Wall St rises as yields ease, Moderna lifts healthcare stocks

Wall St rises as yields ease, Moderna lifts healthcare stocks

By Sinéad Carew and Avinash P

Wed August 19, 2026  

This morning two big things happened. First, the Treasury offered substantial buy back support on the 30-year and 10-year bonds which went through the roof yesterday sending the yields to multi-decade highs. This shot inflation prospects through the roof so the offer served to bring the yields back down, which it did. This had a healthy effect on tech, pushing companies like Marvell up 9.9% though the overall chip index fell 2%.  

The second big thing was Moderna announcing its new cancer wonder drug which catapulted its stock a massive 177% and vaulted several other healthcare stocks. The biotech index bolted up 6.4%. The overall effect is that all three indexes were way up in the morning, the Dow up close to 400 points by 11 a.m. But then profit-taking took over and all three began a steady decline to still close up but at a fraction of the morning’s gains. Volume came in at 16.92, finally putting it almost exactly in line with the 16.96 billion-average. 

DJ: 53,343.40  -116.38         NAS: 26,289.71  -355.20        S&P: 7,691.76  -53.30           8/18

DJ: 53,463.05  +119.65        NAS: 26,331.09  +41.38         S&P: 7,707.98  +16.22         8/19

Wed 8-19-26 5:55 pm Wall St rises as yields ease, Moderna lifts healthcare stocks | Reuters