The Midday Tape
Stocks are grinding higher on the headline index while the internals tell a much rougher story, and that gap is the whole session in one sentence.
Consumer confidence is cracking even as inflation expectations climb.
Michigan sentiment printed 48.1, a stark headline number, with one-year inflation expectations at 4.6% and five-year expectations at 3.4%. Durable goods orders came in essentially flat for August, with ex-defense up just 0.1% and ex-transport up 0.3%. That stagflation-adjacent mix is showing up in the bond market: the iShares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT) is sitting at a record low with long yields hovering near 5.2%, extending the long-duration pain that has defined the back half of this year. The S&P 500 SPDR (SPY) is still up 0.3% and the Nasdaq-100 SPDR (QQQ) is up 0.3%, but a headline making the rounds notes nine of eleven sectors are actually red today, with cyclicals doing the heavy lifting. This is a narrow, uneven advance, not a broad risk-on move.
Mega-cap tech is the drag, and the AI trade is getting a fresh round of skepticism.
Meta Platforms (META) is down 3.5% even after Canaccord reiterated its bullish call and lifted its price target to $950, a reminder that price action is overriding the sell-side today. That weakness lines up with a circulating VC warning comparing the current AI buildout to a 2008-style unwind. Elsewhere in the complex it is a mixed bag: Bloom Energy (BE) is rebounding hard, up over 9%, on datacenter power demand chatter tied to Oracle and Blue Owl, while Dell is surging on the same Oracle-adjacent infrastructure story. CoreWeave is sliding in the other direction with no clean catalyst attached. Nvidia (NVDA) itself is little changed, up modestly, even as Akamai (AKAM) jumps over 6% on a Piper Sandler price target hike to $158.
Single-stock volatility is elevated.
Atlas Energy Solutions (AESI) is the day's standout, up more than 18% alongside strength in Caterpillar (CAT). BlackBerry (BB) is down over 6% after Canaccord trimmed its target following soft Q3 guidance. Crypto-adjacent names are broadly lower after a reported $350 million-plus hack at exchange Bitget froze withdrawals and rattled sentiment across Bitcoin-linked equities. Starbucks is cutting its store outlook and closing select North America locations. On the healthcare side, Humana got an upgrade to Overweight from Barclays, while Moderna touched a fresh 52-week high.
Still ahead this afternoon:
the economic calendar is clear for the rest of the day, so the tape's next move likely comes from headline risk, continued fallout from the Bitget hack, any follow-through on the U.S.-China and Bessent-Japan currency commentary, and whether long-end yields stabilize off today's TLT lows.
Bottom line: the index tape looks calm, but weak consumer sentiment, record-low long bonds, and cracks in mega-cap AI leadership say the real story underneath is far choppier.