Update: US Equity Indexes Close Mixed While Treasury Yields Retreat With Crude Oil

05:02 PM EDT, 09/22/2026 (MT Newswires) -- (Updates with index/price moves and comments from the first paragraph.) US equity indexes ended mixed Tuesday, with materials emerging as top gainers while financials fronted the decliners. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.5% to 27,244.28, after hitting an intraday record earlier in the session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.4% to 51,863.69 while the S&P 500 was unchanged at 7,764.64. Energy and communication services were among the decliners, while the consumer staples sector was one of the biggest outperformers. On Monday, more US stocks in the S&P 500 index scored new 52-week lows during the session than notched 52-week highs, CNBC reported. The last time that occurred for the S&P 500 was in December 1999, the year before the dot.com bust, the news report said. US President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly that a deal with Iran is possible after the midterm elections, but his other choice is to "annihilate the Islamic Republic," CNN reported. The key actors in the US-Iran war will be having meetings in New York, starting Tuesday, Thierry Wizman, global foreign-exchange and rates strategist at Macquarie, said in a note. "And the agreements and accords that come out of those meetings may determine whether the war continues and intensifies or whether an off-ramp is found. The front-month US West Texas Intermediate crude oil contract dropped 1.2% to $94.59 per barrel, while the global benchmark North Sea Brent slumped 1.6% to $98.69 per barrel. The Federal Reserve's next interest rate increase could come as early as October as higher oil prices threaten to push inflation farther away from the US central bank's 2% goal, Oxford Economics said in a report e-mailed Tuesday. The research outfit has raised its projections for oil prices, factoring in risks to oil shipments via the Red Sea at a time when the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. The US Treasury's 2-year auction hit a high yield of 4.787% on Tuesday, up from the 4.204% high in the previous auction. The bid-to-cover ratio for the auction was 2.63, above the 2.60 ratio in the previous auction. Most US Treasury yields slipped, with the 10-year yield leaning lower to 4.96% and the two-year rate down by less than one basis point to 4.75%. Gold futures rose 0.3% to $4,397.5, and silver futures jumped 1.8% to $67.63, turning the corner from earlier in the day. In economic news, Redbook US same-store sales rose by 7.6% from a year earlier in the week ended Sept. 19 after an 8.5% year-over-year increase in the previous week. In company news, Amgen's (AMGN) phase 3 study of dazodalibep met its primary endpoint, showing statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in systemic disease activity at week 48 in adults with Sjogren's disease, the drugmaker said. Shares jumped 4.3%, the Dow's top gainer.