What are today's top business/market headlines?

Your Saturday business briefing is next — I'll pull today's top market headlines.

Top Business / Market Headlines - Saturday, September 26, 2026 (reflecting Friday September 25-26 trading):

For the week: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the week at 51,828.62, up 0.1%, The S&P 500 closed the week at 7,743.41, up 1.2%, Nasdaq closed at 27,068.72, up 1.9%.

On Friday Sept 26, Wall Street is drifting toward the finish of an up -and-down week on Friday, and U.S. stock indexes are mixed following losses in Europe and gains for Asia. The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged in early trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 139 points, of 0.3%, and Nasdaq was 0.3% higher.

Bond yields surged this week, pushing mortgage rates sharply higher. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 5.2%, its highest level since 2007, touching a fresh 19-year high before standing at 5.196%. On Friday, the yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.98% from 4.94% late Thursday after it topped the 5% level early this week. The 30-year treasury bond yield ended the week at 5.49%. Mortgage rates followed: 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 7.03%, up from 6.95% last week.

U.S. business activity expanded in September at its fastest pace in more than five years, weekly unemployment claims fell to just 197,000, and August retail sales rose a stronger-than-expected 1.2% from July and 6.0% from one year ago. The housing market also showed resilience, with new-home sales increasing 6.4% in August.

Traders are assigning a 66% probability of at least a 25-basis-point Federal Reserve rate increase in October, after the Fed raised its federal funds rate earlier this week for the first time in three years.

Microsoft jumped 3.7% after unveiling new capabilities for its Copilot app, including a coding tool and an always-on AI agent. Qualcomm advanced 4%, Dell rose 5% and Akamai Technologies gained 3.2% following an US$11.6 billion cloud services deal with Anthropic. Meta Platforms, however, fell 3.3% after surging about 13% earlier in the week.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, got to nearly $110 early this week, briefly dropped below $102 in overnight trading before pulling back to $104.07. Brent crude remained above US$100 a barrel.

Steel maker Nucor said it expects to report an increase in profit from its steel mills business but gave a forecast that fell short of analysts’ expectations, and its stock sank 4.1%. Berkshire Hathaway slipped 0.1% after Warren Buffett said he’s giving up his role as chairman.

In stock markets abroad, indexes slumped across Europe, including drops of 1.2% for the CAC 40 in Paris and 1% for London’s FTSE 100. Asian indexes did better. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.7%, and Japan’s Nikkei rose 1.4%. The Bank of Japan raised its benchmark interest rate in a widely expected move, up to its highest level in 31 years.