U.S. stocks closed higher Wednesday, snapping a three-day losing streak, after the Treasury Department's surprise move to expand long-dated debt buybacks pulled Treasury yields down sharply and restored risk appetite. Moderna's shares more than doubled after its personalized mRNA cancer therapy developed with Merck cut the risk of melanoma recurrence and spread in a late-stage trial, and Merck jumped to a record high, providing the biggest single-stock boost to the Dow. The rally was narrower than the headline index moves suggested: the S&P 500 healthcare sector rose to a record high and provided the benchmark's biggest sector support, while information technology stocks were roughly flat as continued semiconductor weakness capped the Nasdaq's advance.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.22%
The S&P 500 Index rose 0.21%
The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.16%
Stock & Sector Performance
Healthcare was the standout sector by a wide margin. Merck rose 12.61% to a record high after the melanoma vaccine data, while Moderna finished up 146.03%. Biotech peers rode the momentum, with Novavax up 6% and U.S.-listed shares of BioNTech rallying 21%. On the downside, chipmakers were the session's weak spot: Broadcom lost roughly 4% after Marvell Technology issued Alphabet's Google a warrant to buy a stake worth about $12.18 billion, with Marvell itself rising 8.4% on the news, though Broadcom's far larger $1.7 trillion market cap meant its decline weighed more heavily on the Nasdaq and S&P 500 than Marvell's gain lifted them. Elsewhere on the Dow, Caterpillar fell 3.71% and Goldman Sachs dropped 2.09%, as rising oil prices and Treasury yields weighed on data-center-and capital-intensive-adjacent names.
Magnificent Seven performance was mixed and comparatively muted next to the healthcare and chip-sector headlines. Nvidia finished little changed, holding roughly flat as it stayed largely insulated from the broader chip-sector selloff ahead of its upcoming earnings report. Apple and Tesla each gained approximately 1% on the session. Reliable closing figures for Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta were not available in today's reporting at publication time.
Major Company Story of the Day
The day's dominant single-stock story was the Moderna-Merck melanoma vaccine trial. Moderna's personalized mRNA cancer therapy, developed jointly with Merck, cut the risk of melanoma recurrence and spread in a late-stage Phase 3 trial, though the companies have not yet disclosed the specific effect size or full statistical results, with additional data expected at an upcoming medical meeting. The reaction reflected the scale disparity between the two companies — Moderna's smaller market capitalization drove its outsized percentage gain, while Merck's move, though far smaller in percentage terms, delivered the larger absolute contribution to Dow points given its much greater market weight.
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