Will Moderna's 14% Rally Carry Into Next Week?

Today's mood

Wall Street bounced back after Thursday’s pullback. The Dow rose 0.83% to 51,654.95, the S&P 500 added 0.59% to 7,811.54, the Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.64% to 27,366.17, and the small-cap Russell 2000 gained 0.46% — all four benchmarks closed higher. The VIX fear gauge dropped 3.70% to 14.84, a visible easing of the tension that had built up through the week.

But the real story wasn’t the indexes — it was individual stocks. Moderna alone jumped more than 14%, while Deere slid almost 5%. On the surface it was a quiet Friday; underneath, it wasn’t.

What we were watching, and what happened

Our last article (Oct. 7) flagged three things to watch: whether the 10-year yield would retest the mid-5.3% zone, whether Micron’s rally would spread to memory peers like SanDisk, and how Moderna would trade before its Nasdaq-100 inclusion on Oct. 9.

The results were mixed. The 10-year yield eased to 5.23% on Oct. 8 and was essentially flat today at 5.24% — it never retested Wednesday’s intraday high of 5.365%, the richest level since 2002, after a well-received auction. Micron’s rally didn’t spread either: Micron fell 0.66% and SanDisk fell 1.72% today, with memory names moving lower together instead. Moderna did its biggest moving not the day before inclusion, but on the inclusion day itself — it surged 14.21%, its largest single-day move in the past eight sessions.

Moderna was today's biggest mover by far

Line up today’s six biggest movers among the stocks we follow and you get Moderna, Lumentum, Palantir, Deere, Coinbase and Amazon. Four indexes rose together, but underneath, each name moved on its own catalyst — an index addition, a supply-chain comment, an analyst upgrade, a demand warning. We go through them below.

Moderna jumped 14% on its Nasdaq-100 inclusion day

Moderna surged 14.21% to $225.00, by far the largest move among the stocks we follow today. Nasdaq announced on Oct. 1 that Moderna would replace Warner Bros. Discovery in the Nasdaq-100, effective today.

Index funds that track the Nasdaq-100 have to mechanically match the index, which often pulls in buying once an addition is announced. That flow is separate from the company’s fundamentals, though. Citigroup cut Moderna to Sell from Neutral on Sept. 30 while still raising its price target to $80 from $60 — a reminder that index inclusion can lift a stock without changing its earnings or pipeline.

Photo: J.N. Eskra / Wikimedia Commons (BY-SA 4.0)

Palantir rose again on bullish analyst notes

Palantir gained 5.17% to $209.05, near record territory, after Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to Buy from Neutral and Barclays initiated coverage at Overweight with a $265 price target. It was Palantir’s biggest daily move in the past eight sessions.

Coinbase also rose, up 4.30% to $179.39. Wells Fargo started the stock at Equal-Weight on Oct. 2, and shares have swung between $172 and $189 since. Both names moved on analyst calls today, but by valuation, Coinbase remains one of the most expensive stocks we track at 58.8 times forward earnings.

Lumentum said its optics are sold out through 2029

Lumentum rose 5.22% to $1,103.35 after CEO Michael Hurlston told Bloomberg Television that the company’s optical-component capacity is already sold out through early 2029, with demand for some products running as much as 70% ahead of what it can supply next year. Peers Coherent and Applied Optoelectronics rose alongside it.

Lumentum’s stock had climbed to $1,133.40 on Oct. 6 before falling to $1,048.60 on Oct. 8, then jumped back today on Hurlston’s comments. Elsewhere in chips, memory and logic names moved the other way — Micron fell 0.66%, SanDisk fell 1.72%, and AMD fell 2.03%, while Broadcom inched up 0.39%. The Philadelphia Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) slipped 0.69%.

Memory chips stayed under pressure

Line up Micron, SanDisk, AMD and Broadcom over the past two sessions and the pattern is clearer: all four rallied sharply in early October and have been catching their breath since. Lumentum’s supply story hasn’t spilled over into memory sentiment just yet.

Deere fell on soft crop demand and a new inquiry

Deere dropped 4.85% to $620.93, today’s biggest decliner. The USDA raised its corn and soybean yield forecasts, pushing grain prices lower and squeezing the farm-income outlook that drives big-equipment demand. The same week, the FTC and USDA opened a joint inquiry into the farm-equipment market. Peers AGCO and CNH Industrial each fell roughly 5% as well.

Deere closed at $682.79 on Oct. 5; today’s $620.93 is down 9.06% from that level. Its next earnings report is in November, which should show whether today’s drop was a one-day reaction or the start of a trend.

Photo: Nathan Lugo / Unsplash

SpaceX traded the most on an $8 billion spectrum deal

SpaceX rose 1.25% to $162.57 and had the highest dollar trading volume among the stocks we follow today. A deal reported the day before has SpaceX paying roughly $8 billion to buy nationwide low-band spectrum from Grain Management, seen as a push to expand Starlink’s direct-to-phone ambitions. Wireless carriers Verizon and T-Mobile fell on the same news, on worries that SpaceX is moving deeper into their market.

Gold hit a fresh record as yields caught their breath

Gold rose 1.43% to $4,216.30 an ounce, a fresh record, even as yields and the dollar both firmed — a sign that worries over the U.S. fiscal deficit and the rate path are broadening safe-haven demand. WTI crude rose a modest 0.39% to $91.85 a barrel, a step down from this week’s Iran-driven spike.

The 10-year yield was 5.24% and the 30-year was 5.60%, both roughly unchanged from the prior session. Bloomberg reported the dollar is on track for a fourth straight weekly gain, and Investing.com put the dollar index near 102.30, up about 0.1% on the week — a rally fed by eurozone fiscal worries and Middle East risk alike.

Valuation check: Micron is cheap, Coinbase is not

For beginners: forward P/E divides a stock’s price by expected earnings over the next year, not this year’s. “+51.1% to target” means the average analyst price target sits 51.1% above today’s price — the inverse framing, “the stock trades N% below target,” is a different number and shouldn’t be used interchangeably.

Leaving aside Moderna’s 14%-plus jump, the cheapest and most expensive names we track stand out clearly. Micron trades at 5.0 times forward earnings, with the average price target sitting 51.1% above today’s price, and the stock itself 18.0% below its 52-week high. Coinbase trades at 58.8 times forward earnings, with its target only 18.2% above today’s price, yet the stock is 55.4% below its own 52-week high — expensive by earnings, yet far from its own peak.

Next week brings big-bank earnings and September CPI

Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan report on the 13th, followed by Morgan Stanley and Bank of America on the 14th. A Reuters poll expects bank earnings growth around 10%, in line with historical norms. September CPI also lands on the 14th — Reuters’ poll sees headline inflation at 3.6% year over year and core at 2.5%, the last major data point before the Fed’s late-October meeting.

Among the stocks we follow, Tesla reports first on the 21st, followed by Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet on the 28th, then Intel, Amazon, Merck and Coinbase on the 29th.

What to watch next session

First, whether Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan — reporting from the 13th — beat the Reuters consensus of roughly 10% earnings growth. Second, whether September CPI on the 14th lands near the forecast (3.6% headline, 2.5% core) and what that means for the rate path ahead of the Fed’s late-October meeting. Third, whether Lumentum’s supply-constraint story starts to lift sentiment in memory names like Micron and SanDisk.

What we learned digging deeper today

New 13F filings covering the second quarter (as of June 30) show Berkshire Hathaway added 24,541,369 shares of Alphabet Class A (+45%) and 23,603,218 shares of Class C (+658%), plus 17,510,544 shares of Delta Air Lines (+44%). It cut Bank of America by 30,230,150 shares (-6%) and Kroger by 11,000,000 shares (-22%).

Coatue Management moved more aggressively: a new 12,084,027-share stake in Intel, a 2,976,338-share increase in Micron (+1794%), and a newly disclosed 18,561,780-share stake in SpaceX.

Worth flagging clearly: 13F filings are released 45 days after the reporting date, so this is last quarter’s snapshot. Whether these funds still hold these positions — or have already trimmed them — since June 30 isn’t something this filing can tell us.

Lumentum CEO Michael Hurlston told Bloomberg Television on the 9th that the company’s optical-component capacity is already sold out through early 2029, with demand for some products running as much as 70% ahead of next year’s available supply. The stock rose to $1,133.40 on Oct. 6, fell to $1,048.60 on Oct. 8, then jumped back to $1,103.35 (+5.22%) today on the comment.

Hurlston also said new laser-manufacturing capacity takes roughly three years to reach customers — meaning capital spent today won’t meaningfully add supply before 2029-2030. For a component that takes years to build out, tightness becomes structural rather than cyclical as long as demand holds.

That pressure shares the same root — AI infrastructure buildout — as the forces squeezing SK Hynix’s HBM memory and Samsung Electro-Mechanics’ substrate demand. But the two U.S. memory names we track, Micron (-0.66%) and SanDisk (-1.72%), fell together today — a sign investors may be starting to split AI-adjacent chip names into structurally constrained supply chains (optics) and ones that have already priced in a lot of good news (memory), rather than trading them as one basket.

Sources

• CNBC Treasury yields steady as traders wrap up volatile week
• CNBC Earnings season kicks into high gear as big banks report next week. Here's what's ahead
• Investing.com U.S. stocks higher at close of trade; Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.83%
• Investing.com Why is Lumentum stock surging today?
• Investing.com Farm equipment stocks fall on regulatory probe and falling crop prices
• Yahoo Finance Moderna, Inc. to Join the Nasdaq-100 Index® Beginning October 9, 2026
• Yahoo Finance Palantir stock hits all-time high after Wall Street grows bullish on next phase of growth
• Bloomberg Dollar's Longest Winning Streak Since Early 2025 Keeps Going