What’s News in Markets: Bond Selloff, Big Nvidia Deals, Apple’s New CEO

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Shradha Dinesh (0:33)

Hey, listeners. It's Saturday, September 5th. I'm Shradha Dinesh for the Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News in Markets, our look at the biggest stock moves of the week and the news that drove them. Let's get to it. It's the unofficial end of summer, but markets aren't exactly soaring into Labor Day weekend. September is off to a rocky start. The conflict in the Middle East was back at the forefront for investors this week, as renewed fighting in the Shradha formuze sent Brent crude back above $90 a barrel, ending the week at about $96.

The rise in energy prices fueled inflation concerns and pushed bond yields higher. More on that later. As for stocks, things were mixed. The Nasdaq added 0.4 percent for the week. The S&P 500 gained 0.1 percent, and the Dow finished about a quarter of a percent lower.

Bond yields around the world hit new multi-year highs this week, lifted by a confluence of factors, including the sharp climb in energy prices driven by the war in Iran, worries about runaway government spending, uncertainty from a new Fed chairman, and the huge surge in corporate bond issuance to fund the AI buildout.

A hotter than expected jobs report was added to the Mix Friday. Ten-year Treasury yields rose to 4.783 percent, reversing the declines that led up to the report. A strong labor market adds to expectations that the Fed could raise interest rates this month. On Friday, interest rate futures placed the odds at 60-40 in favor of a September hike, up from a 50-50 coin toss the day prior.

Nvidia is expanding its dominance over the AI landscape with a series of big-ticket deals this week. First, hardware. Nvidia announced it's investing $3.5 billion into Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek. The companies will work together on local AI computing and will develop platforms for AI-powered vehicles. Next, physical infrastructure. Anthropic has signed a $35 billion cloud computing deal with Lambda, a cloud computing provider backed by Nvidia. People familiar with the matter say Nvidia itself will hold the lease on the data center. Lastly, software. Nvidia agreed to buy AI startup Hugging Face in a deal worth roughly $13 billion.

Engineers use Hugging Face to collaborate on machine learning projects from model development to applications. The acquisition is aimed at helping Nvidia develop open-weight models which work locally and are customizable and related services. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Wong said Hugging Face would remain an open platform. So how did investors take in all this deal making? Shares of Nvidia rose 0.8 percent on Friday to cap off a weekly gain of close to 6 percent.

And from the world's most valuable company to the second most, Apple. This week, all eyes were on John Ternes who officially became Apple's new CEO. He replaces Tim Cook, who is ending a 15-year run at the helm. Under Cook, Apple grew to nearly $5 trillion in market value. Annual iPhone sales also more than tripled. Now, Ternes faces a major challenge. He must get Apple back in front of the next big tech shift. Apple has fallen behind rivals in AI, and that leaves it vulnerable as companies like OpenAI build a new generation of AI-first devices. During Ternes' first week in charge, Apple shares initially rose, but then fell 2.5% on Friday. And in the end, we're basically flat for the week.

And now you know what's news in markets this week. You can read about more stocks that moved on the week's news in our live markets coverage on wsj.com. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienamé with supervising producer Melanie Roy and deputy editor Chris Sinzley. I'm Shradha Dinesh. Have a great weekend and see you next Saturday.

SPEAKER_3 (5:22)

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SPEAKER_3 (5:46)

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