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Wall Street is hanging near its records on Monday, as technology stocks keep rising.The S&P 500 rose 0.3%, coming off its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 17 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.Advanced Micro Devices soared 32.6% to help lead the market after announcing a deal where OpenAI will use its chips to power artificial-intelligence infrastructure. As part of the deal, OpenAI could own up to 160 million shares of AMD if it hits certain milestones.A frenzy around AI has been one of the main reasons Wall Street has been hitting record after record, though that’s also raising worries that prices have potentially shot too high. Much of the furor around AI in the last couple weeks has come from OpenAI, which has quickly become a $500 billion company, announcing deals with businesses around the world to develop more AI infrastructure.Another chip company, Nvidia, announced a deal last month where it would invest $100 billion in OpenAI as part of a partnership, creating criticism that the AI investment pipeline was beginning to appear like a circle. Nvidia fell 1.5% following the AMD announcement.Outside of tech, Comerica jumped 16.5% after Fifth Third Bancorp agreed to buy its rival in an all-stock deal valued at $10.9 billion. The combination would create the country’s ninth-largest bank. Fifth Third added 1%.Elsewhere on Wall Street, trading remained relatively quiet as the stock market continues to largely ignore the U.S. government’s shutdown. Past closures of the federal government have had minimal effect on the stock market or on the economy, and the bet on Wall Street is that something similar will happen again.Politics are playing a more active role in stock markets abroad, though, as Japanese stocks soared and French stocks slumped following their latest political shake-ups.Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 4.8% after the country’s Liberal Democratic Party chose Sanae Takaichi as its leader and likely Japan’s first woman prime minister. She was an ally of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who pushed for lower interest rates and market-friendly policies.The yen’s value dropped against the U.S. dollar on expectations that Takaichi will boost spending, likely adding to inflationary pressures. That in turn helped push up stocks of Japanese exporters, whose products can become more attractive on the global market because of a cheaper yen.“Obviously, investors like what she has been saying and certainly today judging by the number of stocks that moved and which stocks moved, it seems like pretty much led by foreigners so far,” Neil Newman, head of strategy at Astris Advisory Japan, said about Takaichi.In Paris, the CAC 40 index slumped 1.2% following the resignation of France’s new prime minister.Sébastien Lecornu resigned a day after he named his government, drawing a backlash across the political spectrum for his choice of ministers. French politics have been in disarray since President Emmanuel Macron called snap elections last year that produced a deeply fragmented legislature.In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.16% from 4.13% late Friday.The shutdown of the U.S. government means fewer economic data releases this week, though markets will have some earnings reports to comb through, including from Delta Air Lines, PepsiCo and Levi Strauss.Despite the shutdown, the Federal Reserve will release minutes from its meeting last month when it cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time this year. AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed. Stan Choe, AP Business Writer
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Fifth Third on Monday agreed to buy regional lender Comerica in an all-stock deal valued at $10.9 billion, creating the ninth-largest U.S. lender with a robust presence in the Midwest. Regional lenders are looking to diversify revenue streams, strengthen balance sheets and expand into faster-growing markets as they recover from an industry-wide crisis in 2023 that shook investor confidence and exposed the risks of bank runs and troubles in commercial real estate. Analysts have said consolidation is crucial for smaller lenders to compete with the nation’s largest banks, with several banks looking to take advantage of a potentially lighter regulatory environment under the Trump administration. Comerica shareholders will receive 1.8663 Fifth Third shares for each Comerica share, valuing the deal at $82.88 per share based on Fifth Third’s closing price on October 3. Shares in Comerica were last up 12% before the bell, while Fifth Third fell 3%. “Record bank stock prices have also allowed for a greater currency to do deals, and today’s announcement will likely encourage more boardroom discussions about possible tie-ups, both large and small,” said Stephen Biggar, analyst at Argus Research. The S&P 500 Banks Index has surged nearly 21% this year, outpacing the benchmark S&P 500’s roughly 14% rise. GROWTH AVENUE Mergers and acquisitions have become crucial for regional lenders looking for a competitive edge in a highly saturated U.S. banking market. The latest deal expands Fifth Third’s reach to 17 of the 20 fastest-growing U.S. markets, including parts of the Southeast, Texas and California, and by 2030, more than half of its branches are expected to be located in these regions, it said. “This combination marks a pivotal moment for Fifth Third as we accelerate our strategy to build density in high-growth markets and deepen our commercial capabilities,” Fifth Third CEO Tim Spence said. Many lenders are looking to build larger, more diversified franchises with steadier revenue from businesses such as wealth management, payments and treasury services, as interest income gets squeezed by shifting Federal Reserve policy. Comerica CEO Curt Farmer will assume the role of vice chair in the combined company, while Peter Sefzik, its chief banking officer, will lead Fifth Third’s wealth and asset management business. The companies expect to have two $1 billion recurring and high return fee businesses Commercial Payments and Wealth and Asset Management, following the deal. The deal is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2026, after which Fifth Third shareholders will own about 73% of the combined company. Manya Saini and Arasu Kannagi Basil, Reuters
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American scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi from Japan won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for work shedding light on how the immune system spares healthy cells, creating openings for possible new autoimmune disease and cancer treatments. This year’s prize relates to peripheral immune tolerance, or “how we keep our immune system under control so we can fight all imaginable microbes and still avoid autoimmune disease”, said Marie Wahren-Herlenius, a rheumatology professor at the Karolinska Institute. Sakaguchi told reporters outside his university laboratory that “I feel it is a tremendous honour,” Kyodo news agency reported. REGULATORY T CELLS: THE IMMUNE SYSTEM’S ‘SECURITY GUARDS’ The winners for medicine are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university and receive a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million), as well as a gold medal presented by Sweden’s king. Brunkow is senior programme manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, while Ramsdell is scientific adviser at Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco. Sakaguchi is a professor at Osaka University in Japan. “Their discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of research and spurred the development of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases,” the prize-awarding body said in a statement. The laureates identified so-called regulatory T cells, which act as the immune system’s security guards that keep immune cells from attacking our own body, it added. After announcing the winners, the institute’s Thomas Perlmann said specific therapies had yet to win market clearance but more than 200 trials on humans involving regulatory T cells were ongoing. Among companies in the early race, Sonoma Biotherapeutics , which Ramsdell co-founded, is partly funded and supported by U.S. drugmaker Regeneron to work on therapies against diseases including inflammatory bowel disease. Also targeting that condition, Quell Therapeutics has partnered with AstraZeneca. Other biotech firms exploring the approach include Bayer’s BlueRock. MEDICINE THE FIRST PRIZE OF NOBEL SEASON The Nobel Prizes were established through the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and a wealthy businessman. They have been awarded since 1901 for outstanding contributions in science, literature, and peace, with interruptions mainly during the World Wars. The economics prize was added later and is funded by Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank. Winners are selected by expert committees from various institutions. All prizes are awarded in Stockholm, except for the Peace Prize, which is presented in Oslo a possible legacy of the political union between Sweden and Norway during Nobels lifetime. Past recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine include renowned scientists such as Alexander Fleming, who shared the 1945 award for discovering penicillin. In recent years, the prize has recognized major breakthroughs, including those that enabled the development of COVID-19 vaccines. Last year’s medicine prize was awarded to U.S. scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA and its key role in how multicellular organisms grow and live, helping explain how cells specialise into different types. Medicine in accordance with tradition kicks off the annual Nobels, arguably the most prestigious prizes in science, literature, peace and economics, with the remainder set to be announced over the coming days. More than a century after their inception, the Nobel Prizes remain steeped in tradition. The awards culminate in ceremonies attended by the royal families of Sweden and Norway, followed by lavish banquets held on December 10 the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. ($1 = 9.3898 Swedish crowns) (Reporting by Niklas Pollard, Johan Ahlander in Stockholm; Additional reporting by Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo and Marie Mannes and Greta Fondahn in Stockholm; Writing by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; editing by Alex Richardson) Johan Ahlander, Niklas Pollard and Ludwig Burger, Reuters
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