Nasdaq Hits Record High

Stocks pushed higher while long-term Treasury yields kept climbing

Author

Elie Zakhour
October 06, 2026

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Market News

Nasdaq Closes at a Record as the 10-Year Yield Hits Its Highest Close Since 2002

The Nasdaq closed at a record high yesterday, up 1.05% which puts it past its Sept. 22 high. The S&P 500 also rose 0.66%, about 0.3% short of its August record, and the Dow also narrowly gained 0.18%. About six in ten S&P 500 stocks finished higher and the VIX still edged up to 15.5.

What carried the market today was big tech, surprise! Nvidia hit its first record close since May, and Meta (+1.9%), Tesla (+2.2%), and Microsoft (+1.5%) all finished higher. Foxconn, which builds AI servers for Nvidia, reported a 47% jump in third-quarter sales earlier in the day. A couple of deals moved stocks on their own, with PTC up 33% on a $22.6 billion buyout and C.H. Robinson down 11% after agreeing to buy RXO.

Bonds had a much worse day. Long-term Treasurys sold off again, and the 10-year yield ended around 5.31%, its highest close since 2002. The 30-year got to about 5.67%, while the 2-year hardly budged. Long-term rates are the ones that set mortgage and corporate borrowing costs, so this matters well outside of Wall Street. The selloff is about more than the Fed, with high real yields and heavy government borrowing also keeping pressure on the long end.

The ISM services report gave yields another push. The headline index slipped to 54.9 from 55.4, which still means the sector is growing. The trouble was the prices index, which rose to 74, the highest since July 2022. Survey respondents brought up fuel costs twice as often as anything else. The employment index came in at 50.1, about as close to flat as you can get while still technically growing.

Putting it all together, the Fed is in a pretty tough spot. Chair Kevin Warsh and other Fed officials raised rates a quarter point on Sept. 16. Then Fridayā€™s jobs report showed only 29,000 jobs added in September, and prediction market odds of another hike in October dropped to about 16%. To put it into perspective, they were near 69% earlier last week. Minutes from the September meeting come out Wednesday.

Last but not least, we have oil falling about 2%, with WTI near $89 and Brent near $100. The G7 agreed to release up to 100 million barrels of oil and diesel from emergency reserves, and Gulf exports kept on recovering. On the earnings calendar this week are PepsiCo, Delta, Constellation Brands, and Levi Strauss.

Peel Take: Stocks and bonds have been sending very different signals for a while now, and that gap only got wider Monday. The Nasdaq set a record on the very day the 10-year had its highest close since 2002, which feels like celebrating a raise the same week your landlord hikes the rent by more. We understand the bull logic. Jobs are weak, so the Fed probably sits on its hands in October, so buy stocks. The catch is that the Fed only controls short-term rates, and the pain is coming from the long end. Fed minutes are out Wednesday, might actually be worth reading this time.

What's Ripe

PTC (PTC) 33.49% 

  • Schneider Electric is buying PTC, maker of the Creo and Windchill design software, for $205 a share in cash. That's 42% above Friday's close and values the company at $22.6B with debt.

  • Schneider has never done a deal this big. Its previous record was the $11B Aveva buyout in 2023. Its shares fell about 10% in Paris, and the deal isn't expected to close until Q3 2027.

  • Peel Take: Good morning to PTC shareholders and nobody else. The stock closed about 6% shy of the offer price, reflecting the long wait to close and the usual deal risk. The buyer is the more interesting part to us. Schneider dates back to 1836 and built its name around electrical equipment and automation, and it just put $22.6B behind a much bigger push into industrial software. So far the AI money has mostly gone to chips and data centers. Our guess is that more of it finds its way to the boring industrial software that keeps production lines running, and that Schneider won't be the last old-line company out shopping for some.

SpaceX (SPCX) 7.63% 

  • Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas told clients the stock looks cheap and that the weeks before Starship Flight 15 are a good time to buy. His price target stays at $300.

  • That made for SpaceX's best close since June 18. Shares are up about 15% since Sept. 25, though they're still around 24% under the June intraday high of $225.64.

  • Peel Take: One note caused a $2.2 trillion company to move 7.6%. Blue chips really arenā€™t supposed to trade like that, and for a lot of SpaceX holders thatā€™s sort of the point. Over the weekend, Musk also said the companyā€™s AI unit will be renamed SpaceXSI, in line with a White House order replacing ā€œAIā€ with ā€œsuper intelligenceā€ in official government language. Jonas says successfully catching Starship with the launch tower on a future flight could be the biggest catalyst since the IPO. Could be. It's also a rocket test, and rocket tests are famous for going off script.

What's Rotten

C.H. Robinson (CHRW) 10.85%

  • C.H. Robinson is buying rival freight broker RXO for $5.8B, or $30.25 a share, paid roughly 57% in cash and the rest in stock. That's a 29% premium to Friday's close, and RXO jumped 22.5%.

  • New debt covers the cash portion. Buybacks are on hold until leverage is back at target, which the company doesn't expect before the end of 2028.

  • Peel Take: We do see the logic for C.H. Robinson. Freight brokerage is a crowded business, and scale is one of the few things that helps margins. The market clearly wasn't thrilled about funding it with new stock and a pile of debt, then losing buybacks for a couple of years on top of that. Management is promising about $300M a year in savings from running the combined company on its "Lean AI" operating model, which might be the most 2026 phrase we've read all month.

Lennar (LEN) 6.73%

  • Lennar slid again after Friday's short report from Hunterbrook, whose affiliated investment fund disclosed short positions in Lennar and Millrose. The report alleges the homebuilder sold more than 700 finished homes worth roughly $200M to its own spinoff, Millrose Properties. According to Hunterbrook, at least 356 of those sales happened in the final week of Lennar's fiscal third quarter.

  • Morgan Stanley also initiated coverage Thursday at Underweight with a $65 target, citing earnings and margin pressure. The stock has lost about 9% over the past two sessions.

  • Peel Take: Lennar already had enough pressure from weak housing economics, and the Hunterbrook report added another layer of uncertainty for investors. Berkshireā€™s timing is interesting too: a filing Monday night showed it bought another roughly $190M of Lennar shares late last week, taking its stake to about 12%, just before the stock slid again. With the 10-year still above 5%, the macro backdrop for homebuilders isnā€™t getting any easier either.

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A bank has $500 million in loans earning an average interest rate of 6% and $400 million in deposits costing 2%. Ignoring all other assets, liabilities, and expenses, what is the bankā€™s annual net interest income?

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