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September 2026

6 digests published this month.

7 SeptMonday3:21 AM EDT

A September cut is priced out, and a ceasefire no longer reopens the Strait

A hike and a hold are within three points of each other for the 15-16 September meeting and a cut sits at 0.35%, while the August core-CPI market drifted cooler over the same 24 hours. Separately, ceasefire odds rose at every horizon on the day and the odds of the Strait of Hormuz reopening did not move with them.

1A September rate cut is off the board, and a hike is a coin flip
2The oil market prices a ceasefire and a still-shut Strait at the same time
3The largest capex cycle on record now runs on bond investors, not cash flow
4Copper and gold now out-earn iron ore at Australia's two largest miners

6 SeptSunday3:23 AM EDT

The September hike now turns on energy, not wages — and the ceasefire moved further away

August payrolls beat without any acceleration in wages, which leaves the case for a September hike resting on record diesel prices rather than a tight labour market. Joseph Wang argues the global yield surge is an oil story — and US strikes on three Iranian tankers on Saturday knocked twelve points off the odds of a ceasefire inside a week.

1A September hike is a coin flip, and the case for it rests on energy rather than wages
2The surge in global bond yields is an oil story, and the oil story got worse over the weekend
3The cash flows behind the AI buildout are moving between statements faster than they can be compared
4Two Asian regulators pushed back on single-stock leverage in the same week a US filing pushed it further
5The largest gold fund holds less metal per share every year, by design

5 SeptSaturday3:17 AM EDT

One jobs print flipped September to a hike, and the oil market stopped pricing relief

August payrolls came in at 162,000 and the deepest Fed contract flipped in one session — a September hike is now the base case, just ahead of a CPI print that both of Joseph Wang's co-panellists named as decisive. Meanwhile the ceasefire book and the shipping book moved in opposite directions.

1A September rate hike became the base case in a single session
2The oil market expects a ceasefire and a closed Strait at the same time
3Record AI earnings have stopped moving AI stocks
4A gross-margin miss is the most punished thing in this earnings season

4 SeptFriday3:16 AM EDT

The hike bet unwound before the jobs print, and the AI build lost its buyback bid

Odds on a September Federal Reserve rate hike fell nine points in one session and the market guessing August payrolls swung fifteen points toward a near-zero month, all before the number printed. Dan Niles, on Excess Returns, published the week's most emphatic hike call the same morning the bet came off.

1The rate-hike bet is unwinding on a jobs number nobody has seen yet
2The buyback bid that steadied the tape has been replaced by an equity raise
3Memory's shortage-to-2030 story has a China problem and a MacBook problem
4The day's single-name conviction sits in drug development, and one call is two weeks stale

3 SeptThursday3:16 AM EDT

A September hike went from near-certain to a coin flip, twelve hours before the jobs report

The market's odds on a September Federal Reserve rate hike fell nine points in a day, and the odds on $100 oil fell twelve, without a single macro release landing in between. Ian Bremmer expects the Iran war to run past the midterms; Matthew Klein and Felix Breen read the same 5% long yields as opposite things.

1The September hike bet came off nine points in a day with no new data behind it
2The oil premium is de-pricing faster than the war is de-escalating
3Whether 5% long yields are a crisis or a repricing depends on growth, and growth is the number that has not printed yet
4The AI build was financed on a rate assumption that has since inverted

2 SeptWednesday4:08 AM EDT

Washington tried to talk the bond market down — it priced in a rate hike instead

An off-schedule Treasury buyback meant to cap long-term borrowing costs left yields higher, and the market has moved to a 59.5% chance of a September rate hike — into a July payroll report that lost 23,000 jobs. Robert Armstrong, Ben Hunt and Kevin Muir disagree about whether the bond move is a crisis signal or an overdue repricing.

1The market is pricing a rate hike into an economy that lost 23,000 jobs
2A Treasury intervention aimed at the long end left it higher, not lower
3The long end unwound its post-Jackson-Hole rally within two sessions
4The AI buildout is now carrying the whole growth number