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The Trading Day · Friday, September 18, 2026

Yen — the Bank of Japan hikes and the dollar holds 157: the carry trade pays, the lines held, chips +3.4% over $505

Two central banks raised rates this week and the market has now answered both. The Federal Reserve hiked on Wednesday and the belly of the curve sold, the 10-year closed above 5% for the first time in the cycle, and the equity lines were lost at the bell. On Thursday the same curve fell six basis points in parallel — 10-year 4.947%, 5-year 4.801%, 30-year 5.296% — the VIX fell 13% to 15.4, gold was bought back +1.7% after two days sold on the hike, and every equity line we carry was retaken and held into the close: the S&P 500 ETF $762.60 above $757.83, the Nasdaq-100 fund $716.92 above $708.69, the semiconductor ETF $519.10 above $505 and above last Thursday’s $517.43, the Magnificent Seven fund $70.78 above 69.5. The memory ETF closed $57.78, twenty-two cents under the $58 it lost on Monday; it is the one line still owed. The equal-weight S&P +0.5%, the Dow +0.6%, the Russell +0.5% — narrower than the cap-weighted number, which is how a chip-led day looks from the inside.

The Morning 10

Yen — the Bank of Japan hikes and the dollar holds 157: the carry trade pays, the lines held, chips +3.4% over $505

  1. 1 The first held reclaim of the month: S&P 500 ETF +1.1% to $762.60, above $757.83 for the first close since Monday; Nasdaq-100 fund +1.7% to $716.92, above $708.69 and off the 704 shelf; semiconductor ETF +3.4% to $519.10, above $505 and above last Thursday’s $517.43; Magnificent Seven fund $70.78 above 69.5; memory ETF $57.78, still twenty-two cents under $58; equal-weight +0.5%, Dow +0.6%, Russell +0.5%, VIX 15.4
  2. 2 The Bank of Japan hikes to 1.25%, a 31-year high, as expected — and the yen falls: 157.2 to the dollar at 06:00 UTC, −0.8% on the day, through the 156 it carried in; Nikkei +1.6% to 65,159, Tokyo Electron +4.2%, SoftBank +1.7%; Kospi +2.8% to 6,903, SK Hynix +6.0%, Samsung +3.5%; Taiex closed +1.9%, TSMC +1.4%; Hang Seng +0.8%; dollar index 100.3
  3. 3 Rates, gold and the level a market can absorb: a parallel −6 bp day — 10-year 4.947% after Wednesday’s first close above 5.00%, 5-year 4.801%, 30-year 5.296%; long bond ETF +1.1%, high-yield ETF +0.4%; gold ETF +1.7% to $398.36, bought back after two days sold; Brent $103.52, a fourth day under $107.63; the August inflation prints by the desk’s reading — core CPI 2.4%, sticky-price core 2.7%, services ex energy and shelter about 3.0%; monthly core 0.29% in August after 0.22% in July, a moderate firming
  4. 4 Chips, the sort paused: semiconductor ETF +3.4% to $519.10; design bought wide — Astera Labs +9.1%, Arm +8.6%, Intel +7.7%, AMD +6.4% to $545.09, SanDisk +6.2%, Micron +5.5% to $977.50, Marvell +4.8%, TSMC +3.0%, Nvidia +2.5% to $219.34, Broadcom +2.3%; equipment stopped falling, did not join — Applied Materials +0.5%, Lam flat, KLA +1.0%; memory ETF +4.4% to $57.78, under $58 by twenty-two cents; Tokyo Electron +4.2% this morning
  5. 5 Rubin +1.5% to 1,904.95 on the layers closest to the design: Foundry & Integration +5.4%, Architects +3.8%, Design +3.5%, AI Factory Systems +3.3%, EDA +3.0%, Testing & Metrology +2.5%; Advanced Materials −1.1%, Wafer Processing −1.0%, Robotics −0.2%; US +2.4%, Israel +5.0%, Europe +1.9%, Japan −0.9%; Astera Labs +9.1%, Arm +8.6%, Tower +8.4%, Cohu +7.7%, HPE +7.7%, Intel +7.7%, Aehr +7.5%, GlobalFoundries +6.5%; the week −2.2%, the month −2.9%, the year +85.3%
  6. 6 The other four: Agentic Winners 40 +0.4% to 924.35 — Megacap Gateway +1.7%, Endpoints −1.5%; Tempus AI +14.8%, Workday +6.1%, Oracle +5.2%, Nvidia +2.5%; CoStar −3.5%, Spotify −3.4%, Salesforce −3.1%, Reddit −3.0%; HALO +0.9% to 1,012.13 — Longevity +2.6%, Space +2.5%, Energy Transition +2.1%; Shoals +12.2%, Illumina +7.1%, Rocket Lab +6.5%; Fluence −15.4%; Agentic Ecosystem +2.5% to 1,645.45 — Runtime +4.6%, Europe +5.9%; DigitalOcean +7.4%, OVHcloud +7.1%; CoreWeave −4.4%; Euro-AI +1.7% — Chip Architecture & Cloud +6.0%, AT&S +5.7%, Nebius +4.1%; Carl Zeiss Meditec −4.2%
  7. 7 Print record, the drift after the verdicts: Oracle +5.2% to $150.59, back above the $148.35 line it was marked sold at on Tuesday; Adobe +0.9% to $252.67, still under the $256.29 line it was paid above — the three-session verdicts stand, the tape keeps moving; no windows open, both names print again on 9 December; Micron next week is the next order-book fact
  8. 8 Expiry Friday: the quarterly options expiry pins the indices to the strikes with the largest open interest and releases them on Monday; Thursday’s reclaim was printed the day before the pin — S&P ETF $762.60, Nasdaq-100 fund $716.92, chip ETF $519.10; the VIX 15.4, −13% on the day; the ex-tech Nasdaq flat at $97.42 and negative on the year; the equal-weight S&P +0.5% against the cap-weighted +1.1%
  9. 9 The wires this morning: ‘Yen slumps after BOJ hikes rates as expected’ (Reuters) · ‘Investors react to BOJ raising interest rates to 31-year high’ (Reuters) · ‘Bank of Japan raises interest rates to 31-year high, flags concerns over inflation’ (CNBC) · ‘Tech leads Wall St to higher close as oil eases, Treasury yields dip’ (Reuters) · ‘Market Indexes Bounce Back From the Fed’s Rate Hike’ (The Globe and Mail, The Motley Fool)
  10. 10 The clock: the Bank of Japan’s press conference and the yen through the London open; Tokyo’s close 06:30 UTC with Tokyo Electron +4.2% into it; the US quarterly options expiry at the New York close; Micron’s print next week, the first order-book fact of the quarter; the lines — S&P ETF $757.83, Nasdaq-100 fund 704 and $708.69, chip ETF $505, memory ETF $58, Magnificent Seven fund 69.5, the 10-year 5.00%, the yen 156 and 160

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