Stock market today: S&P 500, Nasdaq head for records with Fed rate cut seen as done deal

The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) hit its fifth straight record Friday as tech stocks continued to gain amid renewed AI optimism.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell as Wall Street took stock of this week’s US economic data ahead of the Federal Reserve’s meeting next week.

The Nasdaq climbed nearly 0.5% to close above 22,149. The Dow (^DJI) fell 0.4% after closing above 46,000 for the first time Thursday. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) dipped below the flat line. All three major indexes had rallied to records on during the previous trading session.

Despite the Dow’s loss Friday, the index saw its first weekly gain in three weeks, up roughly 1%. For their part, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq saw their best weekly performance since early August, as did the Technology Sector (XLK).

Yahoo Finance’s Jake Conley reports:

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Yahoo Finance’s Francisco Velasquez reports:

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Yahoo Finance’s Ben Werschkul reports:

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Crypto exchange Gemini Space Station (GEMI) began trading on the Nasdaq on Friday afternoon.

The stock opened at $37.01, 32% above its initial public offering price of $28 per share. Shares continued to soar, reaching $40 as of 2 p.m. ET.

The crypto brokerage firm led by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss raised $425 million, putting its valuation at about $3.3 billion. According to Reuters, the IPO was 20 times oversubscribed, indicating strong demand for crypto companies.

“The market sentiment is incredible,” Gemini COO Marshall Beard told Yahoo Finance earlier today. “I think with the regulatory landscape, especially here in the United States, being very positive for the crypto industry, folks are excited. Folks are building projects again, they’re launching new things. More people are coming into the industry.”

Last year, Gemini made $142 million in revenue, and the crypto brokerage boasts more than $21 billion in assets on its platform. But the company has been grappling with mounting losses: In 2024, Gemini recorded a net loss of $158.5 million, and in the first half of 2025, that widened to a net loss of $282.5 million.

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Quantum stocks surged after quantum computing firm IonQ (IONQ) said it secured regulatory approval from the UK government to acquire Oxford Ionics, another company in the emerging sector.

Shares in IonQ spiked more than 16% Friday, putting the stock up 31% for the year.

Rigetti Computing jumped 14% and up 25% for the year. Meanwhile, Quantum Computing was up roughly 7% Friday and only 2.6% in 2025.

Black Rock Coffee Bar (BRCB) made its public debut on the Nasdaq on Friday.

Shares opened at $26.50 under the ticker symbol BRCB after the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company initially offered 14.7 million shares at $20 each.

The company raised $294 million in the initial public offering. The coffee chain currently has 158 locations stretching from the Pacific Northwest, where it was founded in 2008 in Beaverton, Ore., to Texas. It started with a drive-through model, but now 75% of locations also have a lobby for customers to sit and stay.

“We have all the components of a Dutch Brothers,” CEO Mark Davis told Yahoo Finance about the company’s competitive advantage. “If you think about the drive-through only, we have the order ahead with the app, and then we have third party that can order.”

“Then secondarily, we have this lobby and … when you think about the magic behind our brand, it’s certainly the baristas and the way that they engage,” he added.

In the second quarter, same-store sales increased by 10.9% from a year ago.

This is the first coffee chain to go public since Dutch Bros (BROS) went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September of 2021. That stock is up around 100% since it went public at $23 per share.

Black Rock Coffee Bar joins a list of recent IPOs. This week, companies including Legence (LGN), Figure Technology, and Klarna (KLAR) debuted on the public markets, and the crypto exchange Gemini (GEMI) is also set to begin trading on Friday. Other IPOs earlier this year include Chime (CHYM), Circle (CRCL), Figma (FIG), eToro (ETOR), and Bullish (BLSH).

Just a day after Boeing’s CEO said the aircraft maker is behind on certifying its newest widebody jet, the Federal Aviation Administration proposed fining the company $3.1 million for a string of safety violations.

Boeing shares fell more than 1% Friday and were set for a weekly loss of 5.5%

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Tesla (TSLA) stock continued to lead the “Magnificent Seven” Big Tech stocks in early afternoon trading Friday as the EV maker was granted a new permit from Nevada’s Department of Motor Vehicles to test its robotaxis in the state.

Shares climbed as much as 7% to $395 and were on track to close at their highest level since Jan. 31.

Meanwhile, Microsoft (MSFT) stock gained more than 2% after settling an EU antitrust probe and reaching a tentative deal to revise its partnership with OpenAI (OPAI.PVT).

Apple (AAPL) shares rose 1.6%, extending yesterday’s gain despite being hit with two downgrades from Wall Street analysts at D.A. Davidson and Phillip Securities Thursday. The stock was still set to lose 2.7% for the week after the company unveiled its iPhone 17 lineup.

Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) climbed fractionally, and Amazon (AMZN) fell less than 1% after the tech giants were probed by the FTC over their Search advertising practices. Nvidia (NVDA) and Meta (META) also rose fractionally.

Cryptocurrencies climbed on Friday and were on track for weekly gains.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) rose less than 1%, while ethereum (ETH-USD) jumped 3.6%. Solana (SOL-USD) spiked 5.4%. XRP (XRP-USD) and BNB (BNB-USD) rose more than 1.5%.

Bitcoin and ethereum were set for weekly gains of 3% and 6%, respectively, while solana was set to add nearly 12%.

The moves come as investors await the Federal Reserve’s September meeting next week, when the central bank is expected to cut interest rates.

Crypto stocks were also largely positive for the week. Robinhood (HOOD) was on track to add 14%, Coinbase (COIN) 8%, and Circle (CRCL) nearly 10%. Strategy (MSTR) and PayPal (PYPL) were set for losses of about 1% and 2%, respectively.

The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) and S&P 500 (^GSPC) were set to see weekly gains of 1.9% and 1.6% on Friday, respectively — their best performance in five weeks.

The Technology Sector (XLK) was also on track for its biggest gain in five weeks, set to add 3.1% for the week, just as Tesla (TSLA) stock eyed a seven-month high on Friday.

For its part, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) was on track to add 1.1%, its best showing in three weeks. The index closed above 46,000 for the first time on Thursday but fell just below that level Friday.

Vaccine makers’ stocks tumbled on Friday after the Washington Post reported that Trump health officials are planning to link 25 child deaths to COVID-19 vaccines, alarming scientists.

Moderna (MRNA) shares fell more than 7%, while Pfizer (PFE) sank more than 3%. BioNTech (BNTX) stock tumbled 10%.

The health officials plan to include the claims in a presentation to a panel of advisers to the Centers for Disease Control as it considers new COVID vaccine recommendations, the Post reported. The outlet said the move alarmed scientists who say the vaccines have been studied extensively.

Tesla (TSLA) stock continued an upswing on Friday amid broader gains for technology stocks. Shares were up more than 5% in intraday trading and set for a roughly 11% weekly gain.

The stock is set to notch a seven-month high. The last time shares closed above their current level was Feb. 4, when shares hit $392.

That gain comes even as Tesla’s share of the EV market is sliding, per the latest figures from Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book, and despite news of an engineer quitting as he pointed to CEO Elon Musk’s “seriously compromised” leadership.

The engineer, Giorgio Balestrieri, wrote in a LinkedIn post Thursday: “This is not just about politics: it’s about lying to the public, manipulating public discourse, targeting minorities and supporting climate change deniers and political forces aligned with the oil and gas industry.”

Meanwhile, Wall Street has applauded Tesla’s expanding energy business. Wolfe Research analyst Emmanuel Rosner and William Blair’s Jed Dorsheimer published bullish notes on Tesla’s energy storage segment after the company unveiled new battery storage systems earlier this week.

Dorsheimer said the new products contributed to his “bullish thesis on the [Tesla’s] energy storage business.”

Rosner wrote in a note Thursday that Tesla’s Energy revenues could potentially reach $28 billion and that the business’s rapid growth is “critical for TSLA to avoid meaningful cash burn.”

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) shares surged 9% Friday after a report from The Wall Street Journal said that Paramount Skydance (PSKY) is preparing a majority cash bid for the media company.

The bid would be for the whole company, including its cable networks and movie studio, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The news comes after Warner Bros. Discovery said earlier this year that it will separate into two publicly traded companies by mid-2026, splitting up its streaming and studio assets from its global television networks business. Paramount’s move is an attempt to pre-empt a bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming and studio business, the Journal reported.

Paramount Skydance shares climbed more than 2% following the news. Paramount and Skydance Media formally completed a merger in August.

Consumer sentiment slipped more than expected in September as Americans worried over the effects of Trump’s tariffs.

University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey released Friday showed the headline consumer sentiment index came in at 55.4 for the month, a lower reading than the 58 projected by economists polled by Bloomberg and down from 58.2 in August.

The director of the University of Michigan’s consumer surveys, Joanne Hsu, said about 60% of Americans polled provided “unprompted comments about tariffs during interviews, little changed from last month.”

“Consumers continue to note multiple vulnerabilities in the economy, with rising risks to business conditions, labor markets, and inflation,” she said.

Meanwhile, Americans’ long-term inflation expectations for the next five to 10 years rose to 3.9% in September, ahead of the 3.4% projected by economists polled by Bloomberg and the long-term inflation expectations of 3.5% in August. Hsu noted that the reading is still “considerably lower” than the 4.4% in April.

Year-ahead inflation expectations were steady from the previous month and in line with economists’ estimates at 4.8%.

The report comes a day after August’s CPI report showed inflation ticking up in that month, revealing the sting of Trump’s tariffs on consumer prices. Still, a recent slew of jobs data showing a weakening US labor market is expected to dominate the Fed’s decision to cut rates in September, though questions remain about how steep the cut will be and how many additional cuts lie ahead.

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Correction: This post was updated to reflect that the consumer survey showed preliminary results for September, not August.

Investors are convinced there’s an interest-rate cut coming in September. The debate now is how big wiill it be, and what happens after that?

Morgan Stanley has put down its marker, saying Friday that it expects the Federal Reserve to lower rates four times in a row: at its three remaining meetings this year, then in January. All will be quarter-point moves, the brokerage said, even as some traders start leaning toward a jumbo cut to kick off.

Bloomberg reports:

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US stocks were muted on Friday at the open as Wall Street looked ahead to the Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated decision on interest rates next week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell more than 0.1%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) sank below the flat line. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) edged up 0.1%. The gauges meandered after rallying to records on Thursday, which saw the Dow close above 46,000 for the first time.

The major stock indexes are all headed for weekly gains of over 1.4%, with the Dow set for its first win in three weeks.

Now, investors are looking to the University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment for September — due at 10 a.m. ET — for insight into Americans’ inflation expectations.

Gemini Space Station, a crypto exchange founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, is set to go public on Friday to cap a week of IPO activity.

The company priced its initial public offering at $28 per share on the Nasdaq late on Thursday, putting Gemini’s valuation at $3.3 billion. According to Reuters, the IPO was 20 times oversubscribed, indicating strong demand for crypto companies. The stock will begin trading under the ticker GEMI.

Meanwhile, shares of blockchain platform Figure Technology Solutions (FIGR) are set to begin their second day of trading by taking a leg lower. The stock, which opened at $25 per share on Thursday, spiked as much as 48% in initial trading and closed the day 24% higher at $31 per share.

Figure raised $787.5 million in its IPO, valuing the company at $5.3 billion. In an interview with Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi, Figure co-founder Mike Cagney explained why there’s market excitement around crypto and how it’s disrupting financial markets.

Buy now, pay later firm Klarna (KLAR), which debuted on the public markets on Wednesday, was up 2.5% in premarket trading on Friday after a down day on Thursday. The stock closed its first day of trading 16% higher and its IPO raised $1.37 billion.

Luxury furniture maker RH (RH) cut its annual outlook on Thursday, warning of the toll tariffs are having on the industry. The stock fell 9% in premarket trading.

“There’s going to be gross margin headwinds from tariffs coming,” CEO Gary Friedman said on the earnings call. “You just can’t raise prices fast enough, and there’s only so much room our manufacturing partners have [to absorb costs].”

Friedman said that tariff uncertainty led the company to delay a new brand extension and its Fall Interiors Sourcebook.

As a result, RH said it expects a $30 million hit to profits in the second half of the year. The company also lowered its full-year revenue growth outlook to 9% to 11% from 10% to 13% previously.

Earnings per share of $2.62 missed Wall Street estimates of $3.25 per share. Revenue also missed: $899 million compared to $905 million estimated.

Year to date, RH stock has faced significant pressure and is down 42%.

Despite notable tariff-fed jumps in prices, the Fed is preparing to cut rates next week. Jerome Powell has signaled it. Markets are pricing it in. And the reason isn’t inflation. It’s jobs, Yahoo Finance’s Allie Canal says in today’s Morning Brief.

Allie reports:

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