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1. Hot PMI sends 10-year to 5.11%, snaps Nasdaq streak
Stocks sank Wednesday as hotter-than-expected U.S. Flash Manufacturing and Services PMI readings for September reignited rate-hike fears. The 10-year Treasury yield surged about 14 basis points to near 5.11% in late-afternoon trading, its highest level since 2007 and its biggest one-day jump since April 2025. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.1%, ending its two-day run of record closes; the S&P 500 dropped 0.8%; and the Dow shed about 350 points (-0.7%). Traders now see a 69% chance the Fed raises rates a quarter point at its meeting next month, up from 55% on Tuesday. The selloff hit the week’s hottest trade hardest: memory-chip stocks gave back part of their surge, with SanDisk down about 3.5%, Micron off roughly 2%, the Roundhill Memory ETF down nearly 3%, and Alphabet dropping nearly 4%.
Sources: Investopedia · Barron’s
2. Meta hits 52-week high on Muse mania
Meta Platforms defied the selloff, rising about 1% to a 52-week high (trading as high as $763.90) ahead of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Connect keynote at 7 p.m. ET, where he is expected to tout the early adoption of Meta’s Muse AI agent. The app, launched September 8, has soared to the top of Apple’s download charts, and Meta has rallied nearly 30% this month on the momentum. Analysts keep raising targets: Cantor Fitzgerald lifted its price target to $860 from $680, KeyCorp to $900 from $780 (calling it “Muse’s moment”), and Jefferies to $875. Meanwhile, Muse is becoming a wrecking ball for consumer-facing incumbents — online travel, insurers like Allstate, and brokerages like Charles Schwab all felt pressure as investors game out an AI agent that books travel, fills out forms, and negotiates discounts on users’ behalf.
Sources: Investor’s Business Daily · MarketBeat
3. Travel stocks crack as Muse eats bookings
Booking Holdings fell about 4.6% as investors bet the world’s biggest online travel agency will be among the losers from Meta’s Muse, the most downloaded app on both the App Store and Google Play. Expedia, which announced a Muse partnership yesterday, popped at the end of Tuesday’s session but gave back all of those gains this morning — a sign investors are skeptical even a partnership can save online travel agencies from disruption. Airbnb also slid roughly 6% in morning action, a fresh signal that the travel sector is cracking under the double pressure of AI agents and rising rates. The fear is straightforward: OTAs are middlemen that don’t own inventory, and an AI assistant that books travel directly could simply route around them.
Sources: Motley Fool · Investor’s Business Daily
4. AppLovin slides 6% on Edgewater downgrade
AppLovin was one of the day’s worst large-cap decliners, falling about 6% in morning trading after Edgewater Research analyst Joe Wittine said fresh channel checks suggest the mobile ad platform’s market-share expansion has effectively stalled. Wittine expects fourth-quarter revenue growth of just 8% to 9% sequentially, warning that AppLovin’s flagship MAX ad network has reached a “functional ceiling” and that competition is increasingly compressing its net revenue spreads. The caution landed just two days after Citi offered a more bullish read, reporting AppLovin’s global e-commerce client base grew 5.1% in a week to 13,105 — its fastest weekly expansion in five months — while maintaining a Buy rating and a $600 price target.
Sources: Stocktwits · Investor’s Business Daily
5. Cracker Barrel pops 8% on earnings beat
Cracker Barrel surged nearly 10% in premarket trading and ended the session up about 8% after reporting fiscal fourth-quarter results before the bell. Revenue of $849.3 million beat the roughly $845 million consensus despite a smaller store footprint, but the real shock was the bottom line: adjusted earnings of 99 cents per share crushed the ~26-cent consensus. Management’s fiscal 2027 outlook was equally confident — revenue of $3.325 billion to $3.4 billion, comparable-store restaurant sales growth of 3% to 5%, and adjusted EBITDA of $180 million to $200 million, with a $0.25 quarterly dividend on the way. It was the first earnings report under new CEO David Deno, who took the helm on August 10. Elsewhere in the earnings lineup, KB Home slipped about 3% and Paychex faded on a sell-the-news reaction despite a narrow earnings beat, while General Mills added a fraction.
Sources: TradingView (StockStory) · Mondeum Capital
Market recap for information only — not financial advice.
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