Market Open: Stocks Mixed, Pain at the Pump as Gas Nears $4.50 • 9/18/26

0:01CNBC Business News Update. Market open. I'm Jessica Ettinger. We have mixed major averages out of the gate this morning. The Dow down 122 points. IBM shares leading it lower. They're down almost 2%. Disney falling 1.5 % this morning. The S &P 500 index is in the green. It's up 6 points. The NASDAQ is up 104 points. Most of the chip makers are in the green this morning. U.S. crude oil ticking higher, back above$102 a barrel today. American drivers with more pain at the pump again today. The national average for a gallon of regular, it's getting closer to$4.50 at$4.47. Diesel at a fresh record high today,$6.45 a gallon, according to AAA.

0:51The market is proving that it has zero tolerance for any refinery problems. There was a refinery problem at the ExxonMobil plant in Joliet, Illinois. And there was a problem at the Valero Refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. And subsequently, we've seen prices in Chicago, for example, go up by 40 or 50 or 60 cents a gallon. So that's pretty daunting. It's pretty challenging going forward. That's Gulf Oil's chief energy advisor, Tom Kloza, on CNBC. J.P. Morgan's oil team has stopped trying to forecast the Iran war endgame as the Trump administration blows past economic red lines. Analysts had assumed at the start of the war that several economic points in time would force President Trump into a deal to stop the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

1:42The red lines included oil above$100 a barrel, prices at the pump near$5 a gallon, and 10-year Treasury yields above 5%. In a note by head of global commodities strategy, Natasha Koneva, she wrote, six months later, many of those lines have been crossed, yet the exit strategy is less clear. Microsoft publishing a code of conduct this week to help govern its AI models. Its key message, people matter more than AI. CNBC asked Microsoft CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleiman, about liability. What happens when an AI model causes damage? I just got an email a couple weeks ago from the manufacturer of my car. There was a defect with it.

2:27I took it back. They repaired it at no cost. That's how it works. I don't know why there's even an issue. Manufacturers are responsible for the quality and the safety of the products they create. We've got an incredible track record as a society of doing that for 100 years. Broadly speaking, airlines are incredibly safe. Cars are incredibly safe. They enable us to eat healthy food that doesn't poison us. And we shouldn't be reinventing the wheel here. Nestle, the latest foreign company doing business in Russia to have the local Russian assets seized by Putin's government. Moscow has seized dozens of Western corporate assets since Putin introduced a new legal framework three years ago, including assets owned by Danish brewer Carlsberg, French food company Danone, and Finnish energy company Fordham.

3:22Many U.S. businesses pulled out of Russia after its unprovoked assault on Ukraine. Apple's iPhone 18 goes on sale today. The S &P Dow Jones indexes will undergo a quarterly rebalance effective after the market closed today. New in theaters tonight, Columbia's horror film Resident Evil. Jessica Edinger, CNBC. Building a portfolio with Fidelity Basket Portfolios is kind of like making a sandwich. It's as simple as picking your stocks and ETFs, sort of like your meats and other topics, and managing it as one big juicy investment. Now that's pretty good. Learn more at Fidelity.com slash baskets. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.

4:11Fidelity Broker Services, LLC. Member NYSC SIPC.