Market Report for Thursday, September 18, 2025
Wall Street performed a textbook Pavlov today: the bell rang (a Fed rate cut), and prices salivated. Megatech indexes set records, small caps turned cartwheels, and JPMorgan’s “sell the news” warning was drowned out by barking buyers.
Level Change 9/18/25 (%)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
+0.3 Dow
+0.9 Nasdaq
+1.0 Nasdaq 100
+0.5 S&P 500
+1.3 S&P 400
+2.3 S&P 600
The “don’t fight the Fed” reflex fired as usual, with an extra shot for the little guys.
Small caps, those scrappy wannabes hooked on credit, were the day’s showboats as yesterday’s cut lowered the cost of oxygen. The Russell 2000 cracked its November 2021 record, and our preferred S&P 600 surged 2.3%. When policy turns easier, the dinghies rise first.
Economic signals obligingly played along.
Initial jobless claims dropped to 231K, better than the 241K consensus and clear of last week’s Texas-flavored distortion, when a flood of fraudulent filings puffed weakness into the stats. Continuing claims eased to 1.920M from a revised 1.927M, also beating estimates. Call it cooling, not cracking: soft enough for the Fed to pivot, firm enough to steady the tape. Another Goldilocks print, to the bears’ dismay.
Manufacturing chipped in with its own feel-good subplot. The Philly Fed index jumped to 23.2 from 0.3, walloping the 3.0 consensus. New orders and shipments climbed, while prices paid and received dropped sharply—a trader’s dream formula: more activity, less inflation.
Forward-looking measures showed factories expecting growth over the next six months. If you were staging a soft landing, you’d pin this to the rehearsal mirror. “When, oh when,” the bears cry, “does our recession finally arrive?”
Tech lit some headline fireworks. Intel erupted 22.8% after Nvidia pledged a $5B stake in the struggling stalwart and a joint push into chips for PCs and data centers.
Intel gets to graft Nvidia’s GPU wizardry onto its PC lineup, while contributing CPUs to Nvidia-driven data centers. Call it co-opetition with benefits: Nvidia diversifies supply and product hooks; Intel gets a credibility injection. Nvidia added 3.5%, proving even kings enjoy a good alliance when it deepens the moat.
So yes, the market did the obvious thing after a cut. But the obvious isn’t trivial when backed by confirming data: claims normalizing, factories perking up, prices easing. Liquidity met breadth, and up went the curtain.
— Jason Kelly
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