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# The S&P 500 Gained 2.5% the Week the Two-Year Yield Rose 36 Basis Points
- URL: https://www.leadlagreport.com/the-s-p-500-gained-2-5-the-week-the-two-year-yield-rose-36-basis-points/
- Published: 2026-11-14T22:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-14T22:00:01.000Z
- Description: The S&P 500 rose 2.5% for its best week since August while the two-year Treasury yield climbed from 4.51% to 4.87%. Gold, long bonds and bitcoin fell.
- Author: Michael A. Gayed, CFA
- Tags: Macro Observations

[![Lead-Lag Live Digital Credit Panel with Tuttle Capital and Strive Asset Management, Wednesday November 18, 2:00 PM ET](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/9e/b89e006c-adc9-4384-b804-e802e23b544e/content/images/2026/11/tuttle_strive_digital_credit_webinar_header.png)](https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN%5FEB6oLbvCRPaOFit9zXP4Cw)

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- Risk, liquidity, custody and counterparty questions to ask in due diligence
- Where it may fit, and where it may not, in a client's plan
- Live Q&A

Panelists: Matt Tuttle, Founder and CEO, Tuttle Capital Management; Chris Nicholson, Portfolio Manager & Head of Research, Strive Asset Management; and Frances Newton, Chief Investment Officer, Tuttle Capital Management. Moderated by Michael Gayed, CFA.

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*Sponsored content. Lead-Lag Media receives compensation from Tuttle Capital and Strive Asset Management for producing and distributing this webinar. Views expressed are those of the panelists. This is not investment advice and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.*

---

# The S&P 500 Gained 2.5% the Week the Two-Year Yield Rose 36 Basis Points

### *Stocks had their best week since August. In the same five days the bond market priced a faster Federal Reserve, the 10-year Treasury yield went back above 5%, and gold, long bonds and bitcoin all fell. One of those two messages is early. I think it is the stock market's.*

**MICHAEL A. GAYED, CFA**

## Key Highlights

- The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,561.67, up 2.5% on the week. It was the index's first weekly gain since October and its largest since August, and it followed four straight weekly declines.\[2\]\[11\]\[12\]
- The two-year Treasury yield rose from 4.51% on November 6 to 4.87% on Friday, a move of 36 basis points. The 10-year rose from 4.86% to 5.15%.\[2\]\[3\]
- Consumer prices rose 0.4% in October against a 0.3% forecast, and core prices rose 0.3% against 0.2%. Producer prices are up 6.5% from a year ago, the largest annual increase since November 2022.\[4\]\[7\]
- The 20-year-plus Treasury ETF (TLT) fell 3.1% on the week, the gold ETF (GLD) fell 4.6%, the silver ETF (SLV) fell 5.8% and bitcoin fell 9.9%. The dollar ETF (UUP) rose 1.3%.\[1\]
- High yield credit did not confirm the worry. The ICE BofA high yield spread narrowed from 3.42 percentage points on November 6 to 3.20 on Thursday, and the VIX fell from 25.64 to 19.30.\[1\]\[9\]

## The Week in One Paragraph

This is a closing review of the week that ended Friday, November 13\. The short version is that the stock market and the bond market spent five days telling different stories. The S&P 500 gained 2.5%, the Nasdaq Composite 2.3% and the Dow 2.1%.\[11\] Over the same stretch the two-year Treasury yield, the part of the bond market that tracks where traders think the Federal Reserve is headed, rose 36 basis points.\[2\]\[3\] Reuters reported on Friday that the two-year was on track for its largest weekly increase since the first week of October 2024.\[14\]

A rally in stocks during a week when short-term rates jump is not impossible. It is unusual, and it deserves a closer look than a headline about a winning week gives it. So I am going to walk through what happened day by day, then through what each market did, and then say what I take from it.

![Weekly price change for major asset classes: stocks up, bonds, gold, silver and bitcoin down](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/9e/b89e006c-adc9-4384-b804-e802e23b544e/content/images/2026/11/wk1113_1_assets.png)

## Monday: Oil Did the Work

The week's gain was made on Monday. The S&P 500 rose 2.35% to 7,549.94, its best day since April 8.\[15\] The trigger was oil. Brent crude fell 5.8% to $92.57 a barrel after President Trump told CNN over the weekend that a resumption of strikes on Iran was "highly unlikely" if the United States sees progress in negotiations. Brent had started the month above $112.\[6\]

There was a second driver. The prior week's 2.7% loss had been led by artificial intelligence stocks, on worry that Democratic wins in the midterm elections could slow the construction of data centers.\[6\]\[12\] On Monday, strategists at large banks called that selling overdone, and buyers came back for chip stocks even as Nvidia fell.\[12\]\[16\]

Here is the detail I would hold on to. From Monday's close to Friday's close the S&P 500 rose 11.73 points, or about 0.2%.\[2\]\[15\] Nearly all of the week was one session, and that session was a reaction to a lower oil price. The next four days brought the inflation data, and stocks went sideways through it.

## Tuesday: The Inflation Report

The October consumer price index arrived Tuesday morning. Prices rose 0.4% for the month, above the 0.3% economists expected. Core prices, which leave out food and energy, rose 0.3% against a forecast of 0.2%.\[4\] Each number missed by a tenth of a point. That does not sound like much. In a year when the Fed is already raising rates, it was enough.

Reuters reported the same day that Fed officials had opened the door to a half-point increase, and that the two-year yield had its largest one-day rise since early April 2025.\[5\] The 10-year yield went from 4.88% to 4.99%.\[17\] The S&P 500 slipped 0.4%.\[17\] Before the report, futures markets already put the odds of an increase at the Fed's December meeting above 80%, according to CME FedWatch data cited by Reuters.\[16\] After it, the question traders were asking was how large.

The bond market was closed Wednesday for Veterans Day, and stocks used the quiet to rally 1.3%, led again by AI names.\[10\] On Thursday the selling in bonds resumed. The 10-year closed at 5.10% and the two-year at 4.86%.\[3\] On Friday the producer price index came in at 0.3% for the month, a little below the 0.4% forecast, but the annual rate rose to 6.5%, the highest since November 2022.\[7\] The 10-year finished the week at 5.15%.\[2\]

## The Two-Year Is the Story

![Two-year and 10-year Treasury yields since October 1, with the two-year rising sharply in the week of November 9](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/9e/b89e006c-adc9-4384-b804-e802e23b544e/content/images/2026/11/wk1113_2_yields.png)

Most of the coverage this week was about the 10-year crossing 5% again. I would look at the two-year instead. The 10-year is still below its early October peak of 5.31%. The two-year is not. At 4.86% on Thursday it was above every close since the start of October.\[3\]

Why does that distinction matter? A 10-year yield can rise for many reasons: more government borrowing, a stronger economy, investors demanding more to hold long bonds. A two-year yield mostly rises for one reason, which is that traders expect the Fed's own rate to be higher over the next two years. The effective federal funds rate was 3.88% on Thursday.\[13\] A two-year yield near 4.87% is about one full percentage point above it. That gap is the market's estimate of how much more tightening is coming.

The other tell is where the rise in the 10-year came from. The yield on 10-year inflation-protected Treasuries, the so-called real yield, went from 2.63% on November 6 to 2.86% on Thursday. The market's 10-year inflation forecast went from 2.23% to 2.24%.\[8\] So the bond market did not decide this week that inflation will be much higher over the next decade. It decided that the Fed will have to charge more to stop it. That is a higher price of money, and a higher price of money is what long-duration assets have the most trouble with.

## What Rallied and What Did Not

Look at what fell. The 20-year-plus Treasury ETF (TLT) lost 3.1%. Investment grade corporate bonds (LQD) lost 1.6%. Gold (GLD) lost 4.6% and silver (SLV) 5.8%. Bitcoin fell from about $75,700 to about $68,200, a drop of 9.9%.\[1\] Those are the assets people own for diversification, for protection against inflation, or as a store of value outside the dollar. All of them went down in a week when the inflation data came in hot.

I wrote about gold on Saturday morning, and the explanation there applies to the whole group: when real yields rise, anything that pays no income has to compete with a Treasury that pays more after inflation than it has in years.\[18\] The dollar tells the same story from the other side. The dollar ETF (UUP) rose 1.3% on the week and the yen ETF (FXY) fell 0.7%.\[1\] Higher U.S. short-term rates pull money toward the dollar. I covered what that means for the yen on Friday.\[19\]

![Sector ETF returns for the week and for November to date](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/9e/b89e006c-adc9-4384-b804-e802e23b544e/content/images/2026/11/wk1113_3_sectors.png)

Inside the stock market, the leadership was a rebound and not a new trend. Energy (XLE) gained 5.4% on the week and is still down 7.2% for November. Semiconductors (SMH) gained 4.9% and are still down 6.8% for the month. Technology (XLK) gained 3.4% and is down 5.1%.\[1\] The groups that led were the ones that had been hit hardest the week before. That is what short-covering and bargain hunting look like. It is different from money moving into a sector because the outlook improved.

Energy is worth a second look. The sector rose 5.4% in a week when the Brent oil ETF (BNO) fell 1.9%, and after a month in which that fund has lost 14.5%.\[1\] I do not have a clean explanation for that gap, and I would be careful with anyone who offers one confidently. Energy stocks had fallen a long way, and they bounced with everything else that had.

Small caps lagged. The Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) rose 1.4% against 2.6% for the S&P 500 ETF (SPY), and it remains down 0.6% for November.\[1\] Smaller companies tend to rely more on shorter-term and floating-rate borrowing, so they feel a higher two-year yield sooner than large companies do. If the rally were a broad vote of confidence in the economy, I would expect small caps to lead it. They did not.

## Credit Did Not Flinch

Now the evidence against my own caution, because it is real. Credit markets, which are usually the first place stress shows up, improved. The extra yield investors demand to hold high yield bonds over Treasuries narrowed from 3.42 percentage points on November 6 to 3.20 on Thursday, after touching 3.48 the week before.\[9\] The high yield bond ETF (HYG) fell only 0.4% in a week when the 7-to-10-year Treasury ETF (IEF) fell 2.0%.\[1\] The VIX, which measures the cost of protection on the S&P 500, dropped from 25.64 to 19.30.\[1\]

In my work the order matters. Credit spreads tend to widen before stocks have serious trouble, and they did the opposite this week. As long as lenders are relaxed, a rise in rates is a headwind for stock prices and not a threat to the companies themselves. That is the best argument that the stock market's reading of the week is the correct one: the economy is strong enough to absorb a higher Fed rate, and October's selling was about positioning in a handful of AI stocks.

I take that argument seriously. I also notice that spreads at 3.20 points leave little room for disappointment, and that a spread can stay tight right up until the cost of refinancing changes the arithmetic for the weakest borrowers. A two-year yield at 4.87% is that cost.

## What I Take From It

Put the pieces side by side. Stocks rose 2.5%, almost all of it on one day and on one piece of news about oil. The inflation reports that followed were worse than expected. The bond market responded by pricing a faster Fed, and the assets most sensitive to the price of money fell hard. The stock market spent those four days flat.

Flat is the word that matters. Stocks did not fall on a hot inflation report and a 36 basis point move in the two-year. Bulls will call that resilience, and they have a case. I read it as a market that has not yet priced what the bond market priced. The S&P 500 ETF is 0.2% below where it ended October, so nothing is broken.\[1\] But bonds, gold, the dollar and small caps all moved in the direction you would expect if policy is about to get tighter, and large-cap stocks did not. When several markets agree and one disagrees, I give the benefit of the doubt to the several.

I could be wrong, and here is how. If oil keeps falling, the next inflation reports will look better, the two-year will give back this week's move, and Monday will turn out to have been the start of something. Brent is the variable to watch for that. If credit spreads stay near 3.20 while yields rise, the economy is handling it, and my caution is early.

## What I Am Watching Next

Three things. First, the two-year yield. A close back below 4.70% would tell me the market overreacted to one inflation report. A push toward 5% would tell me traders are pricing the half-point increase Fed officials talked about this week.\[5\]

Second, high yield spreads. They are the one indicator that sided with stocks. If they widen back above the 3.48 points they reached on November 5 while stocks hold up, the disagreement between markets gets wider, and those disagreements tend to close quickly.\[9\]

Third, whether the rebound in the AI trade survives a week without a large drop in oil to help it. Nvidia's chief executive resigned on Thursday, and the stock was at the center of the market's swings on Monday and again late in the week.\[2\]\[16\] A market that depends on one industry for its direction is a market where the two-year yield matters even more, because that industry's valuations rest on profits that are years away.

The stock market had a good week. The bond market had an important one. I would pay more attention to the second.

## Notes

1. [Perplexity Finance, daily closing prices for SPY, QQQ, IWM, RSP, sector ETFs, TLT, LQD, HYG, GLD, SLV, BNO, UUP, FXY, the VIX and bitcoin, October 30 to November 13, 2026](https://www.perplexity.ai/finance/SPY)
2. [Associated Press, Stocks fall but Wall Street notches a winning week after several turbulent days, November 13, 2026](https://apnews.com/article/stocks-markets-ai-us-oil-f8edd0eeb1494d4d2584715686c5e619)
3. [Federal Reserve Board via FRED, Market Yield on U.S. Treasury Securities at 2-Year and 10-Year Constant Maturity (DGS2, DGS10), through November 12, 2026](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS2)
4. [CNBC, Consumer prices rose 0.4% in October, more than expected, complicating Fed's inflation fight, November 10, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/10/cpi-inflation-report-october-2026.html)
5. [Reuters, Fed officials open door to a half-percentage-point rate hike as inflation worsens, November 10, 2026](https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/investors-boost-odds-half-point-fed-hike-core-cpi-rise-meets-wallers-bar-2026-11-10/)
6. [Associated Press, US stocks rally and recover most of last week's losses, November 9, 2026](https://apnews.com/article/stocks-markets-ai-trump-oil-d938f8e6ff42b3706e1d36e6245ec56b)
7. [CNBC, PPI inflation report October 2026, November 13, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/13/ppi-inflation-report-october-2026.html)
8. [Federal Reserve Board via FRED, 10-Year Treasury Inflation-Indexed Security yield (DFII10) and 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate (T10YIE), November 6 and November 12, 2026](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFII10)
9. [ICE BofA US High Yield Index Option-Adjusted Spread via FRED (BAMLH0A0HYM2), through November 12, 2026](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BAMLH0A0HYM2)
10. [Associated Press, A rebound in AI stocks lifts the US market, November 11, 2026](https://apnews.com/article/stock-markets-ai-earnings-oil-297d040c83844a9563327340b370c24e)
11. [CNBC, Stock market news for November 13, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/12/stock-market-today-live-updates.html)
12. [CNBC, AI sell-off could set up a year-end stock rally, November 9, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/09/ai-selloff-stock-market-year-end-rally.html)
13. [Federal Reserve Bank of New York via FRED, Federal Funds Effective Rate (DFF), November 12, 2026](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFF)
14. [Reuters, Stocks fall with tech, Nvidia concerns; US dollar climbs, November 13, 2026](http://rmb.reuters.com/rmd/rss/item/tag:reuters.com,2026:newsml%5FKCN3WO06M?channel=frL012)
15. [CNBC, Stock market news for November 9, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/08/stock-market-today-live-updates.html)
16. [Reuters, Wall St jumps as oil slide cools inflation worries; Nvidia slumps, November 9, 2026](http://rmb.reuters.com/rmd/rss/item/tag:reuters.com,2026:newsml%5FKCN3WK14N?channel=FES376)
17. [Associated Press, US stocks slip following a discouraging update on inflation, November 10, 2026](https://apnews.com/article/ffe205fbc4fddf65c3e8e64e740355b7)
18. [The Lead-Lag Report, Oil Fell 18% in November. Gold Hit a 13-Month Low Anyway.](https://www.leadlagreport.com/oil-fell-18-in-november-gold-hit-a-13-month-low-anyway/)
19. [The Lead-Lag Report, The Dollar Is at a 19-Month High. Japan Intervened Twice This Year and the Yen Is Back at 160.](https://www.leadlagreport.com/the-dollar-is-at-a-19-month-high-and-the-yen-is-back-at-160/)