30 Sep 2026

Inflation came in cooler, the long end kept climbing, and Micron guided to $61.5bn

August PCE came in well under forecast, with core at 3.0% against 3.3% expected, and the odds of an October hike fell sharply. The thirty-year still rose 5bp to 5.64%, and stocks gave up their gains in the last hour, the Dow down 0.86% to finish September off 4.3%. After the bell Micron beat and guided to $61.5bn, and Google announced Gemini 4 Argon.

S&P 500: −0.25%
Core PCE: 3.0%
30-year: 5.64%+5bp
Micron AH: +0.4%
Alphabet AH: +1.7%

PCE came in cool

core 3.0% · headline 3.4%

The PCE price index rose 0.3% in August and core 0.2%, putting the annual rates at 3.4% and 3.0%. Forecasts were 3.7% and 3.3%, and core had been 3.3% in July. The annual revisions lowered past inflation too. Yahoo, citing CME FedWatch, had the odds of an October hike falling from about 70% to 37%. Spending was strong, up 0.9% in dollars, against income up 0.2%, and the saving rate sat at 4.1%.

The long end didn't take the hint

10-yr 5.29% · 30-yr 5.64%

Yields dipped for a few minutes after the print and then kept rising. The two-year slipped 1bp to 4.88%, which is where a softer hike path shows up, but the ten-year rose 3bp to 5.29% and the thirty-year 5bp to 5.64%. The ten-to-two gap widened for a second day, to 41bp from 32bp on Monday.

Stocks gave it back in the last hour

Dow −0.86% · Sept −4.3%

Stocks were up after the PCE data and gave it all back late. The S&P closed down 0.25%, the Dow 0.86% and the Nasdaq 100 up 0.23%. That closes out September with the Dow down 4.3%, the S&P down 0.45% and the Nasdaq Composite up 1.9%. For the quarter, the S&P rose 2.0%, the Composite 2.5% and the Dow fell 2.7%.

Micron beat and guided higher

MU +0.4% AH

Micron is trading slightly higher after hours on a beat and a raise. Fiscal fourth-quarter revenue was $54.23bn, against about $51.5bn expected and $11.32bn a year ago, with a non-GAAP gross margin of 87.0% and non-GAAP EPS of $33.42 against $31.82. It guided the next quarter to $61.5bn, give or take $1.5bn, where the Street had about $57.9bn. The stock was up 1.8% at 16:36 ET during the call and settled back to 0.4% by 16:55. Look to the call for how far into 2027 customers have committed, and at what prices.

Google launched Gemini 4 Argon

GOOGL +1.7% AH

Google announced Gemini 4 Argon at 1pm Pacific, the minute the bell rang in New York. It's built for long coding and knowledge-work tasks, and it can write up to a million tokens in one answer, up from 64,000. It's going first to cyber defenders through a program called Fairwind, then to AI Ultra subscribers and paying API customers, at an introductory $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output. Alphabet was up 2.9% within six minutes and held 1.7% by 16:55.