Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on September 16, 2026 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
U.S. equities climbed on Thursday, supported by a drop in Treasury yields and oil prices as well as gains in key technology stocks, with traders trying to claw back some of the prior day’s losses incited by the first Federal Reserve interest rate hike in three years.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 363 points, or 0.7%. The S&P 500 was up 1.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite added 1.6%.
Tech drove the broader market higher. “Magnificent Seven” names Nvidia and Amazon rose 2% each, while fellow member Microsoft gained 1%. Other stocks related to the artificial intelligence trade such as Qualcomm and Intel advanced 2% and 9%, respectively.
Meanwhile, Treasury yields pulled back. The 10-year yield moved below 5%, dropping more than 5 basis points to 4.945%. The yield had risen back above that key level Wednesday following the Fed’s rate decision.
Oil prices declined, which also gave a boost to equities. U.S. crude traded less than 1% lower, falling to around $101 per barrel. Brent slid 1% to about $104 a barrel. That’s as supply disruption concerns eased after Saudi Arabia reportedly decided to make more crude cargoes available to Asian refiners through ship-to-ship transfers near the Sohar port in Oman.
Thursday’s moves mark a bounceback from Wednesday’s losses, which came after the Fed raised the overnight federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point. Policymakers also signaled in the prior trading day that another hike could come this year, with Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh saying that inflation remains too high.
“The market’s reaction could be kind of summed up in one word: relief,” Robert Conzo, CEO at The Wealth Alliance, said of Thursday’s trading action. “I think there is a relief that, ‘Hey the Fed is addressing a sticky inflation problem.'”
However, the CEO believes that the market still faces the possibility of “extreme” volatility depending on how the conflict in the Middle East continues to unfold.
“If oil prices remain elevated, price inflation gets translated to retailers and gets embedded in the prices that they’re passing on to consumers,” he said. “If you see oil remain high, you can see that problem get greater and greater and greater, which makes inflation harder and harder and harder to slow down.”
