10-Year Treasury Yield Spikes to One-Year High of 4.60% as Hot Inflation Reports Slam Stocks; Nasdaq Tumbles Nearly 1%

Wall Street opened the week in retreat Monday as the 10-year Treasury yield surged above 4.60% — its highest level in a year — and longer-dated yields climbed to ground last visited in 2007, dragging the major equity benchmarks into the red and reigniting fears that inflation may be hardening rather than fading.

The Nasdaq Composite tumbled 0.97% in early trading, the S&P 500 fell 0.48% and the small-cap Russell 2000 dropped 0.79%, according to TheStreet's market open dashboard. The technology sector took the heaviest hit, sliding nearly 2% as rate-sensitive megacaps repriced under the weight of suddenly more expensive money. The 20-year and 30-year Treasury yields hovered around 5.13%, the highest readings in roughly two decades and a textbook signal that bond investors are demanding more compensation to hold long-duration U.S. debt.

The selling pressure had been building since last week, when two consecutive inflation reports came in hotter than economists expected. The April Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index both pointed to renewed sticky-price pressure in services, dimming hopes that the Federal Reserve will resume rate cuts before the fall. "The bond market is finally saying the quiet part out loud — disinflation is stalling," one fixed-income strategist at a major Wall Street bank told clients in a Monday morning note. Futures traders have now priced out essentially all probability of a June rate cut and are split on whether the Fed eases at all before September.

Geopolitics added a second leg to the move. Investors continued to weigh the deteriorating U.S.-Iran ceasefire that President Trump described over the weekend as being on "life support," with traders rotating into the dollar and gold while dumping risk assets. The U.S. Dollar Index strengthened, a notable break from the typical pattern in which rising yields and a stronger greenback together choke off equity rallies. Crude oil was volatile, with WTI swinging in a $2 range as headlines crossed about the Strait of Hormuz.

Individual stories provided rare bright spots in an otherwise grim tape. Dominion Energy shares jumped 14.3% on confirmation of buyout talks with NextEra Energy, and LiveRamp Holdings rocketed 27% in early trading after Publicis Groupe agreed to acquire the data-onboarding firm in a $2.5 billion all-cash deal. But those gains were swamped by losses in the megacap technology names that have led the market for most of 2026 — Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and Alphabet all opened lower as the rate-sensitivity trade reasserted itself.

For households and corporate borrowers, the more durable story is the bond market. The 30-year fixed mortgage tracked higher again Monday and is now within a few basis points of 7.5%, a level that has frozen the spring home-selling season in many markets. Investment-grade corporate spreads widened modestly while high-yield credit held in, but strategists warned that a sustained run in long-end yields above 5% would force a broader repricing across credit and equities. "This is not a panic — yet," one portfolio manager said. "But the path of least resistance for stocks is lower until the bond market gets some good news."