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U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily
Friday, August 28, 2026 — Pre-Market Report | Data as of: 7:25 AM ET | News window: Thu 4:00 PM ET → Fri 7:25 AM ET
Prepared for Institutional Investors. Not Personalized Investment Advice; Verify Independently before Acting. | Source Links and Data Notes & Conflicts provided in the companion text file (US_CrossAsset_Opening_2026-08-28_DataNotes.txt). |
1 · Pre-Open Dashboard |
| Equity futures — front contract (September 2026), Investing.com real-time, 07:06–07:14 AM ET |
| Contract | Last | Chg (pts) | %Chg | Prior settle | Overnight range | Implied cash open | | S&P 500 (ES) | 7,738.50 | −4.00 | −0.05% | 7,742.50 | 7,731.00–7,745.00 | 7,726.99 | | Nasdaq 100 (NQ) | 29,605.25 | −90.50 | −0.30% | 29,695.75 | 29,578.25–29,652.25 | 29,551.06 | | Dow (YM) | 53,641.00 | +20.00 | +0.04% | 53,621.00 | 53,616.00–53,757.00 | 53,589.44 | | Russell 2000 (RTY) | 3,016.50 | −2.50 | −0.08% | 3,019.00 | 3,015.10–3,024.60 | 3,013.17 |
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| The arithmetic, shown. The implied-open column is built from the cash-to-futures basis carried at Thursday's settle, not from a vendor fair-value feed. S&P: prior futures settle 7,742.50 − prior cash close 7,730.99 = a basis of +11.51 points; 7,738.50 − 11.51 = 7,726.99, or −4.00 points / −0.052%. Same construction gives a Nasdaq-100 basis of +54.19 (implied open 29,551.06, −0.305%), a Dow basis of +51.56 (53,589.44, +0.037%) and a Russell basis of +3.33 (3,013.17, −0.083%). Two-vendor check: Bloomberg's 7:00 AM board marks ES1 7,738.25, NQ1 29,605.00, DM1 53,639.00 with net changes implying prior settles of 7,742.50 / 29,695.75 / 53,621.00 — matching Investing.com's implied prior settles to the tick on all three. Futures ranking: YM > ES > RTY > NQ. |
| Prior cash closes — the anchor (Thursday 27 August, 4:00 PM ET) |
| Index | Close | Chg | %Chg | | S&P 500 | 7,730.99 | +55.29 | +0.72% | | Nasdaq Composite | 26,541.35 | +411.15 | +1.57% | | Dow Jones Industrials | 53,569.44 | +105.56 | +0.20% | | Nasdaq 100 | 29,641.56 | +417.04 | +1.43% | | Russell 2000 | 3,015.67 | +9.77 | +0.33% | | PHLX Semiconductor (SOX) | 11,882.2 | +270.9 | +2.33% | | VIX | 14.51 | −0.70 | −4.60% |
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| Volatility, rates, FX, commodities, crypto — live pre-open |
| Instrument | Level | Chg | Note (all times ET) | | VIX (cash) | 14.45 | −0.06 / −0.41% | 07:25. Held a 14.45–14.50 band into the keynote | | VIX futures (Sep 26) | 16.70 | +0.04 / +0.23% | Last print 27/08 — stale; carried for the 2.25-pt premium to cash only | | UST 2Y | 4.234% | +0.2 bp | 07:09:55 vs prior 4.232%. +3.4 bp vs the 4.20% official par | | UST 10Y | 4.690% | +1.8 bp | 07:18:21 vs prior 4.672%. +2.0 bp vs the 4.67% par. Bloomberg marks 4.69% — exact agreement | | UST 30Y | 5.208% | +1.7 bp | 07:09:14 vs prior 5.191%. +1.8 bp vs the 5.19% par | | DXY | 99.125 | +0.033 / +0.03% | 07:25. Unchanged for a third session | | EUR/USD | 1.1647 | −0.02% | BGN 07:11 vs Thursday's 1.16489 | | USD/JPY | 159.6700 | +0.14% | BGN 07:11 vs 159.440. Yen weaker with JGB 10s +4 bp | | WTI (Oct 26) | $83.13 | −$0.40 / −0.48% | Prior settle $83.53. Range $82.54–$83.76 | | Brent (Nov 26) | $88.22 | −$0.30 / −0.34% | Prior settle $88.52. Three vendor bases disagree — see Data Notes | | Gold (Comex Dec 26) | $4,652.86 | −$11.14 / −0.24% | Prior settle $4,664.00. Range $4,623.94–$4,667.71 | | Silver (Comex Sep 26) | $70.290 | +$0.859 / +1.24% | Prior settle $69.431. Gold–silver ratio 66.20, in from 67.18 | | Copper (Comex Oct 26) | $6.6313 | +$0.0103 / +0.16% | Contract rolled from September — see Data Notes | | Bitcoin | $79,803.82 | −0.4% (24h) | Markets Wrap 07:01. Gave back Thursday's $80,000 handle |
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| Global equities overnight |
| Market | Level | %Chg | Status | | Kospi | 6,788.88 | −1.79% | Close 02:29 ET. Worst major index of the overnight | | Nikkei 225 | 66,385.00 | +0.38% | Cash close 02:30 ET | | Taiwan Weighted | 46,331.45 | +0.77% | Cash close 02:29 ET | | Hang Seng | 25,584.79 | +0.07% | Cash close 03:59 ET | | Shanghai Composite | 3,952.18 | −0.11% | Cash close 02:59 ET | | S&P/ASX 200 | 9,092.30 | +0.60% | Cash close 02:04 ET | | Nifty 50 | 24,175.65 | +0.35% | 05:59 ET | | Stoxx Europe 600 | — | +0.6% | 9:35 AM London. Sep future 655.80, +0.49% | | DAX | 26,510.85 | +0.59% | Live 07:13 ET | | CAC 40 | 8,398.47 | +0.94% | Live 07:13 ET. Best in Europe after Thursday's −1.68% | | Euro Stoxx 50 | 6,469.85 | +0.70% | Live 07:12 ET | | FTSE 100 | 10,810.21 | +0.16% | Live 07:13 ET | | FTSE MIB | 52,655.00 | +0.75% | Live 07:13 ET | | IBEX 35 | 19,978.70 | +0.49% | Live 07:13 ET |
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| Sources: Investing.com real-time futures, commodities, bond-yield and world-index boards (each row timestamped); Bloomberg Markets futures, rates-bonds, currencies and commodities boards read 7:00–7:12 AM ET; Bloomberg Markets Wrap updated 7:01 AM ET; U.S. Treasury Daily Par Yield Curve for 27 August; Investing.com Fed Rate Monitor updated 6:45 AM ET; NY Fed reference-rate API. |
| The overnight in one paragraph. Nothing happened, and that is the position. The dominant driver of the past fifteen hours is an event that has not occurred: Chair Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote at approximately 10:00 AM ET, thirty minutes after the open and nineteen days before the FOMC. Every asset class refused to take a side. S&P futures are −4.00 points, or −0.05%, in a 14-point overnight range; the 10-year is 4.690%, up 1.8 bp; the dollar index is +0.03% at 99.125; spot gold is −0.03%. Nabil Milali of Edmond de Rothschild put it plainly to Bloomberg: "Investors are reluctant to increase their exposure just hours before Kevin Warsh's speech," adding that his recent comments "have been so vague that no one knows what to expect today." What did move is idiosyncratic and concentrated in two names. PayPal is −17.91% at $50.46 after Bloomberg reported Advent International and Stripe have abandoned a pursuit valued above $50 billion — a stock that rose more than 40% this quarter on that speculation now handing the deal premium back at the bell. Marvell is −8% near $223.10 despite beating: revenue +37% to $2.7 billion, $39 million above its own May guide, full-year outlook to roughly $18 billion from $16.5 billion — but the fiscal-2028 detail on the Google custom-silicon agreement did not arrive. The futures ranking is YM (+0.04%) > ES (−0.05%) > RTY (−0.08%) > NQ (−0.30%), and that ordering is the whole tape: Marvell and the memory complex sold against everything else held — the inverse of Thursday's melt-up in which technology rose 3.09% and ten of eleven groups fell. Overnight Korea's Kospi fell 1.79% to 6,788.88, the worst major index anywhere, while Taiwan rose 0.77%. Europe is the one constructive tape, Stoxx 600 +0.6% on a consumer-led bounce, and it is green despite selling off in rates: Spanish August CPI printed 4.3% y/y against 3.6% in July, the highest since February 2023, and French HICP accelerated toward 2.7% from 2.4%, pushing Bunds +3 bp to 3.28%. What this hands the 9:30 open: a flat-to-marginally-lower index with two large single-name air pockets inside it, no 8:30 AM data to trade beforehand, and the entire session's risk compressed into the fifteen minutes from 9:45 (Chicago PMI, consensus 57.9) through 10:00 (Michigan final at 51.0, and Warsh). The opening auction is not the event today. The 10:00 print is. |
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2 · Overnight Hot Spots — ranked by tradability at today's open |
| 1. PayPal loses the bid, and $11 a share with it. [Equities] PYPL is −17.91% at $50.46 at 07:17 ET, a $10.99 decline on 2.2 million shares — the most-traded name on the pre-market board and the largest gap in the index. Bloomberg reported overnight that the Advent International / Stripe consortium has abandoned its pursuit, which would have ranked among the largest LBOs ever attempted. The history matters for the level: the group is understood to have bid roughly $53 billion in July when PayPal was near historic lows at about a $40 billion market value; that was rejected, a higher bid was being assembled, and then PayPal's own Q2 beat took the stock up more than 40% in the quarter to a market value near $52.6 billion. The deal was killed by the target's recovery, not its weakness — which is why the fade is violent: the buyer's premium and the earnings re-rating became the same price. Bloomberg's 7:01 AM read was −15% and Investing.com's 07:17 mark is −17.91%; the gap is widening, not narrowing. Hook: above $52 at the auction the market is paying for the standalone quarter; below $48 it is marking the whole quarter's move as deal premium. A rejected $50bn take-private is also a datapoint about sponsor appetite across the payments complex. | | 2. Marvell beats, raises, and falls 8% on the sentence it did not say. [Equities] MRVL fell 8% to $223.10 per Reuters, having closed the regular session at $241.45 (−1.49%) and printed −7.8% overnight. The print was good: revenue +37% to $2.7bn, $39m above May guidance; adjusted EPS $0.94 vs $0.93; Q3 revenue guidance $3.15bn vs a $3.04bn consensus; full-year revenue to roughly $18bn, about 50% growth, from $16.5bn. What was missing was fiscal-2028 granularity on the Google custom-chip agreement, a warrant structure worth up to $12.2bn in shares. Stifel's framing is the bull case and its caveat in one line: the deal "could generate up to $120 billion in revenue over 6.5 years" — but purchases are optional, the agreement does not guarantee the orders, and Google earns the warrant incrementally as Marvell reports eligible revenue. The sell side raised targets anyway and the dispersion is the tell: KeyBanc's John Vinh went to a Street-high $400, while Oppenheimer, UBS, Wells Fargo, Rosenblatt, Roth, Jefferies and RBC clustered in the $300–$360 band. A Street-high 79% above the pre-market price, published the morning the stock gaps 8% lower, is a market that has not agreed what the Google deal is worth. Hook: $223 is the line, and Marvell is the read-across instrument for Broadcom on 2 September — AVGO closed Thursday +4.49% at $371.54 having been bid twice on other companies' numbers. | | 3. The whole session is one speech, and the market has priced no view. [Rates / FX / Equities] Warsh speaks at approximately 10:00 AM ET, thirty minutes into the cash session. Bloomberg reports that doubts about his commitment to taming inflation have already pushed long-term yields up, with a divided committee and the Treasury's bond-market intervention complicating the read. JPMorgan Asset Management's Hugh Gimber: "What investors want to see is the framework that the Fed is using to think about the economy to allow markets to better assess incoming data. That's the piece that's been missing at the moment." Berenberg's Ulrich Urbahn argues it matters more for FX, gold and bonds than for equities, and specifies the reaction function: "A firm message on inflation, fiscal credibility or the need to preserve restrictive policy would tend to lift real and nominal long-end yields, support the dollar and pressure duration-sensitive assets." The base rate is unhelpful to both sides — Bloomberg's data show the S&P 500 has gained just 0.4% on average in the week following the symposium. Overnight the strip barely moved: the September hold went to 65.9% from 65.6% and the hike to 34.1% from 34.4%, on a contract price of 96.330 against 96.325 — half a tick. Hook: the instrument that resolves is the long end. 30s at 5.208% against 20s at 5.202% — six-tenths of a basis point of pickup for ten fewer years of duration — breaks either way on the composition of the move (Section 6). | | 4. Korea sold its chips and Taiwan bought them — the Asian complex split. [Equities] Kospi fell 1.79% to 6,788.88, low 6,780.13, the worst major index in any time zone — and it did so after rising 1.53% Thursday and after New York's SOX added 2.33%. Against it, Taiwan's weighted index rose 0.77% to 46,331.45 and the SGX FTSE Taiwan September future added 1.44%. Two chip markets, one session, opposite signs. The differentiating variable is currency and policy: the Bank of Korea raised its policy rate 25 bp to 3% Thursday, its second consecutive hike and the highest since January 2025, and USD/KRW is 1,375.13, roughly 0.26% stronger for the won. A market that hikes into a semiconductor rally gets a stronger currency and a weaker index; Taiwan, which did not, got the reverse. Elsewhere Asia was flat-to-firm — Nikkei +0.38%, Hang Seng +0.07%, Shanghai −0.11%, Shenzhen Component −0.68%, ASX 200 +0.60% — with MSCI Asia Pacific +0.2%. Hook: SOX at the open. Trading Taiwan means Thursday's narrow leadership survives; trading Korea means Marvell's gap is the leading edge, not an idiosyncrasy. | | 5. Spain printed 4.3% and Europe rallied anyway. [Rates / Equities / FX] Spain's flash August CPI came in at 4.3% y/y, seven-tenths above July's 3.6% and the highest since February 2023, driven by fuels and lubricants for personal vehicles — products that fell in price in August 2025, so the base effect does most of the work. France's harmonised measure is running toward 2.7% from 2.4%, again energy-led with services softening. Bloomberg reports yields rose across Europe as a direct consequence, "strengthening the case for an increase in interest rates next month": Bunds +3 bp to 3.28%, OATs +3 bp to 4.13%, BTPs +2 bp to 4.10%, Bonos +2 bp to 3.72%, Gilts +3 bp to 5.06%. And the equity market went up into it — Stoxx 600 +0.6%, CAC +0.94%, DAX +0.59% — on a consumer-led bounce that puts the index on course to dodge its longest run of weekly losses since 2024. Hook: an ECB that hikes in September while the Fed holds is dollar-negative at the margin, and the euro has not moved (1.1647). Watch EUR/USD 1.1700. | | 6. The bear steepener is intact and the front end did not move. [Rates] On the vendor's own consistent real-time basis: 2Y +0.2 bp to 4.234%, 3Y +0.6, 5Y +0.9, 7Y +1.1, 10Y +1.8, 20Y +1.6, 30Y +1.7. That is a bear steepener led from the belly out, and it is imported: 2s10s widened 1.6 bp to 45.6 and 2s30s widened 1.5 bp to 97.4 on a night when Bunds rose 3 bp, Gilts 3 bp, JGBs 4 bp and Korean 10s 3 bp — and the U.S. rose less than any of them. Bloomberg's wrap says it directly: "The yield on 30-year Treasuries rose one basis point, with the rest of the curve seeing almost no moves." The bills tell the other half: 3M +2.2 bp to 3.796%, 6M +2.0 to 3.927%, 1Y +1.8 to 4.040%, all cheapening into 31 August month-end two sessions away. Hook: framework delivered and the steepener pays; silence and Apollo's Torsten Slok's "much higher move in long rates" hits the 20s/30s box first. | | 7. Ulta beat, popped, and is now down 2.5% — the clearest fade on the board. [Equities] ULTA is −2.54% at $526.40 after reporting EPS $6.55 against a $6.17 estimate on $3.0bn revenue with full-year FY27 EPS reaffirmed at $28.70–$29.00 — and after trading +2% in Thursday's after-hours session. A name up 2% at 8:00 PM and down 2.5% at 7:17 AM has given back roughly four and a half percentage points on no new information. It is the second consecutive session of the same behaviour in the consumer complex: Dollar General opened +12% pre-market Thursday and closed +2.53%. Autodesk shows the mirror image — −6% after hours, −4.28% now — so the software fade is narrowing while the consumer fade widens. Hook: three of four consumer names that reported this week were sold. If a clean beat cannot hold a bid, the Michigan final at 51.0 — 4.2 points below July's 55.2 — is a sector event at 10:00 before it is a macro one. | | 8. Silver takes the debasement bid alone, for a fourth session. [Commodities / FX] Comex September silver is $70.290, +$0.859 or +1.24%, having ranged $68.488 to $70.945, against December gold at $4,652.86, −$11.14 or −0.24%. The gold–silver ratio compressed to 66.20 from 67.18 — a fourth consecutive session, and at 0.98 points essentially the same magnitude as Thursday's, which was the largest of the prior three. The industrial complex went with it: LME zinc +1.77%, nickel +0.86%, LME copper +0.60%, Comex copper +0.16%, with Bloomberg noting copper is headed for a ninth consecutive weekly gain, its longest run since 2020. Outliers: palladium +5.18% to $1,408.00 and platinum +2.66% to $1,903.20. What did not participate is bitcoin — −0.4% to $79,803.82, back below the $80,000 it retook Thursday. Hook: silver plus copper plus platinum up while bitcoin is down separates the industrial-scarcity trade from the pure debasement trade for the first time this week. A hawkish Warsh should widen that separation; miners are the equity expression. | | 9. Crude fell and the refinery took the margin again — a fourth straight session. [Commodities / Equities] WTI October is $83.13, −$0.40 or −0.48%, having traded to $82.54, giving back a fifth of Thursday's 2.10% rally; Brent November is $88.22, −0.34%. But the products rose against a falling barrel for a fourth session: RBOB September $3.4053, +0.62%, heating oil September $4.3147, +0.84%. On the 42-gallon basis, the gasoline crack is 3.4053 × 42 − 83.13 = $59.89, up $1.28 from Thursday's $58.61 and $6.96 from Tuesday's $52.93; the distillate crack is 4.3147 × 42 − 83.13 = $98.09, up $2.19. The supply tape cut both ways: Bloomberg reports Qatar extended its LNG force majeure with Hormuz traffic halted and that Ukraine struck a major Russian refinery at Yaroslavl, against Venezuela weighing an OPEC exit and the WSJ finding no visible sign of the threatened Iran escalation. Hook: a product that outperforms on the way up and down for four sessions trades its own balance. The September gasoline calendar turns against the long leg from Tuesday. | | 10. Analyst actions did the damage the tape could not explain. [Equities] Three of the ten largest pre-market decliners have no earnings and no news — they have a downgrade. Parker-Hannifin is −2.89% at $981.96 after Wolfe Research's Nigel Coe cut it to Peer Perform from Outperform; the stock fell 2.72% Thursday, so this is a second consecutive decline into a rating change. Equinix is −3.49% at $1,038.83 and Motorola Solutions −1.80% at $477.80, both without an identified catalyst on the reviewed wires — flagged as unattributed in Data Notes. Hook: Parker-Hannifin below $1,000 for the first time in the reporting window — watch whether machinery follows it or leaves it isolated. | | 11. Elastic is the software print that worked, and nobody owns it. [Equities] Elastic (ESTC) rose 26.24% after the close on fiscal-Q1 adjusted EPS of $0.70 against a $0.58 consensus — a 20.7% surprise — on revenue of $478m, +15% y/y. Underneath: Cloud revenue +20% to $235.2m, sales-led subscription +18% to $398.5m, current RPO $1.15bn +21% and total RPO $1.85bn +27%. Not an index member. Set it against the four index software names that reported into Thursday's melt-up and were sold: Autodesk −6%, Workday −5%, Rubrik −10%, SentinelOne −3%. Hook: the differentiator is backlog. Elastic showed 27% RPO growth and was paid; Workday showed a 12% subscription guide and was not. Check that metric first when Palo Alto Networks reports Tuesday — PANW closed Thursday +12.83% without reporting anything. | | 12. A judge ruled against the administration on Anthropic, and it is a procurement datapoint. [Equities] Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal both report a U.S. judge has ruled the administration must lift its ban on Anthropic's AI technology for federal agencies, with the WSJ framing it as a First Amendment ruling. The direct equity read-through is narrow — Anthropic is private — but federal AI procurement is a revenue line for the hyperscalers that host these models. Hook: a slow-burn positive for federal AI spend rather than a Friday trade. |
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| Cross-asset tally: seven of the twelve items are primarily equity events, three are rates or FX events and two are commodity events. No item this session is credit-led. |
3 · Global Markets Overnight — Asia & Europe |
| Asia — cash closes |
| Index | Close | %Chg | The specific catalyst | | Kospi | 6,788.88 | −1.79% | Chip leaders retreated after Thursday's 1.53% gain; the won firmed to 1,375.13 on the BoK's second hike, to 3%. Low 6,780.13 | | Nikkei 225 | 66,385.00 | +0.38% | Fujitsu and NEC led; held the AI bid without extending it. Range 65,991–66,836 | | Taiwan Weighted | 46,331.45 | +0.77% | The one Asian chip market that bought New York's SOX print. SGX Sep future +1.44% | | Hang Seng | 25,584.79 | +0.07% | Erased an early loss; China H-shares September future −0.61% | | Shanghai Composite | 3,952.18 | −0.11% | BYD posted its first profit increase in five quarters on exports (Bloomberg) | | SZSE Component | 13,953.07 | −0.68% | The weakest of the mainland boards | | China A50 | 14,774.16 | −0.50% | | | S&P/ASX 200 | 9,092.30 | +0.60% | Xero and CBA led; PEXA fell 18% on its FY27 outlook | | Nifty 50 | 24,175.65 | +0.35% | Sensex +0.43% to 77,264.51 | | SET (Thailand) | 1,588.22 | −0.78% | | | PSEi (Philippines) | 5,956.33 | −0.80% | |
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| MSCI Asia Pacific rose 0.2%, with Bloomberg noting winners and losers almost evenly split. The most important Asian corporate datapoint of the night is CXMT, whose first-half revenue leapt almost tenfold with profit surging, making the memory chipmaker China's most valuable business — a domestic-substitution datapoint sitting directly on the Micron and SanDisk theses. MU is −1.68% at $919.70 in the U.S. pre-market. |
| Europe — live, mid-session (07:12–07:13 AM ET) |
| Index | Level | Chg | %Chg | | CAC 40 | 8,398.47 | +78.60 | +0.94% | | FTSE MIB | 52,655.00 | +389.88 | +0.75% | | BEL 20 | 5,882.64 | +43.97 | +0.75% | | PSI | 9,458.88 | +69.64 | +0.74% | | Euro Stoxx 50 | 6,469.85 | +45.12 | +0.70% | | OMXC25 | 1,930.88 | +13.38 | +0.70% | | DAX | 26,510.85 | +154.88 | +0.59% | | OMXS30 | 3,338.05 | +16.62 | +0.50% | | IBEX 35 | 19,978.70 | +97.10 | +0.49% | | WIG20 | 3,976.70 | +17.07 | +0.43% | | AEX | 1,106.27 | +2.89 | +0.26% | | SMI | 14,418.90 | +34.53 | +0.24% | | FTSE 100 | 10,810.21 | +17.67 | +0.16% | | ATX (Vienna) | 6,762.03 | +85.80 | +1.29% |
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| Sector leadership, from the September STOXX 600 sub-index futures: Auto & Parts +1.45%, Basic Resources +0.87%, Banks +0.70%, against the broad STOXX600 future +0.49% — a cyclical-beta rally, not a defensive one, and it is happening on a day European yields are rising. It is also a reversal: Thursday closed CAC −1.68%, FTSE MIB −1.17%, SMI −1.09%, IBEX −0.93%, FTSE 100 −0.79% with only the DAX green. Friday has inverted almost exactly that ranking. |
| Global rates overnight (Bloomberg board, 07:09–07:12 AM ET) |
| Market | 10Y yield | 1-day | Spread to Bund | | Germany | 3.28% | +3 bp | — | | United States | 4.69% | +1 bp | +141 bp | | United Kingdom | 5.06% | +3 bp | +178 bp | | France | 4.13% | +3 bp | +85 bp | | Italy | 4.10% | +2 bp | +82 bp (unchanged d/d) | | Spain | 3.72% | +2 bp | +44 bp | | Netherlands | 3.35% | +3 bp | +7 bp | | Portugal | 3.62% | +2 bp | +34 bp | | Greece | 3.94% | +2 bp | +66 bp | | Switzerland | 0.38% | +3 bp | — | | Japan | 2.91% | +4 bp | — | | South Korea | 4.28% | +3 bp | — | | Australia | 5.10% | +1 bp | — | | India | 6.91% | +4 bp | — |
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| The BTP–Bund spread is 82 bp and did not move, which is the quiet fact of a night in which peripheral inflation surprised to the upside: the market repriced the level of European rates without repricing peripheral credit at all. OAT–Bund at 85 bp is now wider than BTP–Bund at 82 — France pays more than Italy for ten-year money, and that inversion held through the print. |
| Overnight policy and data already released |
| Release | Actual | Prior | Market reaction | | Spain flash CPI, August | +4.3% y/y | +3.6% | Bonos +2 bp; IBEX still +0.49%. Highest since Feb 2023, fuel-led | | France HICP, August (prelim) | ~+2.7% y/y | +2.4% | OATs +3 bp; CAC +0.94% | | Bank of Korea policy rate (Thu) | 3.00%, +25 bp | 2.75% | Won to 1,375.13; Kospi −1.79% | | BYD H1 profit | First rise in five quarters | — | Shanghai −0.11% | | CXMT H1 revenue | Up almost tenfold | — | Memory read-across; MU −1.68% pre-market |
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| What this hands the U.S. open. Rates get an imported bear steepener — every major sovereign sold off harder than Treasuries did, and the U.S. 10-year's 1.8 bp is the smallest move on a board where Bunds, Gilts and Korean tens each rose 3 bp and JGBs 4 bp. That is not a domestic repricing, and the Fed strip proves it: September is 34.1% against 34.4% last night. FX gets nothing: EUR/USD is 1.1647 with a European inflation surprise and a rate-hike repricing already in the price, which means the euro is being held down by the 10:00 AM event and not by the data. Equities get a two-speed tape — Europe's cyclical bounce (autos, miners, banks) argues for U.S. industrials and materials to open firm, while Korea's 1.79% decline argues for the semiconductor complex to open soft. By U.S. sector: semis and memory face the weakest overnight signal in the market (Kospi, CXMT, Marvell); autos, machinery and mining face the strongest (STOXX autos +1.45%, basic resources +0.87%, LME zinc +1.77%); staples and discretionary face the Michigan final at 51.0 as their event; and payments face a 17.9% hole in PayPal. |
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4 · Pre-Market Movers & Single-Name Catalysts |
| Source: Investing.com pre-market board read 07:16–07:18 AM ET, cross-checked against Bloomberg's Markets Wrap (07:01) and Reuters. Pre-market volumes are thin; every percentage carries that caveat and the suspect prints are flagged. |
Down | PayPal (PYPL) −17.91% to $50.46 — volume 2.2 million, the heaviest on the board. Advent International and Stripe abandoned a pursuit valued above $50 billion (Bloomberg). Bloomberg's 7:01 AM wrap marked it −15%; the fade deepened through the pre-market. S&P 500 member. | | Marvell Technology (MRVL) −8% to ~$223.10 (Reuters, 07:14) — beat and raised; the fiscal-2028 detail on the Google agreement did not arrive. Was −7.8% overnight, so the fade is stable, not deepening. S&P 500 member. | | Autodesk (ADSK) −4.28% to $259.00 — FY27 EPS guidance $12.52–$12.60, midpoint below consensus, with commercial-real-estate and construction billings cited. After-hours was −6%, so roughly a third of the decline has been bought back. S&P 500 member. | | Equinix (EQIX) −3.49% to $1,038.83 — no catalyst identified on the reviewed wires; see Data Notes. | | Parker-Hannifin (PH) −2.89% to $981.96 — Wolfe Research's Nigel Coe downgraded to Peer Perform from Outperform. Follows a 2.72% decline Thursday. Below $1,000 for the first time in the reporting window. S&P 500 member. | | Ulta Beauty (ULTA) −2.54% to $526.40 — the fade of the morning. EPS $6.55 against $6.17 on $3.0bn revenue with FY27 EPS reaffirmed at $28.70–$29.00, and the stock traded +2% after hours. A round-trip of roughly 4.5 percentage points on no new information. S&P 500 member. | | Steel Dynamics (STLD) −1.87% to $231.42 — no identified catalyst; note LME and Comex base metals are higher overnight, so this is not commodity-driven. | | Intel (INTC) −1.80% to $90.43 — giving back part of Thursday's 4.36% Nvidia-halo gain. S&P 500 member. | | Motorola Solutions (MSI) −1.80% to $477.80 — no identified catalyst; see Data Notes. Paycom (PAYC) −1.78% to $232.82, trading with the enterprise-software fade. | | Micron (MU) −1.68% to $919.70, volume 346,000 — the memory complex against CXMT's tenfold first-half revenue increase. Micron also fell 0.32% Thursday, the day Nvidia rose 8.74%; two consecutive sessions of memory refusing the accelerator's bid. S&P 500 member. | | Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) −0.81% to $472.80; NVIDIA (NVDA) −0.46% to $226.93 on 1.73 million shares — the heaviest single-name volume after PayPal. Nvidia is giving back roughly five percent of Thursday's 8.74%. |
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Up | Cummins (CMI) +15.88% to $665.00 — treat with extreme caution. No catalyst is identifiable on any reviewed wire and no size is disclosed. A 15.9% pre-market move in a large-cap industrial with no news is far more likely a thin-print artifact than a real quote. Do not trade this number without exchange-level confirmation. | | Emerson Electric (EMR) +4.17% to $164.29 — no identified catalyst; consistent in direction with Europe's industrial bounce but not in magnitude. | | Teleflex (TFX) +3.48% to $142.50; Amcor (AMCR) +3.18% to $48.00; FMC Corp (FMC) +2.72% to $10.95 — FMC fell 3.79% Thursday, so this is a partial retrace on a low absolute price where percentage moves are mechanically large. | | Atmos Energy (ATO) +2.53% to $171.45 — a regulated utility bid on a day the 10-year is higher, which is the wrong sign for its own rate sensitivity. Flagged as suspect in Data Notes. | | Take-Two (TTWO) +2.47% to $238.75; Ameriprise (AMP) +2.20% to $568.00; Tyson Foods (TSN) +2.10% to $56.51; Mettler-Toledo (MTD) +0.84% to $1,419.25. | | Moderna (MRNA) +1.14% to $144.39 — recovering part of Thursday's 4.60% decline on the proposed $2bn convertible senior note private placement. | | Tesla (TSLA) +0.50% to $356.57; Amazon (AMZN) +0.37% to $257.20; Apple (AAPL) +0.29% to $315.50; Broadcom (AVGO) +0.14% to $372.07 — the mega-cap complex is flat, which is the honest description of the whole pre-market. |
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Non-S&P 500 names moving on their own prints | Elastic (ESTC) +26.24% after the close — adjusted EPS $0.70 vs $0.58, revenue $478m, +15%, cloud +20% to $235.2m, total RPO +27% to $1.85bn. The largest earnings reaction of the overnight. | | Rubrik (RBRK) −9.3% to −10% — non-GAAP EPS $0.20 against $0.04 on $427.3m, full-year guidance raised to $1.69bn; sold on valuation after a 30% year-to-date run. | | SentinelOne (S) −3.1% — EPS $0.08 on $292m, both above, with FY27 EPS guidance $0.30–$0.32 against $0.35. | | PagerDuty (PD) −1.81% to $12.40 after hours — EPS $0.32 vs $0.31 on $124.4m vs $123.26m, with ARR crossing $500m for the first time, and a 15% workforce reduction lifting the profit outlook. The stock had risen 3.61% to $12.63 in the regular session. |
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Analyst rating actions | Wolfe Research (Nigel Coe) downgraded Parker-Hannifin (PH) to Peer Perform from Outperform. The stock is −2.89% at $981.96, a $29.24 decline. | | KeyBanc (John Vinh) raised Marvell (MRVL) to a Street-high $400 target, Overweight maintained, citing Google custom-chip orders that have begun contributing revenue. Against the $223.10 pre-market price that implies 79% upside — published the morning the stock gapped 8% lower. | | Stifel reiterated Buy on Marvell with a $350 target, framing the Google agreement as potentially $120bn of revenue over 6.5 years while noting purchases are optional and the warrant vests only as eligible revenue is reported. $350 implies 57% upside from the pre-market price. | | Oppenheimer, UBS, Wells Fargo, Rosenblatt, Roth Capital, Jefferies and RBC all raised Marvell targets into a $300–$360 band — seven brokers clustered 35% to 61% above a stock that is down 8%. |
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Corporate actions and regulatory | PayPal: the Advent/Stripe consortium has withdrawn. No revised bid is reported. | | Anthropic: a U.S. judge ruled the administration must lift its ban on the company's AI technology for federal agencies; the Wall Street Journal reports the ruling found a First Amendment violation. | | L3Harris (LHX): the Wall Street Journal published fresh analysis this morning on the 17 August departure of CEO Christopher Kubasik after a conduct review, with Sam Mehta appointed and 2026 guidance reaffirmed. This is commentary on an eleven-day-old event, not an overnight catalyst — listed so nobody mistakes the headline for news. | | Prediction markets: the WSJ reports a U.S. servicemember and a KPMG employee are targets of an insider-trading crackdown, with charges possible this fall. |
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5 · Overnight Earnings Scorecard |
| Every company that reported since Thursday's 4:00 PM ET cash close. Bold denotes an S&P 500 member. |
| Company | EPS act / cons | Revenue act / cons | Guidance | Reaction | Read-through | | Marvell (MRVL) | $0.94 / $0.93 | $2.74bn / $2.71bn (+37% y/y, $39m above own guide) | Q3 rev $3.15bn vs $3.04bn; FY rev to ~$18bn from $16.5bn (+50%) | −8% pre-mkt ~$223.10 | The read-across name of the morning. A beat-and-raise sold for missing FY28 detail on an optional warrant. Relevant to Broadcom (2 Sep), AMD, Micron | | Autodesk (ADSK) | $3.30 / $3.12 | $2.05bn / $2.01bn | FY27 EPS $12.52–$12.60, midpoint below consensus | −4.28% (was −6% AH) | CRE and construction billings cited | | Workday (WDAY) | $2.75 / $2.61 | $2.65bn / $2.64bn | Q3 FY27 subscription revenue $2.515bn, +12% | −5% AH | The 12% subscription guide is what the market is trading. Set against Elastic's +27% RPO | | Ulta Beauty (ULTA) | $6.55 / $6.17 | $3.0bn / $2.98bn | FY27 EPS reaffirmed $28.70–$29.00; guidance raised | +2% AH → −2.54% | The clean beat in the group, and it is being sold. Read into the 10:00 Michigan final at 51.0 | | Gap (GAP) | $0.52 / $0.49 | $3.7bn / $3.7bn (in line) | — | Closed $20.79; no reliable pre-market print captured | Apparel held its margin — a modest offset to this week's consumer sequence | | Rubrik (RBRK) | $0.20 / $0.04 | $427.3m | FY revenue raised to $1.69bn | −9.3% to −10% | Not an index member. A 16-cent beat and a raise sold on a 30% YTD run | | SentinelOne (S) | $0.08 / below | $292m / below | FY27 EPS $0.30–$0.32 vs $0.35 | −3.1% | Not an index member. Margin guide, not demand | | Elastic (ESTC) | $0.70 / $0.58 (+20.7%) | $478m / $469.6m (+15% y/y) | Cloud +20% to $235.2m; cRPO $1.15bn +21%; total RPO $1.85bn +27% | +26.24% AH | Not an index member. The counter-example — backlog growth got paid where Workday's seat deceleration did not | | PagerDuty (PD) | $0.32 / $0.31 | $124.4m / $123.26m; ARR through $500m | Q3 rev $123–125m, EPS $0.34–0.36; FY27 rev $491.5–496.5m | +3.61% reg → −1.81% AH | Not an index member. A 15% workforce cut lifted the margin guide — cost, not growth |
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| Aggregate scorecard. Nine companies reported into the window and every one of them beat on earnings per share; seven of the nine also beat or matched on revenue. The tape paid exactly one — Elastic, +26.24% — and sold six. That is the third consecutive session in which the reporting cohort has beaten and been sold, and the pattern now has a specific shape: beats on the current quarter are worth nothing; the market is paying only for forward backlog and punishing any guidance line whose midpoint sits below consensus or whose composition is optional. Marvell raised its full-year revenue outlook by $1.5 billion, or 9%, and lost 8%. Autodesk beat on both lines and lost 4.3% on an EPS midpoint. Ulta beat by 38 cents, raised, and is down 2.5%. No FactSet or LSEG blended-growth statistic was retrievable in this pre-market window; the beat count above is this desk's own tally of the nine names and is stated as such. No S&P 500 company reports today — see Section 13. |
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6 · U.S. Treasury Par Curve & Rates |
| Official par curve — Thursday 27 August, 3:30 PM ET close |
| Tenor | 27 Aug | 26 Aug | 1-Day | 20 Aug | 1-Week | | 1 Mo | 3.81% | 3.80% | +1 bp | 3.80% | +1 bp | | 3 Mo | 3.84% | 3.85% | −1 bp | 3.87% | −3 bp | | 1 Yr | 4.04% | 4.02% | +2 bp | 3.99% | +5 bp | | 2 Yr | 4.20% | 4.19% | +1 bp | 4.19% | +1 bp | | 3 Yr | 4.30% | 4.29% | +1 bp | 4.26% | +4 bp | | 5 Yr | 4.38% | 4.37% | +1 bp | 4.39% | −1 bp | | 7 Yr | 4.52% | 4.51% | +1 bp | 4.53% | −1 bp | | 10 Yr | 4.67% | 4.66% | +1 bp | 4.69% | −2 bp | | 20 Yr | 5.18% | 5.17% | +1 bp | 5.20% | −2 bp | | 30 Yr | 5.19% | 5.18% | +1 bp | 5.23% | −4 bp |
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| Source: U.S. Treasury Daily Par Yield Curve Rates. Colour convention on yields is inverted — up is red, down is green. This is the anchor for every overnight comparison below and it is a Thursday construct, not a live quote. |
| Live pre-open block — the overnight move |
| Tenor | Live yield | Time ET | vs vendor prior close | Gap to official par | | 3 Mo | 3.796% | 06:43:50 | +2.2 bp | −4.4 bp (known bill-basis gap) | | 6 Mo | 3.927% | 07:01:01 | +2.0 bp | — | | 1 Yr | 4.040% | 06:43:52 | +1.8 bp | 0.0 bp | | 2 Yr | 4.234% | 07:09:55 | +0.2 bp | +3.4 bp | | 3 Yr | 4.302% | 07:09:47 | +0.6 bp | +0.2 bp | | 5 Yr | 4.405% | 07:08:13 | +0.9 bp | +2.5 bp | | 7 Yr | 4.533% | 07:09:14 | +1.1 bp | +1.3 bp | | 10 Yr | 4.690% | 07:18:21 | +1.8 bp | +2.0 bp | | 20 Yr | 5.202% | 07:09:14 | +1.6 bp | +2.2 bp | | 30 Yr | 5.208% | 07:09:14 | +1.7 bp | +1.8 bp |
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| Investing.com real-time yields, each row timestamped ET. The change column is versus that vendor's own prior real-time close (~5:00 PM ET Thursday) — a like-for-like basis. The final column is the gap to the official 3:30 PM par above, which is a different construct and is shown so the two are never confused. |
| Spreads |
| Spread | Official par (27 Aug) | 1-Day | 1-Week | Live pre-open | Overnight change | | 2s10s | 47 bp | 0 bp | −3 bp | 45.6 bp | +1.6 bp steeper | | 3M10Y | 83 bp | +2 bp | +1 bp | 89.4 bp | −0.4 bp | | 2s30s | 99 bp | 0 bp | −5 bp | 97.4 bp | +1.5 bp steeper | | 20s30s | 1 bp | 0 bp | −2 bp | 0.6 bp | −0.1 bp |
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| The read: an imported bear steepener, and the proof is in the relative magnitudes. (1) The shape: on the vendor's own consistent basis the 2-year rose 0.2 bp and the 30-year rose 1.7, so the curve bear-steepened 1.5 bp in 2s30s and 1.6 bp in 2s10s. (2) Not a Fed-path repricing: the September hold went up to 65.9% and the hike down to 34.1% overnight (Section 8), and the September fed funds contract moved half a tick, 96.325 to 96.330. A curve that steepens while the front-end policy distribution is unchanged is not pricing the Fed. (3) The actual cause is European: every major sovereign sold off harder — Bunds +3 bp to 3.28%, Gilts +3 bp to 5.06%, OATs +3 bp, JGBs +4 bp to 2.91%, Korean 10s +3 bp, Indian 10s +4 bp — against a U.S. 10-year at +1.8 bp. Spanish CPI at 4.3% and French HICP toward 2.7% hardened September ECB pricing and the U.S. long end took the duration hit by correlation, not conviction. (4) The bills corroborate: 3-month +2.2 bp, 6-month +2.0, 1-year +1.8, all cheapening into 31 August month-end — a funding-calendar effect running independently of the coupon curve (Section 11). Vendor gaps, stated: Bloomberg's board marks the 10-year at 4.69% and Investing.com at 4.690% — exact level agreement — but Bloomberg's own Markets Wrap says "little changed at 4.67%" and the Bund "little changed at 3.26%," both of which disagree with Bloomberg's own board by 2 bp. The wrap is quoting official-par and earlier snapshots; the boards are the live marks and are used here. The 20s/30s box is 0.6 bp on the live board. |
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| Today's supply and Fed operations |
| No Treasury coupon auction is scheduled today. The week's supply is complete; the Wall Street Journal headlined Thursday's seven-year as clearing at yields "near a two-year high," and that segment sits in the part of the curve the buyback programme has not addressed. | | Regular bill settlements occur at the standard time; no new size announcements were published in the reviewed sources overnight. | | Chair Kevin Warsh speaks at approximately 10:00 AM ET from the Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole symposium, which runs through Saturday 29 August on the theme "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy." It is his first Jackson Hole keynote and lands nineteen days before the 16 September FOMC. No other Fed speaker is scheduled today. | | The next scheduled operation of consequence is the 9 September buyback, with the 4 November refunding behind it. | | The structural fact about today's clock: there is no 8:30 AM ET release. The gap risk that normally sits between the pre-market and the open does not exist. Every scheduled event lands after the auction — 9:45, then 10:00, then 10:00 again — which transfers the day's volatility out of the opening print and into the first thirty minutes. |
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7 · U.S. Macroeconomic Calendar |
| ★ TODAY — Friday, August 28, 2026 |
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| Time ET | Release | Period | Consensus | Prior | Sensitivity | What a beat / miss does | | 09:45 | Chicago PMI | Aug | 57.9 (WSJ: 58.0) | 57.6 | Medium | First print of the session, 15 min after the open. A beat above 60 cheapens the 2-year and supports industrials into Europe's cyclical bid; a miss below 55 steepens from the front and hits PH, EMR, CMI hardest | | ~10:00 | Chair Kevin Warsh — Jackson Hole keynote | — | — | — | VERY HIGH | The event of the month. Hawkish framework: long-end yields up, dollar up, duration-sensitive equities down. No framework: Slok's "much higher move in long rates" — bear-steepening, worse for the same cohort | | 10:00 | Michigan Consumer Sentiment (Final) | Aug | 51.0 | 55.2 | Medium–High | A 4.2-point decline is already in the consensus. A miss below 50 is a sector event before a macro one — read straight into ULTA (−2.54% on a beat) and the staples complex | | 10:00 | Michigan Current Conditions | Aug | 51.8 | 54.8 | Medium | | | 10:00 | Michigan Consumer Expectations | Aug | 50.6 | 55.4 | Medium | The larger component decline, at −4.8 points | | 10:00 | Michigan 1-Year Inflation Expectations | Aug | 4.30% | 4.20% | High | The sleeper. A 1-year expectation rising ten basis points in the same fifteen minutes Warsh speaks is the one combination that could reprice the September contract | | 10:00 | Michigan 5-Year Inflation Expectations | Aug | 3.30% | 3.30% | High | Anchoring check. Any print above 3.5% is a Fed-credibility datapoint | | 12:45 | New York Fed Staff Nowcast | — | — | — | Low | | | 14:00 | R-Star, Holston–Laubach–Williams | Q2 | — | — | Low | Publishes after the keynote; long-end debate, not the session |
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| There is no 8:30 AM ET release today. That is the structural fact of the session and it is unusual. The opening auction at 9:30 will trade with no new macro information since Thursday's claims print, and then the entire day's scheduled risk arrives in the fifteen minutes from 9:45 to 10:00. Traders who normally use the 8:30 print to set the gap have nothing to set it with. |
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| Overnight global data already released |
| Release | Actual | Consensus / Prior | Reaction | | Spain flash CPI, August | +4.3% y/y | Prior +3.6%. Highest since Feb 2023 | Bonos 10Y +2 bp to 3.72%; IBEX 35 still +0.49% | | France HICP, August (prelim) | ~+2.7% y/y | Prior +2.4%; prelim national CPI +2.4% | OATs +3 bp to 4.13%; CAC 40 +0.94% | | Bank of Korea policy rate (Thu) | 3.00% (+25 bp) | In line; second consecutive hike, highest since Jan 2025 | USD/KRW 1,375.13; Kospi −1.79% |
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| The euro-area flash CPI for August aggregates these national prints and lands early next week; reviewed sources project roughly 3.1% headline against 2.9% and 2.6% core against 2.5%. Those are projections, not verified consensus, and are labelled as such. |
| Rest of this week and next week |
| Date | Time ET | Release | Sensitivity | | Sat 8/29 | — | Jackson Hole symposium concludes | — | | Mon 8/31 | 10:30 | Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey (Aug) | Low | | Mon 8/31 | — | Month-end. Index rebalancing and funding turn | Medium | | Tue 9/1 | 10:00 | ISM Manufacturing (Aug) | High | | Tue 9/1 | 10:00 | JOLTS (Jul) | High | | Tue 9/1 | 10:00 | Construction Spending (Jul) | Low | | Tue 9/1 | 10:30 | Dallas Fed Texas Retail Outlook | Low | | Wed 9/2 | 08:15 | ADP National Employment Report (Aug) | 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) | High | | Thu 9/3 | 08:30 | Advance International Trade in Goods (Jul) | Medium | | Thu 9/3 | 08:30 | Productivity and Costs, revised (Q2) | Medium | | Thu 9/3 | 10:00 | ISM Non-Manufacturing (Aug) | High | | Thu 9/3 | 11:30 | Weekly Economic Index | Low | | Fri 9/4 | 08:30 | Employment Situation (Aug) | 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 |
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| The look-ahead. Today the calendar is thin and the communication is everything; from Tuesday it inverts completely. The market goes from one speech and two second-tier prints to ISM manufacturing and JOLTS Tuesday, ADP Wednesday, ISM services and claims Thursday, and the August payroll report Friday 4 September — the last labour reading before the 16 September FOMC and the only release on the horizon rated Very High. Behind it sits the 11 September CPI, five days before the meeting and the last inflation print the committee sees. The strip going into all of it prices zero probability of a cut at any 2026 meeting, a 34.1% chance of a September hike, 53.8% cumulative by October and 74.4% by December (Section 8). What today's 10:00 hour can do is narrow that distribution, and the mechanism to watch is the Michigan 1-year inflation expectation at a 4.30% consensus against a 4.20% prior landing in the same minute as the keynote. If Warsh talks about framework while consumers' one-year expectations rise, the front end has a reason to move for the first time in a fortnight. If he talks about payments innovation — the symposium's actual theme, which gives him room to say nothing about policy — the market will read the silence the way it read July's press conference, and the move goes into the long end instead. |
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8 · Fed Funds Futures & Rate Path |
| Current target range: 3.50%–3.75%. Primary source: Investing.com Fed Rate Monitor Tool, updated 28 August 2026, 06:45 AM EDT — a genuine pre-market snapshot. The CME FedWatch four-column Compare tab could not be rendered this session; the page sits behind a registration form and did not resolve after two attempts. That gap is documented in the companion Data Notes with the ladder attempted. |
| Headline — the 16 September 2026 meeting |
| Target range | NOW (28 Aug, 06:45) | PREV DAY (vendor) | PREV WEEK (vendor) | This desk's 27 Aug 22:05 read | | 3.50–3.75 (hold) | 65.9% | 65.9% | 64.4% | 65.6% | | 3.75–4.00 (+25 bp) | 34.1% | 34.1% | 35.6% | 34.4% | | 4.00–4.25 (+50 bp) | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
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| September contract price: 96.330, against 96.325 at Thursday's 10:05 PM read — half a tick, or 0.5 basis points, across the entire overnight session. The row sums to 100.0%. Cumulative probability of any hike by September: 34.1%. Cumulative probability of any cut: 0.0%. How much repriced overnight: almost none, and that is the finding. Against this desk's Thursday-evening figures the hike fell 0.3 pp; against the vendor's own previous-day column the change is exactly zero. Fifteen hours that included a European inflation surprise, a Korean central-bank hike working through, a 4 bp JGB move and an 8% gap in a $200bn semiconductor company moved the September contract by half a tick. The market has deliberately declined to take a position ahead of 10:00 AM. Where the movement actually is: against Thursday evening, October's hold fell 47.5% → 46.2% and its cumulative-above rose 52.5% → 53.8% — four times September's move; December's cumulative-above rose 73.6% → 74.4%. On the vendor's own one-week column October's hold has gone 52.5% → 46.2%, a 6.3-point collapse, with the +50 bp cell rising 6.5% → 10.2%. |
| (a) Current-year meeting distributions — current [prior day] [prior week] |
| Meeting | Future price | 3.50–3.75 (hold) | 3.75–4.00 (+25) | 4.00–4.25 (+50) | 4.25–4.50 (+75) | Cum. above | Cum. below | Sum | | Sep 16 | 96.330 | 65.9% [65.9] [64.4] | 34.1% [34.1] [35.6] | 0.0% | 0.0% | 34.1% | 0.0% | 100.0% | | Oct 28 | 96.275 | 46.2% [46.2] [52.5] | 43.6% [43.6] [40.9] | 10.2% [10.2] [6.5] | 0.0% | 53.8% | 0.0% | 100.0% | | Dec 9 | 96.125 | 25.6% [25.4] [33.1] | 44.8% [44.8] [45.2] | 25.1% [25.2] [19.2] | 4.5% [4.6] [2.4] | 74.4% | 0.0% | 100.0% |
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| October has broken below 46.2% for the first time, against a 53.8% cumulative above — 52.5% hold and 47.5% above seven days ago has become 46.2% and 53.8%, a 6.3-point swing that has crossed the fifty-fifty line and kept going. December's modal outcome remains +25 bp at 44.8%, essentially static, while the tail fattens: +50 bp is 25.1% against 19.2% a week ago and +75 bp is 4.5% against 2.4% — a combined 7.9 points pulled out of the hold column in five sessions. |
| (b) Next-year meeting path |
| Meeting | Future price | Modal range | Prob. | Cumulative above | Cumulative below | | Jan 27, 2027 | 96.090 | 3.75–4.00 | 40.7% | 79.9% | 0.0% | | Mar 17, 2027 | 96.010 | 3.75–4.00 | 35.1% | 85.3% | 0.0% | | Apr 28, 2027 | 95.975 | 3.75–4.00 | 32.9% | 87.0% | 0.0% | | Jun 9, 2027 | 95.930 | 4.00–4.25 | 32.7% | 88.1% | 0.0% | | Jul 28, 2027 | 95.925 | 4.00–4.25 | 32.6% | 88.4% | 0.0% | | Sep 15, 2027 | 95.925 | 4.00–4.25 | 32.4% | 87.9% | 0.2% | | Oct 27, 2027 | 95.925 | 4.00–4.25 | 32.1% | 87.2% | 0.5% | | Dec 8, 2027 | 95.945 | 4.00–4.25 | 30.9% | 84.8% | 1.4% |
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| Two things changed overnight and both point the same way. First, December 2027 broke its tie: Thursday it was an exact 31.0% / 31.0% split between 3.75–4.00% and 4.00–4.25%; this morning 4.00–4.25% is modal outright at 30.9% against 30.7%. Second, the trough of the contract-price curve has flattened and lifted. Thursday the low was a single point, 95.920 at September 2027. This morning three consecutive meetings — July, September and October 2027 — all price 95.925, half a basis point higher and spread across five months. Cumulative-above now peaks at 88.4% in July 2027, one meeting earlier than Thursday's September peak of 88.1%. April 2027 is the knife-edge: 3.75–4.00% at 32.9% against 4.00–4.25% at 32.7% — two-tenths of a point apart, which is where the strip currently thinks the second hike lands. |
| (c) Year-end probability ladders |
| Year-end 2026 — 9 December meeting | Range | Probability | | −100 bp and beyond | 2.75 and lower | 0.0% | | −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 | 25.6% | | +25 bp | 3.75–4.00 | 44.8% | | +50 bp | 4.00–4.25 | 25.1% | | +75 bp | 4.25–4.50 | 4.5% | | +100 bp and beyond | 4.50 and higher | 0.0% |
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| Cumulative above the current range: 74.4%. Cumulative below: 0.0%. Sum: 100.0%. |
| Year-end 2027 — 8 December meeting | 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 | 13.8% | | +25 bp | 3.75–4.00 | 30.7% | | +50 bp | 4.00–4.25 | 30.9% | | +75 bp | 4.25–4.50 | 16.9% | | +100 bp | 4.50–4.75 | 5.3% | | +125 bp | 4.75–5.00 | 0.9% | | +150 bp | 5.00–5.25 | 0.1% | | +175 bp and beyond | 5.25 and higher | 0.0% |
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| Cumulative above the current range: 84.8%. Cumulative below: 1.4%. Sum: 100.0%. Rounding, transparently: every figure is reproduced at the vendor's own one-decimal precision and no cell has been rescaled. Of the eleven meeting rows captured, eight sum to exactly 100.0%, April 2027 sums to 100.1%, and June, July and September 2027 each sum to 99.9% — all four are rounding artefacts of one-decimal precision, not missing probability mass. Cells shown as 0.0% are ranges the vendor publishes with a zero; ranges the vendor omits entirely are below the rounding floor and are excluded rather than assumed. |
| The interpretation, in four parts. (1) What is priced. Hold on 16 September at 65.9%; the first hike more likely than not by 28 October at 53.8% cumulative above, having crossed fifty-fifty this week; 74.4% cumulative by 9 December with +25 bp modal at 44.8%; and a 2027 path whose modal range is 4.00–4.25% from June onward and whose cumulative-above peaks at 88.4% in July 2027. Zero probability of a cut at any 2026 meeting. (2) What repriced overnight. Essentially nothing in September — half a tick on the contract, 0.3 points on the probability. The movement is in October (hold −1.3 points vs Thursday evening, −6.3 points on the week) and in December 2027 breaking its modal tie upward. The market spent the night moving the window and not the destination. (3) Can today's data move it further? Yes, but not through the channel most people are watching. There is no 8:30 print. The mechanism is the 10:00 Michigan one-year inflation expectation, consensus 4.30% against a 4.20% prior — a consumer expectation rising into a keynote about credibility. Warsh alone is a long-end event, as Berenberg's Urbahn argues. Warsh plus a 4.5%-handle one-year expectation is a front-end event, and the September contract at 96.330 has 34.1% of a hike to reprice in either direction. (4) The practical trade. The asymmetry that has worked all week is still on the board: September is inert and December is not. A long ZQU6 / short ZQZ6 calendar spread expresses exactly that and has now been paid by the same mechanism for seven consecutive sessions. The catalyst is 10:00 today; the invalidation is a September cumulative hike printing above 50% on either vendor, or any 2026 meeting showing a non-zero cut probability. See Section 12, idea 1. |
|
9 · FX Market |
| Pair | Level (07:11 ET) | Thursday 5pm | Overnight move | Driver | | DXY | 99.125 (07:25) | 99.11 | +0.02% | Third consecutive session of doing nothing. Bloomberg's Dollar Spot Index "little changed" | | EUR/USD | 1.1647 | 1.16489 | −0.02% | The contrarian cross of the session. Spain 4.3%, France 2.7%, Bunds +3 bp, September ECB odds hardening — and the euro is unchanged | | USD/JPY | 159.6700 | 159.440 | +0.14% (yen weaker) | JGB 10s +4 bp to 2.91%, the largest sovereign move on Bloomberg's board — and the yen weakened again. Second consecutive session | | GBP/USD | 1.3588 | 1.35902 | −0.02% | Gilts +3 bp to 5.06%, the highest major-market yield on the board, and sterling did not move | | USD/CHF | 0.8035 | 0.80452 | −0.13% (franc stronger) | The haven bid is on. The largest G10 move overnight, toward safety on a flat-to-green equity tape | | AUD/USD | 0.7198 | 0.72017 | −0.05% | Best major of 2026; softened marginally despite LME zinc +1.77% and copper's ninth weekly gain | | USD/CAD | 1.3847 | 1.38510 | −0.03% (CAD stronger) | Loonie firm on a day WTI is −0.48% — the wrong sign, and worth watching | | USD/KRW | 1,375.13 | 1,378.78 | −0.26% (won stronger) | The EM cross that matters. The BoK's second hike to 3% is still working; the won strengthened on the session the Kospi fell 1.79% | | USD/CNH | 6.7205 | 6.7185 | +0.03% (yuan weaker) | Bloomberg marks it "little changed." The grind has paused after Thursday's fresh closing extreme | | EUR/JPY | 185.9600 | — | — | Cross-check on the yen leg | | EUR/GBP | 0.8572 | — | — | |
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| Levels are Bloomberg Generic Composite (BGN) marks read at 07:11 AM ET, which Bloomberg states are indicative, not trade-based, and 25 minutes delayed. The change column is computed against Thursday's post-close levels as published in this desk's Closing Daily — a like-for-like level comparison, not a vendor %Chg column, because both vendors' daily boundaries had already rolled. Quote basis: USD per unit for EUR, GBP and AUD; units per USD for JPY, CHF, CAD, KRW and CNH. DXY is the Investing.com mark at 07:25. |
The take: the dollar failed a third test, and this time the test was a real one. For two sessions this desk has flagged a dollar index that would not move on hawkish domestic news. Overnight it declined to move on hawkish foreign news, which is harder to explain. Spanish CPI printed 4.3% — seven-tenths above July and the highest since February 2023 — French HICP accelerated toward 2.7%, Bloomberg reported the prints "strengthening the case for an increase in interest rates next month," Bunds sold off 3 bp and OATs 3 bp, and EUR/USD moved two hundredths of one percent. A rate differential that narrows in the euro's favour and produces no currency response is a market that has parked. The parking is explicable — it is 10:00 AM — but the parking is itself the position, and Berenberg's Urbahn has named the release valve: a firm Warsh message on inflation and fiscal credibility "would tend to lift real and nominal long-end yields, support the dollar and pressure duration-sensitive assets." DXY 99.125 is the level; the two-sided risk around 10:00 is larger than anything the overnight range suggests.
The second-order cross is USD/CHF, and it disagrees with everything. The franc firmed 0.13%, the largest G10 move of the night, on a tape where Europe rallied 0.6%, Asia was mixed-to-higher, U.S. futures were flat and VIX printed a 14 handle. A haven bid with no risk-off anywhere else is either positioning ahead of the keynote or the same instinct that showed up in silver +1.24% and platinum +2.66%. Note what did not join: bitcoin is −0.4% at $79,803.82, back below the $80,000 it reclaimed Thursday. The debasement bid is now discriminating between hard assets and digital ones.
The yen is still not trading its own bond market — a three-session pattern. JGB 10s rose 4 bp to 2.91%, the largest sovereign move anywhere, and USD/JPY rose 0.14%: a bond market selling off while its currency depreciates is repricing domestic inflation without attracting foreign capital. The carry trade remains the dominant flow in the pair.
Translating FX into equity terms. A flat dollar into a hawkish-risk keynote is neutral for the S&P's foreign-revenue cohort at the open and asymmetric afterwards: a Warsh-driven dollar rally is a first-order negative for the roughly 40% of S&P revenue earned abroad, and it lands on mega-cap technology hardest because that is where the foreign share is highest. The won's strength against a falling Kospi argues that Korea's equity decline is domestic positioning rather than foreign outflow — which matters for how U.S. semiconductor investors should read the 1.79%. |
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10 · Commodities |
| Contract | Price | Chg | %Chg | Overnight range | YTD (spot)* | Driver | | WTI (Oct 26, NYMEX) | $83.13 | −$0.40 | −0.48% | $82.54–$83.76 | +45.26% | Gave back a fifth of Thursday's 2.10% rally | | Brent (Nov 26, ICE) | $88.22 | −$0.30 | −0.34% | $87.63–$88.73 | +45.45% | Bloomberg's wrap marks −0.6% at $89.14 on a different contract — see Data Notes | | RBOB gasoline (Sep 26) | $3.4053 | +$0.0211 | +0.62% | $3.3703–$3.4094 | — | Fourth consecutive session rising against a falling barrel | | Heating oil (Sep 26) | $4.3147 | +$0.0360 | +0.84% | $4.2603–$4.3198 | — | Outperformed gasoline for once | | Natural gas (Oct 26) | $2.878 | −$0.036 | −1.24% | $2.876–$2.933 | −21.03% | The weakest energy contract on the board | | Gold (Comex Dec 26) | $4,652.86 | −$11.14 | −0.24% | $4,623.94–$4,667.71 | +6.14% | Spot $4,600.29, −0.03%; the wrap marks spot +0.2% at $4,609.47 — three-way vendor conflict | | Silver (Comex Sep 26) | $70.290 | +$0.859 | +1.24% | $68.488–$70.945 | −3.24% | Spot +1.50% at $70.3055. Ratio to gold 66.20, in from 67.18 | | Copper (Comex Oct 26) | $6.6313 | +$0.0103 | +0.16% | $6.5700–$6.6455 | +16.11% | Ninth consecutive weekly gain in prospect — longest since 2020 | | Platinum (Oct 26) | $1,903.20 | +$49.40 | +2.66% | $1,841.75–$1,904.65 | — | Second-largest metal move | | Palladium (Sep 26) | $1,408.00 | +$69.30 | +5.18% | $1,347.00–$1,413.00 | — | The largest move in any commodity overnight | | LME zinc (3M) | $3,944.00 | +$68.45 | +1.77% | — | — | Base metals joined the precious bid | | LME nickel (3M) | $16,998.63 | +$145.00 | +0.86% | — | — | | | LME copper (3M) | $14,370.68 | +$85.50 | +0.60% | — | — | Comex $6.6313/lb ~ $14,619/t | | LME aluminium (3M) | $3,242.18 | +$5.73 | +0.18% | — | — | The laggard of the base complex | | Corn (Dec 26, CBOT) | 539.60c | +6.60c | +1.24% | 531.25–541.13 | — | | | Wheat (Dec 26, CBOT) | 768.40c | +8.40c | +1.11% | 756.30–769.75 | — | | | Dutch TTF gas (Oct 26) | 68.860 | +0.592 | +0.87% | 68.260–70.085 | — | Qatar extended its LNG force majeure; Hormuz traffic halted |
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| Basis: Investing.com real-time front-month futures read at 07:25 AM ET, each against that contract's prior settlement. Contract months named. WTI, Brent, gold, silver and RBOB reconcile to the tick against Thursday's published settles, which verifies the basis; copper, natural gas and heating oil do not, and those gaps are worked in the companion Data Notes. *YTD columns are TradingEconomics spot returns, not futures returns on the quoted contracts — directional only. Mixing the two would be a basis error. Dutch TTF is quoted in euros per MWh. |
The crack spreads went again, for a fourth consecutive session. On the same 42-gallon basis this desk has used all month: gasoline crack = $3.4053 × 42 − $83.13 = $59.89, up $1.28 from Thursday's $58.61, $4.10 from Wednesday's $55.79 and $6.96 from Tuesday's $52.93. Distillate crack = $4.3147 × 42 − $83.13 = $98.09, up $2.19 from $95.90. Read the sequence: for three sessions early in the week the gasoline crack expanded because crude was collapsing faster than the product. Thursday crude rallied 2.10% and RBOB rallied 3.29% anyway — the crack expanded on the way up. Overnight crude fell 0.48% and RBOB rose 0.62% — it expanded on the way down again. A product that outperforms in all three regimes is not being driven by the barrel; it is being driven by its own balance. The distillate crack's $2.19 gain is the larger of the two and it is the first session this week in which heating oil beat gasoline — an early tell that marginal tightness is rotating from the summer product to the winter one. The seasonal caveat is now the entire risk on the gasoline leg: this is the final trading day of August, and the September gasoline calendar works structurally against a long crack from Tuesday.
The supply tape is two-sided and that is why the barrel is going nowhere. Bullish: Qatar extended its LNG force majeure with Hormuz traffic halted, and Ukraine said it struck a major Russian refinery at Yaroslavl (both Bloomberg). Bearish: Venezuela is weighing an OPEC exit, and the WSJ's Dubai dispatch found no visible sign of the Iran escalation the market had positioned for. WTI ranged $1.22, or 1.5%, and settled the overnight down 40 cents. The equity verdict is already in: energy closed +0.01% on Thursday's 2.10% crude rally.
The metals are where the conviction is, and the split inside them is new. Palladium +5.18% and platinum +2.66% are the two largest moves in the complex, and silver +1.24% outperformed gold −0.24% by 148 basis points, compressing the gold–silver ratio to 66.20 from 67.18 — a fourth consecutive session. Underneath, LME zinc +1.77%, nickel +0.86% and copper +0.60% rose with them, with copper on course for its ninth straight weekly gain, the longest run since 2020. What broke rank is gold itself, down 0.24%, and bitcoin, down 0.4% to $79,803.82. That is the structural change: for three sessions the monetary metals and the digital asset moved together on a single retail-risk impulse. Overnight the industrial-scarcity trade (silver, platinum, palladium, copper, zinc) went up and the pure debasement trade (gold, bitcoin) went down. If that separation holds through the keynote it is tradeable — a hawkish Warsh should widen it further.
Equity read-through. Refiners over integrateds on the crack, September calendar as the exit. Miners and silver are the cleanest overnight long. Airlines face a distillate crack at $98.09, up $2.19. Packaged food faces corn +1.24% and wheat +1.11% on top of a staples group that fell 1.39% Thursday, with the Michigan final at 10:00. |
|
11 · Credit & Funding |
| (a) IG and HY spreads |
| Series | FRED code | 26 Aug | 1-Day | 1-Week (vs 19 Aug) | YTD (from 31 Dec 2025) | | IG (ICE BofA US Corporate OAS) | BAMLC0A0CM | 80 bp | −1 bp | −1 bp (from 81) | +1 bp (from 79) | | HY (ICE BofA US High Yield OAS) | BAMLH0A0HYM2 | 267 bp | −3 bp | −6 bp (from 273) | −14 bp (from 281) | | CCC & lower | BAMLH0A3HYC | 1,031 bp | −8 bp | +1 bp | +146 bp (from 885) | | CDX IG 5y | — | Not retrievable this session | — | — | — | | CDX HY 5y | — | Not retrievable this session | — | — | — |
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| FRED publishes with a one-business-day lag and had not yet posted the 27 August observation at the time of this pull — its stated last update is 27 August 9:15 AM CDT, carrying data through 26 August. The levels above are therefore the 26 August close, the same vintage the Closing Daily carried, and are labelled as such rather than restated as fresh. No live pre-open credit spread exists and none is asserted here. CDX was worked again through the same ladder that has failed for three weeks — Bloomberg's boards carry the Fixed Income Indices but no CDX line; Cbonds masks levels behind a subscription; TradingView and Barchart resolve the ticker to an unrelated ETF. No CDX level is published. Colour convention: spreads widening = red, tightening = green. |
| With the 26 August vintage in hand: every credit row moved tighter at once — IG 80, HY 267, CCC 1,031, with the CCC-minus-HY differential in to 764 bp from 769, the first narrowing of the reporting window. HY is 14 bp tighter than where 2026 started; IG 1 bp wider; CCC 146 bp wider — that dispersion is the year in one line, and one session does not undo it. Bloomberg's Fixed Income Indices, live at 7:09 AM ET, are the closest thing to a pre-open credit signal: Global Aggregate 501.85, U.S. Aggregate 2,351.54 (52-week return 2.20%), Pan-Euro 226.36 (0.76%), EM USD 1,410.09 (5.24%), Asian-Pacific 194.41 (7.15%). A U.S. Aggregate returning 2.20% over 52 weeks while the 10-year rose 48 bp is a market whose carry has just absorbed its duration — which is exactly what a hawkish keynote would break. |
| (b) Money-market and funding plumbing |
| Rate | 26 Aug | Change vs 25 Aug | 1st pct | 99th pct | Volume | | SOFR | 3.64% | −2 bp | 3.60% | 3.72% | $2,859bn | | EFFR | 3.63% | 0 bp | 3.60% | 3.65% | $112bn | | OBFR | 3.63% | 0 bp | 3.55% | 3.69% | $216bn | | TGCR | 3.62% | −2 bp | 3.57% | 3.67% | $1,174bn | | BGCR | 3.62% | −2 bp | 3.57% | 3.67% | $1,203bn | | SOFR − IORB | −1 bp | −2 bp | — | — | IORB 3.65% |
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| New York Fed reference rates via the Markets API, read at 07:20 AM ET. The 27 August effective-date overnight rates had not yet published — the Fed posts at approximately 8:00 AM ET, forty minutes after this pull. The rates above carry the 26 August effective date, unchanged from the Closing Daily, and are labelled as such. New this morning — the 27 August SOFR averages and index: 30-day average 3.64586%, 90-day 3.64335%, 180-day 3.65955%, SOFR index 1.25642304. The 30-day average sitting above the 90-day is the term structure of the last month's squeeze still working through the compounding window. |
| The bill strip is the live signal and it is cheapening into the turn. With the overnight rates a day stale, the only real-time funding information available pre-open is the bill curve, and it moved: 3-month +2.2 bp to 3.796%, 6-month +2.0 bp to 3.927%, 1-year +1.8 bp to 4.040% (Section 6), against a 2-year that rose 0.2 bp. Bills cheapening ten times faster than the 2-year, two sessions before 31 August month-end, is a calendar effect being priced in term while the overnight market's own reading is unavailable. What did not reverse is the structural drain: reserve balances fell $10.4bn to $2.9249tn for the week ended 26 August, a fourth consecutive weekly decline and $68bn below the 5 August peak of $2.9933tn. Overnight reverse repo take-up was $456m on 27 August, down from $702m on the 26th but still more than double the $200m of 21 August. The 9 September bills-for-bonds operation sits behind the month-end turn. |
| (c) Issuance and idiosyncratic credit |
| IG primary is at a record August pace and the index tightened into it. August high-grade supply reached $145.2bn, topping 2020's $136bn and setting an August record, with roughly $1.4tn of U.S. IG notes sold year to date, about 9% above the 2020 pace (Bloomberg). IG OAS at 80 bp on 26 August, one basis point tighter, is the demand side holding. | | The concession data still says the demand side is being tested: roughly 5 bp of new-issue concession on deals covered about 2x, with order-book attrition near 40%. | | No new-issue calendar for today was retrievable in this pre-market window. Friday of the last week of August into a Fed keynote is structurally a light-to-zero issuance day, and the September calendar opens Tuesday. This is stated as an inference, not as a sourced fact. | | No idiosyncratic credit event, downgrade or distressed exchange was reported in the overnight window. Carried watch items are unchanged: Brightline's $350m Assured-backed loan, and Guggenheim Investments' disclosure that affiliates may buy its marked-down loan. | | The PayPal read-through is a credit datapoint even though no credit traded. A consortium walking away from a $50bn-plus leveraged buyout because the target's equity re-rated is information about the sponsor bid at current financing costs. With HY at 267 bp — 14 bp inside where 2026 began — a $50bn LBO still could not clear. That is the most useful thing this section learned overnight and it did not come from a spread. |
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| The credit take. Nothing in credit moved overnight because nothing in credit could move overnight: the OAS series are a day stale, the overnight rates are a day stale, CDX is unquotable, and the primary calendar is empty. What the section can say is that the last observable print in every row was tighter — IG 80, HY 267, CCC 1,031, the CCC-minus-HY differential in to 764 from a record 769 — and that the funding market's only live instrument, the bill strip, cheapened 1.8 to 2.2 basis points into month-end while the 2-year did not move. The calm is intact and it is now four markets wide: index credit, tail credit, a 14.45 VIX, and a Fed strip that moved half a tick in fifteen hours. What breaks it today: a Warsh keynote that produces Torsten Slok's "much higher move in long rates," which reprices the swap-spread basis — Fed researchers put hedge-fund positions there at a record $305bn — before it reprices any credit spread. What breaks it Monday: a month-end turn that pushes SOFR back through the 3.65% IORB with the bills already 2 bp cheaper. |
|
12 · Trading Views |
| Desk-style ideas for institutional investors. Each carries an explicit expression, a catalyst with the time it lands, an invalidation level and a sizing note. These are not personalized investment advice; verify independently and size to your own mandate before acting. |
1. Stay long the September/December fed funds calendar into 10:00 — the mechanism worked again overnight.
The mark. Long ZQU6 against short ZQZ6, DV01-matched one-for-one at $41.67 per basis point per contract pair, entered a week ago at 96.325 / 96.160 for a spread of 16.5 bp, marked 19.5 bp at Thursday's close with the stop at 18.5 bp. This morning: ZQU6 96.330 against ZQZ6 96.125, a spread of 20.5 bp — +1.0 bp overnight, worth +$41.67 per pair, and +4.0 bp from entry, its best mark of the trade with 2.0 bp of cushion above the stop. Why it worked. The spread needs December to absorb more of every repricing than September. Overnight delivered that for a seventh consecutive session: September rose half a tick (96.325 → 96.330) as its hike probability eased 34.4% → 34.1%, while December fell to 96.125 as its cumulative-above rose 73.6% → 74.4%. October did more still — its hold went 47.5% → 46.2% and its cumulative-above crossed fifty to 53.8%. The front contract is inert through a European inflation shock and a 4 bp JGB move. The tails. Dovish: a keynote treating inflation as solved that pulls December back under 65% cumulative — compresses through the stop. Hawkish but adverse: a keynote explicit enough that the market pulls the hike forward into September, compressing it from the other side; note this is what two sitting Fed presidents argued for Thursday and the market ignored them. Wildcard today: the Michigan 1-year inflation expectation at 4.30% consensus, landing in the same minute as the speech.
Expression: long ZQU6 / short ZQZ6, DV01-matched, half size. Catalyst: Warsh ~10:00 today; ISM manufacturing and JOLTS 1 Sep; payrolls 4 Sep 08:30; the buyback operation 9 Sep; the 16 Sep FOMC. Invalidation: the spread through 19.0 bp (raised from 18.5); or a September cumulative hike above 50% on either vendor; or any 2026 meeting showing a non-zero cut probability. Sizing: one-for-one DV01 at $41.67 per bp per pair; risks 1.5 bp to make a further 2.0. | 2. The 20s/30s box is the cleanest expression of the keynote — and it is 0.6 bp wide.
The setup. The live board has the 20-year at 5.202% and the 30-year at 5.208% — six-tenths of one basis point of yield pickup for ten additional years of duration. On the official par curve the same box was 1 bp at Thursday's 3:30 PM close and it has been inside 2 bp all week. Bloomberg reported this week that JPMorgan, Apollo and Morgan Stanley all see a credibly hawkish Warsh as a reason to buy the 30-year, whose yield "hit the highest since 2007 last week." JPMorgan's Priya Misra: if he can deliver, "some of the angst on Fed credibility will reduce." Apollo's Torsten Slok framed the other side: "He will have to deliver something that is clearer than the July press conference," and if he gives no framework guidance "the risk is that it will involve a much higher move in long rates." Why it resolves today. Bloomberg's rates strategist Alyce Andres supplied the instruction: "The composition of any bond selloff after Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh's comments Friday is crucial — it will signify the difference between a market adjusting to a new Fed regime and a market beginning to question whether the Fed has one." A 0.6 bp box cannot survive either outcome. Framework delivered → the 30-year is bought and the box goes negative. No framework → term premium widens at the very long end and the box steepens sharply positive.
Expression: long the 30-year against the 20-year, DV01-matched — the pro-framework version, where three of the largest houses on the Street are reported to be positioned. Catalyst: ~10:00 today; the 9 September buyback; the 4 November refunding. Invalidation: the box wider than +5 bp. Sizing: small; a binary with a 6.5-hour horizon and no carry to defend it. | 3. Fade the PayPal gap only above $52 — the deal premium and the earnings re-rating are the same money.
The setup. PYPL is −17.91% at $50.46, a $10.99 decline, on the heaviest pre-market volume on the board (2.2 million shares). The bear case for buying the gap is precise: the stock rose more than 40% this quarter on a combination of the takeover approach and a genuine second-quarter beat, taking the market value from roughly $40bn to $52.6bn. Advent and Stripe walked because that re-rating made their arithmetic fail. You cannot separate the two contributions cleanly — which is why the fade risk is real in both directions. The level logic. Above $52 at the auction, the market is paying for the standalone quarter and pricing the deal premium at roughly zero, which is a defensible long. Between $48 and $52 it is marking part of the operating improvement as deal premium too — an over-correction, and the more likely entry. Below $48 something else is being priced and the trade is off.
Expression: long PYPL against an equal-weight basket of payments peers, dollar-neutral, entered only after the first fifteen minutes — the opening auction in a −18% gap on 2.2 million pre-market shares is not a price, it is an imbalance. Catalyst: any revised-bid headline; the absence of one by Monday's close is itself information. Invalidation: $48.00 on a closing basis. Sizing: half a normal single-name unit; headline risk is two-sided and unhedgeable. | 4. Long the refining crack against integrated energy — four sessions, three regimes, one answer.
The setup. The gasoline crack is $59.89 (3.4053 × 42 − 83.13), up $1.28 overnight and $6.96 from Tuesday; the distillate crack is $98.09, up $2.19. The product complex has now outperformed the barrel when crude fell hard, when crude rallied 2.10%, and again overnight when crude fell 0.48%. Three regimes, same answer. Meanwhile the equity refuses to pay: energy closed +0.01% on Thursday's 2.10% crude rally, and the supply tape overnight was genuinely two-sided.
Expression: long U.S. refiners against integrated majors, beta-neutral. The distillate leg is the one with the calendar behind it. Catalyst: weekly EIA product inventories; the September gasoline calendar from Tuesday; Canada's tariff retaliation 8 September. Invalidation: the gasoline crack back through $55, or a distillate crack that stops making highs while gasoline rolls over — the second is the earlier warning. Sizing: the seasonal is now the entire risk on the gasoline leg. Weight the pair toward distillate. | 5. Long the industrial-scarcity metals against gold and bitcoin — the split is new and it is dateable.
The setup. Overnight: silver +1.24%, platinum +2.66%, palladium +5.18%, LME zinc +1.77%, nickel +0.86%, copper +0.60% — against gold −0.24% and bitcoin −0.4% to $79,803.82. The gold–silver ratio compressed to 66.20 from 67.18, a fourth consecutive session, and Bloomberg reports copper on course for a ninth straight weekly gain, the longest run since 2020. For three sessions the monetary metals and the digital asset moved as one retail-risk impulse; overnight they separated for the first time. Why the keynote should widen it. A credible inflation fighter is unambiguously negative for the debasement bid — that is the entire content of gold's and bitcoin's 2026 — and roughly neutral for cyclical metal demand, which is priced off industrial activity and the copper deficit. A Warsh who says nothing does the reverse.
Expression: long a silver/copper/platinum basket against gold, dollar-neutral. Catalyst: ~10:00 today; euro-area flash CPI early next week; ISM manufacturing 1 September. Invalidation: the gold–silver ratio back above 68.25, Thursday's starting level, which would say the four-session compression was noise. Sizing: full unit on the ratio leg, half on platinum and palladium — a 5.18% overnight move in palladium is not a liquid entry. | 6. Buy the European cyclical bounce against U.S. semis — the overnight signals point opposite ways.
The setup. Europe's bounce is cyclical and broad: CAC +0.94%, FTSE MIB +0.75%, DAX +0.59%, with STOXX 600 Auto & Parts futures +1.45%, Basic Resources +0.87% and Banks +0.70% leading, and the index on course to dodge its longest weekly losing streak since 2024 — all of it happening while European yields rose, which makes it a growth bid rather than a duration bid. Against that, the semiconductor signal overnight is the weakest available: Kospi −1.79%, CXMT's tenfold Chinese memory revenue, Marvell −8%, Micron −1.68%, Intel −1.80%, and the NQ future −0.30% against YM +0.04%.
Expression: long European cyclicals (autos, miners, banks) against U.S. semiconductors, beta-neutral, currency-hedged. Catalyst: Chicago PMI 9:45 — a beat supports the cyclical leg directly; euro-area flash CPI next week; Broadcom 2 September for the short leg. Invalidation: SOX opening green and holding through 10:30, which would say the market is trading Taiwan's +0.77% rather than Korea's −1.79%. Sizing: one unit; the FX leg is itself exposed to a Warsh dollar rally, so hedge it rather than running it. |
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Vol note and technical levels. VIX cash is 14.45 at 07:25 ET, −0.06 or −0.41%, having held a 14.45–14.50 band through the pre-open — a 14 handle on the morning of the largest scheduled communication event of the quarter. The September VIX future's last vendor print is 16.70 (27/08, stale), a 2.25-point premium to cash, so the vol curve is pricing the aftermath of the keynote rather than the keynote. No option-implied one-day move for the S&P was retrievable in this pre-market window and none is estimated here. What can be said arithmetically: a 14.45 VIX implies roughly 0.91% of daily standard deviation (14.45 / sqrt 252) — a typical session, which on a day the Fed Chair speaks for the first time at Jackson Hole with the strip at 34.1% is either correct or the cheapest thing on the board. No 0DTE or dealer-gamma positioning data was sourceable this session.
Technical levels for the cash S&P 500. Prior close 7,730.99; implied open 7,726.99. Overnight futures range 7,731.00–7,745.00 (14.00 points, 0.18%) — a genuinely narrow band, mapping to roughly 7,719.5–7,733.5 in cash terms. Thursday's cash range was 7,689.89–7,741.27: the overnight low sits 41 points above Thursday's low, so the market has not tested the downside at all. The round number the tape is trading around is 7,700, 31 points below the implied open — the level a hawkish 10:00 would target first. The record close is 7,798.99 (13 August), 0.87% above Thursday's close. Nasdaq 100: prior close 29,641.56, implied open 29,551.06; the round number is 29,500, 51 points below the implied open, and it is the level Marvell's gap is pulling toward.
What they are not pricing: a 14-point overnight band and a 14.45 VIX price a session in which the keynote says nothing surprising. They do not price Slok's "much higher move in long rates," nor a Michigan one-year expectation with a 4.5 handle. Both are live between 9:45 and 10:00. |
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13 · S&P 500 Earnings Calendar |
| ★ TODAY — Friday, August 28, 2026 |
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| No S&P 500 company reports today, before the bell or after the close. The Nasdaq capture returns seven names for 28 August and none is an index constituent: Ubiquiti (UI), market cap $31.8bn, consensus $3.67 for the June quarter against $3.52 a year ago; RLX Technology (RLX); Buckle (BKE); ZKH Group (ZKH); CleanCore Solutions (ZONE); Bridgford Foods (BRID); Lakewood-Amedex Biotherapeutics (LABT). Ubiquiti is the only one above $5bn of market capitalisation and the only one likely to trade with any size. |
| What this means for the session. The single-stock engine that produced Thursday's tape — Nvidia's guide, four software prints after the close, four consumer prints before it — stops entirely today and does not restart until Medtronic before the open on Tuesday 1 September. Four and a half sessions with no index reporter, beginning with the one that contains the Fed Chair's keynote. Whatever moves the S&P 500 today will be macro, positioning, or the two single-name gaps already in the pre-market (PayPal −17.91%, Marvell −8%). There is no earnings flow to absorb a shock and none to create one. |
| Current week (Aug 24–28) — reported overnight |
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| Thu 8/27, AMC. S&P 500: Marvell (MRVL), Autodesk (ADSK), Workday (WDAY), Ulta Beauty (ULTA), Gap (GAP). Non-members: Rubrik (RBRK), SentinelOne (S), Elastic (ESTC), PagerDuty (PD). Full actuals, guidance and reactions in Section 5. |
| Fri 8/28. BMO: none. AMC: none. |
| Next week (Aug 31 – Sep 4) |
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| Mon 8/31. BMO: No S&P 500 reporter. AMC: No S&P 500 reporter. |
| 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) — a fifth consecutive capture with the same gap; confirm with company investor relations. |
| Fri 9/4. BMO: No S&P 500 reporter. AMC: No S&P 500 reporter. |
| Changes versus the prior calendar (27 August report): no additions and no removals across 8/28 or 8/31–9/4. Every S&P 500 name on Thursday's roster reappears on this session's independent Nasdaq capture in the same bucket. Dual listings deduped: Brown-Forman appears as both BF.A and BF.B and is carried once as the class B share, which is the index line. Nasdaq publishes a before-open / after-close bucket rather than a clock time, so no clock times are asserted this session. Non-members on the same dates, listed so nobody mistakes their absence for an omission: UI, RLX, BKE, ZKH, ZONE, BRID and LABT on 8/28; Sasol (SSL), Grifols (GRFS), SAIC, Apartment Investment (AIV) and StealthGas (GASS) on 8/31; Credo (CRDO), MongoDB (MDB), NIO, GitLab (GTLB) and Elme (ELME) on 9/1; Snowflake (SNOW), Five Below (FIVE), Argan (AGX), Ollie's (OLLI) and PVH on 9/2; Ciena (CIEN), Zscaler (ZS), Samsara (IOT), Guidewire (GWRE), DocuSign (DOCU), UiPath (PATH), Planet Labs (PL), Asana (ASAN) and Ambarella (AMBA) on 9/3; KT Corp (KT) and KNOT Offshore (KNOP) on 9/4. Borderline membership cases are listed in the companion Data Notes and conservatively excluded. |
| What the forward calendar hands the desk. The densest AI-adjacent week since July begins Tuesday afternoon. Palo Alto Networks and Dell after Tuesday's close — PANW closed Thursday +12.83% at $382.85 and DELL +1.82% at $472.26, neither having reported anything. Broadcom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp on Wednesday evening, three hardware names on one tape, with AVGO +4.49% at $371.54 and bid twice this month on other companies' numbers. And Lululemon and Campbell's on Thursday into a consumer complex that sold three of four prints this week and faces the Michigan final at 51.0 today. Marvell's 8% gap on a beat-and-raise is the template every one of those names now carries into its own print — the market is not paying for the quarter, it is paying for the backlog, and it is punishing any forward number whose composition is optional. |
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14 · Risk Map — Today's Session |
| ★ TODAY — Event clock — Friday, August 28, 2026 (all times ET) |
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| Time | Event | Why it matters | | 07:25 | Data-as-of for this report | ES −0.05%, 10Y 4.690%, DXY 99.125, VIX 14.45 | | 08:00 | NY Fed publishes 27 August reference rates | SOFR against the 3.65% IORB, two sessions before month-end | | 09:00 | Final pre-market hour | PayPal and Marvell price discovery; both gaps are on thin size until now | | 09:30 | U.S. cash open | Full session, 9:30–16:00. Not a half day. Two single-name air pockets inside a flat index | | 09:45 | Chicago PMI (Aug), consensus 57.9, prior 57.6 | First macro print, 15 minutes after the open. Cyclical read-through | | 10:00 | Chair Warsh, Jackson Hole keynote | VERY HIGH. The event of the month, 19 days before the FOMC | | 10:00 | Michigan final: sentiment 51.0, expectations 50.6, 1-yr inflation 4.30%, 5-yr 3.30% | Same minute as the keynote. The 1-year expectation is the sleeper | | ~10:15–11:00 | Q&A and headline flow from the symposium | Where the composition of the bond move gets decided | | 12:45 | New York Fed Staff Nowcast | Low | | 14:00 | R-Star (Holston–Laubach–Williams), Q2 | Low, but relevant to the long-end debate | | 15:00–16:00 | Month-end positioning begins | 31 August is Monday; index rebalancing and pension flows start here | | 16:00 | Cash close | No S&P 500 reporter after the bell. Next index print Tuesday BMO |
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| The structural feature of this clock: there is no 8:30 AM release. The gap window that normally carries the morning's risk is empty, and everything is compressed into the fifteen minutes from 9:45 to 10:00 — after the opening auction. Traders sizing the open have no new macro information to size it with. |
| Crowded consensuses to stress-test, each with the number that breaks it |
| 1. "Warsh will not surprise." Bloomberg's data show the S&P 500 has gained 0.4% on average in the week after the symposium, and the VIX is at 14.45. The number that breaks it: a 30-year yield through 5.30% intraday, or the September hike probability printing above 50% on either vendor. | | 2. "The Fed hikes in October, not September." October's cumulative-above is 53.8%, having crossed fifty this week from 47.5% seven days ago. The number that breaks it: the Michigan 1-year inflation expectation with a 4.5 handle, which would pull the hike forward into the 16 September meeting the strip currently prices at 65.9% hold. | | 3. "The AI trade is intact because Nvidia guided to $108bn." Nvidia added $442bn Thursday, the second-largest single-day gain of all time — and overnight Marvell fell 8% on a beat-and-raise, Micron fell 1.68%, Korea's chip complex fell 1.79%, and CXMT's Chinese memory revenue rose tenfold. The number that breaks it: SOX opening red and closing red the day after an 8.74% Nvidia print. | | 4. "Credit is calm." IG 80 bp, HY 267 bp, both tighter on the last observation. The number that breaks it: CCC back above 1,040 bp, or a single tail default. Note that a $50bn LBO could not clear at 267 bp HY — the sponsor bid is not where the index spread says it is. | | 5. "Europe's rally is a bounce, not a turn." Stoxx 600 +0.6% and set to dodge its longest weekly losing streak since 2024, led by autos +1.45%. The number that breaks it either way: euro-area flash CPI next week against a projected 3.1% headline — an upside surprise makes the September ECB hike a certainty and turns the cyclical bid into a duration problem. | | 6. "The dollar is a one-way short." DXY 99.125, unchanged across three sessions of hawkish domestic and foreign news. The number that breaks it: EUR/USD through 1.1550, which is what Berenberg's "support the dollar" scenario looks like in practice. |
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| Two-sided geopolitical tape — the next 6.5 hours |
| Could move it lower: the Qatari LNG force majeure extending further with Hormuz traffic halted; escalation following Ukraine's reported strike on the Yaroslavl refinery; any formal Section 232 semiconductor tariff notice, which Politico reported this week could extend to laptops, consoles and data-centre servers — a headline that would land directly on the only sector that worked Thursday. | | Could move it higher: Venezuela's possible OPEC exit is bearish crude and therefore disinflationary at the margin; the Wall Street Journal's Dubai dispatch reporting no visible sign of the threatened escalation against Iran, continuing the de-escalation tape; and the judicial ruling lifting the federal ban on Anthropic's AI, a modest procurement positive. |
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| Structural watch items carried forward |
| Reserve balances at $2.9249tn, down $10.4bn on the week and $68bn below the 5 August peak — a fourth consecutive weekly decline into Monday's month-end turn. | | The hedge-fund swap-spread basis at a record $305bn per Fed researchers, with 30-year spreads at a six-month extreme. This reprices before any credit spread does if the long end moves. | | August IG supply at a record $145.2bn with ~5 bp concessions and ~40% order-book attrition — the September calendar opens Tuesday into whatever Warsh leaves behind. | | The 9 September buyback operation and the 4 November refunding. Canada's tariff retaliation on 8 September. The 11 September CPI, the last inflation print before the 16 September FOMC. |
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| What the VIX and today's pricing are — and are not — saying. VIX at 14.45 implies about 0.91% of one-day standard deviation, and the overnight futures range was 14.00 S&P points, or 0.18% — the narrowest pre-open band of the reporting window. The September VIX future at a stale 16.70 carries a 2.25-point premium, so the vol curve is pricing the aftermath of the keynote rather than the keynote itself. What that is saying: the market expects Warsh to be a bond and dollar event, not an equity event — exactly as Berenberg argues — and it expects the equity consequence to arrive over the following week rather than the following hour. What it is not saying: it is not pricing a framework so hawkish that the September contract reprices; it is not pricing Slok's "much higher move in long rates" and the term-premium shock that would follow; and it is not pricing a Michigan one-year inflation expectation printing above consensus in the same minute the Chairman speaks. With no 8:30 print to absorb any of it and no earnings flow in either direction, the entire distribution of today's outcomes sits in a fifteen-minute window that begins fifteen minutes after the bell. |
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| Full Source Links and Data Notes & Conflicts: see the companion file US_CrossAsset_Opening_2026-08-28_DataNotes.txt. |
| U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily — Friday, August 28, 2026. Data as of 7:25 AM ET. News window: Thursday 27 August 4:00 PM ET to Friday 28 August 7:25 AM ET. Prepared for institutional investors. Not personalized investment advice; verify independently before acting. Sections 15 (Source Links) and 16 (Data Notes & Conflicts) are omitted here and provided in full in the companion text file. |
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