Market Midday: Stocks Lower, 10-Year Yield Jumps, McDonald’s CEO on Inflation • 9/23/26

0:01CNBC Business News update. Market midday. Jessica Ettinger. Wall Street is lower. The 10-year Treasury yield has soared to a 19-year high. Look at yields go. Over 5 % in the 10. Interest rates, well, they've had one close. That was Fed Wednesday above 5 % all the way back to 2007. We may be on pace for another one today. That's CNBC's Rick Santelli. The major averages all in the red this afternoon. The Dow now down 315 points. McDonald's shares leading it lower. They're down almost 6%. The S &P 500 index down 49 points. That's a half percent. The NASDAQ down 276 points. That's 1 % this afternoon.

0:45McDonald's shares, as I mentioned, leading the Dow lower this afternoon. It's investor day for the company. And the CEO, Chris Kamchinsky, spoke on CNBC. Industry traffic has been down and there's been elevated inflation. And one of the things I've talked to our team about is we need to stop talking about that being a difficult environment and just say that is the environment. I think as we look out forward, we're not expecting things to change. We're not expecting that the industry all of a sudden is going to go to having robust traffic growth. We think that's going to be largely flat. We do think inflation is going to be with us for, you know, unfortunately, I think many more years.

1:22Kamchinsky says McDonald's does have plans to grow its chicken and beverage categories to bring in more people. Oil is higher this afternoon. Brent crude at$102 a barrel. U.S. crude back above$92 a barrel. AAA says diesel is holding at$6.52 a gallon. The national average for a gallon of regular gas today sitting at$4.47. since. The Trump administration had been considering a diesel export ban to keep more of it in the U.S. and lower prices at the pump. But Sankey researches Paul Sankey, tells CNBC that's not the best idea. Well, it would bring down pump prices, which is why, you know, we're talking about politicians here and short term gains, you know, that I care about the long term implications.

2:10The long term implications would be terrible. What you really need is more refineries. And of course, by banning exports and messing around at the margin, even threatening a ban, you effectively disincentivize further refining investment. So there's a lot of long term reasons why this is a terrible idea. But of course, in the short term, what can you do? It's going to bring down prices. And we do have U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright saying today a diesel export ban wouldn't work. He says it would raise gasoline and jet fuel prices. Meta Connect is on the biggest event of the year for the parent of Facebook and Instagram.

2:42CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks tonight. Meta's new AI agent that will do things for you. Muse, the number one free downloaded app on the Apple App Store. That's in focus. Here's more from CNBC's Julia Borsten. Meta Connect. At 7 p.m. Eastern, Mark Zuckerberg will discuss his AI roadmap, addressing the key investor question of whether Meta can create the definitive consumer AI software and hardware. There's been a lot of speculation about how much of a player Meta really can be in this AI ecosystem. But once they launch Muse, the question really, I think, that's going to be key to watch here is about trust.

3:20Do you trust Meta actually to act as an agent, do things for you or make purchases for you? And that's where things like the Shopify partnership come in to enable that kind of trust when it comes to things like transactions and credit cards. Nearly 10 % of all home loan borrowers opted for riskier mortgages last week as the average rate on a 30-year fixed home loan soared over 7%. According to Mortgage News Daily, would-be homebuyers are going for arms. Adjustable rate mortgages, they start off with a lower fixed rate, but then it pops up after a certain time period. Jessica Ettinger, CNBC. Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus, the next generation of advanced trading from Fidelity.

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