Wall Street holds near its record after Brent oil falls below $100 per
barrel
[September 23, 2026] By
STAN CHOE
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market held near its record high on
Tuesday after oil prices eased again.
The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged, edging down by less than 0.1%, and
is sitting 0.4% below its all-time high set last month. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average dipped 185 points, or 0.4%, while the Nasdaq
composite added 0.5% to its own record.
Stocks had been higher in the morning, when the price for a barrel of
Brent crude briefly fell below $98. But oil prices later trimmed their
losses, and Brent settled at $99.25 per barrel, down 1.1%.
That’s down from the nearly $110 that it touched last week, but it’s
still much more expensive than the $72 it was fetching before the war
with Iran began. It’s been swinging with uncertainty about when the war
will allow crude to freely flow again from the Middle East to customers
worldwide.
On Wall Street, AutoZone rose 3.3% after the retailer reported a
stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though
its revenue fell short. CEO Phil Daniele said the auto parts seller
faced “a difficult selling environment” in the first two months of the
quarter, but it improved afterward and “we feel we are well positioned
for sales growth” in its upcoming fiscal year.
At Thor Industries, which sells recreational vehicles, the mood was more
muted. CEO Bob Martin said expensive fuel, high interest rates and
still-high inflation are stretching its customers’ budgets, and business
“never reached the inflection point many in the industry expected” in
its latest fiscal year.
Its stock rose 5.5%, though, after it delivered a stronger profit for
the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Such strong profit reports are one of the main reasons the U.S. stock
market has reached the brink of its all-time high despite expensive oil
and jitters about whether stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry
shot too high.
Many companies are close to closing the books on their third quarter of
the year, which ends with September. And analysts are forecasting
companies in the S&P 500 will report overall growth of nearly 29% for
the quarter from a year earlier, according to FactSet.
If they’re right, it would be the third straight quarter of growth
better than 25% for the index. And stock prices tend to follow the track
of corporate profits over the long term.
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Michael Pistillo works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange
in New York, Monday, Sept. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
 On Holding’s stock climbed 7.6%
after the Swiss sneaker and sportswear company unveiled its
financial goals for upcoming years. It also approved a plan to buy
back up to $1 billion of its stock through 2029. Such purchases send
cash directly to investors and boost the company’s per-share
performance.
On the losing end of Wall Street were several stocks of companies in
the oil and gas industry, which were hurt by the drop in crude
prices. ConocoPhillips fell 1.8%.
Banks also dropped, continuing their weak run since last week, when
the Federal Reserve raised the overnight interest rate that it
controls for the first time in three years. When the spread narrows
between short-term interest rates and longer ones, banks come under
pressure because they make profit off the difference.
JPMorgan Chase fell 3.4% and was one of the heaviest weights on the
S&P 500.
The gap between short- and long-term yields in the bond market did
not move much Tuesday, and the 10-year Treasury yield edged down to
4.95% from 4.96% late Monday.
All told, the S&P 500 inched down by 0.06 to 7,764.64 points. The
Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 185.14 to 51,863.69, and the
Nasdaq composite rose 122.18 to 27,244.28.
In stock markets abroad, indexes ticked higher across much of Europe
and Asia. London’s FTSE 100 was an outlier and dipped 0.3%.
Stocks rose 0.2% in Hong Kong and 0.1% in Shanghai after Alibaba
unveiled new artificial intelligence chip technologies, including
what it said was China’s most powerful AI chip. That comes just days
ahead of a meeting between Chinese and U.S. leaders at which
competition to lead on AI technology is expected to be a major
theme.
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AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed to this report.
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