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(Bloomberg) — The stock market crept higher, but stopped short of records Friday, as traders refrained from making big bets ahead of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cut decision next week. Treasuries notched their worst week since June.

The S&P 500 notched small gains and remains within a whisker of October’s all-time high. The Nasdaq 100 advanced 1% this week while the Russell 2000 gauge of smaller companies pulled back from Thursday’s closing record. Treasuries extended losses with the yield on the 10-year climbing roughly four basis points to 4.14%.

A dated reading of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge did little to shift Wall Street’s expectations of a rate cut on Wednesday with swaps bets pointing to further easing into 2026.

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The core personal consumption expenditures price index, a measure that excludes food and energy, rose 0.2% in September, inline with economists expectations for a third-straight 0.2% increase in the Fed’s favored core index. That would keep the year-over-year figure hovering a little below 3%, a sign that inflationary pressures are stable, yet sticky.

“Overall, the data was consistent with another 25 basis point Fed cut next week, but it doesn’t suggest any urgency for the Fed to accelerate the pace of cuts in 2026,” said BMO’s Ian Lyngen.

A December rate cut is a not given for every Fed watcher. BlackRock CIO of Global Fixed Income Rick Rieder told Bloomberg Television before the data that he is expecting some dissents and disagreement at the next meeting.

Meanwhile, sentiment toward technology stocks got a boost after Nvidia Corp. partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. reported strong sales. Moore Threads Technology Co., a leading Chinese AI chipmaker, jumped 425% in its Shanghai trading debut. Shares of Netflix Inc. slid after agreeing to a tie-up with Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.

In a sign that institutional appetite for the world’s largest cryptocurrency remains subdued, BlackRock Inc.’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) recorded its longest streak of weekly withdrawals since debuting in January 2024.

Investors pulled more than $2.7 billion from the exchange-traded fund over the five weeks to Nov. 28, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. With an additional $113 million of redemptions on Thursday, the ETF is now on pace for a sixth straight week of net outflows. A drop in Bitcoin deepened, falling below $90,000 on Friday.

What Bloomberg Strategists say…

There are two things stand in the way of a year-end rally — and both are on display today. One is the third downdraft in crypto prices in the last two weeks, which has sent Bitcoin back below $90,000. Such a pullback served to dampen risk sentiment on two previous occasions in November.

—Edward Harrison, Macro Strategist, Markets Live

For the full analysis, click here.

WTI crude steadied around $60 a barrel. Gold erased earlier gains.

Corporate News

SpaceX is preparing to sell insider shares in a transaction that would value Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker at a valuation higher than OpenAI’s record-setting $500 billion, people familiar with the matter said. SoftBank Group Corp. is in talks to acquire DigitalBridge Group Inc., a private equity firm that invests in assets such as data centers, to take advantage of an AI-driven boom in digital infrastructure. Netflix Inc. agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. in a historic combination, joining the world’s dominant paid streaming service with one of Hollywood’s oldest and most revered studios. Moore Threads Technology Co., a leading Chinese artificial intelligence chipmaker, soared as much as 502% in its Shanghai debut after raising 8 billion yuan ($1.13 billion) in an IPO. Nvidia Corp. would be barred from shipping advanced artificial intelligence chips to China under bipartisan legislation unveiled Thursday in a bid to codify existing US restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductors to the Chinese market. Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% as of 4:03 p.m. New York time The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.4% The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2% The MSCI World Index was little changed Currencies

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.2% The euro was little changed at $1.1645 The British pound was little changed at $1.3335 The Japanese yen fell 0.1% to 155.30 per dollar Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin fell 3% to $89,405.75 Ether fell 2.9% to $3,033.32 Bonds

The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced four basis points to 4.14% Germany’s 10-year yield advanced three basis points to 2.80% Britain’s 10-year yield advanced four basis points to 4.48% Commodities

West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.8% to $60.12 a barrel Spot gold fell 0.2% to $4,200.69 an ounce This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

–With assistance from Andre Janse van Vuuren, Levin Stamm, Neil Campling and Sidhartha Shukla.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators on Friday fined X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, 120 million euros ($140 million) for breaches of the bloc’s digital regulations, in a move that risks rekindling tensions with Washington over free speech.

The European Commission issued its decision following an investigation it opened two years ago into X under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Services Act, also known as the DSA.

It’s the first time that the EU has issued a so-called non-compliance decision since rolling out the DSA. The sweeping rulebook requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting European users and cleaning up harmful or illegal content and products on their sites, under threat of hefty fines.

READ MORE: France will investigate Musk’s Grok after AI chatbot posted Holocaust denial claims

The Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said it was punishing X because of three different breaches of the DSA’s transparency requirements. The decision could rile President Donald Trump, whose administration has lashed out at digital regulations, complained that Brussels was targeting U.S. tech companies and vowed to retaliate.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on his X account that the Commission’s fine was akin to an attack on the American people. Musk later agreed with Rubio’s sentiment.

“The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” Rubio wrote. “The days of censoring Americans online are over.”

Vice President JD Vance, posting on X ahead of the decision, accused the Commission of seeking to fine X “for not engaging in censorship.”

“The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” he wrote.

Officials denied the rules were intended to muzzle Big Tech companies. The Commission is “not targeting anyone, not targeting any company, not targeting any jurisdictions based on their color or their country of origin,” spokesman Thomas Regnier told a regular briefing in Brussels. “Absolutely not. This is based on a process, democratic process.”

X did not respond immediately to an email request for comment.

EU regulators had already outlined their accusations in mid-2024 when they released preliminary findings of their investigation into X.

Regulators said X’s blue checkmarks broke the rules because on “deceptive design practices” and could expose users to scams and manipulation.

Before Musk acquired X, when it was previously known as Twitter, the checkmarks mirrored verification badges common on social media and were largely reserved for celebrities, politicians and other influential accounts, such as Beyonce, Pope Francis, writer Neil Gaiman and rapper Lil Nas X.

After he bought it in 2022, the site started issuing the badges to anyone who wanted to pay $8 per month.

That means X does not meaningfully verify who’s behind the account, “making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with,” the Commission said in its announcement.

X also fell short of the transparency requirements for its ad database, regulators said.

Platforms in the EU are required to provide a database of all the digital advertisements they have carried, with details such as who paid for them and the intended audience, to help researches detect scams, fake ads and coordinated influence campaigns. But X’s database, the Commission said, is undermined by design features and access barriers such as “excessive delays in processing.”

Regulators also said X also puts up “unnecessary barriers” for researchers trying to access public data, which stymies research into systemic risks that European users face.

“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA protects users,” Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a prepared statement.

The Commission also wrapped up a separate DSA case Friday involving TikTok’s ad database after the video-sharing platform promised to make changes to ensure full transparency.

AP Writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.