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U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Closing Daily
Wednesday, August 26, 2026 — Full Market Close Report | Data as of: ~6:15 p.m. ET (Fed-probability cards timestamped Aug 26, 2026 05:45 p.m. EDT)
Prepared for Institutional Investors. Not Personalized Investment Advice; Verify Independently before Acting. Companion file: US_CrossAsset_Daily_2026-08-26_DataNotes.txt
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| The tape in one paragraph. The index did nothing and the market did plenty. The S&P 500 closed 7,675.70, down 1.50 points or 0.02%, its smallest absolute change of the month, while 273 of its members advanced and 217 declined on Investing.com's component board — a 1.26-to-1 up market underneath a red index, twenty-four hours after 289 decliners sat underneath a green one. Two consecutive sessions in which the index and the median stock disagreed, with the sign flipping between them, is the concentration signal stated twice. On macro, the one release rated "Very high" in Section 7 landed at 8:30: the core PCE deflator rose 0.2% month over month and 3.3% year over year, both exactly matching the Dow Jones consensus, with personal income at +0.4% against a +0.2% WSJ forecast; the second estimate of Q2 GDP was unrevised at 1.5% but carried stronger consumer spending and business investment, advance durable goods printed +1.1% against a verified +0.5% consensus, and Q2 core PCE prices were revised up to 3.6% from a 3.4% expectation. No release rated "Very high" falls in the next twenty-four hours; Chair Warsh's Jackson Hole keynote is Friday at approximately 10:00 a.m. ET. The bond market read the details rather than the headline. The belly led a bear steepener — the 3-year rose 4 bp to 4.29%, the 7-year 3 bp to 4.51%, the 10-year 2 bp to 4.66% — while the 3-month bill fell a basis point to 3.85% and the 30-year rose only 1 bp to 5.18%. The Wall Street Journal's own bond headline was "Treasury Yields Rise as Data Supports Fed Hawks," and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management's Ellen Zentner supplied the qualifier: the day's numbers "weren't necessarily what investors — or the Fed — wanted to see," but "it wasn't enough to shift the balance for September's FOMC meeting." The Fed strip agreed in both directions at once: CME's September hike fell from 39.6% to 36.5% while cumulative hike-by-December rose to 71.7% from 70.2% on Investing.com — later, not sooner (Section 8). The second-order tells are the session. Nvidia fell 1.59% to $209.66, its eighth decline in nine sessions, on the day it reported — and the hardware chain that feeds it swept the leaderboard: Arista Networks +5.92% to $202.25, F5 +4.40%, Western Digital +4.02% to $468.88, Corning +3.82%, NetApp +3.43%, HP Inc. +3.39%, Hewlett Packard Enterprise +3.35%, Seagate +3.01%. Then the print landed. Revenue of $96.2bn, up 106% year on year, EPS $2.22, gross margin 75.0%, and a current-quarter revenue guide of $108bn plus or minus 2% against a $105.2bn Bloomberg consensus; Bloomberg's 4:57 p.m. wrap described a forecast that "left some investors underwhelmed," and by 5:53 p.m. the stock printed $220.30, up 5.07%. Salesforce rose 12.54% after hours to $231.40 and CrowdStrike 10.48% to $209.00, while HP Inc. gave the whole session back and more, -9.12% to $27.74. Elsewhere: energy rose 0.18% on a day crude fell, because refining and midstream did the work — RBOB +1.71% against WTI -0.67% to $81.81, taking the gasoline crack up $2.87 to $55.79; Nike fell 2.25% to $38.59, a fresh twelve-year low, on a Truist downgrade to Hold; gold settled -0.96% and silver -0.82%, the debasement bid pausing with bitcoin flat at $78,497; and USD/CNH printed a fresh fifty-two-week low of 6.7151 intraday and closed back at 6.7216 on a day the dollar index rose 0.23%. VIX fell 1.55% to 15.21. |
| Index | Close | Chg | %Chg | Note |
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| S&P 500 | 7,675.70 | -1.50 | -0.02% | Range 7,657.41-7,690.73. 273 advancers vs 217 decliners with 4 unchanged on Investing.com's 494-name component board. 1.58% below the 13 August record close of 7,798.99. Investing.com's board marks 7,675.83, -1.45 | | Nasdaq Composite | 26,130.20 | -21.10 | -0.08% | Range 26,021.63-26,189.81 | | Dow Jones Industrials | 53,463.88 | -113.52 | -0.21% | Range 53,379.40-53,639.75. Worst of the four headline indices; ends a three-day streak | | Nasdaq 100 | 29,224.52 | +15.29 | +0.05% | Range 29,096.84-29,296.77. The only headline index to close green, by 7 bp over the S&P | | Russell 2000 | 3,006.56 | -3.46 | -0.11% | Range 2,998.60-3,016.00. Back below the 3,009.35 prior close but held 3,000 | | VIX | 15.21 | -0.24 | -1.55% | Range 15.21-15.74. Closed at the low of the day on the eve of a Jackson Hole keynote | | PHLX Semiconductor (SOX) | 11,611.2 | +23.2 | +0.20% | Range 11,471.0-11,632.4. Rose while Nvidia fell 1.59% — the supply chain outperformed its own customer | | UST 2Y (official par) | 4.19% | +2 bp | — | Unchanged on the week | | UST 3Y (official par) | 4.29% | +4 bp | — | The largest move on the curve, on the day and on the week | | UST 10Y (official par) | 4.66% | +2 bp | — | Bloomberg's 4:59 p.m. board marks 4.65%, +2 bp | | UST 30Y (official par) | 5.18% | +1 bp | — | Still 1 bp below where it sat a week ago | | WTI (Oct, NYMEX) | $81.81 | -$0.55 | -0.67% | Investing.com settle series; Bloomberg marks $81.92, -0.5% | | Brent (Nov, ICE front) | $86.36 | -$0.91 | -1.04% | Contract rolled from October — not comparable to the prior edition's $88.58 October settle | | Gold (Comex Dec) | $4,649.25 | -$45.25 | -0.96% | First decline in five sessions | | Silver (Comex Sep) | $68.120 | -$0.562 | -0.82% | Gold-silver ratio 68.25, in from 68.35 | | Copper (Comex Sep) | $6.6033 | -$0.1107 | -1.65% | Gave back the whole of Tuesday's 1.65% gain, to the basis point | | Natural gas (Oct, NYMEX) | $2.901 | +$0.080 | +2.84% | The best-performing energy contract on the board | | DXY | 99.07 | +0.23 | +0.23% | Investing.com board; TradingEconomics marks 99.137, +0.22% |
2 · Market Hot Spots (ranked by tradability) |
- The supply chain outran the customer into the customer's own print, and then the print vindicated the supply chain. SOX rose 0.20% to 11,611.2 while Nvidia fell 1.59% to $209.66 — an eighth decline in nine sessions. The names that carried the index were the hardware layer beneath the accelerator: Arista Networks +5.92% to $202.25 (the day's best S&P 500 performer), F5 Networks +4.40% to $399.59, Western Digital +4.02% to $468.88, Corning +3.82%, NetApp +3.43%, HP Inc. +3.39%, Hewlett Packard Enterprise +3.35%, Seagate +3.01%. A 24/7 Wall St. tally had hardware names taking the top four gainer slots of a 111-stock priority list. Then the numbers: revenue $96.2bn, +106% year on year, EPS $2.22, +111.4%, gross margin 75.0% against 72.7% a year earlier, and a current-quarter guide of $108bn ±2% against a $105.2bn Bloomberg consensus — above the average estimate but below the highest projections, which exceeded $110bn. The stock traded down first and up second: $220.30, +5.07%, at 5:53 p.m. ET, then $218.35, +4.15%, at 6:15 p.m. Forward catalyst: Marvell after Thursday's close (Section 5), the first read on whether the customer-funded silicon layer earns the same re-rating.
- Energy rose on a day crude fell, and the mechanism is the refinery, not the barrel. Finviz's energy group closed +0.18% while WTI settled -0.67% at $81.81 and Brent -1.04% at $86.36 on the November contract. What paid was everything downstream of the wellhead: Williams +4.68% to $74.41, ONEOK +3.49%, Kinder Morgan +3.49%, Targa Resources +2.46%, Phillips 66 +2.25%, Valero +2.24%. The arithmetic underneath is the crack. RBOB rose 1.71% to $3.2763 against crude down 0.67%, taking the gasoline crack to 3.2763 × 42 - 81.81 = $55.79, up $2.87 on the day; heating oil fell 0.57% and the distillate crack slipped 47 cents to $95.41. Natural gas rose 2.84% to $2.901, the best energy contract on the board. Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Tehran had reached a revenue-sharing deal with Oman on the Strait of Hormuz, which lifted crude off its lows without reversing them. Forward catalyst: EIA natural gas storage Thursday 10:30, consensus 3,190 Bcf (Section 7); the September gasoline calendar.
- The whole rates move sat in the belly — a policy-timing signal, not a term-premium one. The 3-year rose 4 bp to 4.29% and the 7-year 3 bp to 4.51%, against the 2-year +2 bp to 4.19%, the 10-year +2 bp to 4.66%, the 20-year +1 bp and the 30-year +1 bp to 5.18% — while the 3-month bill fell a basis point to 3.85%. A curve that sells off four basis points at three years and one at thirty is repricing when the Fed moves, not what the government issues. 3M10Y widened 3 bp to 81, 2s10s was unchanged at 47, and 2s30s flattened a basis point to 99. The Wall Street Journal headlined it "Treasury Yields Rise as Data Supports Fed Hawks." Forward catalyst: initial claims Thursday 8:30, consensus 208,000; Warsh Friday ~10:00 (Section 7).
- The Fed strip moved hawkish and dovish on the same day, at different points. CME's September hike fell from 39.6% to 36.5%; Investing.com's cumulative hike-by-December rose to 71.7% from 70.2% and from 67.2% a week ago. October fell (50.7% from 52.7%) and every 2027 meeting shifted up — the modal 2027 range is unchanged at 3.75-4.00% but the mass above it grew at every single meeting. That is the market saying an in-line core PCE at 3.3% removes the urgency without removing the destination. Bloomberg's wrap put it more bluntly than the matrices do, reporting that money markets "fully priced in a rate hike by December"; the vendor probability tables this report reads put cumulative hike-by-December at 71.7%, and the gap is flagged in Data Notes. The probability of a cut at any 2026 meeting remains 0.0%. Forward catalyst: Warsh, Friday; ISM manufacturing and JOLTS 1 September; payrolls 4 September.
- HP Inc. is the round trip of the week. The stock rose 3.39% to $30.52 in the regular session, the eleventh-best S&P 500 performer, and then fell 9.12% to $27.74 after the close. Bloomberg's read: investors "looked past a widely expected boost in the company's profit forecast" and focused on future demand for computers and printers. A name that gains 3.4% into its own print and loses 9.1% on it has told you that the buy-side positioning and the sell-side model were pointed at different lines of the release. Forward catalyst: the PC channel read from Dell on 1 September (Section 5).
- Nike made a twelve-year low, and the read-through is a category, not a company. Nike fell 2.25% to $38.59, a level last traded in August 2014, down close to 40% in 2026 and more than 75% from its late-2021 high, after Truist Securities cut it to Hold. Truist's argument is a supply-chain one: weak fiscal-2026 guidance from Dick's Sporting Goods implies bad news for Nike, which makes up roughly 35% to 40% of Dick's merchandise purchases. Goldman Sachs, on the other side of the same event, kept a Buy on Dick's while cutting its target 37% to $170 from $271, with Kate McShane writing that Dick's core comp of +4.9% stands against Foot Locker's -3.6%. Both houses agree on the diagnosis; they disagree only on which listed entity owns the damage. Forward catalyst: Lululemon 3 September (Section 5).
- The renminbi made a new high and could not hold it, on a day the dollar rose. USD/CNH printed 6.7151 intraday, a fresh fifty-two-week low for the pair and a one-year high for the currency, then closed back at 6.7216 with the dollar index up 0.23% to 99.07. Onshore USD/CNY finished 6.72094, +0.05%, still -3.66% year to date. A managed currency that sets a new extreme and then gives it back inside a session, on a day the dollar broadly firms, is a currency being allowed to appreciate rather than one being pushed. Forward catalyst: the PBoC fixing pattern into month-end; the Canadian tariff implementation on 8 September, which is a commodity-currency event before it is a renminbi one.
- The debasement trade took its first day off in five. Comex December gold settled -0.96% at $4,649.25, its first decline in five sessions, silver -0.82% to $68.120, copper -1.65% to $6.6033 — giving back Tuesday's 1.65% gain to the basis point — and bitcoin was flat at $78,497.57 after failing at $80,000 on Tuesday. Fairlead Strategies' Katie Stockton had flagged the asymmetry a day early: bitcoin is "not oversold but not overbought yet" with a base breakout underway, while gold "will meet resistance" and the move "won't be quite as long-lived." Basic materials was the worst sector of the session at -1.24%, with Newmont -2.62% and Freeport-McMoRan -1.14%, after leading the week at +3.85%. Forward catalyst: Warsh Friday, the first policy voice on the debasement question since the buyback announcement.
- The funding tape started to bite, three sessions before month-end. SOFR printed 3.66% for the 25 August effective date, one basis point above the 3.65% IORB, its first positive spread of the run, on $2,916bn of volume with the 99th percentile at 3.74%. TGCR and BGCR both rose a basis point to 3.64%. And the facility filled again: overnight reverse repo take-up reached $702m on 26 August, from $405m on the 25th and $200m on the 21st — a 3.5x increase in three sessions. Reserve balances stand at $2.935tn for the week ended 19 August. Rates moved, the buffer kept draining, and 31 August month-end arrives before the 9 September buyback operation. Forward catalyst: month-end; the bill auction sizes behind the operation (Section 9).
- The consumer prints and the consumer tape now say the same thing, and it is not what the index is saying. Personal income rose 0.4% against a 0.2% forecast and the second estimate of Q2 GDP showed stronger consumer spending than first reported, yet consumer cyclical was the third-worst Finviz group on the week at -1.57% and is -3.09% year to date; Lowe's -1.98%, Ross Stores -2.04%, TJX -1.90%, Booking -2.29%, Carnival -2.10%, Las Vegas Sands -2.20% and Nike -2.25% on the session. LPL Financial's Jeff Roach framed the macro side: "consumers continue to benefit from income growth that's outpacing inflation," but "for policymakers, the balance of risks still tilts toward inflation." Income is fine and the multiple is not. Forward catalyst: Michigan final Friday 10:00, consensus 51.0; Lululemon and Campbell's on 3 September.
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3 · Sector Performance — August 26, 2026 |
| Sector | 1-Day | 1-Week | YTD |
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| Industrials | +0.98% | -1.16% | +12.92% | | Utilities | +0.31% | -1.03% | +0.88% | | Technology | +0.28% | -0.41% | +21.83% | | Energy | +0.18% | -1.58% | +35.81% | | Financial | -0.08% | +1.42% | +8.69% | | Consumer Defensive | -0.43% | -1.10% | +7.85% | | Consumer Cyclical | -0.64% | -1.57% | -3.09% | | Real Estate | -0.66% | -0.06% | +11.08% | | Communication Services | -0.78% | +0.75% | -1.15% | | Healthcare | -0.95% | -1.03% | +11.83% | | Basic Materials | -1.24% | +3.85% | +22.97% |
| Source: Finviz group screener, Performance table view (g=sector&v=140&o=name), read after the close. 1-Day is the Change % column, 1-Week Perf Week, YTD Perf YTD. Finviz classification, not GICS. |
| YTD reconciliation. Compounding each group's 25 August YTD by Wednesday's one-day move reproduces the published YTD to within 0.007 percentage points across all eleven groups — the tightest reconciliation this report has recorded, tighter even than Tuesday's 0.02 pp. Worked examples: technology 1.2149 × 1.0028 = 1.2183 → +21.83% against a published +21.83%, deviation 0.000 pp; basic materials 1.2452 × 0.9876 = 1.2298 → +22.98% against +22.97%, deviation 0.006 pp; energy 1.3556 × 1.0018 = 1.3580 → +35.80% against +35.81%. The largest deviations are financial and communication services at 0.007 pp. No group drifted. |
| Nine of eleven groups moved less than 1.0%, and the two that did not are the same trade seen from both ends. Industrials +0.98% was the session's leader on Eaton +2.50%, WW Grainger +2.59%, Honeywell +2.31%, Parker-Hannifin +2.28%, Emerson +2.15%, Leidos +2.15%, Quanta Services +2.14% and GE Vernova +2.90% — the electrification and datacentre-infrastructure block, bid into the Nvidia print alongside the hardware names in technology. Basic materials -1.24% was the session's laggard on the metals reversal, Newmont -2.62% and Freeport-McMoRan -1.14%, after being the week's best group at +3.85%. The rotation is not defensive-versus-cyclical; it is hard assets out, hard infrastructure in, and it turned inside twenty-four hours. |
| The weekly column has flipped almost completely. Only financial (+1.42%), basic materials (+3.85%) and communication services (+0.75%) are positive over five sessions; energy is -1.58%, consumer cyclical -1.57%, industrials -1.16%, healthcare and utilities -1.03%. On the year the shape is unchanged and extreme: energy +35.81% and basic materials +22.97% against consumer cyclical -3.09% and communication services -1.15%, the only two groups still negative for 2026 — and between them they hold Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet and Meta. Note the Finviz composition trap that matters most this session: Amazon (-0.30%) sits in consumer cyclical, and Alphabet (-1.43% on the A line) sits in communication services, so both negative-YTD groups are carrying megacap weight that a GICS reader would file elsewhere. |
4 · Movers & Single-Name Catalysts |
- Arista Networks (ANET) +5.92% to $202.25 — range $190.91-$203.36, the best S&P 500 performer, closing 55 cents off the high after opening at the low. The hardware sweep's leader.
- C.H. Robinson (CHRW) +5.62% to $151.73; Williams (WMB) +4.68% to $74.41; F5 Networks (FFIV) +4.40% to $399.59.
- J.M. Smucker (SJM) +4.34% to $130.90 — the best of the two S&P 500 names that reported before the open.
- Western Digital (WDC) +4.02% to $468.88 and Seagate (STX) +3.01% to $846.37 — a second consecutive session for the storage pair, up 3.5% and 3.4% on Tuesday.
- Corning (GLW) +3.82% to $152.78; ONEOK (OKE) +3.49% to $94.90; Kinder Morgan (KMI) +3.49% to $32.02; NetApp (NTAP) +3.43% to $193.85 a week before it reports.
- HP Inc. (HPQ) +3.39% to $30.52 in the regular session — then -9.12% to $27.74 after the close (see Lower).
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) +3.35% to $55.23; GE Vernova (GEV) +2.90% to $953.68.
- Enphase (ENPH) +2.85% to $38.42; Oracle (ORCL) +2.84% to $148.87; Palantir (PLTR) +2.76% to $177.50; Dell Technologies (DELL) +2.73% to $463.82 six days before it reports.
- W.W. Grainger (GWW) +2.59% to $1,335.39; Starbucks (SBUX) +2.58% to $108.49; Fortinet (FTNT) +2.53% to $157.54; Best Buy (BBY) +2.52% to $87.44 the day before it reports.
- Eaton (ETN) +2.50%, Targa Resources (TRGP) +2.46%, Generac (GNRC) +2.40%, Honeywell (HON) +2.31%, Parker-Hannifin (PH) +2.28% — the industrial electrification block.
- Phillips 66 (PSX) +2.25% to $242.23 and Valero (VLO) +2.24% to $348.03 — the refiners, on a $2.87 expansion in the gasoline crack.
- Marvell (MRVL) +1.97% to $245.11 — a second consecutive gain into Thursday's print, after +4.84% on Tuesday.
- Qualcomm (QCOM) +1.99%, Apple (AAPL) +1.15% to $313.45, Meta (META) +1.07% to $576.14, Microsoft (MSFT) +0.95% to $496.37, Intel (INTC) +0.87% to $88.24, Micron (MU) +0.58% to $938.40.
- SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG) jumped nearly 7% pre-market on a UBS upgrade to Buy, on the argument that a new FCC policy will bring share gains and pricing power. Not an S&P 500 member on this report's screen.
- Kohl's (KSS) fell 5% pre-market on a comparable-sales decline of 0.9% against a 0.6% FactSet estimate, then raised full-year guidance partly on $150m of tariff refunds and restarted buybacks of up to $100m in 2026. Not an S&P 500 member.
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- Moderna (MRNA) -5.77% to $149.66 — range $145.10-$156.13, giving back 41% of Tuesday's 14.36% gain. The stock has now moved +176.97%, -23.55%, +8.86%, -4.30%, +14.36% and -5.77% in six sessions.
- GoDaddy (GDDY) -4.26% to $95.54 — Wells Fargo cut it to Underweight with a $76 target, implying 24% downside from Tuesday's close. Alec Brondolo: AI Overviews now appear in roughly 48% of searches, up from 10% in December, and "GoDaddy's domain pricing remains ahead of peers, causing AI Overviews and LLMs to recommend competitors."
- Eli Lilly (LLY) -3.59% to $1,189.41 — range $1,180.01-$1,235.78, closing near the low; the largest healthcare drag in a group that fell 0.95%.
- Boston Scientific (BSX) -3.39% to $48.17 — the company disclosed a cyberattack this week that is affecting operations. Roughly $2.5bn of market value on a $72bn company.
- Intuit (INTU) -3.24% to $345.88 — range $322.57-$351.39. The stock was marked $324.50 in Tuesday's after-hours session on FY27 revenue guidance of $23.279-23.512bn against a $23.7bn FactSet consensus; it opened near there and recovered $23.31 off the low into the close, cutting the after-hours loss by roughly two-thirds. One of the cleanest gap-fills of the month.
- Robinhood (HOOD) -3.17% to $108.54 — reversing Tuesday's 8.17% gain as bitcoin stalled.
- Accenture (ACN) -2.97% to $181.38; Super Micro (SMCI) -2.78% to $37.39; Newmont (NEM) -2.62% to $131.60; Charles Schwab (SCHW) -2.57% to $109.39.
- BXP (BXP) -2.54% and Host Hotels (HST) -2.48% — real estate fell 0.66% with the belly of the curve 3-4 bp higher.
- Shopify (SHOP) -2.33%; Uber (UBER) -2.33% to $78.48, range $78.42-$82.37, a 4.7% high-to-close fade; Booking (BKNG) -2.29% to $208.89.
- Nike (NKE) -2.25% to $38.59 — a twelve-year low, last seen in August 2014, on Truist's downgrade to Hold.
- Regeneron (REGN) -2.25%; EPAM (EPAM) -2.23%; Live Nation (LYV) -2.21%; Las Vegas Sands (LVS) -2.20%; United Airlines (UAL) -2.20% to $114.83, giving back 65% of Tuesday's 3.39% gain.
- Merck (MRK) -2.14% to $153.10; Carnival (CCL) -2.10%; Kraft Heinz (KHC) -2.09%; Ross Stores (ROST) -2.04%; CoStar (CSGP) -2.04%.
- Lowe's (LOW) -1.98% to $210.36; Copart (CPRT) -1.98% eight days before it reports; Monster Beverage (MNST) -1.93%; TJX (TJX) -1.90%; IBM (IBM) -1.84%.
- Nvidia (NVDA) -1.59% to $209.66 — its eighth decline in nine sessions, on the day it reported. The stock has added less than 13% in 2026.
- Exxon Mobil (XOM) -1.53% to $158.19; Alphabet A (GOOGL) -1.43% to $342.00; Tesla (TSLA) -1.26% to $345.84; Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) -1.14% to $79.00; Walmart (WMT) -0.99% to $104.34.
- SAP was cut to Neutral from Buy by UBS, target €201, implying about 8.4% upside — the analysts' most significant reason being that the company has just 17 out-of-the-box AI agents available against a 200 by year-end goal. Not a U.S. index member.
- Ambu fell 17.6% in Copenhagen on a full-year growth guidance cut to around 10% from 10-12%. Not a U.S. index member.
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- Salesforce (CRM) +12.54% to $231.40 — revenue guidance for strong expansion and a deepened partnership with Anthropic. The largest after-hours move on the board.
- CrowdStrike (CRWD) +10.48% to $209.00 — full-year revenue guidance above consensus, which Bloomberg read as evidence that cybersecurity demand is being driven by AI-borne threats.
- Nvidia (NVDA) +5.07% to $220.30 at 5:53 p.m., +4.15% to $218.35 at 6:15 p.m. — after an initial dip on the guide.
- Palo Alto Networks (PANW) +3.84% to $352.33 and Autodesk (ADSK) +2.88% to $262.10 — sympathy moves; both report next (Section 5).
- Agilent (A) +3.75% to $160.90; Micron (MU) +3.58% to $971.99; Seagate (STX) +2.80% to $870.06; Centene (CNC) +2.95%.
- HP Inc. (HPQ) -9.12% to $27.74 — the reversal of a +3.39% session.
- Moody's (MCO) -2.56%, Expeditors (EXPD) -2.13%, Alexandria Real Estate (ARE) -2.00%, Edison International (EIX) -1.97%, FactSet (FDS) -1.91%, PNC (PNC) -1.50%, Cardinal Health (CAH) -1.49%, Moderna (MRNA) -1.48%.
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- Wells Fargo downgraded GoDaddy (GDDY) to Underweight, target cut to $76, 24% below Tuesday's close. The thesis is structural rather than cyclical: "we believe the top of funnel in consumer internet is quickly shifting to AI Overviews & LLMs," with AI Overviews now in roughly 48% of searches against 10% in December. The stock fell 4.26%.
- Truist Securities downgraded Nike (NKE) to Hold, on the read-through from Dick's Sporting Goods' fiscal-2026 guidance cut — Nike is roughly 35-40% of Dick's merchandise purchases. Nike closed at a twelve-year low.
- Goldman Sachs reiterated Buy on Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS) in a ten-page note led by Kate McShane, while cutting the twelve-month target 37% to $170 from $271. "Dick's is well-positioned for continued [market] share gains"; "while the stock will likely be in a holding pattern for the next several months, we think the stock reflects the current challenges." The split inside the same company is the point: core comp +4.9% against Foot Locker -3.6%.
- UBS downgraded SAP to Neutral, target €201 (+8.4%), citing agentic-AI delivery running far behind the year-end target.
- UBS upgraded SolarEdge (SEDG) to Buy on an FCC policy change the bank expects to deliver share gains and pricing power; the stock rose nearly 7% pre-market.
- Bank of America clients were net sellers of U.S. equities last week, the first time in eight weeks. Institutional clients led, hedge funds sold after three weeks of buying, and retail sold for a fourth week — with the outflow driven by single stocks while equity ETFs took inflows. The S&P 500 fell 1.4% over that week.
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5 · S&P 500 Earnings Calendar — Current & Next Week (S&P 500 components only) |
| Sourcing, disclosed. The Earnings Whispers day pages remain behind a cookie-and-usage-agreement consent banner, which this unattended session did not accept. The rosters below are captured from the Nasdaq earnings calendar API for each date and screened name by name against an S&P 500 constituent list. Nasdaq publishes a before-open / after-close bucket rather than a clock time, so no clock times are asserted this session; confirm every time against company investor relations before trading a date. |
| Current week (Aug 24-28) — remaining |
| Thu 8/27. BMO: Dollar General (DG), Dollar Tree (DLTR), Best Buy (BBY), Hormel Foods (HRL). AMC: Marvell Technology (MRVL), Autodesk (ADSK), Workday (WDAY), Ulta Beauty (ULTA). |
| Fri 8/28. No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket. |
| Next week (Aug 31 - Sep 4) |
| Mon 8/31. No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket; the Nasdaq capture returns twelve names for the date, none of them constituents. |
| Tue 9/1. BMO: Medtronic (MDT). AMC: Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Dell Technologies (DELL). |
| Wed 9/2. BMO: Brown-Forman (BF.B). AMC: Broadcom (AVGO), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), NetApp (NTAP). |
| Thu 9/3. BMO: Campbell's (CPB), Toro (TTC). AMC: Lululemon Athletica (LULU). Timing bucket not published: Copart (CPRT) — the reviewed calendar carries no before-open or after-close designation for this date; confirm with company investor relations. |
| Fri 9/4. No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket. |
| Changes vs. the prior calendar (8/25 report): |
- No additions and no removals across 8/27-8/28 or 8/31-9/4. Every S&P 500 name on Tuesday's roster reappears on this session's independent Nasdaq capture in the same before-open / after-close bucket. Copart's missing timing bucket on 3 September persists for a third consecutive capture, which now looks like a publisher gap rather than a transient one.
- Dual listings deduped: Brown-Forman appears as both BF.A and BF.B on the source calendar and is carried once, as the class B share, which is the index line.
- Non-members on the same dates, listed so nobody mistakes their absence for an omission: Royal Bank of Canada (RY), Toronto-Dominion (TD), CIBC (CM), Affirm (AFRM), Rubrik (RBRK), Burlington (BURL), IREN, HealthEquity (HQY), Elastic (ESTC), Gap (GAP), SentinelOne (S), Bilibili (BILI) and Harmony Gold (HMY) on 8/27; Frontline (FRO), Hafnia (HAFN) and Miniso (MNSO) on 8/28; SAIC and Grifols (GRFS) on 8/31; Credo (CRDO), MongoDB (MDB), NIO and GitLab (GTLB) on 9/1; Snowflake (SNOW), Five Below (FIVE), Argan (AGX), Ollie's (OLLI), PVH, American Eagle (AEO), C3.ai (AI) and Barrick (GOLD) on 9/2; Ciena (CIEN), Zscaler (ZS), Samsara (IOT), Guidewire (GWRE), DocuSign (DOCU), UiPath (PATH), Planet Labs (PL) and Asana (ASAN) on 9/3; KT Corp (KT) and ABM Industries (ABM) on 9/4. Borderline membership cases are listed in Data Notes and conservatively excluded.
- What the forward calendar hands the desk. Eight S&P 500 names on Thursday, four before the open and four after the close, and then nothing until Tuesday. The after-close four are the tradable ones: Marvell carries the customer-funded-silicon question directly, Autodesk and Workday carry the enterprise-software multiple that just re-rated 10-13% in the extended session, and Ulta Beauty is the discretionary read into a complex trading at twelve-year lows in places (Section 4). The before-open four are a consumer block — Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Best Buy, Hormel — reporting into a group that is -1.57% on the week and -3.09% on the year. Then the second AI week arrives with Palo Alto Networks and Dell on Tuesday 1 September, Broadcom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp on Wednesday 2 September — three hardware names on one evening, all of which rallied 3.35-3.43% on Wednesday — and Lululemon and Campbell's on Thursday 3 September. For the reaction function already priced into these names, and the dispersion inside it, see Section 4 and Section 2.
|
6 · U.S. Treasury Yields — Official Par Curve |
| Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates, Text View for August 2026, read after publication. Changes are versus the 25 August official row (1-day) and the 19 August official row (1-week). |
| Tenor | 26 Aug | 25 Aug | 1-Day | 19 Aug | 1-Week |
|---|
| 1 Mo | 3.80% | 3.79% | +1 bp | 3.77% | +3 bp | | 3 Mo | 3.85% | 3.86% | -1 bp | 3.86% | -1 bp | | 1 Yr | 4.02% | 4.01% | +1 bp | 4.00% | +2 bp | | 2 Yr | 4.19% | 4.17% | +2 bp | 4.19% | 0 bp | | 3 Yr | 4.29% | 4.25% | +4 bp | 4.25% | +4 bp | | 5 Yr | 4.37% | 4.35% | +2 bp | 4.35% | +2 bp | | 7 Yr | 4.51% | 4.48% | +3 bp | 4.48% | +3 bp | | 10 Yr | 4.66% | 4.64% | +2 bp | 4.65% | +1 bp | | 20 Yr | 5.17% | 5.16% | +1 bp | 5.17% | 0 bp | | 30 Yr | 5.18% | 5.17% | +1 bp | 5.19% | -1 bp |
| Off-table bills, extracted and reported here because they carry the financing story. 1.5 Mo 3.78% (unchanged), 2 Mo 3.80% (unchanged), 4 Mo 3.88% (-1 bp), 6 Mo 3.94% (-1 bp). The bill strip fell or held everywhere except the 1-month, which rose a basis point and is now 3 bp cheaper on the week — the only tenor on the whole curve with a bigger weekly move than the 3-year. See Section 9 block b. |
| Spread | 26 Aug | 1-Day | 1-Week |
|---|
| 2s10s | 47 bp | 0 bp | +1 bp | | 3M10Y | 81 bp | +3 bp | +2 bp | | 2s30s | 99 bp | -1 bp | -1 bp | | 20s30s | 1 bp | 0 bp | -1 bp |
| The read: a belly-led bear steepener against a pinned long end — policy timing, not term premium. The distribution of the move is the whole diagnostic. The 3-year rose 4 bp, the 7-year 3 bp, the 2-year, 5-year and 10-year 2 bp each, the 20-year and 30-year 1 bp each, and the 3-month bill fell 1 bp. Plot those and you get a hump centred between three and seven years, which is where a market prices when the next hike lands rather than what the government issues at thirty years. The spread table confirms it by elimination: 2s10s did not move, 2s30s flattened a basis point, 20s30s did not move, and the only spread that changed materially was 3M10Y, 3 bp wider to 81 — driven from the bill side, which fell, as much as from the note side, which rose. This is the mirror image of Tuesday, when every coupon tenor rallied 5 to 7 bp and the bill sat still. |
| And the week has now round-tripped, except in the belly. On a five-session view the 3-year is 4 bp cheaper and the 7-year 3 bp cheaper, while the 2-year and 20-year are unchanged, the 10-year is 1 bp cheaper and the 30-year is 1 bp richer. That is not a level move; it is a shape move, and it happened in the exact segment the Fed strip repriced (Section 8): October's cumulative hike fell on the day while December's rose, and the 2027 strip shifted up at every meeting. The 30-year at 5.18% is still 10 bp below its 18 August level of 5.28%, which is the buyback trade still holding the long end while the belly sells off around it. |
| The vendor gap, explained. Bloomberg's 4:59 p.m. board marked the 10-year at 4.65%, +2 bp, against the official par 4.66%, +2 bp. Same direction, same magnitude, one basis point of level difference — a real-time bid struck at 4:59 p.m. against a 3:30 p.m. bid-side par construct. It is a timing artefact, not a level dispute, and it has now run at exactly 1 bp for two consecutive sessions. |
| The policy overhang is now a November event, not a September one. Bloomberg's Greg Ritchie, Michael MacKenzie and Yash Roy reported that Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are all war-gaming a shift in the government's borrowing strategy, with the 4 November quarterly refunding the decision point. BMO's Ian Lyngen: Bessent's moves have "effectively made the November refunding announcement more of a wildcard than otherwise would have been the case," and "reductions to bond auction sizes can no longer be ruled out." Morgan Stanley's Martin Tobias framed the buybacks as "likely just a bridge until they get to November refunding," with "the market-moving event ultimately... the manner with which Treasury goes about shortening the weighted-average maturity." Citi pushed its forecast for larger auctions back to 2028 and raised the tail risk that Treasury eliminates the 20-year bond — which is why the 20-year trades at 5.17% against a 30-year at 5.18%, 1 bp of pickup for ten fewer years of duration, and why Citi's Jason Williams is recommending clients go long the 20-year. WisdomTree's Kevin Flanagan supplied the counter: "it seems to me mathematically very difficult to cut issuance at the longer end of the curve and make it up elsewhere... the market will see that as manipulation and it can backfire." See Section 9 block c for the swap-spread detail. |
7 · U.S. Macroeconomic Calendar |
| Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Indicators Calendar for August and September 2026 (all times Eastern). Consensus figures are carried only where independently verified against WSJ Market Data; where none is verified, the sensitivity note describes what the market is positioned for instead of asserting an expectation. |
| Current week (Aug 24-28) — still to come |
| Date | Time ET | Release | Period | Consensus | Sensitivity |
|---|
| Thu 8/27 | 08:30 | Initial Jobless Claims | wk ended 8/22 | 208,000 (WSJ Market Data) | High | | Thu 8/27 | 10:00 | Multivariate Core Trend Inflation | Jul | — | Medium | | Thu 8/27 | 10:30 | EIA Weekly Natural Gas Storage | wk ended 8/21 | 3,190 Bcf (WSJ Market Data) | Medium | | Thu 8/27 | 11:30 | Weekly Economic Index | wk ended 8/22 | — | Low | | Thu 8/27 | 14:00 | R-Star, Laubach-Williams estimates | Q2 | — | Low | | Fri 8/28 | 09:45 | Chicago PMI | Aug | 58.0 (WSJ Market Data) | Medium | | Fri 8/28 | 10:00 | Michigan Consumer Survey (Final) | Aug | 51.0 (WSJ Market Data) | Medium | | Fri 8/28 | 12:45 | New York Fed Staff Nowcast | — | — | Low | | Fri 8/28 | 14:00 | R-Star, Holston-Laubach-Williams estimates | Q2 | — | Low |
| Not on the statistical calendar but the week's largest scheduled risk: the Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium runs Thursday 27 August to Saturday 29 August, themed "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy," with roughly 120 central bankers and officials from more than 70 countries attending. Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote on Friday 28 August at approximately 10:00 a.m. ET, livestreamed by the Kansas City Fed. It lands nineteen days before the 16 September FOMC. Sensitivity: Very high. |
| Next week (Aug 31 - Sep 4) |
| Date | Time ET | Release | Period | Consensus | Sensitivity |
|---|
| Mon 8/31 | 10:30 | Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey | Aug | — | Low | | Tue 9/1 | 10:00 | ISM Manufacturing | Aug | No verified consensus published in the reviewed sources | High | | Tue 9/1 | 10:00 | JOLTS | Jul | No verified consensus published in the reviewed sources | High | | Tue 9/1 | 10:00 | Construction Spending | Jul | — | Low | | Tue 9/1 | 10:30 | Dallas Fed Texas Retail Outlook Survey | Aug | — | Low | | Wed 9/2 | 08:15 | ADP National Employment Report | Aug | No verified consensus published in the reviewed sources | High | | Wed 9/2 | 09:00 | Labor Market Tightness Index | Aug | — | Medium | | Wed 9/2 | 10:00 | Manufacturing, Shipments and Orders | Jul | — | Low | | Thu 9/3 | 08:30 | Initial Jobless Claims | wk ended 8/29 | No verified consensus published in the reviewed sources | High | | Thu 9/3 | 08:30 | Advance International Trade in Goods / Trade Balance | Jul | — | Medium | | Thu 9/3 | 08:30 | Productivity and Costs (Revised) | Q2 | — | Medium | | Thu 9/3 | 10:00 | ISM Non-Manufacturing | Aug | No verified consensus published in the reviewed sources | High | | Thu 9/3 | 11:30 | Weekly Economic Index | wk ended 8/29 | — | Low | | Fri 9/4 | 08:30 | Employment Situation | Aug | No verified consensus published in the reviewed sources | Very high | | Fri 9/4 | 10:00 | Global Supply Chain Pressure Index | Aug | — | Low | | Fri 9/4 | 12:45 | New York Fed Staff Nowcast | — | — | Low |
| The look-ahead: the inflation question has been answered for a month, and the answer is that nothing changed. Core PCE at +0.2% month over month and +3.3% year over year matched consensus on both lines, which is the single least useful outcome for a market that had spent two sessions repricing the September meeting on the oil price. It removed the near-term catalyst without removing the problem: 3.3% is a full percentage point above target, and the details cut the other way — personal income +0.4% against +0.2%, advance durable goods +1.1% against a verified +0.5%, Q2 core PCE prices revised up to 3.6% from a 3.4% expectation, and corporate profits +8.2% quarter on quarter against +0.5% prior. eToro's Bret Kenwell named the consequence: "inflation is still too high for comfort, and investors will be watching to see whether Fed Chair Kevin Warsh uses Friday's Jackson Hole speech to address how policymakers plan to bring it back toward the Fed's long-term target." That is now the whole asymmetry. The hooks, in the order they can move the Fed card: (1) Chair Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote, Fri ~10:00 — nineteen days before the FOMC, with the strip pricing zero probability of a cut at any 2026 meeting and a 71.7% cumulative hike by December; a theme of financial innovation and payments gives him room to say nothing about rates, and the market will read silence as a hold. (2) Initial claims Thursday 8:30, consensus 208,000 — the only weekly labour input, and the series that pinned the front end at 4.17-4.24% for a fortnight; a print above 220,000 is the cleanest available route to pulling the December hike back below 65%. (3) The labour block on 1-4 September — JOLTS and ISM manufacturing Tuesday, ADP Wednesday, ISM services and claims Thursday, and the August Employment Situation on Friday 4 September, the last payroll before the meeting. (4) Michigan final and Chicago PMI Friday, at 51.0 and 58.0 verified consensus — a Michigan miss into a consumer complex already at twelve-year lows in places is a sector event rather than a rates one. (5) The Corporate Bond Market Distress Index and the 30 September PCE, which is the next inflation reading and lands after the September decision. Note what Wednesday's prints did to the shape rather than the level: the September hike came down and the December hike went up, and the belly of the curve sold off four basis points at three years while the thirty-year moved one. The market did not change its mind about where rates end up. It changed its mind about how long it has to wait. |
8 · Fed Funds Futures & Rate Path |
| Current target range: 3.50%-3.75%. Two independent vendors, two snapshot times, and — for the first time in this reporting window — near-identical answers. |
| CME FedWatch headline — 16 September 2026 meeting. Data as of 26 Aug 2026, 04:54:00 p.m. CT (5:54 p.m. ET), read from the FedWatch probability table. |
| Target rate (bps) | NOW | 1 DAY (25 Aug) | 1 WEEK (19 Aug) | 1 MONTH (24 Jul) |
|---|
| 350-375 (current) | 63.5% | 60.4% | 66.9% | 18.0% | | 375-400 | 36.5% | 39.6% | 33.1% | 55.3% | | 400-425 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 26.6% |
| Provenance of every column, stated — and the prior edition's indicative read is now confirmed. NOW is a live CME read taken after the 5:00 p.m. ET futures close and is therefore indicative, not a settlement snapshot. 1 DAY carries the legend date 25 August and prints 39.6% for the hike — exactly the figure this report published as an indicative live read on Tuesday evening, which retrospectively validates that read to the decimal. 1 WEEK carries the legend date 19 August and 1 MONTH the legend date 24 July, both genuine reference dates rather than chart reads, so both are used in calculations. Investing.com's matrix below is timestamped 26 Aug 2026, 05:45 p.m. EDT. |
| The CME-versus-Investing.com gap, quantified — and it has all but closed. CME puts the September hike at 36.5%, Investing.com at 36.0% — a 0.5 percentage-point difference, against 4.6 pp on Tuesday. The convergence is itself informative: Tuesday's gap was attributed here to a 73-minute snapshot difference amplified by CME's day-weighting of a mid-month meeting. Wednesday's snapshots are nine minutes apart (4:54 p.m. CT versus 4:45 p.m. CT) and the ZQU6 contract price barely moved after the close, so the mechanical wedge disappeared. That supports the timing explanation over the methodology one. Investing.com publishes the underlying September future price at 96.325, up from 96.320. |
| One-day, one-week and multi-day momentum. The September hike fell 3.1 pp on the day on CME (39.6% → 36.5%) and 0.7 pp on Investing.com's own prior-day column (36.7% → 36.0%). On a one-week view it is the other way: 36.5% against 33.1% on CME and 36.0% against 32.3% on Investing.com, so the week added roughly 3.4 pp to September. And the one-month column still holds the real move: on 24 July CME priced 55.3% at 375-400 plus 26.6% at 400-425, a cumulative 81.9% chance of at least one hike by September, now 36.5% — a 45.4 pp collapse in a month. The day's shape is what matters most. October's cumulative hike fell from 52.7% to 50.7% while December's rose from 70.2% to 71.7%, and every single 2027 meeting shifted mass upward, with cumulative-above rising 1.5 to 2.0 pp at each. September down, December up, 2027 up: the market pushed the hike out and made it more certain at the same time. The probability of a cut at any 2026 meeting remains 0.0%. |
| (a) Current-year meeting distributions |
| Investing.com Fed Rate Monitor, updated 26 Aug 2026 05:45 p.m. EDT. Format: current [prior day] [prior week]. Modal range in bold. |
| Meeting | 3.50-3.75 (hold) | 3.75-4.00 (+25) | 4.00-4.25 (+50) | 4.25-4.50 (+75) | Cumulative above | Cumulative below |
|---|
| Sep 16 | 64.0% [63.3] [67.7] | 36.0% [36.7] [32.3] | 0.0% | 0.0% | 36.0% | 0.0% | | Oct 28 | 49.3% [47.3] [53.7] | 42.4% [43.4] [39.6] | 8.3% [9.3] [6.7] | 0.0% | 50.7% | 0.0% | | Dec 9 | 28.3% [29.8] [32.8] | 45.4% [44.9] [45.1] | 22.8% [21.9] [19.5] | 3.5% [3.4] [2.6] | 71.7% | 0.0% |
| All three rows sum to 100.0% on the published figures. October is now a coin flip that leans hawkish for the first time this week: hold at 49.3% against a cumulative 50.7% above, having been 47.3%/52.7% on Tuesday and 53.7%/46.3% a week ago. December's modal range stays +25 bp at 45.4%, with the tail above it — 22.8% at +50 and 3.5% at +75 — accounting for the entire day's gain in cumulative-above. |
| (b) Next-year meeting path |
| Modal range, its probability, and the cumulative probability above and below the current 3.50-3.75% range, with the contract price that draws it. |
| Meeting | Future price | Modal range | Prob. | Cumulative above | Cumulative below |
|---|
| Jan 27, 2027 | 96.100 | 3.75-4.00 | 41.7% | 77.9% | 0.0% | | Mar 17, 2027 | 96.020 | 3.75-4.00 | 36.9% | 83.3% | 0.0% | | Apr 28, 2027 | 95.985 | 3.75-4.00 | 34.6% | 85.1% | 0.0% | | Jun 9, 2027 | 95.945 | 3.75-4.00 | 32.6% | 86.7% | 0.0% | | Jul 28, 2027 | 95.935 | 3.75-4.00 | 32.6% | 86.7% | 0.0% | | Sep 15, 2027 | 95.935 | 3.75-4.00 | 32.1% | 87.0% | 0.0% | | Oct 27, 2027 | 95.940 | 3.75-4.00 | 32.1% | 85.4% | 0.6% | | Dec 8, 2027 | 95.960 | 3.75-4.00 | 32.1% | 83.6% | 1.4% |
| The terminal geometry is still a shallow hump, and it has moved lower and later in one session. ZQ prices fall from 96.100 in January to a trough of 95.935 at both July and September 2027, then recover to 95.960 by December — against a Tuesday strip that troughed at 95.960 in July. The whole 2027 curve is roughly 2.5 to 5 basis points cheaper than it was twenty-four hours ago. Cumulative-above peaks at 87.0% in September 2027, up from 83.5% on Tuesday, and the first non-trivial cut probability — 1.4% at 3.25-3.50% — still appears only at the December 2027 meeting, having been 1.6% on Tuesday. A market that raises the odds of hiking and lowers the odds of cutting at the same meeting is not repricing the path; it is removing the two-sided distribution altogether. |
| (c) Year-end probability ladders |
| Year-end 2026 — the 9 December meeting. |
| Outcome | Range | Probability |
|---|
| -75 bp | 2.75-3.00 | 0.0% | | -50 bp | 3.00-3.25 | 0.0% | | -25 bp | 3.25-3.50 | 0.0% | | Hold | 3.50-3.75 | 28.3% | | +25 bp | 3.75-4.00 | 45.4% | | +50 bp | 4.00-4.25 | 22.8% | | +75 bp | 4.25-4.50 | 3.5% | | +100 bp and beyond | 4.50 and higher | 0.0% |
| Cumulative above the current range: 71.7%. Cumulative below: 0.0%. Sum: 100.0%. |
| Year-end 2027 — the 8 December meeting. |
| Outcome | Range | Probability |
|---|
| -75 bp | 2.75-3.00 | 0.0% | | -50 bp | 3.00-3.25 | 0.0% | | -25 bp | 3.25-3.50 | 1.4% | | Hold | 3.50-3.75 | 15.0% | | +25 bp | 3.75-4.00 | 32.1% | | +50 bp | 4.00-4.25 | 30.4% | | +75 bp | 4.25-4.50 | 15.6% | | +100 bp | 4.50-4.75 | 4.6% | | +125 bp | 4.75-5.00 | 0.8% | | +150 bp | 5.00-5.25 | 0.1% | | +175 bp and beyond | 5.25 and higher | 0.0% |
| Cumulative above the current range: 83.6%. Cumulative below: 1.4%. Sum: 100.0%. |
| Rounding, transparently. Every figure is reproduced at the vendor's own one-decimal precision. Column sums of 99.9% or 100.1% are rounding artefacts of that precision, not missing probability mass; no cell has been rescaled, and cells the vendor does not publish are shown as 0.0% only where the vendor's own card omits the range entirely, which under CME methodology means a probability below the rounding floor. |
| (a) IG and HY credit spreads |
| ICE BofA option-adjusted spreads via FRED. FRED publishes with a one-business-day lag: the levels below are as of 25 August 2026, not the 26 August close. Same-day direction is cross-checked against the cash-market proxies underneath. |
| Series | FRED code | 25 Aug | 1-Day | 1-Week | YTD (from 31 Dec 2025) |
|---|
| IG credit spread (ICE BofA US Corporate OAS) | BAMLC0A0CM | 81 bp | 0 bp | -1 bp | +2 bp (from 79) | | HY credit spread (ICE BofA US High Yield OAS) | BAMLH0A0HYM2 | 270 bp | +1 bp | -5 bp | -11 bp (from 281) | | CCC & lower credit spread | BAMLH0A3HYC | 1,039 bp | +3 bp | +12 bp | +154 bp (from 885) | | CDX IG 5y | — | Not retrievable this session | — | — | — | | CDX HY 5y | — | Not retrievable this session | — | — | — |
| CDX — the full six-step ladder was worked again and is reported so the gap stays auditable. (1) Bloomberg in Chrome: the /markets and /markets/rates-bonds boards publish the Bloomberg Fixed Income Indices and global 10-year yields but carry no CDX line; the only CDS content on the site on 26 August was a sovereign story, "Mexico Touts CDS Levels as Bonds Trade as Speculative Grade," which quotes no CDX index level. (2) WSJ Market Data bonds page: rendered, and its credit tables again did not populate a CDX row. (3) Cbonds carries dedicated CDX.NA.IG 5Y and CDX.NA.HY 5Y index pages but masks the levels behind a subscription; S&P Dow Jones Indices and ICE publish methodology and index-family documentation, not the daily running spread. (4) FT Markets Data and Reuters credit wraps returned no dated CDX quote for 26 August. (5) TradingView and Barchart symbol searches for CDX still resolve to an unrelated ETF. (6) Cash-market proxies, labelled as proxies: HYG closed at $79.90, -0.03%, and LQD at $106.78, -0.07%, both on 26 August. Two ETFs moving less than a tenth of a percent on a day the belly of the curve sold off 2 to 4 bp says credit carried the duration and gave back nothing on spread — consistent with the flat-to-marginally-wider FRED picture through 25 August. No CDX level is published here, because an undated third-party digest number is not a CDX level. |
| The tail keeps widening while the index does not move. IG at 81 bp is unchanged on the day, 1 bp tighter on the week and 2 bp wider than where 2026 started. HY at 270 bp is 11 bp tighter than New Year's Day. And CCC and lower at 1,039 bp is +154 bp year to date and +12 bp on the week alone, putting the CCC-minus-HY differential at 769 bp, its widest of the reporting window and 2 bp wider than Tuesday. Three rows, one story: the aggregate is tight because the aggregate is high quality, and the dispersion inside HY is doing the work the headline spread refuses to show. |
| (b) Money-market and funding plumbing |
| New York Fed reference rates, published ~8:00 a.m. ET for the prior business day. The rates below carry the 25 August 2026 effective date. |
| Rate | 25 Aug | Change vs 24 Aug | 1st pct | 99th pct | Volume |
|---|
| SOFR | 3.66% | +1 bp | 3.60% | 3.74% | $2,916bn | | EFFR | 3.63% | 0 bp | 3.60% | 3.69% | $109bn | | OBFR | 3.63% | 0 bp | 3.55% | 3.70% | $220bn | | TGCR | 3.64% | +1 bp | 3.55% | 3.66% | $1,182bn | | BGCR | 3.64% | +1 bp | 3.55% | 3.69% | $1,205bn | | SOFR - IORB | +1 bp | +1 bp | — | — | IORB 3.65% |
| The first positive SOFR-IORB spread of the run, and the facility filled at the same time. SOFR had printed exactly at the 3.65% IORB for three consecutive sessions; on the 25 August effective date it moved a basis point through it, with the 99th percentile at 3.74% and tri-party and broad general collateral both a basis point higher. Simultaneously, overnight reverse repo take-up reached $702m on 26 August, from $405m on the 25th, $380m on the 24th and $200m on the 21st — 3.5 times the level of three sessions ago. Reserve balances are unchanged at $2.935tn for the week ended 19 August, $58bn below the 5 August peak of $2.993tn, with no newer weekly print yet published. |
| The bill strip is the corroborating tell, and this time it moved. The 1-month bill rose a basis point to 3.80% and is 3 bp cheaper on the week, the largest weekly move of any tenor on the curve bar the 3-year, while 1.5 Mo held 3.78%, 2 Mo 3.80%, 3 Mo -1 bp to 3.85%, 4 Mo -1 bp to 3.88% and 6 Mo -1 bp to 3.94% (Section 6, off-table tenors). A 1-month bill cheapening into month-end while every other bill richens is the shape of a calendar-driven funding squeeze, not a policy repricing — and it arrives with 31 August month-end three sessions out and a bills-for-bonds operation on 9 September behind it. Watch whether SOFR holds above IORB through the turn. |
| (c) Rates volatility and swap spreads |
| Metric | Level | Vintage | Read |
|---|
| ICE BofA MOVE | ≈71.9 | 25 August 2026, delayed vendor series | Change withheld — the source page is internally inconsistent | | VIX | 15.21 | 26 August close | -1.55%, and it closed at the low of the day | | MOVE / VIX | ≈4.7 | Mixed vintage — do not trade on this ratio | Pairs a 25 August MOVE against a 26 August VIX close | | 10y Treasury-swap spread | ≈38 bp | 25 August (Bloomberg) | 3 bp narrower since the buyback announcement; no 26 August update published | | 30y Treasury-swap spread | Narrowest since February | 25 August (Bloomberg) | Level not published by the source; the ranking is |
| The MOVE vintage is labelled deliberately, and this session the series failed its own consistency check. The Investing.com MOVE page marks 71.92 with a 25 August date, a 0.00% change, a day's range of 71.92-73.98 and a stated previous close of 95.74 — a previous close 24 points away from the day's low is not reconcilable with the rest of the page, so the level is reported and the change is withheld. What can be said with confidence comes from the swaps market instead: Treasuries have outperformed equivalent-maturity swaps since the buyback announcement, compressing the 30-year spread to a six-month extreme and the 10-year gap to roughly 38 bp, with Fed researchers putting hedge-fund swap-spread positions at a record $305bn last year against under $50bn in 2022. That basis is now facing a 4 November refunding that three bulge-bracket desks are openly war-gaming (Section 6). |
| (d) Issuance, leveraged loans and private credit |
- IG primary is running at an all-time August pace and the index has not blinked. August high-grade supply reached $145.2bn as of Monday, topping 2020's $136bn for the month and setting an August record — a third consecutive record month. Last week alone brought $80bn, the third-heaviest week of 2026, with nineteen issuers on Monday, the most in seven months. Year to date, roughly $1.4tn of U.S. IG notes have been sold, about 9% above the 2020 pace (Bloomberg).
- The concession data says the demand side is being tested but not broken. Issuers have been paying roughly 5 bp in new-issue concessions on deals covered about 2x, with order-book attrition elevated near 40% — the price of clearing record supply, paid in concession rather than in secondary spread. The evidence is the OAS row above: IG at 81 bp, unchanged on the day and 1 bp tighter on the week, into the heaviest August on record.
- The AI capex channel is the driver, and it produced two datapoints on Wednesday. Anthropic agreed to spend $45bn renting AI cloud capacity from Nscale's flagship West Virginia data-centre development, and the U.S. said it will spend billions to power Army bases with nuclear reactors (Bloomberg). Both are demand for the same balance sheets that are issuing into the IG calendar, and both landed on the day GE Vernova rose 2.90%, Quanta Services 2.14% and Eaton 2.50%.
- Leveraged loans and private credit. No dated Morningstar LSTA index level or bank-CDS print was obtainable this session. The named watch items are Brightline's $350m Assured-backed loan arranged in case of bankruptcy (Bloomberg, 26 August), and, carried forward, Guggenheim Investments' disclosure that affiliates may buy its hard-hit loan — sponsor-affiliate bids into a marked-down position, which is the private-credit governance question in miniature.
|
| The credit take. Tight IG credit spreads, a record supply month, a CCC tier widening every week and a 15.21 VIX that closed at the low of its day is the configuration to flag — and Wednesday added a fourth leg to it, because the funding market moved for the first time in a week. IG at 81 bp has now absorbed $145.2bn of August issuance without widening; HY at 270 bp is 11 bp tighter than New Year's Day; CCC and lower has widened 154 bp year to date and 12 bp in the last week, taking the CCC-minus-HY differential to 769 bp. Meanwhile SOFR printed a basis point above IORB and reverse repo take-up tripled in three sessions to $702m. Equity volatility says nothing is wrong, index credit says nothing is wrong, the tail of credit says something is, and the plumbing has just started to say something too. What breaks it: a month-end turn on 31 August that pushes SOFR further through IORB and forces a bid for balance-sheet; a Warsh keynote on Friday that treats 3.50-3.75% as a floor and re-prices the December hike above 80%; or a single CCC-tier default that turns dispersion into a mark. What confirms it: IG absorbing another record week at 81 bp with the September calendar clearing and SOFR back at the floor after the turn. Colour convention: credit spreads widening = red, tightening = green. |
| Levels from the TradingEconomics currency board, Aug/26 basis, cross-checked against Investing.com. Quote basis: USD per unit for EUR, GBP, AUD and NZD; units per USD for JPY, CHF, CAD, KRW, TWD, CNY and CNH. The board's %Chg column is a full-session daily change, verified against the prior edition's levels for the same vendor. |
| Pair | Level | %Chg | Weekly | YTD | Context |
|---|
| DXY | 99.137 | +0.22% | +0.31% | +0.83% | TradingEconomics; Investing.com's board marks 99.07, +0.23%. Highest close of the week | | EUR/USD | 1.16538 | -0.18% | -0.20% | -0.74% | Bloomberg marks 1.1653, -0.2%. Still the only G3 currency negative for 2026 | | GBP/USD | 1.35933 | -0.40% | -0.10% | +0.99% | The weakest G10 major of the session, with the UK 10-year 4 bp higher at 5.03% | | USD/JPY | 159.283 | +0.05% | +0.71% | +1.62% | Yen still the weakest major year on year, -8.11% | | USD/CHF | 0.80518 | +0.47% | +0.98% | +1.55% | The haven cross sold hardest on a flat equity day — the exact inverse of Tuesday | | AUD/USD | 0.71754 | +0.17% | +0.71% | +7.53% | Best major of 2026, and it rose on a day copper fell 1.65% | | NZD/USD | 0.59435 | -0.56% | +0.13% | +3.26% | | | USD/CAD | 1.38761 | +0.28% | +0.49% | +1.13% | Loonie gave back Tuesday's gain with crude lower | | USD/KRW | 1385.49 | +0.26% | -0.22% | -3.83% | Won weaker on the Kospi's +0.97% session | | USD/TWD | 31.855 | -0.02% | — | — | Investing.com, post-close. Flat on a +1.47% Taiwan Weighted | | USD/CNY | 6.72094 | +0.05% | -0.15% | -3.66% | | | USD/CNH | 6.7216 | — | — | — | Printed 6.7151 intraday, a fresh 52-week extreme, then closed 65 pips off it |
| The take: the dollar had its best day of the week and the two currencies that should have cared did not. DXY rose 0.22% to 99.137, its firmest close of the week, on a session when the belly of the Treasury curve sold off 2 to 4 bp and the September hike probability fell. Société Générale's Kit Juckes had framed the standing problem the day before: "it is hard to escape the fact that the second Trump Presidency is delivering a weaker dollar than US economic performance, or Fed policy, would suggest... dollar strength will only return when (if) domestic data turn stronger and put pressure on the Fed to tighten." Wednesday delivered exactly that — personal income +0.4% against +0.2%, durable goods +1.1% against +0.5% — and the dollar index moved 22 basis points. That is a small answer to a big test. |
| The second-order crosses are the franc and the won, and both went the wrong way. USD/CHF rose 0.47% to 0.80518, making the Swiss franc the session's weakest major — twenty-four hours after it was the strongest, on a day the S&P rose. A haven that bids into a risk-on tape and then sells into a flat one is not hedging equities; it is trading the dollar's rate differential, which means Tuesday's franc bid was the debasement flow and Wednesday's franc sale was its unwind, alongside gold -0.96% and bitcoin flat at $78,497 (Section 11). And USD/KRW rose 0.26% to 1385.49 on a session the Kospi gained 0.97%, while USD/TWD was flat at 31.855 on a Taiwan Weighted up 1.47% — the two Asian semiconductor markets rallied and neither currency was bought. That is domestic leverage and hedged foreign flow, not fresh dollar-selling into the region, and it is the same tell this report flagged on the Kospi's best session of the month. |
| The renminbi is the exception that proves the rule. USD/CNH printed 6.7151 intraday, a fresh fifty-two-week extreme that took out Tuesday's 6.7165, on a day the dollar index rose 0.22%, then closed back at 6.7216. Onshore USD/CNY finished 6.72094, up 0.05%, and remains -3.66% year to date. A currency that sets a new one-year high against a rising dollar and then gives it back inside the session is a currency whose appreciation is being administered, not discovered. It stays the cleanest asymmetry on the board and the cheapest expression of the dollar-diversification thesis that gold spent Wednesday retreating from. |
| Settlement basis, stated, and changed this session: all rows are taken from the Investing.com per-contract historical settlement series, which is one internally consistent basis for both the level and the day-change. The prior edition derived the metals and product settles from the post-18:00 ET electronic board instead; where the two bases disagree on the 25 August print, the difference is reconciled in Data Notes and the historical series is now the standard. All contract months are named. |
| Contract | Settle | Chg | %Chg | Week | YTD | Driver |
|---|
| WTI (Oct, NYMEX) | $81.81 | -$0.55 | -0.67% | -3.07% | +42.46%* | Iran-Oman Hormuz revenue-sharing deal; range $79.65-$83.28 | | Brent (Nov, ICE) | $86.36 | -$0.91 | -1.04% | -4.55% | +43.72%* | Contract rolled from October — see Data Notes | | Natural gas (Oct, NYMEX) | $2.901 | +$0.080 | +2.84% | +0.91% | -22.96%* | Best energy contract on the board, into Thursday's storage report | | RBOB gasoline (Sep) | $3.2763 | +$0.0552 | +1.71% | +0.73% | — | Rose 2.4 points more than crude fell | | Heating oil (Sep) | $4.2196 | -$0.0242 | -0.57% | -5.14% | — | Fell less than Brent, more than WTI | | Gold (Comex Dec) | $4,649.25 | -$45.25 | -0.96% | +1.91% | +6.58%* | First decline in five sessions | | Silver (Comex Sep) | $68.120 | -$0.562 | -0.82% | +2.38% | -3.85%* | Outperformed gold by 14 bp | | Copper (Comex Sep) | $6.6033 | -$0.1107 | -1.65% | +1.67% | +16.08%* | Gave back Tuesday's +1.65% exactly |
| \YTD figures marked with an asterisk are TradingEconomics spot year-to-date returns, not futures returns on the contracts quoted above, and are shown for direction and magnitude only. The daily settles, changes and percentage moves are on the futures basis named in each row. Weekly columns are TradingEconomics spot weekly changes on the same caveat. Mixing the two would be a basis error; they are presented in separate columns for exactly that reason.* |
| The crack spreads decoupled, and this time they decoupled by three dollars. On the same 42-gallon basis this report has used all month: |
- Gasoline crack: $3.2763 × 42 - $81.81 = $55.79, up $2.87 from Tuesday's $52.93.
- Distillate crack: $4.2196 × 42 - $81.81 = $95.41, down 47 cents from Tuesday's $95.88.
|
| A $3.34 move in the gasoline-minus-distillate differential in one session is the largest of the month, and it is the third consecutive session in which the products have told a cleaner story than the barrel. Monday: sanctions land, crude falls, the distillate crack collapses because distillate carries the sanctioned-flow premium. Tuesday: a Hormuz workaround appears, crude falls 3.12%, distillate gives up a fraction and gasoline rises. Wednesday: Iran's Revolutionary Guard confirms a revenue-sharing deal with Oman on the strait, crude falls again — and RBOB rises 1.71% outright. The barrel with no geopolitical premium left to lose is now outperforming on the way down for a third session running. The Iran risk premium has been sold on three consecutive and contradictory headlines, which is what a fully liquidated long position looks like from the outside. The seasonal caveat is real and unchanged: this is late August, and the September gasoline calendar works against the crack. |
| The metals took the day off together, which is itself the information. Copper -1.65%, gold -0.96%, silver -0.82% — after Tuesday's three-way split of copper +1.61%, gold +0.38% and silver +0.05%. Copper gave back Tuesday's gain to the basis point. Gold's decline is its first in five sessions, and it came on a day the belly of the curve sold off and the dollar rose 0.22% — a textbook real-rate result, and confirmation that the four-day run was a discount-rate trade rather than a pure debasement one. Bitcoin was flat at $78,497.57 after failing at $80,000, with VanEck's Matthew Sigel noting the rally was fuelled by short-covering, so "further gains would require fresh capital." The gold-silver ratio compressed to 4,649.25 / 68.120 = 68.25 from 68.35, the second consecutive session of compression and the first evidence for the silver-catch-up thesis (Section 12). Bloomberg's own framing of the week — bitcoin and gold funds drew $7bn amid the scarcity trade — is the flow that has to keep arriving for Tuesday's configuration to resume. |
| Desk-style ideas for institutional investors. Each carries an explicit expression, catalyst and invalidation. These are not personalized investment advice; verify independently and size to your own mandate before acting. |
| 1. The rates trade — the calendar spread took back half of Tuesday's give-back; hold the half, stop unchanged |
| Mark first, honestly. The book is long ZQU6 (September 2026) against short ZQZ6 (December 2026), DV01-matched one-for-one at $41.67 per basis point per contract, entered Thursday at 96.325 / 96.160 for a spread of 16.5 bp, marked 18.5 bp Friday, 20.5 bp Monday where a second quarter came off and the stop was raised to 18.0 bp, and 18.5 bp Tuesday. Wednesday's mark: ZQU6 96.325, ZQZ6 96.135 — a spread of 19.0 bp. That is +0.5 bp on the day, worth +$20.84 per contract pair on the retained half, and it leaves the trade +2.5 bp from entry with 1.0 bp of cushion above the 18.0 bp stop. |
| Why it worked, and it is the mechanism, not luck. The trade needs December to absorb more of every repricing than September. Wednesday delivered that in its purest form so far: September's cumulative hike fell (CME 39.6% → 36.5%; Investing.com 36.7% → 36.0%) while December's rose (70.2% → 71.7%), and every 2027 meeting shifted up by 1.5 to 2.0 pp of cumulative-above. ZQZ6 did not move; ZQU6 rose half a tick. An in-line core PCE at 3.3% removed the case for urgency without touching the case for the destination, and that is precisely the asymmetry this spread is long. |
| The modal path, the base case and the tails. Modal path: hold on 16 September (Investing.com 64.0%, CME 63.5%, ease 0.0%); hold still modal on 28 October at 49.3% but now with 50.7% cumulative above it — October has crossed into hawkish territory for the first time this week; one 25 bp hike delivered by 9 December, modal 3.75-4.00% at 45.4%, cumulative 71.7%; the modal range stays 3.75-4.00% across the entire 2027 strip; and the terminal geometry peaks around July-September 2027, drawn by ZQ prices troughing at 95.935, roughly 2.5 bp lower than Tuesday's trough. Base case: the strip is pushing the hike out and firming it up, which is the exact configuration in which a September-versus-December calendar spread pays. Tail one, dovish: claims above 220,000 on Thursday, which would take December back under 65% and compress this spread through the stop. Tail two, hawkish but adverse: a Warsh keynote that treats 3.50-3.75% as a floor and pulls the hike forward into September, which compresses the spread from the other side. Practical implication: the edge is real but it is two and a half basis points wide after five sessions, so hold the half, do not add, do not move the stop a third time. |
| Expression: long ZQU6 / short ZQZ6, DV01-matched one-for-one, half size. Catalyst: claims 8/27 08:30; Warsh 8/28 ~10:00; ISM manufacturing and JOLTS 9/1; payrolls 9/4 08:30; the first buyback operation 9 September; the 16 September FOMC. Invalidation: the spread through 18.0 bp; or the September cumulative hike printing above 50% on either vendor; or any 2026 meeting showing a non-zero cut probability. Sizing: one-for-one DV01 at $41.67 per basis point per pair; risks 1.0 bp to make a further 2.0. |
| 2. New — long the 20-year against the 30-year, on the November refunding |
| Expression: long the 20-year bond against short the 30-year, DV01-neutral, half size. Thesis: 20s30s sits at 1 bp — the 30-year yields 5.18% and the 20-year 5.17%, one basis point of pickup for ten fewer years of duration, on a curve that slopes upward everywhere else. Bloomberg reported that Citigroup has pushed its forecast for larger auctions back to 2028 and raised the tail risk that Treasury eliminates the 20-year, with Citi's Jason Williams saying "the 20-year may benefit the most from future actions as Treasury is likely to reduce the size of its auctions, given how poor it trades relative to 10s and 30s," and recommending clients go long the tenor. Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Citi are all war-gaming the 4 November refunding, and Morgan Stanley's Martin Tobias calls the buybacks "just a bridge" to it. Honest disclosure: this report closed a 20s30s position on Monday at 2 bp because the spread had compressed and the thesis was carry. This is a different trade with a different driver — issuance composition, not carry — and it is being re-entered at a 1 bp spread rather than defended at the old one. Catalyst: the 9 September buyback operation and its maturity buckets; Treasury's 4 November quarterly refunding; any Treasury guidance language shifting further from "increases" toward "changes." Invalidation: 20s30s through -3 bp (the 20-year cheapening decisively through the 30-year), or an explicit Treasury statement ruling out changes to long-end auction sizes. Sizing: a half. WisdomTree's Kevin Flanagan carries the risk in one line: "it seems to me mathematically very difficult to cut issuance at the longer end of the curve and make it up elsewhere... the market will see that as manipulation and it can backfire." |
| 3. Protection on the CCC cohort funded in IG — hold at a half; the differential just made a new wide |
| Expression: long CCC-exposed credit protection (or short a levered-loan / CCC-heavy vehicle) against long IG cash. Mark: CCC 1,039 bp, +3 bp; IG 81 bp, unchanged on the 25 August FRED update, taking the CCC-minus-HY differential to 769 bp, its widest of the reporting window and 2 bp better on the day. The five-session ratio keeps working: CCC +12 bp on the week against IG -1 bp, and on the year CCC +154 bp against IG +2 bp. What strengthened the case on Wednesday: the funding leg. SOFR printed a basis point above IORB and reverse repo take-up tripled in three sessions to $702m into a 31 August month-end (Section 9). A CCC tier that is already widening does not want a month-end that tightens balance-sheet. Catalyst: month-end; the September IG calendar clearing; Broadcom on 2 September, because the AI capex line is what the calendar funds. Invalidation, unchanged: the differential back through 735 bp, or IG widening beyond 85 bp — the second of which would mean the trade's funding leg has become the problem. Sizing: a half, unchanged. |
| 4. On-balance-sheet AI funding against off-balance-sheet AI funding — take a quarter off before the print |
| Expression: long customer-funded suppliers against short self-funded ones, half size. Mark: Marvell +1.97% to $245.11 against Broadcom -0.32% to $355.59 — a 2.29-point gain, a second consecutive winning session after Tuesday's 5.40 points. Marvell is now roughly 13.7% above its pre-announcement level. Action: take a quarter off and hold a quarter into Marvell's print on Thursday 27 August after the close (Section 5). The trade has made 7.7 points in two sessions on positioning ahead of a binary event; carrying full size through the event converts a positioning trade into an earnings bet, which is not what was underwritten. Catalyst: Marvell 8/27 AMC; Broadcom 9/2 AMC. Invalidation, unchanged: a customer-funded structure trading below its announcement price within ten sessions. Sizing: a quarter into the print. |
| 5. Short the utility complex against the S&P 500 — close it |
| Expression: short an equal-weighted large-cap utility basket against long the S&P 500, beta-adjusted, cut to a quarter on Tuesday. Mark: utilities +0.31% against an S&P -0.02% is a further 0.33-point loss, bringing the three-session total to roughly -1.54 points. Action: close it. The honest reading, and it is the reason rather than the excuse: the thesis required the discount rate on a regulated 30-year cash flow to rise. Wednesday was a hawkish session — the belly sold off 4 bp at three years, the December hike rose to 71.7%, the dollar gained — and utilities still rose 0.31%, outperforming the index for a third straight day. A short that loses on dovish days and on hawkish days has no thesis left; it has only a drawdown. The written invalidations never triggered — the 30-year at 5.18% is 8 bp from the 5.10% stop and the September hike at 36.0% is 6 pp from the 30% floor — which is the point worth recording: the stops were set on the wrong variable. The variable that mattered was the long end's refusal to sell off, and 20s30s at 1 bp says why. |
| 6. Long silver against short gold — hold, small; the ratio has compressed two sessions running |
| Expression: long Comex September silver against short Comex December gold, notional-matched, small. Mark: silver -0.82% against gold -0.96% is a 0.14-point gain, and the gold-silver ratio compressed to 68.25 from 68.35, a second consecutive session of compression. The thesis is intact and the test was a good one: the trade's first real examination was a session in which both legs fell, and silver fell less. A ratio trade that works on the way down as well as the way up is a ratio trade, not a levered long. Copper at $6.6033 is comfortably above the $6.40 invalidation despite a 1.65% decline. Catalyst: Warsh at Jackson Hole, Friday ~10:00 — a keynote that leaves the debasement question unanswered is the cleanest silver catalyst, because silver is the only asset on the board levered to both the industrial and the monetary leg and participating in neither; the copper tape into the 8 September Canadian tariff date. Invalidation, unchanged: the ratio through 71, or copper closing below $6.40. Sizing: small, unchanged. |
| 7. Long the gasoline crack against the distillate crack — best possible first session; take a third off |
| Expression: long the RBOB crack against short the heating-oil crack, both on the standard 42-gallon basis against front-month WTI, barrel-for-barrel, small. Mark: the gasoline crack rose $2.87 to $55.79 while the distillate crack fell 47 cents to $95.41 — a $3.34 move in the differential, the largest single-session move in the pair this month, on the first session of the trade. Why: Iran's Revolutionary Guard confirmed a revenue-sharing deal with Oman on the Strait of Hormuz and crude fell again, and for a third consecutive session the barrel carrying the sanctioned-flow premium bled while the barrel carrying none did not. RBOB rose 1.71% outright on a day WTI fell 0.67%. Action: take a third off. A trade that makes its first month's target in its first session should be reduced, not celebrated — particularly against a September gasoline calendar that works structurally against the long leg. Catalyst: enforcement detail on "Operation Economic Outcast," particularly against Chinese refiners; weekly EIA product inventories, with crude stocks at 428.91m barrels on the 21 August week. Invalidation, unchanged: a re-escalation headline that adds more than $3 to the distillate crack in a single session, or the gasoline crack falling below $50. Sizing: two-thirds of a small position. |
| Prior closes, marked forward. The equal-weight-versus-cap-weight pair, closed Tuesday at its written invalidation, would have made money on Wednesday: the S&P 500 fell 0.02% while 273 members advanced against 217 — the breadth divergence inverted straight back. That is the third consecutive edition in which a correctly-executed stop cost money the following session, and it is being recorded rather than re-entered, for the reason given when it was closed: breadth is a description of concentration, not a direction, and a pair that is long the median stock is a short-Nvidia position wearing a breadth costume. On Wednesday the costume happened to fit. The memory-versus-platform pair, stopped out a week ago, would have made a further 2.1 points (STX +3.01%, WDC +4.02%, MU +0.58%, SNDK +1.26% against AAPL +1.15%, MSFT +0.95%, GOOGL -1.43%, AMZN -0.30%). |
| The vol note. VIX closed at 15.21, -1.55%, at the low of its own day, on the eve of a Jackson Hole keynote and after a session in which the largest constituent of the index reported and moved more than 6 percentage points between its regular-session close and its extended-session high. A 15.21 handle asks for roughly a 0.96% daily move. Consider what is actually in front of it: eight S&P 500 reporters on Thursday including Marvell, Autodesk, Workday and Ulta after the close; initial claims Thursday at 8:30 with a verified 208,000 consensus; Chair Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote Friday at ~10:00, nineteen days before the FOMC; 31 August month-end into a funding market that has just moved; and August payrolls on 4 September. Rates volatility, on a delayed and internally inconsistent vendor series, sits near 71.9 — and the belly of the Treasury curve moved 4 bp in a session. Own gamma dated 27 August through 4 September. The specific asymmetry: an index that closed at 7,675.70 while its futures traded 7,695.80, +0.24%, after hours is an index that has already spent part of Thursday's move before Thursday opens. |
| Crowded consensuses to stress-test, with the numbers. |
- "The long end is protected." The evidence is real: the 30-year at 5.18% is 1 bp richer on the week and 10 bp richer than 18 August while the 3-year cheapened 4 bp, and the 30-year Treasury-swap spread is at its narrowest since February. But the protection is now explicitly a November story — Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Citi are all modelling a shift in issuance composition at the 4 November refunding, and BMO's Ian Lyngen says "reductions to bond auction sizes can no longer be ruled out." Stress test: the position is levered — Fed researchers put hedge-fund swap-spread exposure at a record $305bn against under $50bn in 2022 — and the operation underpinning it has still not executed a single purchase. What does 20s30s at 1 bp do if the 9 September operation is small and the November guidance is unchanged?
- "Nvidia arbitrates everything." It reported, it beat, it guided above the average estimate — $108bn ±2% against $105.2bn — and the stock still traded down first before printing +5.07% an hour later, because some projections exceeded $110bn. Meanwhile the hardware chain beneath it had already gone up 3% to 6% during the session while the stock itself fell 1.59%. Stress test: if the customer's own beat cannot lift the customer more than the suppliers, what is the marginal buyer of the accelerator actually paying for — and what happens to Arista at +5.92% and Western Digital at +4.02% if the supply-chain trade was the front-run rather than the signal?
- "Credit is fine." IG at 81 bp absorbed a record $145.2bn August; HY at 270 bp is 11 bp tighter than New Year's Day. Meanwhile CCC and lower is +154 bp year to date and +12 bp on the week, the CCC-minus-HY differential just made a new wide at 769 bp, issuers are paying ~5 bp of new-issue concession on 2x-covered books with ~40% order attrition, and SOFR has moved a basis point above IORB with reverse repo take-up at $702m, up 3.5x in three sessions. Stress test: four separate markets are pricing calm and two of them — the CCC tier and the repo market — have started to move. Which one is the leading indicator?
- "Inflation is behind us." Core PCE matched at +0.2% and 3.3%, which the tape read as relief. The details did not cooperate: personal income +0.4% against +0.2%, durable goods +1.1% against +0.5%, Q2 core PCE prices revised up to 3.6% from 3.4%, corporate profits +8.2% against +0.5% prior. eToro's Bret Kenwell: "inflation is still too high for comfort." Stress test: the strip has priced the hike later rather than smaller — December cumulative 71.7%, every 2027 meeting shifted up. What does a Warsh keynote that says nothing about rates do to a market that has already decided he is hawkish?
- "Zero cuts is the floor." The strip prices 0.0% probability of a cut at any 2026 meeting and only 1.4% by December 2027, down from 1.6% on Tuesday. That is a distribution with the left tail removed by hand. Stress test: CME's own reference columns show the September hike moving 81.9% → 36.5% in one month. A distribution that can travel 45 points in a month in one direction can travel in the other, and there is no hedge priced for it.
|
| The two-sided geopolitical tape. De-escalation: Iran's Revolutionary Guard says Tehran has agreed revenue sharing with Oman on the Strait of Hormuz — a workaround with a fee attached rather than a blockade, and worth more than 3% off crude on the week. Escalation: Canada's retaliation on $20bn of U.S. goods, 700-plus items at 15-50%, lands 8 September; U.S. and Canadian aluminium groups jointly attacked the tariffs and pointed at China on Wednesday; and Washington is reported to be reviving a Civil War-era court to claim Iranian oil as prize. The market has now traded the de-escalation three sessions running and the escalation not at all, which tells you where the risk is unhedged. |
| Structural watch items. SOFR one basis point above IORB for the first time in the run, with reverse repo take-up at $702m and reserve balances at $2.935tn, $58bn below the 5 August peak, into a 31 August month-end and a 9 September bills-for-bonds operation; the 1-month bill 3 bp cheaper on the week while every other bill richened; a record ~$1.4tn of 2026 IG issuance funding an AI capex cycle that just added a $45bn Anthropic-Nscale commitment in a single day; Meta agreeing to pay up to $18bn to settle U.S. state social-media claims with operational changes attached; and USD/CNH taking out a fifty-two-week extreme on a day the dollar index rose. |
| What VIX is and is not pricing. At 15.21, closing at the low of its own range, VIX is pricing roughly a 0.96% daily move through a stretch containing eight S&P 500 reporters on Thursday, jobless claims Thursday morning, Chair Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote on Friday nineteen days before the FOMC, a month-end turn on 31 August in a funding market that has just moved through the IORB floor, and August payrolls on 4 September. It is not pricing the concentration mechanics that produced a 289-decliner green tape on Tuesday and a 273-advancer red tape on Wednesday. It is not pricing the CCC tier, which has widened 154 bp this year while the index has widened 2 bp. It is not pricing an issuance-composition decision on 4 November that three bulge-bracket desks are already modelling and that would reprice a $305bn crowded basis. And it is not pricing the possibility that Wednesday's supply-chain sweep — Arista, F5, Western Digital, Corning, NetApp, HPE, Seagate — was the whole Nvidia trade, front-run and already paid. Equity volatility is cheap against the calendar and not obviously cheap against the realised tape, which is why the expression stays gamma into the events, not vega across the month. |
| Sources used this session: index levels, ranges, component breadth and after-hours marks from the Investing.com major-indices, US-500 component, PHLX Semiconductor and after-hours boards, cross-checked against Bloomberg's /markets quote board; session narrative, macro actuals, analyst actions and single-name catalysts from the CNBC market live blog and the Bloomberg Markets Wrap; sector performance from the Finviz group screener in Performance table view; the par curve from the U.S. Treasury Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Text View; Fed probabilities from CME FedWatch and the Investing.com Fed Rate Monitor; credit spreads, reserve balances and reverse repo from FRED; reference rates from the New York Fed markets API; the macro calendar from the New York Fed Economic Indicators Calendar for August and September 2026, with consensus figures from WSJ Market Data; the earnings calendar from the Nasdaq earnings calendar API; FX and spot commodity context from TradingEconomics; futures settles from the Investing.com per-contract historical boards; issuance, swap-spread, refunding and credit colour from Bloomberg; ETF and single-name closes from StockAnalysis. |
| Full source links and the complete Data Notes & Conflicts section are in the companion file US_CrossAsset_Daily_2026-08-26_DataNotes.txt, alongside the canonical Markdown report of record. |
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U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Closing Daily — Wednesday, August 26, 2026. Prepared for institutional investors. Not personalized investment advice; verify independently before acting. All levels are as reported by the named sources at the times stated.
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