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The previous session was Thursday, September 17. All three indexes rebounded: the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.69% to 26,418.30, the S&P 500 rose 1.13% to 7,637.05 and the Dow Jones Industrial rose 0.61% tThe previous session was Thursday, September 17. All three indexes rebounded: the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.69% to 26,418.30, the S&P 500 rose 1.13% to 7,637.05 and the Dow Jones Industrial rose 0.61% t

Pre-Market Briefing on Sept 18: Intel +7.67% With 7.08 Points of Excess, and a 4.1% Dot Plot Pricing AI Compute

#US Stocks

2026/09/18 17:29

The previous session was Thursday, September 17. All three indexes rebounded: the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.69% to 26,418.30, the S&P 500 rose 1.13% to 7,637.05 and the Dow Jones Industrial rose 0.61% to 51,778.04. Stocks fell on Wednesday's hike day and took it all back and more on Thursday. The stock in focus is Intel (INTC), up 7.67% to $108.80 and adding $39.1B of market value in one session. The Nasdaq semiconductor industry averaged only 0.59% that day, leaving 7.08 points of excess return, so the day's story sat with the company. Today at 13:30, Fed governor Bowman speaks, the first FOMC voter to talk publicly about the outlook since Wednesday's hike; August industrial production lands at 13:15 and August leading indicators at 14:00. Today's academy piece is the Friday week-ahead: next week is an earnings gap, with the cluster on September 30 and October 1. Data in this article is based on the September 17, 2026 US close, and all times are UTC.

Market today: stocks fell on hike day, then took it all back and more

All three indexes rebounded on September 17, with the Nasdaq Composite the strongest of the three. Stocks fell on Wednesday, the day of the hike, and Thursday took all of it back and more.

Semiconductors led: Micron (MU) rose 5.5% to $977.50, Nvidia (NVDA) rose 2.54% to $219.34 and Broadcom (AVGO) rose 2.29% to $347.30, all three on the AI compute chain.

⚠️ One figure has to sit next to the index move: the equal-weighted average of Nasdaq tech names was only 0.55% that day, far below the cap-weighted index. A handful of large caps carried the index; this was not a broad advance. Quoting +1.69% alone reads it as one.

Stock in focus, Intel (INTC): two threads moved it, and both point at pricing power

Intel rose 7.67% to $108.80, adding $39.1B of market value in one session to reach $548.8B. Volume ran 148 million shares, 1.26x the average, and the price moved back to around the 70% mark of its 52-week range.

Two threads moved it, and both point at pricing power:

Foundry: its Ohio capacity is reported to be in talks to host another company's memory production.

Pricing: PC processors are reported to rise about 10% on October 5.

⚠️ Neither has landed, and that qualifier cannot be dropped: the memory talks are still at the discussion stage, and the other party said publicly on September 16 that nothing is settled; the processor increase has no official price list yet.

Five-Dimension Score: trend position 70, peer strength 85, peer rank 100, sector valuation 83, volatility control 31.

→ Volatility control at 31 is the lowest of the five corners, matching a beta of 2.23: when the market moves 1%, this moves about 2.2%.

→ The other four sit in the upper half, with peer rank at 100, first in its group for the day.

The supporting name, Super Micro (SMCI), rose 9.50% at a $26.1B market cap. ⚠️ It had no announcement of its own that day; the bid in memory and chips spread out to server assembly and carried it along.

Peer comparison: one industry, a day running from +7.67% to −0.97%

Across six large semiconductor names, five rose and one fell on September 17: Intel (INTC) +7.67%, GlobalFoundries (GFS) +6.53%, AMD +6.36%, TSMC (TSM) +3.00%, Nvidia (NVDA) +2.54% and Texas Instruments (TXN) −0.97%. The ends sit 8.64 points apart.

→ Foundry and CPUs were strongest; analog closed lower.

→ ⚠️ This was a group led higher, not a counter-move: five of the six rose and the industry average of +0.59% was positive too. Intel simply rose the most.

One-minute concept: before you read a gain, ask what its peers did

Take a stock's move for the day, subtract the average move of its industry that day, and what is left is the excess return, which roughly corresponds to what the company did on its own.

1. Today's case. Intel rose 7.67% while its industry averaged 0.59%, leaving 7.08 points of excess. The day's story sat with the company.

2. When excess is zero. If a stock rises 3% and its industry also rises 3%, the excess is zero, and the move is usually the whole group rather than any single announcement. Same gain, completely different meaning.

3. How to use it. The same percentage against a different industry average means something else entirely. When a headline gain shows up, look at what its peers did that day before deciding whether it belongs to the company or to the sector.

What to watch today: Bowman, the first voter to speak since the hike

Today at 13:15 August industrial production and capacity utilization, at 13:30 Bowman speaks, which is also the US open, and at 14:00 August leading indicators.

The Fed raised the federal funds target range 25 basis points on Wednesday to 3.75%–4.00%, voted 12–0, the first increase since July 2023. Bowman is a Fed governor and a permanent FOMC voter, and today she is the first policy voter to speak publicly about the outlook since the hike landed. How she describes "whether there is another one" gets taken straight into the discount rate. For AI compute names priced on distant cash flows, that line matters more than the industrial production print the same day.

The dot plot gives a full path (median federal funds projections, %): the midpoint of today's range is 3.875, end-2026 is 4.1, end-2027 is 4.1, end-2028 is 3.9 and the longer run is 3.2.

→ End-2026 at 4.1% sits 0.225 above today's midpoint, which rounds to one more 25 basis point move inside the year.

→ The sharper point is end-2027, still 4.1%: it does not come back down.

→ A longer-run median of 3.2% means the committee sees neutral just above 3%, so rates stay above neutral for two years.

→ The discount rate starts higher and stays longer, and both ends press on distant cash flows. That is exactly the valuation AI capital spending relies on.

⚠️ These are median projections of participants in the Summary of Economic Projections, a forecast rather than a commitment. That qualifier cannot be dropped.

📌 A note on our own discipline across editions: on September 17 we wrote that the source cards gave no dot-plot figures and that the piece would therefore make no claim about the policy path ahead. Today's cards supply the full dot plot, so it can be reported, but the writing still states the medians themselves and does not turn them into "there will be another one".

Drill-down: electricity 3.8%, core goods 0.7%, AI's cost line and price line at opposite ends

August 2026 CPI components year over year (%, not seasonally adjusted): energy 16.3, natural gas 4.4, electricity 3.8, shelter 3.0 and core goods 0.7. Headline CPI ran 3.4% and core 2.4%.

→ The 1.0 point between headline and core sits almost entirely in energy. Core is defined as excluding food and energy, so however hard the oil price runs it never enters core, though it does enter the headline.

→ 🔴 Electricity ran 3.8% year over year, 1.4 points above core inflation at 2.4%. That is the data centre power bill showing up in the price index, and it is the real cost line for AI compute.

→ At the other end, core goods, which include computers, phones and electronics, ran only 0.7%: chips did not push inflation up, yet their valuations pay for this hike.

How to read today: first, listen to how Bowman describes "another one": "may", "data dependent" or "close to the end" imply three very different discount rate paths. Second, watch whether semiconductors hold: the Nasdaq rose 1.69% and Micron 5.5% in the last session, so holding up through a hawkish tone would say this leg is priced on AI demand rather than rates.

Academy: the week ahead, and 62.8 points of range position inside one chip group

Next week, September 21 to 25, has no confirmed large-cap tech earnings and no first-tier macro data. The cluster sits on September 30 and October 1: Micron (MU) reports FY26Q4 on Sep 30, Jabil (JBL) reports FY26Q4 pre-market the same day, and Accenture (ACN) holds its FY26Q4 call on Oct 1. ⚠️ Dates follow each company's investor relations announcements.

Each has a different question to answer. Micron has to show whether this year's memory price increases reached profit: watch the sequential move in gross margin, HBM's share of revenue, and the capital spending plan for the next fiscal year, because an expansion plan often says more about the company's read on demand than the quarter itself. Jabil takes on customers' shipment plans for the coming quarters, so order changes usually show up before the brand owners' own results; watch AI-related revenue and next year's guidance. Accenture's call is the earliest read on enterprise AI budgets.

52-week range position at Thursday's close (%): Broadcom (AVGO) 28.0, Accenture (ACN) 41.7, Jabil (JBL) 44.4, Micron (MU) 74.8, Nvidia (NVDA) 76.2 and AMD 90.8. The calculation is (latest close − 52-week low) ÷ (52-week high − 52-week low).

→ AMD sits near its one-year high while Broadcom sits near the bottom of its range, 62.8 points apart inside the same chip group.

→ Of the three reporting at month-end, Micron sits highest, with Jabil and Accenture in the lower middle.

⚠️ Range position describes the past year and carries no view on what comes next.

⚠️ It is a different calculation from the drawdown-from-high measure used in our September 17 edition, and the two should not be quoted across editions.

The week in review: one group of stocks, pushed by two completely different things

1. September 14, AI slowdown talk picked up. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell nearly 6% that day, Nvidia more than 3%, and Intel, AMD and Marvell between 5% and 6%; the same day Alphabet rose almost 2%, Microsoft 1.6% and Meta about 1.4%. 👉 Buyers of compute held up; sellers of compute did not.

2. September 16, the Fed raised rates 25 basis points to 3.75% to 4.00%, voted 12–0, with the statement keeping the line that inflation remains elevated.

3. September 15 to 17, chips rebounded for three straight sessions. By Thursday's close AMD had risen 6.4% on the day, Nvidia 2.5% and Broadcom 2.3%. ⚠️ The push came from sector flow, with no new company-level news, a direction that earnings can revise.

Company Profile: Jabil (JBL)

It runs electronic manufacturing services. After cloud providers and equipment makers finish designing racks, servers and optical modules, firms like Jabil take on design validation, production and assembly. It does not sell end products under its own brand and employs about 135,000 people worldwide.
Its position sets both the advantage and the risk. It takes on customers' shipment volumes for the coming quarters, so demand changes show up early; the price is thin gross margins and limited pricing power, and when a customer adjusts orders it feels that first.

One-minute concept: which three numbers come first in a report

Gross margin before revenue. Revenue can grow on price increases, acquisitions or customers pulling orders forward. Gross margin answers a different question: whether the extra revenue stayed with the company. That matters most in cyclical businesses like memory and contract manufacturing.
Guidance beats results. A report covers last quarter; the share price trades the next one. Management's revenue range, margin range and capital spending plan for the coming quarter usually explain the day's move better than the print.
Read segments, not the total. Which line is growing, how much of revenue it is, and whether it grew faster than last quarter is what tells you how the company actually earns today.

The transferable test: when a report lands, answer three sentences in order: which way gross margin moved, whether guidance came in above or below expectations, and where the growth is concentrated. Then look at the share price reaction.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Intel rose 7.67%. Was that the semiconductor sector rising as a whole?

A: Not really. The Nasdaq semiconductor industry averaged only 0.59% that day, so Intel finished 7.08 points above it. Within the group the day ran from +7.67% to −0.97%, with Texas Instruments closing down 0.97%. This was a group led higher, neither a sector-wide rally nor a counter-move.

Q: Has the Ohio capacity already been leased out?

A: No. The report describes talks to host another company's memory production, and those talks are at the discussion stage. The other party said publicly on September 16 that nothing is settled. The October 5 processor increase likewise has no official price list yet. Both are news in progress, not completed facts.

Q: The dot plot says 4.1% for end-2026. Does that mean another hike is certain this year?

A: It cannot be read that way. The dot plot is the median of participants' projections in the Summary of Economic Projections, a forecast rather than a commitment. The 4.1% figure sits 0.225 above today's 3.875% midpoint, which rounds to one 25 basis point move, but the committee has promised nothing, and this article makes no forecast either.

Q: The Nasdaq rose 1.69%. Were tech stocks broadly higher?

A: No. The same day, the equal-weighted average of Nasdaq tech names was only 0.55%, far below the cap-weighted index. The two numbers have to be read together: a handful of large caps lifted the index, and most names moved far less.

Q: Super Micro rose 9.50%, more than Intel. Why is it not the focus?

A: Because it had no announcement of its own that day. The source card describes it as the bid in memory and chips spreading out to server assembly and carrying it along. The size of a gain and what actually happened that day are two separate things, and this piece follows the second.

Disclaimer: This article is compiled and written by the MEXC RealStocks team. The data in this article is based on the closing of the US stock market on September 17, 2026. The content is a compilation of public market information, and individual stocks are publicly discussed targets, which do not represent the recommendation or opinion of MEXC and do not constitute any investment advice. More US stock content: @MEXC | @Alpha_MEXC | @MEXC_Research

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