Stocks close higher: Dow up 556 points, Russell 2000 up 1.4%, Nasdaq flat as 10-year yield falls to 5.10%

U.S. stocks rebounded unevenly on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 556.21 points, or 1.08%, to 52,177.69, the S&P 500 gained 0.33% to 7,744.06 and the Russell 2000 climbed 1.38% to 2,767.27, according to Yahoo Finance prices read at 4:35 p.m. ET. The Nasdaq Composite was nearly unchanged at 26,713.03, up 0.08%, and the Nasdaq 100 slipped 0.05%.

Index	Close	Change	Wednesday's close
Dow Jones Industrial Average	52,177.69	+1.08%	51,621.48
S&P 500	7,744.06	+0.33%	7,718.94
Nasdaq Composite	26,713.03	+0.08%	26,692.87
Nasdaq 100	29,935.59	-0.05%	29,950.82
Russell 2000	2,767.27	+1.38%	2,729.53

Source: Yahoo Finance. Percent changes are against Wednesday's close. The S&P 500 remains below Tuesday's 7,805.45.

A rotation, not a rally

The gap between the Dow and the Nasdaq is the story. Wednesday's session knocked the S&P 500 down 1.1% and the Nasdaq Composite down 1.9% on AI-debt worries; Thursday recovered about a third of the S&P's loss, and almost none of the Nasdaq's. Nvidia fell 1.8% to $217.23 and has lost about 5% since Tuesday's close of $228.52. Advanced Micro Devices fell 1.5% and Tesla 1.3%, while Microsoft rose 1.1%.

The money went to the other side of the market. Home Depot rose 4.3% to $308.24 and UnitedHealth 2.8% to $406.67, the two largest contributors among the names we checked. Goldman Sachs added 1.4% to $891.28. We could not tie Home Depot's or UnitedHealth's move to a single company announcement in the sources we read, so we are reporting the moves without a cause. Caterpillar, a Dow member and a CoreWeave customer, fell 1.8% to $735.64, and Exxon Mobil dropped 1.3% to $174.68.

CoreWeave: stock up, credit still stressed

CoreWeave closed up 5.9% at $69.69 after Wednesday's 15.5% drop, but CNBC reported that the bond market did not follow. The yield on its 9.75% notes due 2031 reached 15.78%, and the spread on its five-year credit default swaps touched above 1,140 basis points before easing to about 1,038, up 164% from a year ago. S&P Global Market Intelligence's Gavan Nolan told CNBC a spread of 1,000 or more is generally read as distress. CNBC also reported Oracle's five-year CDS at 282 basis points, up roughly 10% in a week. Our earlier report on CoreWeave's debt load has the interest-to-revenue math.

The point for anyone outside the AI complex: the equity bounce and the credit signal are separate readings, and on Thursday only one of them improved.

Bonds rally after the hot producer prices

The Treasury's par yield curve showed the 10-year at 5.10%, down from 5.19% on Wednesday, the 2-year at 4.77% from 4.82% and the 30-year at 5.43% from 5.52%, per the U.S. Treasury. That came on a day the producer price index rose 1.3% in September and 6.3% on the year, which we broke down in our PPI report. Yields fell anyway, consistent with money seeking shelter from the AI selloff. Freddie Mac's 30-year mortgage rate held at 7.40% for the week (what that means for buyers); the 10-year decline is the first thing that would have to persist for it to move lower.

Oil and gold

West Texas Intermediate futures finished at $96.13 a barrel, up 1.1% from $95.09, while Brent eased 0.3% to $105.75, per Yahoo Finance. The International Energy Agency said it would speed up its emergency stock release, including more than 20 million barrels of diesel (our report). Gold futures rose 2.0% to $4,191.20.

What comes next

The Federal Reserve meets October 28, and fed funds futures cited by CNBC earlier in the day showed roughly a 29% to 34% chance of a hike, up from under 18% a week ago. Before that, flash PMIs arrive October 23 per our economic calendar. September payrolls follow on November 6. Our Main Street piece on the PPI works through what the cost data does to a restaurant, a trucker and a contractor.

Sources: Yahoo Finance (closing prices, read 4:35 p.m. ET; individual stock moves are single-day changes), CNBC, U.S. Treasury, Chronicle economic calendar. This is market information, not investment advice.