Saturday, September 19, 2026

On Saturdays, we wrap up the U.S. market for the week.

This week in the U.S. started with discussions about artificial intelligence deceleration, passed through the Fed's first rate hike in 3 years and 10-year yields at 5%, and ended with memory shortages and price increases, while Nasdaq rose 0.72% for the week.

Semiconductors fell 5.86% on Monday and recovered by Friday

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 5.86% on Monday with all 30 component stocks declining. Over the weekend, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, wrote about slowing performance improvement speeds for new models, which Sam Altman and Elon Musk agreed with, and on the same day CrowdStrike rose 13.85% and Palo Alto Networks rose 13.09%. On Tuesday, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, said slowing down artificial intelligence was clearly a wrong strategy, and Altman announced a major launch later in the week within two days.

The direction changed from Wednesday. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said memory prices have already risen 5 to 7 times and shortages will worsen next year, and Reuters reported that SK Hynix is discussing ways to produce memory with Intel in the U.S. On Thursday, AMD rose 6.36% on news it will raise artificial intelligence accelerator prices by around 10% from the fourth quarter, Arm rose 8.57% after confirming $2 billion in data center CPU demand, and Micron rose 5.5% on starting commercial production at its India factory. The Semiconductor Index rose 3.14% on Thursday and 2.78% on Friday, recovering Monday's decline for the week and closing slightly up. On Friday, SanDisk, Seagate, and Lam Research rose 6% to 10%, and Micron rose 3.92% ahead of its earnings announcement on the 30th.

The top ten weekly S&P 500 gainers included three cybersecurity stocks: CrowdStrike at 14.95%, Palo Alto Networks at 9.96%, and Fortinet at 8.82%, along with SanDisk at 9.70% and AMD at 8.46%. Generac, which signed a $2.4 billion data center backup generator contract with Amazon through 2028, rose 10.94%. In contrast, Constellation Energy fell 10.55%, Corning fell 9.78%, Goldman Sachs fell 8.47%, and Bank of America fell 7.91%.

The Fed raised rates for the first time in 3 years, and 10-year yields exceeded 5% twice

The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.04% intraday on Tuesday, the highest since July 2007. On Wednesday, the Fed raised its benchmark rate by 25 basis points from 3.75% to 4.00%, the first hike since around 2023, about 3 years ago. The dot plot indicated one more rate hike this year and a hold next year, and while Chair Powell said in a press conference that they would not set a predetermined path forward, the Dow fell 700 points and closed down 1.21%.

On Thursday, oil and rates declined and the S&P 500 rose 1.14%, but on Friday, French Treasury yields spiked over 12 basis points on fiscal concerns, pushing the 10-year yield back above 5%. Friday was the second-largest futures and options expiration in history with $7 trillion notional, and Nasdaq turned positive in the afternoon on semiconductor strength. The Dow fell 0.18%, the S&P 500 rose 0.17%, and Nasdaq rose 0.39%, for the week: Nasdaq up 0.72%, S&P 500 down 0.08%, Dow down 1.69%. The volatility index came down to 14.81.

The cryptocurrency bill failed, but 24-hour stock trading opened

On Tuesday, a procedural vote in the U.S. Senate on the Clarity Act received 49 votes for and 50 against, falling short of the 60 needed to pass. Reports indicated the failure was due to disagreements with Democrats over ethics provisions surrounding Trump family cryptocurrency profits, with Coinbase falling 10.1% and Circle falling 11.4%, while Bitcoin briefly dropped 5.3% to $74,910.

Two days later, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allowed tokenized stocks, opening the path for 24-hour stock trading. On Friday, Bitcoin rose 6.45% to $81,282, and Coinbase rose 10.84% for the week, recovering from Tuesday's decline.

Oil prices fell for the week for the first time in 3 weeks

West Texas crude oil exceeded $105 on Tuesday but closed at $95.47 on Friday, marking the first weekly decline in 3 weeks. Reports followed that Saudi Arabia was working to restore half of the east-west pipeline's transport capacity halted by drone attacks within days and proposed a 2-week truce to the Houthis through Oman, and that China requested Iran to pressure the Houthis to stop attacks on Saudi Arabia at Saudi Arabia's request. President Trump said he directly received a message from Iran that it wants to negotiate.

However, Saudi Aramco notified at least two European refiners that it will not allocate crude for next month, and in the Strait of Hormuz, an incident where a tanker was hit by a projectile on the 16th was confirmed belatedly. U.S. gasoline is at a record high of $4.37 per gallon on a seasonally adjusted basis, with diesel at $6.31.

Domestically, KOSPI fell 3.26% but rose 2.66%, ending the week flat

KOSPI fell 3.26% on Monday on artificial intelligence deceleration discussions and was pushed down to 6,582 intraday on Tuesday, but rose 2.66% on Friday to close at 6,894.23. Compared to last Friday's 6,909.91, it was down 0.23% for the week. Foreign investors had consecutive net selling for 7 trading days through Thursday but returned to net buying of 431.7 billion won on Friday, and SK Hynix rose 6.42% on Friday to exceed 1.8 million won. Korea Exchange's aftermarket opened for the first time on Monday with 1.8 trillion won traded on the first day, with individuals accounting for 93%. Doosan announced 968.4 billion won in expanded copper clad laminate production and the full retirement of treasury shares, with calculations circulating that its stock price has risen 61% since July 30.

Other

Warren Buffett steps down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, a position he has held since 1970, to become vice chairman, and his son Howard Buffett takes on the chairman role. Greg Abel continues as chief executive officer. Reports indicate that Anthropic is postponing its initial public offering that was expected in October to November and plans to announce third-quarter results first, and informed investors that it will increase available computing by approximately 5 gigawatts by year-end and approximately 10 gigawatts in 2027. Politico reported on Friday that a civil lawsuit was filed in federal court alleging that Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and Google colluded to slow down the pace of artificial intelligence development.

Exclusive reports circulated that while Google was testing security performance with a Gemini-based agent, the agent accessed the internet and hacked three companies. Huawei refused arguments for slowing down, saying it cannot slow down before catching up. Despite the outlook that Nasdaq-100 weighting doubles and passive funds of $15.5 billion to $22 billion will flow in, SpaceX fell 1.36% on Friday with news of Starship launch delays, and received a $946 million contract from NASA for three crewed International Space Station missions. Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng will visit the United States from the 19th to the 23rd for economic and trade negotiations, and Jensen Huang and Sam Altman are scheduled to attend the state dinner for the U.S.-China summit on the 24th.

Next week, South Korea will be closed on the 24th and 25th for Chuseok, and Japan will be off from the 21st to the 23rd. The CLSA Investor Forum and ECOC optical communications conference will be held on the 21st, and Micron's earnings will be released on the 30th.

Among U.S. stocks, Nvidia was mentioned the most this week, followed by Alphabet, Intel, and SpaceX, and the names that increased the most compared to last week were SpaceX and Intel.

Data Included in This Article

Source: hatzze.fun/kadera

※ Mention volume and counts are merely expressions of how much something is being discussed, are for entertainment and reference purposes only, and are not buy or sell signals. The truth of rumors is not verified.

▶ Original Source: https://hatzze.fun/