Nasdaq 100 Halts Five-Day Slump as Bitcoin Rallies: Markets Wrap
(Bloomberg) — The final stretch of a jittery week on Wall Street saw stocks rising amid solid economic data, with traders weighing the outlook for bonds after a burst of volatility.
Equities extended their August advance as US business activity grew at its fastest pace in more than four years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1%. The Nasdaq 100 halted a five-day drop in the countdown to Nvidia Corp.’s results on Wednesday. Bitcoin rose to around $77,000. Treasuries saw mild losses. Oil notched a weekly gain.
Investors are assessing the fallout from a recent spike in bond yields that was fueled by worries about inflation and spendthrift governments, prompting the US to intervene to curb longer-term borrowing costs. They are now awaiting a promised new initiative from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent aimed at fiscal consolidation.
“We suspect long-dated Treasury yields will stabilize over the next few weeks as some calm is restored following the recent bout of volatility in global sovereign bond markets,” said Joe Maher at Capital Economics.
The extent of this week’s equity decline was modest, but some signals cannot be ignored, said Mark Hackett at Nationwide. The drop was driven by concern over debt issuance and rates, frustration over stalled progress in talks with Iran and skepticism on the artificial-intelligence buildout.
“None of these are new, but given the elevated expectations and positioning of investors, the bar for positive surprises has risen, and the sensitivity to the wall of worry has intensified,” he added.
“We don’t currently see bond market turbulence as a reason to reduce equity market exposure,” said Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi at UBS Chief Investment Office. “It does, however, reinforce the case for diversified equity exposure.”
A failure in the Treasury’s plan to tame long-term yields would pressure the dollar and spur short bets against riskier assets in the lead-up to November midterm elections, noted Bank of America Corp.’s Michael Hartnett.
The Treasury chief’s efforts to keep down the long-end of the yield curve provided a clear signaling mechanism, said Stephen Brown at Capital Economics. He’ll presumably be hoping Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh “doesn’t undo his work during his Jackson Hole speech next week,” Brown added.
Allspring Global Investments’ Ann Miletti said Wall Street has more to worry about from the Jackson Hole economic symposium than earnings from Nvidia.
“The thing that we try to stay focused on with all the craziness going on is what you can control,” said Miletti. “Looking at companies from a bottom-up perspective, really understanding what companies have the balance sheet and the flexibility to kind of get through any environment — that’s really where we’re focused, and that’s what we have control of.”
Corporate Highlights:
Ken Griffin’s Citadel has offloaded more than 80% of the aggregate risk associated with the Situational Awareness stock portfolio it snagged from the embattled AI hedge fund. Anthropic PBC has hired Amir Salek, a founder of the custom chip program at Alphabet Inc.’s Google, as the AI lab lays the groundwork for a push into making its own semiconductors. Nvidia Corp. has agreed to pay $6 billion to license AI models from Poolside and will extend job offers to more than 100 employees, according to people familiar with the situation. Apple Inc. is cutting jobs across teams responsible for the Siri digital assistant and the Vision Pro headset, part of an effort to focus on new devices and AI. Nscale is seeking to raise as much as $3 billion in its US IPO, according to people familiar with the matter, joining a rush of AI data center companies tapping public market investors. Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
The S&P 500 rose 0.4% as of 4 p.m. New York time The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.3% The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1% The MSCI World Index rose 0.5% Currencies
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.1% The euro was little changed at $1.1679 The British pound rose 0.1% to $1.3647 The Japanese yen was little changed at 159.00 per dollar Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin rose 5.9% to $76,937.31 Ether rose 4% to $2,410.71 Bonds
The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced three basis points to 4.73% Germany’s 10-year yield was little changed at 3.26% Britain’s 10-year yield was little changed at 5.06% Commodities
West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.3% to $86.60 a barrel Spot gold rose 2.2% to $4,615.65 an ounce ©2026 Bloomberg L.P.
