The S&P 500 Snapped a Three-Day Skid at 7,666.45 on Thursday, but the Week Is Still Down 1% After the 10-Year Pushed Toward 5.34%

by Jonathan Mercer · October 2, 2026

Chief Markets Correspondent, US Market Current

The S&P 500 rose 14.91 points, or 0.2%, to close at 7,666.45 on Thursday, Oct. 1, ending a three-session losing streak, according to the Associated Press closing tabulation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 20.51 points, or less than 0.1%, to 50,926.56; the Nasdaq composite rose 10.53 points, or less than 0.1%, to 26,871.60; and the Russell 2000 gained 9.76 points, or 0.3%, to 2,806.63. Those are the most recent completed closes. Friday's session is in progress and no Oct. 2 close exists yet.

The modest finish hid a reversal. The AP's full-session report said U.S. bond yields "cranked higher but then gave back the gains later in the day," with the 10-year Treasury yield heading toward 5.34%, which the AP described as its highest level since 2002, before pulling back to 5.23% from 5.29% late Wednesday. Yahoo Finance's historical rows for the S&P 500 show a Thursday low of 7,616.78, which on our arithmetic is 0.45% below Wednesday's 7,651.54 close, before the index recovered to finish higher.

The AP wrap put the four-day week in the red across the board: through Thursday the S&P 500 was down 76.96 points, or 1%; the Dow down 902.06 points, or 1.7%; the Nasdaq down 197.12 points, or 0.7%; and the Russell 2000 down 30.93 points, or 1.1%. Those figures measure from Friday, Sept. 25, when the S&P 500 closed at 7,743.41, within 0.7% of its record, after what the AP called the market's first winning week in three.

The damage was done Monday through Wednesday. On Monday the S&P 500 fell 59.72 points, or 0.8%, to 7,683.69, as the AP reported the 10-year yield jumped to 5.23% and touched its highest since 2007 on another swing in oil, more than offsetting a gain in Nvidia after the chipmaker announced what the AP termed a historic buyback. Tuesday brought a further 12.85-point, or 0.2%, decline to 7,670.84, with the 10-year at 5.25% and Brent crude down 1.7% to $96.16 a barrel, per the AP.

Wednesday, the final session of the third quarter, was the sharpest for the Dow: a 443.87-point, or 0.9%, drop to 50,906.05, while the S&P 500 slipped 19.30 points, or 0.3%, to 7,651.54 and the Nasdaq rose 63.52 points, or 0.2%. The AP's Wednesday wrap attributed the turn lower to reports that the economy was stronger in the spring than previously thought, which "helped yields remain high in the bond market."

The AP did not name the reports; the morning's principal release fitting that description came from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Its third estimate, released Sept. 30, put second-quarter real GDP growth at an annual rate of 2.2%, revised up 0.7 percentage point from the second estimate, "primarily reflecting upward revisions to investment, consumer spending, and government spending." Real final sales to private domestic purchasers rose 4.6%. The same morning, BEA's personal income and outlays release showed the PCE price index up 0.3% in August and 3.4% from a year earlier, with the core index up 0.2% on the month and 3.0% on the year; real PCE rose 0.6% in August.

Thursday added two more reports pointing the same direction. The Labor Department said initial jobless claims for the week ending Sept. 26 were 197,000, down 1,000 from the prior week's revised level, with the four-week average at 200,000 and insured unemployment at 1,701,000 for the week ending Sept. 19. The Institute for Supply Management's September Manufacturing PMI registered 54.5%, 0.1 point below August, with the New Orders Index at 55.3% and the Employment Index at 52.7%, according to the ISM release distributed Oct. 1.

The line in the ISM report that the bond market appears to have read first was prices. The Prices Index registered 77.9%, up 6.8 percentage points from August's 71.1%, which survey chair Susan Spence described as "returning to its level at the start of the Iran War." Among negative respondent comments, ISM said pricing volatility was mentioned in 46%, tariffs in 34% and the Iran war in 30%. The AP's Thursday report flagged the acceleration in prices as "potentially more concerning" than the headline expansion.

Oil did not help. The AP reported Brent crude leaped 4.4% to $102.31 a barrel on Thursday, which it characterised as the latest move in an ongoing yo-yo tied to uncertainty about when the war with Iran would allow the global oil industry to return to normal. Yahoo Finance historical rows for the front-month U.S. crude contract show a Thursday close of $92.87, up from $90.42 on Wednesday.

The offset was, once again, the AI complex. The AP said Micron Technology rose 3% after reporting a stronger-than-expected quarter and giving forecasts that topped estimates, bringing its year-to-date gain to 284.5%; Nvidia added 1.1% and was "the single strongest force lifting the S&P 500"; and Applied Materials rose 3.5%. Outside tech, Accenture jumped 15.8% on a profit beat, while McCormick fell 4.9% after the midpoint of its full-year revenue forecast fell short of estimates, per the AP.

Europe took the brunt of the rates move. Stock indexes fell 1.7% in London, 1.6% in Paris and 1% in Frankfurt, the AP reported, as the yield on the 10-year French government bond swung to nearly 4.95%, then toward 4.80% and back up to 4.90% within the session. Asia fared better on AI optimism: Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped 3.3% and South Korea's Kospi climbed 1.9%, according to the same report.

For context, the AP's running tally has the S&P 500 up 820.95 points, or 12%, for the year as of Thursday's close, the Dow up 6%, the Nasdaq up 15.6% and the Russell 2000 up 13.1%. The 10-year yield, by the AP's account, was below 5% as recently as last week and below 4% before the war with Iran began. The rate backdrop has shifted since the Federal Open Market Committee raised its target range by a quarter point to 3.75% to 4% on Sept. 16 in a 12-0 vote, stating in its release that "inflation remains elevated."

What comes next is already in hand but not yet in any close. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published the September Employment Situation at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday, reporting that nonfarm payroll employment "changed little" at +29,000 and the unemployment rate held at 4.2%, with July revised down to -10,000 and August to +133,000. Any market response to that report belongs to Friday's session, which had not closed when this was written; we are not characterising intraday levels.

Not yet known: whether the 10-year yield's late-Thursday retreat from near 5.34% holds through Friday's close, whether Brent holds above $100, and how the week finishes once Friday's session is tallied. The next scheduled data of comparable weight is the October Employment Situation, which the BLS says is scheduled for Nov. 6.