The 10-year took 5.1%. Crude came back with it

Rundown · 2026-09-24

Wednesday's surprise was the bond market, and it has not stopped. The S&P Global flash composite PMI printed 58.4, the fastest US expansion since July 2021, with input prices rising at the quickest pace since October 2022. Governor Barr said further hikes are "likely to be needed". The 10-year closed at 5.11%, its highest since July 2007, and is 5.13% this morning after touching 5.15%. CME FedWatch put October hike odds at 73% on Wednesday, up from 55% the day before. All four indices fell together, which ended six sessions of dispersion. Overnight, NQ is down 0.94% against its settle, the worst of the four. WTI is back at $93 from Wednesday's low of $88.71: the EIA reported a build, but Iran said it will not allow free passage through Hormuz. Xi Jinping arrives at the White House this morning. The 08:30 slot is live: jobless claims and the Q2 current account.

Overnight

Against Wednesday's settles, as of about 06:45 ET (delayed quotes, not settles). ES (Dec) 7,730.50, -42.00 (-0.54%) from 7,772.50 · NQ 30,476.25, -288.50 (-0.94%) from 30,764.75 · YM 51,744, -129 (-0.25%) from 51,873 · RTY 2,850.20, -10.00 (-0.35%) from 2,860.20
The reference levels, and nothing more. Globex ranges so far: ES 7,707.25-7,779.25 · NQ 30,370.00-30,813.00 · YM 51,602-51,905 · RTY 2,843.90-2,862.00. ES's overnight low sits about 141 points below Tuesday's 52-week high of 7,848.50. ES, NQ and RTY all opened near the top of their overnight ranges and are trading in the lower third; YM is mid-range
Tokyo reopened after three days shut and was the one firm market in Asia: Nikkei 65,513.77, +495.04 (+0.76%), with a session high of 66,249.11, with the yen weaker. Hang Seng 24,761.14, -72.99 (-0.29%)
Europe, early trade: DAX 25,355.17, -55.46 (-0.22%) · FTSE 100 10,712.79, +7.54 (+0.07%). Gilt yields rose with oil on Wednesday, and Reuters describes the bond selloff as continuing this morning. Europe is holding up better than US futures because the pressure is centred on US rates and US tech
What broke while the US was closed. An adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader said Tehran could extend the war to the Indian Ocean if the US or Israel attacks again, and Brent went back above $105 in European trade, per Dow Jones. Treasury Secretary Bessent said the US and China will extend the Busan trade agreement to 10 January, two months past the 10 November deadline. At about 06:00 ET, New York Fed President Williams said the economy is "not overheating" and the labour market is "broadly in balance", but called another hike by year-end "reasonable"

The Dollar & FX

DXY 101.27, +0.15 (+0.15%) from Wednesday's 101.11 close (TradingView), range 101.00-101.32. Wednesday alone added 0.57% from 100.54. That is a two-month high, and it was reached with crude rising, not falling. The driver is the same one as Tuesday, only stronger: a US economy running at a 58.4 PMI and a Fed that keeps saying hike
6J is carrying the move. USD/JPY 158.79, +0.51 (+0.32%) from 158.28, range 157.79-158.80, at its high. Wednesday's session took out Friday's 158.057 high (the level this desk had been tracking) and traded to 158.40. Tokyo's return did not produce yen buying
6A is the weakest major. AUD/USD 0.7025, -0.0014 (-0.20%) from 0.7039, range 0.7017-0.7045, after Wednesday's -1.1%. High US yields and a soft Hang Seng are hitting the currency most tied to China on the morning Xi lands in Washington
6E and 6B are grinding. EUR/USD 1.1370, -0.0013 (-0.11%) from 1.1383, range 1.1361-1.1399. GBP/USD 1.3225, -0.0014 (-0.11%) from 1.3239, range 1.3214-1.3256. They fell 0.55% and 0.78% on Wednesday. Neither has a domestic catalyst today. They are moving on the rate differential
6C is quiet again. USD/CAD 1.4117, +0.0015 (+0.11%) from 1.4101, range 1.4087-1.4118. Higher crude would normally support the loonie, but the dollar's rate bid is outweighing it
Fed speakers today, per TradingView's calendar: Richmond's Barkin at 08:00, Cleveland's Hammack at 08:50, Philadelphia's Paulson at 10:10. With hike pricing this far along, a speaker who pushes back is now the bigger surprise

Energy & Metals

CL: November settled $92.16, +$1.64 (+1.81%) on Wednesday, which ended a five-session losing streak. It is $93.13, +$0.97 (+1.05%) this morning, range $91.23-$94.69. It had traded as low as $88.71 on Wednesday before reversing
The inventories said sell and the tape bought. EIA showed a 2.97m barrel crude build against a 0.7m draw expected, and Cushing +2.27m to a four-month high, which confirmed Tuesday's API. Gasoline drew 1.69m against an expected build, and November RBOB closed +3.67% at a four-month high. Geopolitics decided the settle: Secretary Rubio said Iran fired on commercial ships in Hormuz, and President Pezeshkian told the UN that Iran will not allow free navigation while sanctions and the US blockade stay in place
Brent is where the risk premium shows. November Brent settled $103.08, +$3.83 (+3.86%), more than double WTI's gain, and is $104.41 now (TradingView, delayed), range $101.83-$106.50. The Brent-WTI gap on the November contracts is about $11.30, up from about $9.40 on Wednesday morning. US crude is building at Cushing and Middle East supply is not. Saudi Arabia still says it plans a "meaningful resumption" of its East-West pipeline by Saturday
GC: December settled $4,318.40, -$58.00 (-1.33%) and is $4,292.80, -$25.60 (-0.59%) now, range $4,278.30-$4,338.00, below $4,300. The mechanism is simple: a metal that pays no yield against a 10-year at 5.1% and a dollar at a two-month high. Gold and silver miners fell 3%+ on Wednesday per Investrade. The Iran headlines that lifted crude did not lift gold, which tells you which force is dominant
Rates. 10-year 5.129%, +1.9bp on the morning (TradingView), after a +13.7bp Wednesday (Investrade). 2-year 4.874%, -2.3bp. 2s10s is about 25bp, steeper than the 18bp of Wednesday morning. The long end is now leading the selloff. The desk has not sourced Wednesday's 5-year auction result

Where We Left Off

Wednesday's RTH close, per AP: Dow 51,511.59 (-352.10, -0.7%) · S&P 500 7,706.03 (-58.61, -0.8%) · Nasdaq Composite 26,936.04 (-308.24, -1.1%) · Russell 2000 2,838.66 (-51.26, -1.8%). All four reconcile against Tuesday's published closes. Investrade has the same Nasdaq and Russell figures and matches on the Dow and S&P to within a point
Small caps took the worst of it, which is what a 14bp move in the 10-year does to the most rate-sensitive index. Utilities and real estate lagged on yields. Energy gained with crude. The Nasdaq had set back-to-back records into Tuesday; Wednesday gave back 1.1%
What carries over: the dispersion has ended and rates are the driver. For six sessions this desk tracked Nasdaq up against the Dow down. Wednesday, everything fell, and overnight NQ leads the decline. When the 10-year is the story, the long-duration index takes the hit

Yesterday's Data

On The Calendar Today

Time ET · Event · Consensus · Prior · Hits

Pre-open · Earnings: Darden Restaurants · n/a · n/a · ES

08:00 · Fed's Barkin (Richmond) · n/a · n/a · USD · GC

08:30 · Initial jobless claims, w/e Sep 19 · 201k · 196k · USD · ES/NQ · GC

08:30 · Continuing claims, w/e Sep 12 · 1.750M · 1.730M · USD

08:30 · Current account, Q2 · -$255B · -$226.8B · USD

08:50 · Fed's Hammack (Cleveland) · n/a · n/a · USD · GC

10:00 · New home sales, Aug · 620k · 607k · USD · ES

10:00 · Building permits, Aug final · 1.394M · 1.433M · USD

10:10 · Fed's Paulson (Philadelphia) · n/a · n/a · USD · GC

10:30 · EIA natural gas storage, w/e Sep 18 · +53 Bcf · +44 Bcf · NG

11:00 · Kansas City Fed manufacturing, Sep · n/a · 17 · USD

11:30 · 4-week and 8-week bill auctions · n/a · 3.82% / 3.92% · USD

12:00 · Freddie Mac 30-year mortgage rate · n/a · 6.95% · USD · ES

13:00 · 7-year note auction · n/a · 4.512% · USD · GC · ES/NQ

After close · Earnings: Costco · n/a · n/a · ES · NQ

All day · Xi Jinping state visit, Oval Office talks · n/a · n/a · ES/NQ · 6A · CL

The 08:30 slot is populated, and has been checked. TradingView's calendar lists claims and the current account; BEA's own schedule confirms the Q2 current account at 08:30, and Census confirms new home sales at 10:00. TradingView places the final building permits at 08:30. They are published inside Census's New Residential Sales release, so the table shows 10:00. Durable goods is Friday at 08:30 per Census, not today. Thursday's fixed releases, claims at 08:30 and natural gas at 10:30, are both in the table.

There are two fulcrums today, and neither is a data release. The first is the 13:00 7-year auction. It is the first long-end supply since the 10-year crossed 5.1%, so weak demand would test the bond market directly. The second has no fixed time: the Oval Office meeting with Xi. Tariffs, Taiwan, AI and Iran are on the agenda, and 6A, NQ and CL all have a stake in what comes out of it. Claims at 08:30 are the only print likely to move anything before then. At 201k, they would be another low number from a labour market that Williams just called balanced, which adds weight to the hike case. Costco after the close is the consumer read into Friday's durable goods.

Index Movers

Ranked by index contribution. The Dow is price-weighted, so $1 in any constituent is worth roughly 5.9 Dow points (divisor about 0.168, secondary source; treat these as approximate). Closes are from TradingView's feed; MCD and GOOGL percentages match closing reports.

GOOGL $337.83, -$13.33 (about -3.7%), the largest single drag on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 by market cap. The catalyst was Meta's Muse AI agent reaching the top of Apple's US App Store and passing 2.8 million downloads in 12 days. Coverage framed it as a threat to the search-ad auction that produces most of Alphabet's operating profit. Microsoft finished +0.5%, which suggests this was about Alphabet specifically rather than a broad tech selloff
META $744.10, +$7.51 (+1.0%), the offset on the other side of that trade. It also detailed how Muse will make money, by taking a small fee on transactions, and unveiled $1,299 VR glasses
GS $936.36, -$13.13 (-1.38%), about -78 Dow points and the largest Dow drag. It was the second straight session of selling, after Tuesday's report that it is in talks to buy Palmer Square
MCD $238.32, -$12.03 (-4.81%), about -72 Dow points. At its investor day it pushed the 50,000-restaurant target from 2027 to 2028 and laid out an $8.5B technology investment plan
HD $296.72, -$8.63 (-2.83%), about -51 Dow points, reversing Tuesday's gain as 30-year mortgage rates reached about 7.26%, a near two-year high per Yahoo Finance. GS, MCD and HD together are worth about -201 Dow points, more than half the index's 352-point loss
Semis gave back Tuesday's lift: MU -2.2%, AVGO -2.6%, NVDA -1.5%. Before the open, Darden (S&P 500) reports. After the close, Costco (S&P 500, Nasdaq-100) reports; it is the largest consumer-staples weight in the Nasdaq-100

What Would Change The Read

Scoring Wednesday's questions. The 09:45 PMI was the fulcrum and it beat by more than three points. The dollar held: DXY's low was 100.544, right at the level flagged, and it closed at 101.11. EIA confirmed API with a 2.97m build and another Cushing build. Crude still rose, so the slide that rested on diplomacy reversed on Iran headlines, as flagged. USD/JPY took 158.057 on Wednesday. The financials selling was not a one-day event: GS fell again
Whether 5.15% holds as the overnight high on the 10-year. It is the level the whole tape is keyed off. If the 7-year auction is sloppy and yields break it, NQ and RTY carry the most duration risk. If yields turn back from there, Wednesday starts to look like a data-day overshoot
Whether the odds keep climbing. CME FedWatch had October at 73% after Barr, and one report this morning has it near 77%. The desk could not date a prediction-market price to today, so no range is given. Williams' "not overheating" was the most dovish line of the morning. A similar tone from Barkin, Hammack or Paulson is the kind of thing that would slow the repricing
Whether Brent's premium over WTI keeps widening. At $11, the gap is being driven by Hormuz and Red Sea risk, not by US balances, and US balances are building. A Saudi pipeline restart on Saturday or progress with Iran would compress it from the Brent side
Whether anything concrete comes out of the Oval Office. The Busan extension was announced before the meeting. Anything on tariffs or chips beyond that is new information for NQ and 6A

The Bottom Line

The bond market set the agenda on Wednesday, and nothing overnight has changed that. A 58.4 PMI, a governor saying hikes are likely and a 10-year at a 19-year high turned six sessions of index dispersion into a broad selloff. Overnight, NQ is leading the decline, gold is below $4,300 and the dollar is at a two-month high. Crude is the exception: Iran's refusal to allow free passage through Hormuz outweighed an inventory build, so oil has its own reason to be bid. Today's tests are the 7-year auction at 13:00 and a Xi meeting with no set time. Claims at 08:30 and three Fed speakers before 10:30 decide whether the repricing continues before either arrives.

_For informational purposes only. Not investment advice._