The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.02% at the opening bell, while the S&P 500 gained 0.07% and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.12%, according to Reuters.
That modest move hides a much bigger market tension. The 10-year Treasury yield recently reached roughly 5.2%, its highest level since 2007, while the 30-year climbed toward 5.5%. Yet AI-linked technology shares continue to attract buyers.
One more catalyst is Anthropic's huge infrastructure commitment. Akamai said in its $11.6 billion agreement with Anthropic that the seven-year deal will support growing CPU workloads and distributed AI infrastructure.
AI Stocks Are Absorbing the Yield Shock
Before the opening bell, Nasdaq-100 futures were up about 0.69%, compared with 0.37% for S&P 500 futures and 0.36% for Dow futures. AMD, Intel, Marvell and Cerebras were among semiconductor stocks rising more than 1%, while Akamai surged after the Anthropic deal.
That follows a week in which AI enthusiasm has repeatedly outweighed macro pressure.
The Nasdaq reached a record earlier this week as AMD crossed $1 trillion in market value, while Meta's new AI push helped revive enthusiasm across semiconductor and technology stocks.
Coinpaper's earlier look at the Nasdaq-Dow divergence showed why that matters: expensive yields are hurting rate-sensitive and cyclical parts of the market while investors continue paying for companies expected to capture AI growth.
How Long Can Stocks Ignore 5% Yields?
The pressure from bonds is getting harder to dismiss.
Long-term Treasury yields surged this week as high energy costs, resilient economic data and government borrowing concerns pushed investors to demand more compensation for holding U.S. debt. The 10-year reached about 5.20%, while the 30-year hit roughly 5.48%, its highest since 2004.
That normally creates a difficult backdrop for growth stocks because higher yields increase discount rates and give investors an increasingly attractive alternative to equities.
Our recent VIX analysis showed another unusual part of the setup: equity volatility remains relatively subdued even while bond markets are experiencing much greater stress.
