S&P, Dow, Nasdaq hit new highs to end week

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Happy Friday. This is TheStreet’s Stock Market Today for Sept. 19, 2025. You can follow the latest updates on the market here in our daily live blog.

That’s a wrap. The major averages moved higher and hit record intraday highs and record  closes.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 0.5% to 6,672. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.7% to 22,631, and the Dow Jones industrials ended the day up 0.4% to 46,315.

The small-cap Russell 2000 slipped 0.8% to 2,449 after hitting a 52-week high of 2,472 at the open. But the index was up 2.18% on the week, trailing only the Nasdaq and Nasdaq-100 indices on weekly performance.

For the year, the Nasdaq and Nasdaq-100 are up 17.2%. The S&P 500 is up 13.31%. The Russell’s gain is 9.83%, while the Dow is the laggard up 8.86%.

Technology and utility stocks led the S&P 500 on Friday. The weakest of the 11 sectors in the index was energy shares.

Smaller companies like Oklo  (OKLO) , which aims to build small nuclear electric plants, and quantum computing company Rigetti Computing  (RGTI)  shot higher in the session.

Oklo was up 28.8% to $135.23 and up 537% in 2025, even though has no revenue, much less earnings. What it does have is an idea: to take spent nuclear fuel and use it in small facilities that generate electricity for customers with specific demands like data centers.

Rigetti, up 15.3% on the day and 87% on the year, is developing a quantum computer that doesn’t depend on classical circuitry but a sub-atomic technology that can do calculations at many times faster than the fastest computers now.

The technologies may not be ready for market until at least the end of the decade. But that hasn’t dampened speculative enthusiasm.

But speculative technologies sometimes can’t prove out. So, investors beware.

With the stocks nearing the close, the bulls are buying. The major stock indexes are headed to record closes after hitting 52-week highs earlier in the session.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was up 0,4% to 6,662. The Nasdaq Composite Index had risen 0.5% to  22,590, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4% to 46,328.

The Russell 2000 Index hit a 52-week high of 2,472 right at the open but has slipped ever since. Nonetheless, the index, up 2.2% on the week, has outperformed the major indexes.

The bullishness was the result of the Federal Reserve’s rate cut on Wednesday and projections for two more rate cuts this year.

Per sources close to the administration, President Donald Trump is expected to impose a new $100,000 fee for H1-B visa applications. It remains to be seen if this fee would be inclusive of existing fees, or if it would be additional to filings.

Part of the reforms, H-1B workers will also have to receive similar wages to U.S. workers. The reform proposal takes aim at discrepancies between the pays of foreign-born workers and U.S. nationals/citizens.

An effort to advance a stopgap bill to the President fell short in the Senate, increasing the spectre of a government shutdown

Heading into midday, stocks are jumping back from session lows. The Nasdaq (+0.51%), S&P 500 (+0.31%), and Nasdaq (+0.28%) are all going places. The Russell 2000 (-0.40%) is struggling.

The intraday recovery is shrouding the fact that 62.5% of the U.S. markets’ stocks have seen declines today, or about 3,463 assets. Digging deeper, we can take a look at which stocks are pulling through today.

In the spirit of fairness, we can take a look at the S&P 500 for some color on the here and now.

At least for the moment, the top performers are Eversource Energy ES (+5.7%), Newmont Corp  (NEM)  (+4.1%), and Fortinet  (FTNT)  (+4%). However, there’s not a lot of really big movers today.

Here are those top 20 performers intraday:

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the index is Dexcom  (DXCM)  (-10.33%), Hologic  (HOLX)  (-5.2%), and Humana  (HUM)  (-4.7%). Zooming out, here are all 20 of the worst-performing stocks in the index intraday:

If we just sorted by midcaps or greater in FinViz (>$2 billion market cap) then there’s a different story emerging beyond the comfort of the index.

At the top of the market are quantum computing stocks like the very-imaginatively named Quantum Computing  (QUBT)  (+28%), nuclear upstarts like Oklo (+22%), and gold businesses like Barrick Mining Corp  (B)  (+14%).

Here’s the top 20 gainers, just sorting without index criteria:

(Update: 11:38 a.m. ET)

After a promising start to the day, equities have pulled back a bit. Equities are now relatively flat, bar the Nasdaq (+0.15%) and the Russell 2000 (-0.66%), which are going in totally opposite directions.

What’s going on that has the S&P 500 (+0.03%) and Dow little-changed? Here’s a cropping of today’s big news so far:

• The U.S-China trade talks have wrapped; Trump says he will visit China next year, while Xi will visit the U.S.

• The U.S. House passed a funding bill and sent it to the Senate, but odds of a shutdown are still on the rise.

• Estonia says its airspace was violated by Russian fighter jets.

• Trump asked the Supreme Court to allow him to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook in a filing.

That said, here’s the S&P 500 heading towards midday. Looking a little grey, at least compared with the last few days. 

The U.S. equity markets are now open. The Nasdaq (+0.44%) led the pack, followed by the S&P 500 (+0.27%), Dow (+0.20%), and Russell 2000 (-0.02%). At least for the moment, that’s a few new intraday highs.

This morning, we’ll be keeping an eye on stocks as President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping are expected to meet to discuss the U.S-China trade deal, including the fate of social media app TikTok.

The product of that talk could affect stocks today. We’ll be keeping an eye out.

Good morning. All four U.S. equity benchmarks closed out Thursday at record highs. The Dow hit 46,142.42, the S&P 500 hit 6,631.96, the Nasdaq Composite hit 22,470.72. Even the Russell 2000 finally set a record, slaying 2,467.70.

But where do we go from here? If you buy futures, maybe the answer is flat. For the moment, all four indexes are trading within a narrow, almost unchanged rate.

There might not be a whole lot that tilts the market in a particular direction today, either. After a rowdy few weeks of earnings and economic data, there’s not a lot going on today, giving investors an opportunity to digest information and to take a breather.

Per data from TipRanks, there are no earnings calls today.

This might not be particularly surprising to any of you either but there are no major economic events taking place today.

As far as events of real consequence go, the UN General Assembly is this weekend, but we won’t be seeing any real impactful economic datapoints until bright and early Monay.

This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Sep 19, 2025, where it first appeared in the Stock Market News & Data section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.