Chipmakers Drive Global Stocks Higher as Oil and Yields Retreat
A rebound in AI-linked shares pulled major indexes back toward record territory, with AMD reaching a $1 trillion valuation.
Global equity markets advanced on Monday as renewed confidence in artificial intelligence spending lifted semiconductor shares, while a retreat in oil prices and government bond yields eased pressure across risk assets. The S&P 500 rose about 1% and pulled back within roughly 1% of the all-time high it set last month, according to reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press.
The move reversed part of a sharp selloff a week earlier, when warnings from the leaders of several large AI companies about the pace of the technology's development triggered a global decline in technology stocks. Investors returned this week to a simpler read of the data in front of them: capital spending on AI infrastructure is still expanding, and the companies supplying that build-out are still selling everything they can manufacture.
Semiconductor names led the advance. Intel climbed roughly 13% on the session, Advanced Micro Devices surged more than 9% and became the latest chipmaker to reach a $1 trillion market valuation, and Micron added about 2%, per Reuters market coverage. Meta rose sharply after a brokerage raised its price target, and Accenture gained after announcing an AI-related partnership with Anthropic.
The bond market, which had endured a sixth consecutive weekly selloff, rallied alongside equities. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to roughly 4.95%, according to Associated Press reporting, with European government debt leading gains. For equity investors, the direction of yields has become the dominant variable in a market where valuations rest heavily on long-duration growth expectations.
Energy prices did much of the work. Brent crude fell more than 3% toward the $100 mark, down from highs above $109 last week, after data indicated that more supply was moving out of the Gulf than traders had assumed and after signals that the parties to the conflict in the Middle East were open to talks at this week's United Nations General Assembly.
The macro backdrop remains unusual: rate expectations are rising, not falling. Futures markets were pricing a roughly 53% probability of a Federal Reserve rate increase in October and close to 89% odds of at least one by year-end, according to Reuters. That normally weighs on equity multiples. Strategists quoted in Monday's coverage argued that the distinction matters — central banks tightening to contain an oil-driven inflation impulse behave differently from central banks tightening to slow an overheating economy.
Asia set the tone overnight. South Korea's Kospi rose about 1.7%, helped by a 5% jump in Samsung Electronics, while Taiwan's Taiex added roughly 1% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained just under 1%. South Korean trade data showed exports in the first 20 days of the month hitting a record, driven by demand for memory and logic chips — one of the cleanest available proxies for global AI hardware demand. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday stretch, thinning liquidity across the region.
Investors also positioned for a heavy diplomatic calendar. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described weekend talks in New York with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng as a successful engagement, and Beijing confirmed a state visit by President Xi Jinping to the United States later in the week. Trade, tariffs and AI policy are all expected on the agenda.
The practical takeaway for business leaders is that two competing narratives now set the cost of capital week to week: the durability of AI-driven earnings growth and the path of energy prices into a tightening cycle. Neither has resolved. Companies planning 2027 budgets are effectively underwriting both a higher-for-longer rate environment and an input-cost curve that can swing 10% on a single headline out of the Gulf.
For now, the tape is rewarding the AI capital-spending trade and punishing rate-sensitive assets when crude rises. That relationship, more than any single earnings report, is what strategists say will determine whether indexes take out their records before the end of the quarter.
