Dow climbs 500 points as Nasdaq slips and investors rotate out of AI
Yields drop and Walmart, Merck and Nike rise while memory chip stocks keep sliding.
Markets · Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 12:30 PM ET
Wall Street split in two on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 500 points, or about 1%, the S&P 500 up 0.2% to 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite down 0.2% (CNBC, Yahoo Finance). The Nasdaq had been down more than 1% earlier in the session (Yahoo Finance).
Rotation out of tech
CNBC said investors were rotating out of AI-linked shares and into other areas. Walmart rose about 4%, Merck more than 3% and Nike more than 5%, according to CNBC. Memory and storage stocks such as Micron, Sandisk, SK Hynix, Seagate and Western Digital were down more than 5% in early trading, extending the week's losses, Investopedia reported. CoreWeave fell 7% to 8% (CNBC, Investopedia), adding to its 15% drop Wednesday; see our CoreWeave story.
Yields fall
The 10-year Treasury yield fell about 14 basis points to 5.05% as investors moved into bonds (Yahoo Finance). CNBC quoted Alex Shahidi of MAI Capital Management: with Treasurys yielding 5%, investors will start weighing that against a big bet on AI, and "it's not are you in or out of AI; it's how concentrated you want to be."
The producer price report that came out this morning is in our PPI story, and the retail sales and jobless claims numbers are here.