Wall Street ends lower as oil spikes and the benchmark Treasury yield breaches 5%

Wall Street ends lower as oil spikes and the benchmark Treasury yield breaches 5%

By Stephen Culp and Tharuniyaa Lakshmi

Tue September 15, 2026  

Yesterday was a straight shot down rout in the morning followed by a 50% recovery in the afternoon. Today it was just straight down right out the gate and stayed there all day, 3-digit losses all around. Today’s expert pointed out three problems – “Given rising prices for fuel, especially diesel, given the near-certain outlook for rising rates beginning tomorrow, and given the concerns over the potential slowdown in the AI ecosphere, why step into the market aggressively until some of this clears up?” Indeed, the odds of a rate hike tomorrow are now at 95% vs 33% a few weeks ago.  

The Fed has already signaled that this is likely to be one of several. The situation is tense for AI companies that have taken out extensive debt to finance their build-outs and now wondering how they’re going to cover the cost of that debt with these hikes. Crude is up 25% in just the last two weeks; the Middle East remains an enormous wild card and Treasury yields have broken the 5% mark for the first time in 19 years. So there’s good reason for a continued selloff and even better to stay on the sidelines, which is exactly how the experts are describing today’s activities though, at 15.85 billion shares traded vs the 15.14 average, that’s hardly the sidelines.

DJ: 52,421.20  -152.09         NAS: 26,186.41  -146.82        S&P: 7,619.98  -37.00           9/14

DJ: 52,093.11  -328.09         NAS: 25,981.57  -204.84        S&P: 7,585.73  -34.25           9/15

Tue 9-15-26 4:20 pm Wall Street ends lower as oil spikes and the benchmark Treasury yield breaches 5% | Reuters