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Dow Jones

Stocks Gain as Treasury Yields Fluctuated: October 1 Market Recap

The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq edged higher on October 1 as Treasury yields swung sharply. Friday’s stronger rally followed slower hiring and reduced October rate-hike bets.

By TheFinanceBase Team 3 min read
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U.S. stocks finished modestly higher on Thursday, October 1, 2026, after Treasury yields surged to reported multi-decade highs and then pulled back. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq each ended slightly up. On Friday, October 2, stocks rallied more strongly after slower hiring eased traders’ concerns about an October Federal Reserve rate increase.

How stocks closed on Thursday, October 1

All three major U.S. indexes ended the session higher, though the gains were small. Kiplinger reported these closing levels and daily changes:

Index October 1 close Daily change
Dow Jones Industrial Average 50,926 Up 0.04%
S&P 500 7,666 Up 0.2%
Nasdaq Composite 26,871 Up 0.04%

The figures are from Kiplinger’s October 1 market recap. The index levels are closing points; the percentages show each index’s change for that session.

Why stocks gained while Treasury yields fluctuated

The session’s direction changed as investors weighed corporate earnings against inflation and interest-rate concerns. Stocks opened higher after earnings news, then turned lower by mid-morning as Treasury yields climbed. Yields later retreated, and the indexes recovered enough to finish slightly positive.

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Kiplinger also pointed to energy prices, inflation concerns and changing expectations for Federal Reserve policy. Its recap said the ISM manufacturing prices index rose 6.8 percentage points from August to September. BMO Capital Markets senior economist Priscilla Thiagamoorthy told Kiplinger that “inflation remained the dominant story here,” adding that “the sharp rebound in input price pressures and persistent supply constraints will likely keep the Fed on edge.” Those comments describe the inflation backdrop investors were assessing; they do not establish that any one factor alone caused stocks or yields to move.

What happened to Treasury yields on October 1

Kiplinger reported that the 10-year Treasury yield reached an intraday high of 5.344% and closed at 5.234%. The 30-year yield peaked at 5.693% intraday and closed at 5.603%. These are the article’s reported intraday highs and closing figures, not a single yield reading that held throughout the day.

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The Federal Reserve’s H.15 release dated October 2 reports rounded October 1 nominal constant-maturity observations of 5.24% for 10 years and 5.61% for 30 years. Those are official daily-series values; they are close to, but are not a replacement for, Kiplinger’s more precise reported closing figures. The Fed explains that these Treasury yields are interpolated from the yield curve using closing market bid yields on actively traded over-the-counter securities and composites of quotations obtained by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. See the Federal Reserve H.15 release.

The Treasury’s constant-maturity rates are curve-derived rather than necessarily the yields on a particular bond with exactly that much time remaining. The Treasury says its daily par curve uses indicative bid-side quotations from the New York Fed at or near 3:30 p.m.; these are not actual transactions. Its methodology is described on the Treasury daily yield curve page.

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How Friday, October 2 changed the picture

The next completed U.S. session brought a broader rally. The Associated Press reported that slower hiring cooled concerns that a strong economy could add to inflation and led traders to reduce bets on an October Fed rate increase. Treasury yields initially fell, then recovered some of that decline as oil prices rebounded. The AP attributed the market reaction to those developments; they are contemporaneous explanations, not proof of a single cause.

Index October 2 close Daily change Change for the week
S&P 500 7,722.72 Up 0.7% Down 0.3%
Dow Jones Industrial Average 51,176.96 Up 0.5% Down 1.3%
Nasdaq Composite 27,190.86 Up 1.2% Up 0.5%

The daily and weekly changes are from the Associated Press’s October 2 market report. Friday’s gains did not mean every index ended the week higher: the S&P 500 and Dow were down for the week, while the Nasdaq was up.

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What the rate-hike odds meant

Kiplinger reported that the probability traders assigned to an October rate increase had fallen to 26%, from 69% a week earlier. It also reported futures pricing a 62% probability of a quarter-point increase in December. These were market-implied probabilities at the time of the October 1 article, not Fed decisions or settled predictions; expectations can change as new data arrive.

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