US Market Weekly Recap: Bonds Break a 19-Year Ceiling, Chips Refuse to Blink, and Washington Takes the Dollar On-Chain

The strongest US business-activity reading in five years sent the 10-year Treasury yield to its highest level since 2007. Chipmakers and AI platforms kept rallying anyway, and Nasdaq records held up against the tightest financial conditions in almost two decades. In Washington, a US-China summit produced a new AI hotline but no breakthroughs, while the administration looked at making dollar stablecoins a tool of statecraft.

Macro & Rates: The Bond Market Moves Ahead of the Fed One week after the Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time since 2023, the bond market signaled that one hike would not be enough. S&P Global's flash composite PMI rose to 58.4, far above the 54.9 consensus and its highest level since July 2021. The survey's input-price gauge climbed to 66.4, as the war with Iran kept fuel and freight costs high. On the same afternoon, Fed Governor Michael Barr said further policy adjustments were "likely to be needed." Then a five-year note auction drew weak demand. Indirect bidders, a group that includes foreign central banks, took 54% of the sale against a typical 65%. The 10-year yield posted its biggest one-day jump in 18 months and reached 5.225% by Thursday, while the 30-year yield moved above 5.5%.

The impact reached households quickly. The average 30-year mortgage rate rose to 7.45%, the highest since April 2024. Gasoline averaged $4.48 a gallon, compared with $3.16 a year earlier. Futures now price roughly a two-in-three chance of another rate increase in October, up from less than one-in-ten a month ago. Through Thursday, the Dow was on track for a fourth straight weekly loss, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq held small gains. A strong economy was now the main reason for tighter policy, and August PCE inflation on September 30 will show whether price pressures are easing or still building.

Tech & AI: A Trillion-Dollar Rally and a Hotline to Beijing The AI trade held firm despite the pressure from rates. Monday was the market's best session since early August. Advanced Micro Devices passed a $1 trillion valuation for the first time, and Arm rose 17%. Meta gained more than 11% after its Muse agent reached the top of Apple's App Store. At its Connect conference two days later, Meta dropped the metaverse from the center of its pitch and put "personal superintelligence" there instead. Muse will be free across a large token allowance, and Meta plans to earn a small fee on the transactions the agent completes. That change links Meta's AI ambitions to commerce as well as advertising.

After Thursday's close, Anthropic signed a seven-year, $11.6 billion agreement with Akamai for CPU capacity, with room to grow to about $20 billion. Akamai added a warrant that lets Anthropic take up to 5% of the company, and its shares rose 22% in extended trading. The deal shows AI demand spreading from GPUs to general-purpose processors and memory. As with Oracle last week, the vendor is funding the buildout with its own balance sheet and equity. Micron reports on September 30 and will show whether that demand is reaching memory makers.

In geopolitics, the debate over AI safety moved from the labs to the level of heads of state. Before Xi Jinping's first visit to Washington in more than a decade, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent proposed a US-China "notification mechanism" for AI incidents that could threaten national security. For now, the mechanism is little more than an open line between Bessent and Vice Premier He Lifeng. The summit itself was heavy on ceremony and made no progress on trade, Taiwan, or Iran, and US export controls appear set to stay. Xi said that AI must remain "under human control." Both governments now acknowledge the risk, but neither is willing to slow down.

Crypto: Rates Pull Bitcoin Back as Washington Eyes Stablecoins Abroad Bitcoin started the week above $87,000 for the first time since January. Spot ETFs took in $999 million on Monday, their strongest session of the month. Higher yields then took over. By Thursday, Bitcoin had fallen back near $84,400 and about $126 million in leveraged long positions had been liquidated, as rising yields made holding a non-yielding asset more costly.

The bigger developments were structural. Bloomberg reported that the administration is weighing joint ventures to promote dollar-backed stablecoins overseas. Stablecoin issuers hold their reserves mainly in cash and short-term Treasuries, so wider adoption abroad would create new demand for US government debt. That demand was being discussed in the same week a Treasury auction struggled to attract buyers. Separately, the New York Stock Exchange signed an agreement with Blockchain.com to offer tokenized US stocks and ETFs through NYSE's planned digital venue, pending regulatory approval. Ten days after the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate, the government and Wall Street are building digital-asset infrastructure without waiting for Congress.

A strong PMI reading, a weak auction, a CPU contract, and a diplomatic hotline can each change how an asset is priced before the headlines settle. Midas is built for that kind of analysis. It is a non-custodial intelligence layer that lets self-directed investors model and stress-test these shifts against their own portfolio hypotheses, with backtesting, paper trading, and real-time Hong Kong and US equity feeds.

Test your thesis at themidas.ai.