The S&P 500 slid on Wednesday, the final day of September, even after new U.S. economic data showed inflation slowed last month.
The broad-market index dropped 0.25%, giving up its gains from earlier in the trading day and closing at 7,651.54. The S&P 500 was up as much as nearly 0.7% at one point during the session. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.24% to end at 26,861.06. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.86%, or 443.87 points, to 50,906.05.
The personal consumption expenditures price index for August increased at an annual rate of 3.4%, down from 3.7% the month prior. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for inflation to remain steady at 3.7%. Even more encouraging was core PCE, excluding food and energy, which rose 3% year on year, down from 3.3% the month before and also lower than economists had forecast.
The 10-year Treasury ended Wednesday’s trading higher on the day, last up about 4 basis points at 5.298%. The benchmark yield surpassed 5.3% at its session high. The 30-year Treasury yield was last up nearly 5 basis points to 5.642%.
“I’m not seeing that inflation expectations are really blowing out, so I think it’s really the growth number [that traders are eyeing]… you’ve got a fairly hot Q3 Atlanta Fed GDP expectation [and] we got a hotter Q2 GDP expectation, and so that’s probably pushing out longer-term real rate opportunities,” Rob Haworth, senior investment strategy director at U.S. Bank Asset Management Group, told CNBC.
The market turned its attention to the jobs reports, which is slated to come out on Friday. Non-farm payrolls are expected to have risen by 84,000 in September. That’s about half of those added in August on a seasonally adjusted basis.
Odds of a Fed rate hike eased on Wednesday. The CME Group’s FedWatch tool shows traders are pricing in a 35% chance of a quarter-point rate hike next month. That’s down from about 51% a day ago. Traders are still expecting another hike in December despite the light inflation data Wednesday.
“While today’s inflation data is somewhat better than expected, strong labor and GDP data suggest the print is unlikely to derail consensus expectations for another rate hike before the end of the year,” Adam Hetts, global head of multi-asset and portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Investors, said Wednesday in an email.
“It’s still 75% odds of three hikes by the time we get to the middle of next year, so the market doesn’t think this is quite behind us yet, but it’s maybe not as urgent an issue as as they feared,” U.S. Bank Asset Management Group’s Haworth said.
Strong private sector data offset the light inflation report with ADP saying 90,000 jobs were added in September, much better than the 68,000 consensus estimate from economists.
Wednesday marked the end of the month and the third quarter. In September, the S&P 500 dropped 0.5%, while the Dow fell 4.3%. The Nasdaq outperformed, rising 1.9% during the month. In the third quarter, the S&P 500 advanced 2%, while the Nasdaq gained 2.5%. The Dow underperformed and lost 2.7% on the quarter.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/stock-market-today-live-updates.html