Today, the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury briefly hit around 5.35%, marking a nearly 24-year high. The continued rise in long-term interest rates increases the cost of new borrowing and refinancing old debt for businesses and households. Companies issuing bonds, people buying homes or cars—these activities may now require paying more interest. However, loans that were previously locked in at fixed rates won’t be directly affected for the time being. Some of you might be wondering: if the outlook is this bad, why is the U.S. stock market still going up? One major reason is AI investment. Tech companies are continuously building data centers, purchasing chips, and servers, and these expenditures translate into orders and revenue for related suppliers. For example, NVIDIA’s data center revenue grew 117% year-over-year in the quarter ending July 26 this year. The market expects this demand to keep growing, which makes investors willing to bet on the future profits of related companies. Since large tech companies like NVIDIA and Microsoft have significant weight in the indices, their gains can drive up the S&P and Nasdaq. Beyond AI, other industries’ earnings expectations are also providing support. On October 2, FactSet projected that S&P 500 earnings for Q3 would grow 29.5% year-over-year, with all 11 sectors expected to see growth. Rising interest rates do put pressure on valuations, but if corporate earnings grow fast enough, stock prices can still rise. So, higher financing costs and a rising stock market can coexist—it ultimately depends on whether companies can deliver earnings that meet market expectations. As for BTC, the situation is different. The higher the U.S. Treasury yield, the more confidence investors need in Bitcoin’s future upside to justify giving up interest income and holding BTC instead. If spot and ETF funds continue to see inflows, it could offset some of the pressure from high interest rates; but if buying slows and selling increases, the price will face downward pressure. While rising tech stocks can boost market sentiment, BTC still needs actual buying support. A shoutout to @Gate—trade more markets!