S&P 500 closes at 7,596 as chip stocks jump 3% on Fed dust settling

Wall Street extended Wednesday's post-Fed bounce through Thursday's full session, with the S&P 500 closing up 0.59% at 7,596 points and a closely watched gauge of chipmakers climbing 3%. Treasury 10-year yields fell back from their highest level since 2007, snapping an eight-day rising streak, as investors grew more confident that inflation can be kept under control following the Federal Reserve's quarter-point hike to 3.75%-4.00%. It was a quiet, grinding session rather than a dramatic one — the market absorbing Wednesday's shock rather than reacting to anything new.

Markets

European equities rallied broadly in sympathy with the post-Fed relief. Germany's DAX closed up 0.53% at 25,538, France's CAC 40 rose 0.62% to 8,141, and the pan-European Stoxx 600 traded more than 0.6% higher at the open; the Euro Stoxx 50 added 0.57% to 6,272. Britain's FTSE 100 lagged the rest of the region, up a more modest 0.28% to 10,688, as the broader continental bloc traded between 0.2% and 0.7% higher.

Commodities

WTI crude eased to $102.13 a barrel, down 0.29% on the day, as Brent slipped toward $104 on signs that Middle East supply disruptions are easing — a sharp pullback from levels near $108 earlier in the week. Gold was choppy: it opened near $4,301 an ounce, down about 2% from Wednesday's close, before recovering partially to trade around $4,354-$4,372 through the morning.

Crypto

Bitcoin traded at $76,600.01 as of 18:56 UTC, up 0.52% from the 00:00 UTC open of $76,206.01, having ranged between $76,000 and $77,179 through the session — a steady grind higher rather than any single sharp move. Ether outperformed, trading at $2,452.69, up 1.42% from a $2,418.26 baseline. Solana was the standout major, up 2.26% to $100.89. BNB rose a more modest 0.29% to $728.05, and dogecoin gained 0.68% to $0.08146. XRP was the lone laggard among the majors, down 0.28% to $1.2958.

On the regulatory side, the SEC held its previously announced roundtable on preparations for 24-hour stock trading in Washington, with panelists from BlackRock, Citadel Securities, NYSE, Nasdaq, Robinhood, Citi and UBS discussing exchange readiness, overnight surveillance and the clearance and settlement changes needed for round-the-clock trading — a session explicitly framed around competing with crypto exchanges' 24/7 trading of tokenized stocks. It follows this week's SEC and CFTC pledges to advance crypto rulemaking under their existing statutory authority after the Senate's CLARITY Act vote fell short.

What it means for crypto trading

Crypto spent the session tracking the broader risk-on drift in equities and falling yields rather than driving it — a continuation, not a reversal, of the post-Fed-hike recovery that started overnight. With Wednesday's shock now fully priced and Thursday's session quiet by comparison, the next catalyst that could move crypto meaningfully is either a hawkish follow-through from a Fed official or a data surprise, not anything crypto-specific from today's docket.

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