JBizNews U.S. Market Opening Recap — September 25, 2026 | 10:00 A.M. ET
Wall Street opened almost perfectly flat Friday as investors weighed two powerful and competing forces: another surge in AI spending versus some of the highest U.S. borrowing costs in nearly two decades.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 51,359.70, up 9.7 points, or 0.02%. The S&P 500 opened at 7,709.86, up 5.7 points, or 0.07%, while the Nasdaq Composite opened at 26,970.95, up 31.6 points, or 0.12%.
The reason stocks are having trouble moving higher is the bond market.
The 10-year Treasury yield was around 5.17% Friday morning after touching roughly 5.22% Thursday, its highest level in 19 years. The 30-year yield was near 5.47%, its highest since 2004. That pushes up the cost of mortgages, business borrowing and corporate refinancing while forcing investors to compare stock valuations against government bonds yielding more than 5%.
Oil remains the other major inflation threat. Brent crude was still above $100 a barrel, around $105 earlier Friday, although prices pulled back on reports that U.S. and Iranian negotiators are exploring a phased agreement that could eventually reopen the Strait of Hormuz more fully and ease the U.S. blockade. U.S. diesel prices have climbed above $6.50 a gallon, a new record that is feeding directly into trucking, agriculture, construction and distribution costs.
Friday morning’s economic data was more encouraging than the bond market might suggest — but it also showed that business investment remains surprisingly strong.
U.S. durable-goods orders were essentially unchanged in August at $338.6 billion, after rising a revised 0.9% in July. Economists had generally expected a decline. Excluding transportation, orders increased 0.3%, while orders excluding defense rose 0.1%. Transportation-equipment orders fell 0.6%, including a 4.3% decline in nondefense aircraft orders.
The more important number for businesses was underneath the headline: orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft — a closely watched measure of planned business equipment investment — jumped 1.6% in August. Shipments of those goods increased 0.6%. That is considerably stronger than the roughly 0.5% increase economists had expected for core capital-goods orders.
Put together, the morning economic picture says something important: big-ticket manufacturing demand is not booming overall, but American companies are still spending heavily on equipment. That helps growth, but it also gives the Federal Reserve less evidence that higher interest rates are meaningfully slowing business investment.
The second major economic report — the University of Michigan’s final September consumer-sentiment survey — was scheduled exactly at the 10 a.m. cutoff. The preliminary reading was 47.8, down sharply from 51.7 in August, with one-year inflation expectations at 4.6% and five-year expectations at 3.4%. The official final release had not yet populated in a source JBizNews could independently verify when this recap was locked, so an unconfirmed update is not being inserted.
The morning’s biggest individual stock story is Akamai Technologies.
Akamai shares surged roughly 20% to 22% before the bell after the cloud and networking company announced an extraordinary $11.6 billion, seven-year computing agreement with Anthropic. Anthropic will use Akamai’s distributed cloud infrastructure for growing AI CPU workloads, and the agreement can potentially expand by another $9 billion — bringing the relationship to roughly $20 billion.
Anthropic also received warrants that could ultimately give it the equivalent of roughly 5% of Akamai, depending on how much additional cloud capacity it purchases. Akamai expects approximately $5.5 billion of capital spending to support the initial contract.
That deal is a significant market signal. Investors have spent months debating whether AI infrastructure spending is becoming excessive. Anthropic committing more than $11 billion to one additional cloud provider suggests demand for computing capacity is still expanding rapidly — and that the AI boom is spreading beyond Nvidia GPUs into CPUs, networking, cloud infrastructure and data-center services.
But Oracle is showing the other side of that same AI boom.
Oracle shares were down roughly 5.5% before the bell, extending pressure tied to concerns over its massive data-center expansion. Oracle recently sent a “force majeure” notice involving its Project Jupiter data center in New Mexico amid potential delays securing power, according to a Bloomberg report cited by Reuters. Separately, roughly $18 billion of loans tied to the project have been trading below par as investors grow more cautious about Oracle’s rising debt and the financing requirements of AI infrastructure.
The contrast is striking: Akamai is being rewarded for landing a huge AI infrastructure contract while Oracle is being punished over the cost and execution risk of building that infrastructure.
Costco is also giving investors an important look at the American consumer. The warehouse retailer reported fourth-quarter revenue of $95.72 billion, above Wall Street’s $94.86 billion estimate. Adjusted earnings were $6.60 a share, topping the $6.53 consensus, while comparable sales excluding gasoline and foreign exchange increased 6.7%.
Costco’s reported earnings also included a 15-cent-per-share one-time benefit from tariff refunds, making the adjusted profit number particularly useful. The larger story is that inflation continues pushing households toward bulk buying and value-oriented retailers. Costco says traffic remains strong as consumers consolidate shopping trips and search for lower prices on essentials and gasoline.
AI remains the market’s biggest counterweight to rising interest rates. Meta’s new Muse AI agent has helped reignite enthusiasm across the sector after becoming one of the most downloaded consumer AI applications in the U.S. and Canada. Meta has gained more than 20% since Muse launched earlier this month, adding more than $200 billion in market value and helping drive renewed interest in processors, networking and cloud infrastructure.
At the same time, the Trump-Xi summit ended Thursday without a major new breakthrough on trade, artificial intelligence or geopolitical issues. Earlier negotiations did extend the U.S.-China trade truce by another two months, through January 10, and established plans for a formal AI dialogue. For businesses, that at least postpones another immediate tariff escalation.
For the rest of Friday, the first number to watch is 5.20% on the 10-year Treasury yield. The yield has already reached about 5.22%. Another sustained move higher would raise financing costs further and could begin overpowering even strong AI-related earnings and investment news.
The second is oil. Any credible progress toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz could push Brent lower and give both stocks and bonds significant relief. A breakdown in negotiations could send crude — and inflation expectations — right back up.
The third is consumer inflation expectations. The final Michigan survey could move Treasury yields if households’ one-year or long-term inflation expectations rise materially from the preliminary 4.6% and 3.4% readings.
And at 2 p.m. ET, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack is scheduled to speak at an inflation conference. With the Fed having raised rates last week and bond markets increasingly pricing additional tightening, any signal on whether another rate increase is needed could matter into the closing bell.
Friday morning’s market can be summed up by two extraordinary numbers:
Anthropic is committing $11.6 billion to Akamai for more AI computing power. The U.S. government is paying roughly 5.2% to borrow money for 10 years.
One says corporate spending is still accelerating.
The other says money is becoming very expensive.
JBizNews Desk | New York
© JBizNews.com. All rights reserved. This article is original reporting by JBizNews Desk. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution is strictly prohibited.
