Market Report for Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Markets spent today as tired and anxious as a hungover trust fund kid, vaguely offended by reality. Stocks slid for the second straight day, oil kept climbing, gold sulked, and the Fed wheezed into its microphone about “careful pacing.”
Level Change 9/24/25 (%)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
-0.4 Dow
-0.3 Nasdaq
-0.3 Nasdaq 100
-0.3 S&P 500
-0.8 S&P 400
-0.9 S&P 600
The great “everything rally” took another smoke break.
After record highs on Monday, stocks looked bored and queasy at once. The Dow slipped 0.4%, the S&P 0.3%, and small caps were left bleeding in the alley with nearly a full point lopped off. Even gold, usually the bad-news belle, lost its sparkle—down 1.3%, tiara in the ashtray.
Oil gave economic naysayers something to nay about, strutting 4% higher this week. Blame the never-one-to-change-his-mind President Trump, who suddenly swapped pals from Vladimir to Volodymyr, sartorial choices notwithstanding. Go Ukraine. Show NATO a thing or two.
Investors have circled two things on their calendars:
Friday’s core PCE, the Fed’s favorite inflation yardstick; and quarter-end, with Goldman warning pensions could dump $22B in equities. “Largest flows in years,” they warned. Brace for selling, says the bank that said to brace for recession, again, and again.
In AIville, Micron bragged about 30% quarter-on-quarter high-bandwidth-memory revenue growth, an $8B run rate, and sold-out 2026 capacity. Traders rewarded it with a 2.8% nosedive, grumbling something about a high bar into the print.
Across the Pacific, Alibaba found investor religion by pledging $50B more in AI spend and unveiling Qwen3-Max, a large language model, not a droid in Mos Eisley. Shares jumped 8.2%.
The Silicon Valley Lazarus occasionally known as Intel angled for another AI-linked sugar daddy—Apple this time—after last week’s $5B Nvidia infusion. The stock jumped 6.4%, proving hope is the strongest chip.
Rates ticked higher too, courtesy of Oracle, which is about to borrow $15B from bond buyers to chase cloud-AI dreams; and the Chicago Fed’s Goolsbee, who warned against “overly frontloaded cuts.” You’ll get your easing, kids, just not before Daddy finishes his stagflation lecture.
The pièce de résistance, courtesy of the Ministry of Making America China, was Lithium Americas, up an absurd 95.8% after the Energy Department baited its state capitalism hook with a “potential” 10% ownership stake. Alas, no fresh money, just an IOU on cash already promised last year. Washington gets a free slice, retail holders get diluted, and everyone applauds America’s pretend EV supply chain. Comrade!
— Jason Kelly
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