Written by: Chao Xiang Research

The US stock market continued to diverge on Tuesday. The Nasdaq rose 0.45% to close at 27244.28 points, marking a new all-time closing high for the second consecutive day; the S&P 500 finished nearly flat at 7764.64 points; the Dow dropped 0.36% to 51863.69 points. The influence of Muse is spreading from AI computing power, and investors are starting to worry that agents will siphon off business from wealth management, travel, and e-commerce platforms, putting Schwab, JPMorgan, and Airbnb under collective pressure. Oil prices fell back below $100, and the yield on 10-year US Treasuries dipped slightly. Tonight we focus on the preliminary value of the S&P Global PMI for the US in September.

Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rises for six consecutive days, seven tech giants diverge

The Nasdaq rose 0.45% to close at 27244.28 points, setting a new historical closing high for the second consecutive day. The S&P 500 finished nearly flat at 7764.64 points, while the Dow fell 0.36% to 51863.69 points. VIX dropped 4.44% to 14.21.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 1.49% to 12618.70 points, marking the sixth consecutive trading day of gains. Among the seven tech giants, three rose and four fell. Tesla rose 0.96%, NVIDIA rose 0.66%, and Apple rose 0.23%; Meta fell 0.63%, Microsoft fell 0.72%, Google fell 1.07%, and Amazon fell 1.34%.

The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index rose 0.48% to 5856.22 points.

The yield on 2-year US Treasuries was around 4.73%, and approximately 4.95% for 10-year Treasuries, with the dollar index rising slightly. WTI crude oil fell 1.24% to $94.99 per barrel, and Brent crude oil fell 1.09% to $99.25 per barrel. Spot gold fell 0.4% to $4325 per ounce. Bitcoin was priced at $86207, down 0.32%; Ethereum was priced at $2751, down 0.38%.

Wealth management and travel platforms are hit hardest

After Muse went live, it initially boosted AMD, Intel, and AI hardware, but by Tuesday, funds began looking for another batch of companies that could be impacted.

Schwab fell 6.1%, Ameriprise fell 4.4%, Raymond James fell over 3%, and the S&P 500 Bank Index fell overall by 3%. JPMorgan and Wells Fargo also dropped more than 3%. Muse can already handle searches, emails, shopping, and travel bookings for users, with wealth management and brokerage services also falling within Muse's application range. Once AI agents become the entry point for users to complete transactions and services, the most valuable customer touchpoints of traditional platforms will be weakened.

Travel and consumer software also feel the pressure. Airbnb fell 3%, while Uber and Lyft both fell over 1%. Amazon has previously banned Muse from shopping directly on its platform, and the competition over data and transaction entry between the platform and the agents has already fallen to specific business matters.

Storage stocks continue to be strong, Micron rises 5% and SanDisk rises 6.82%

The AI hardware market continues to soar.

Micron rose 5%, and SanDisk rose 6.82%, with the semiconductor index rising for the sixth consecutive trading day. As demand for reasoning increases, servers require not only more GPUs but also increasing memory capacity, bandwidth, and high-speed storage, with storage being one of the strongest segments in this round of AI trading.

SanDisk’s cumulative increase this year has exceeded 600%. Rosenblatt recently set a target price of $2400 and mentioned that AI is increasing the importance of NAND in data centers. Tight supply is continuing to drive up prices, with significant room for average NAND selling prices to rise in the third quarter.

On the same day, Apple released a new generation of high-end Mac Mini and Mac Studio, focusing on local AI. The company showcased four Mac Studios running trillion-parameter models in tandem, hoping to reduce the long-term costs of enterprises using cloud AI through local computing. AI hardware has already split into several clear demand lines, with GPUs responsible for training and reasoning, CPUs handling agent task scheduling, and storage solving data throughput, while local devices start to compete for enterprise reasoning scenarios.

Oil prices fall below $100, and bank stocks are also under pressure from the yield curve

Oil prices have continued to decline. After Saudi Arabia restored the east-west oil pipeline, the Red Sea port has regained export conditions. Iran stated that if the US reduces military pressure and lifts the blockade on Iranian ports, it can reopen the Strait of Hormuz in as little as seven days. Improved supply has caused Brent to drop back below $100 and has also driven the yield on 10-year US Treasuries down from high levels.

Short-term interest rates remain high. CME FedWatch shows that traders assign a probability of about 53% for a rate hike of at least 25 basis points again in October. The spread between 2-year and 10-year US Treasuries narrowed to about 18 basis points at one point during trading, the flattest since March 2025.

Financial stocks faced additional pressure last night for another reason. High short-term rates and long-term rates not keeping up make it increasingly difficult for banks to profit from term spreads. AI competition and the yield curve exert pressure simultaneously, causing the financial sector to drop about 2% that day, making it the weakest-performing sector in the S&P 500.

What to focus on today

Preliminary value of the S&P Global PMI for the US in September. The performance of the manufacturing and service sectors, as well as corporate pricing pressures, will affect expectations for the next rate hike; with the Federal Reserve just having restarted rate increases, the sensitivity of this data set has clearly increased.

Divergence within AI. Chips and storage have been rising consecutively, while the financial, travel, and consumer platforms are starting to worry that Muse is taking their business. Whether funds can continue to spread from chips and storage to the impacted directions of finance and travel will be a key change to watch tonight.