Midday Rundown — Wednesday, September 30

The tape: Big-cap tech is carrying the market on its back while breadth quietly leaks. S&P 500 +0.5-0.6% (~7,700), Nasdaq +1% (~27,000, a fresh session high), Dow roughly flat (~51,350) and small caps +0.4%. The equal-weight S&P? Barely budging — the same cap-weighted-vs-everybody-else split that's defined all of September.

What's driving it

Cooler August PCE, sort of. Core came in at 0.2% m/m vs 0.3% expected, 3.0% y/y vs 3.3%, with July revised down. But Vital Knowledge flags the fine print: methodological changes flattered the reading, so traders aren't fully buying the disinflation. Odds of an Oct 28 Fed hike have cooled to ~35% from over 70% earlier this week.
The long end is shouting. The 2-year dropped ~6bp to 4.83% on the PCE, but the 10-year sits around 5.24-5.27% after tagging 5.29% — its highest since 2007 — and the 30-year near 5.58% is knocking on a 2002 record.
Other morning data ran hot. Q2 GDP revised up to 2.2% from 1.5%, ADP added 90K jobs vs 75K expected, and the Chicago PMI came in hot. Personal income, though, was soft (+0.2% vs +0.5%). A mixed soup with hawkish chunks.
Europe inflation still simmering. CPIs ran hot in France, Germany and Italy.

Biggest movers and why

Microsoft +1.9% to a 52-week high ($519.83) — AI money still flows to the crown jewel.
HPE +4.9% — raised its FY27 networking revenue growth target to high-teens/low-20% and bumped Juniper synergy goals to $800M.
FactSet (FDS) up — solid FQ4 beat on sales and non-operating tailwinds.
Jabil (JBL) down — beat on EPS and sales with bullish guidance... and still sold off. That tells you everything about how priced-in AI expectations are right now.
Conagra (CAG) up — FQ1 EPS blew past (41c vs 29c) but full-year guidance left unchanged.
Cal-Maine (CALM) -6%+ — ugly quarter, revenue crashed 41.5% on weak egg pricing.
Boeing up, Northrop (NOC) down — Boeing won the Navy's next-gen fighter contract (initial $20B), beating Northrop.
Eli Lilly up — its next-gen obesity drug combined with Zepbound showed 23.3% body-weight loss vs 14.8% for Zepbound alone.
Synopsys (SNPS) up — a $1B+ multi-year Amazon deal to expand its custom silicon footprint.
Apple — new smart-home device launches Oct 13, per Bloomberg. Also: the FTC has opened a sweeping AI safety probe into Anthropic and OpenAI, per the NY Post.
FICO — extending Tuesday's losses; credit-score stocks still under a cloud.

What to watch this afternoon

Micron earnings after the close (call 4:30pm ET) — the day's main event. The Street wants ~$51B in revenue (+350% y/y) and ~$31.60 in adjusted EPS (a tenfold jump). With the stock up ~270% YTD, the bar is skyscraper-high — guidance and gross margins will matter as much as the print.
Fed speakers — Cook, Barkin, Goolsbee and Kashkari are all on tape this afternoon. Watch for reactions to the cool PCE vs hot GDP.
Month and quarter end — today's close is the bookend. The Dow (-3.5% in September) will snap a five-month win streak; the S&P flips back to a small monthly gain; the Nasdaq is near +2% for the month; all three are on pace for ~2.5-3% Q3 gains despite the worst bond quarter in four years. Expect some rebalancing chop into the bell.
Overnight — South Korea trade data, Asian manufacturing PMIs and Macau casino revenue.
Thursday morning — jobless claims, ISM manufacturing, and Nike earnings; then Friday's jobs report looms.

One-line takeaway: A soft PCE met a loud long end — tech is papering over tired breadth, and now the afternoon belongs to Micron.

Sources: The Vital Knowledge mid-day update + economic data notes (Sep 30), TradeTheNews wire, web market coverage. Synthesis only — not financial advice.