% show investors discounting AI buildouts that depend on permits, pipelines and project finance. MGM's 10% drop and TD Synnex's 9% sell-the-news slide show a market that won't pay for financing-dependent stories or crowded winners.

Participation is thin on the upside. The gains are clustered in energy, health care, storage, cybersecurity and firms with signed customers and delivered milestones. That is rotation inside a declining market, not a broad bid.

The S&P 500 at 7,688, the Nasdaq at 26,804 and the Dow at 51,320 are pulling back from records rather than breaking down, and the morning's trim from the opening lows shows dip buyers are still active. But with Brent above $105, the dollar at a two-month high and the Fed signaling more tightening, the burden of proof sits with the bulls. Until the 10-year retreats below 5%, rallies in growth stocks are selling opportunities, and the next leg for the Nasdaq depends more on the bond market than on anything AI delivers this week.

That's TradingNEWS