ANGLES.

An absolutely pivotal week began on Monday with stocks initially bouncing back somewhat at the open from the prior week’s bruising tech bloodbath, helped by a 10%+ plunge in oil prices caused by an uptick in hopes of some kind of a US/Iran diplomacy breakthrough.

But Big Tech/AI anxiety soon returned, led by the ongoing collapse in the price of Intel, the previous Friday’s most brutalized victim and the indexes dramatically reversed to finish lower again, especially the NASDAQ-100.

Apple mostly met expectations with its earnings report after the close but missed iPhone sales and revenue targets in China. Palantir also issued a largely decent report but it wasn’t enough to overcome wider tech woes and both stocks fell in the aftermarket.

With almost 60m votes already cast, midterm polling day finally arrived on Tuesday but Wall Street’s attention remained focused on tech stocks, at least until the final election results rolled in later that night. After miserable trading sessions in Asia and Europe, US markets stabilized and the indexes actually ended up slightly higher on the day.

The Democrat romp in the midterms as voters angrily punished Trump and the Republicans for sticky inflation, a seemingly endless war, scary job insecurity and rampant corruption ensures a purple Washington DC for the next two years with gridlock, vetos, investigations and impeachments all on the dance card.

The election being in the rear view mirror is a huge clearing event for financial markets as a major layer of uncertainty was removed from the short/medium term outlook. A divided Congress doesn’t often make much progress, but that’s rarely a problem for Wall Street. Legislative constraint has historically generated strong equity market returns.

Markets enthusiastically celebrated the Dem-olition on Wednesday, with a few exceptions. With Musk a likely target for congressional scrutiny and a number of his Republican benefactors and protectors in Texas now booted out of office, Tesla and SpaceX tumbled.

But with the macro road ahead clearer now and Congress’ new-found inclination to challenge Trump’s tariffs, hasten the end of the Iran quagmire and maybe even to curb the perceived excesses of AI, the stock indexes rocketed to close solidly higher and interest rates eased. A further dive in energy prices didn’t hurt either.

A meaningful rotation is taking place under the surface. Chip stocks around the world notably failed to participate in the rally as traders processed US voter messaging on AI in general and data center buildouts in particular. On the other hand, three of the eleven S&P 500 sectors (consumer defensive, financials and healthcare) quietly reached new all-time record highs during the session.

The giddy positivity spilled into Asian and European markets overnight with the latter making new all-time highs. But Wall Street’s mood quickly turned extremely sour on Thursday as the rush to the exits in chip stocks massively intensified, things moved to another level and Wednesday’s gains evaporated in minutes. Unlike the electoral map, markets were a sea of red by the close.

The biggest losers were Nvidia, Broadcom, Micron, AMD, Qualcomm, Sandisk and, once again, Intel. SpaceX and Tesla continued to implode. As a result, it was the tech-heavy NASDAQ-100 that got smashed the hardest, falling by over 6.4% on the day to more than 14% below its October 6th highs and suffering its worst single day loss since the early COVID panic.

The Big Tech/AI carnage continued in Asia and Europe with Taiwan Semiconductor joining the growing list of chip names being dragged behind the woodshed. Japanese stocks fell into an official bear market.

As if we had not had enough to absorb already during the week, the calendar threw in a Jobs Report on Friday morning. It was very positive, with far more jobs created than expected, an upward revision to prior data and a drop in the unemployment rate. Bargain hunters dipped their toes back into the wreckage and the indexes closed slightly in the green for the day, but for the week the S&P 500 and NASDAQ-100 large cap indexes, international stocks and US small caps all finished lower.

Some other things I’m thinking about ..

* Between the October 6th highs and the midterm elections, the biggest AI and chip stocks shed about $5 trillion in value. The rest of the stock market actually added $1.3 trillion over the same time period. This can be viewed in one of two ways. The happy-clappers will tell you that it’s a healthy broadening of investor interest beyond the tech trade. According to the doom-merchants however, it is investors fleeing from the trade that has been the main building block of the now-four-year-old bull market and puts the entire stock market rally at risk. We shall see.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in ETF-based managed investment accounts, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

Bloomberg’s midterm results post-mortem.

.. AND I QUOTE:

“Washington’s perceived influence on market returns is often overstated. Markets are driven more by fundamentals than political outcomes.”

Keith Lerner, Chief Investment Officer at Truist

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Down by 2.7% last week

* Down by 5.0% over the past month

* Down by 4.9% over the last three months

* Up by 7.8% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Down by 5.0% last week

* Down by 12.2.0% over the last month

* Down by 9.0% over the last three months

* Up by 6.8% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF that tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Down by 2.0% last week

* Down by 1.4% over the last month

* Down by 5.9% over the last three months

* Up by 11.2% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF that tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Down by 1.8% last week

* Down by 3.8% over the past month

* Down by 6.8% over the last three months

* Up by 7.3% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $97.97 (down by 13.6% last week)

* GOLD .. $4,080 (up by 5.0% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 75,895 (down by 2.3% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE: 7.17%

Data courtesy of Mortgage News Daily which calculates a daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate from several different sources including surveys from Mortgage News, Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.875% (3.875% a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 7.00% (7.00% a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 4.00% (4.16% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.51% (4.56% a week ago)

* 5 YEAR TREASURY 4.65% (4.72% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 4.86% (4.93% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.26% (5.31% a week ago)

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury as of Friday’s market close.

* Decided upon by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee at periodic meetings 8x a year. Used as a basis for overnight interbank loans and for determining high yield savings interest rates.

** Wall Street Journal Prime Rate as of Friday’s close. Moving in lockstep with the Fed Funds interest rate, this measure is used as a basis for determining certain consumer loan interest rates such as credit cards, auto loans, personal loans, home equity loans/lines of c…

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The Federal Reserve was widely expected to hold the Fed Funds Rate steady in a pivotal week where key data releases were set to collide with megacap tech earnings during the final days of campaigning before the US midterm elections.

Things got off to a bright start on a Monday dominated by the announcement officially confirming the upcoming blockbuster Anthropic IPO (ticker ANT). After just five years of existence, the firm’s quarterly revenues are now higher than those of Intel, Uber, Coca-Cola, Netflix or Nike.

Stocks and bonds both shifted higher as interest rates continued to ease and the price of oil pulled back from its multi-month highs. The stock indexes all advanced to close nicely in the green.

After a solid Asian session and further energy price drops, mostly decent earnings reports from UPS, SoFi and Coca-Cola kept the party going on Tuesday, although Boeing plunged after announcing more losses and a dismal outlook. Tech and particularly beaten-down chip stocks took the lead and the NASDAQ-100 had a very good day.

Fed Decision Day dawned on a huge Wednesday with major earnings on deck for after the close. Stocks remained in a holding pattern going into the 2pm ET announcement, despite a sensational earnings report from the world’s second largest chipmaker, SK Hynix, with the market-driven probability of a rate hike steady at less than 10%.

As expected, the Fed Funds Rate was left unchanged at 3.875% with two dissents out of twelve votes, both of whom wanted a 0.25% hike. The market consensus was that inaction in October could well mean action in December and the probability of a rate increase at the final meeting of the year remains high. It was also announced that the Fed would meet less frequently in the future to adjust interest rates, down from the current eight meetings a year to six by 2028.

An evasive chairman Walsh admitted in the press conference that “inflation is too high” but that the committee wants to see more data before pulling the trigger on another increase, inevitably sparking speculation that the decision had been politically influenced ahead of the midterms by pressure from Trump, who apparently thinks that interest rates should be below 1.0%.

Alphabet/Google’ stock price got brutalized after hours on much worse-than-expected revenue and sales. RobinHood, Samsung and ServiceNow also underwhelmed. Microsoft, Oracle, Ford and T-Mobile, however, all surprised to the upside.

Wall Street set fire to half a trillion dollars (that’s $500,000,000,000) of Alphabet/Google’s value when the stock crashed by over 13% the moment that the real markets opened on Thursday morning and it barely recovered, dragging down the large cap indexes, especially the NASDAQ-100 which crapped out by 2.0% in a matter of minutes..

US Q3 GDP increased at an accelerating 3.4% annualized rate, according a preliminary estimate but the closely-watched PCE inflation rate climbed to 3.6% annualized, still way above the Fed’s supposed 2.0% target. The stock indexes stabilized somewhat as the session wore on, but still ended up deep in the red

The concentrated source of the problem was highlighted by the fact that fewer than 20% of the S&P 500 companies (mostly tech names) closed lower on the day but they did so by so much that the overall index was pulled significantly lower. After the bell, Amazon and Intel fell short of expectations with their reports and outlook, but Eli Lilly and Sandisk impressed with theirs.

The Big Tech/AI massacre snowballed dramatically on Friday with index heavyweights Amazon and especially Intel (which lost 30% of its value) getting butchered in response to their earnings and was not helped by a massive theft of over $6 billion of client crypto assets at Binance by North Korean hackers.

Money flooded out of tech stocks and into the perceived safe haven of bonds and this sent interest rates spinning lower (see INTEREST RATES below). The NASDAQ-100 car crash, which capped a brutal month for the index, took it into official correction territory just three and a half weeks after celebrating a new all-time high on October 6th.

Crypto and gold’s supposed role as useful hedges to equities was once again undermined as both asset classes got pounded even harder than stocks.

The S&P 500 and NASDAQ-100 large cap indexes and international stocks all ended lower for both the week and the month, but US small caps ended October with fractional gains.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in ETF-based managed investment accounts, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

How does Social Security actually work? Will it be around when you need it?

.. AND I QUOTE:

“While not a perfect relationship, the relative performance of the technology sector currently pretty much mirrors the overall success or failure of the S&P 500 index.”

Jim Paulsen, Chief Investment Strategist, Paulsen Perspectives

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Down by 0.6% last week

* Down by 1.0% over the past month

* Down by 0.3% over the last three months

* Up by 10.8% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Down by 2.0% last week

* Down by 7.0% over the last month

* Down by 1.4% over the last three months

* Up by 12.4% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF that tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Up by 1.3% last week

* Up by 0.1% over the last month

* Down by 5.9% over the last three months

* Up by 13.5% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF that tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Down by 0.2% last week

* Down by 2.3% over the past month

* Down by 3.1% over the last three months

* Up by 9.2% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $113.40 (down by 2.9% last week)

* GOLD .. $3,885 (down by 7.2% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 77,650 (down by 5.0% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE: 7.29%

Data courtesy of Mortgage News Daily which calculates a daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate from several different sources including surveys from Mortgage News, Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.875% (3.875% a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 7.00% (7.00% a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 4.16% (4.22% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.56% (4.69% a week ago)

* 5 YEAR TREASURY 4.72% (4.81% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 4.93% (4.99% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.31% (5.32% a week ago)

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury as of Friday’s market close.

* Decided upon by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee at periodic meetings 8x a year. Used as a basis for overnight interbank loans and for determining high yield savings interest rates.

** Wall Street Journal Prime Rate as of Friday’s close. Moving in lockstep with the Fed Funds interest rate, this measure is used as a basis for determining certain consumer loan interest rates such as credit cards, auto loans, personal loans, home equity loans/lines of credit and securities-based lending.

*** Used as a basis for determining mortgages.

INTEREST RATE EXPECTATIONS:

Where will the Fed Funds interest rate be after the next rate-setting meeting on December 9th?

* 0.50% higher than now .. 0% probability (7% a week ago)

* …

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit simonbrady.substack.com

The earnings focus shifted from financials to tech and tech-adjacent companies reporting over the next couple of weeks which will help set the narrative going into this week’s FOMC meeting and the midterms, now just a week or so away.

European traders watched France burning over the weekend and got back to work selling local stocks and bonds on Monday, but Wall Street rebounded hard from the NASDAQ-100’s worst week of the year amid the recent chip stock wipeout.

Dip buyers swarmed in with a frenzy of bargain-hunting right from the opening bell which sent many of Wall Street’s recent tech victims soaring, pushing the stock indexes solidly higher by the close.

Initially, Monday’s rally reversed when markets opened on Tuesday as anxiety returned about circular financing and AI debt levels, but attention soon turned to the upcoming earnings blitz, beginning after the closing bell. The mood brightened a little in anticipation, helped also by rumored progress in US/Iran talks and the indexes closed the session unchanged, although nothing could save Coreweave stock which continued to nosedive.

Coming into its Q3 earnings report, Netflix had shed over $135 billion in value this year through poor stock performance and the firm recently announced major layoffs and boardroom bloodletting that notably discarded the Chief Content Officer. There was nothing in the disappointing report to spark any confidence in an imminent turnaround.

Elsewhere, United Airlines and General Motors also both missed forecasts and gave worrying profit and sales outlooks. But SpaceX, Super Micro Computer and 3M handily topped analysts’ estimates.

When markets opened on Wednesday, a picky Wall Street set about punishing Tuesday’s earnings disappointments but rewarding the upside surprises while at the same time bracing for more big reports after the close. The net result was nicely higher stock indexes by the end of the session. Earnings after the bell were mixed. Meta and IBM mostly exceeded expectations but Tesla announced falling revenues and the stock dropped heavily in the after-market.

Wall Street seems unable to keep an AI narrative going one way or another for more than a couple of days at a time and the tech trade dramatically fell apart again on Thursday, severely dragging down all the indexes, but particularly the NASDAQ-100 which got absolutely pummelled as AI debt concerns flooded back. Even Meta was crushed despite its solid earnings report.

The declines were further fueled by another surge in oil prices to a new five-month high with traders on edge at the suggestion of an imminent resumption of US/Israeli bombings.

Bonds were the main beneficiaries from the flight of assets from chip stocks and interest rates cascaded lower (see INTEREST RATES below), with the crucial 10-year Treasury rate falling back below 5% and finally slender signs of mortgage rate relief (see AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE below).

The Big Tech/AI bloodbath and the jump in bond and oil prices eased on Friday but all failed to reverse their moves. Three of the Magnificent Seven report in the coming days and Wall Street seems afraid of being caught offside.

For the the second week in a row, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ-100 large cap indexes and international stocks all finished lower but US small caps ended up in the green.

Some other things I’m thinking about ..

* Confirmation came last week that the US residential real estate market is rapidly grinding to a halt. The number of closings on sales of existing homes collapsed last month to its lowest level since records began. Sky high prices, supply being wrecked by holders of COVID-era mortgages staying put and the trajectory of mortgage interest rates are all clearly to blame. No region was spared but the West and the South are suffering the most.

* And it’s not as if new construction is coming to the rescue either. New single-family home building is back to early pandemic-era lows, with the homebuilders getting throttled by the same rise in borrowing costs that is scaring away potential buyers, not to mention labor shortages due to immigration enforcement and exorbitant lumber and energy costs driven up by tariffs, inflation and war.

* Heading into the midterms, Trump is facing record levels of unpopularity with two-thirds of all Americans failing to approve of his presidency (including 91% of voters aged below 30, two-thirds of whom cite antagonism towards Trump as their #1 motivation for even voting at all).

* The president’s volatile character could lead to some market-impacting surprise moves out of desperation before polls open on November 3rd, but the most likely outcome is divided government, legislative gridlock, presidential vetos, possible impeachments and the never-ending prospect of more government shutdowns. This could all make for turbulent financial market conditions in the next two years in the lead-up to the 2028 election.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in ETF-based managed investment accounts, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

“Today I’d like to talk about stupid money s**t people get distracted by versus what actually moves the needle.”

Here are a few financial red herrings that you are probably wasting your time on when you could be focusing on much more important stuff.

.. AND I QUOTE:

“I don’t think anyone should have billions of dollars at their disposal.”

Peter Buffett, son of Warren - the fate of his father’s $150 billion fortune will be decided by three siblings

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Down by 0.4% last week

* Down by 0.9% over the past month

* Up by 2.8% over the last three months

* Up by 11.5% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Down by 0.8% last week

* Down by 5.0% over the last month

* Up by 3.3% over the last three months

* Up by 14.7% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF that tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Up by 2.0% last week

* Down by 2.1% over the last month

* Down by 5.9% over the last three months

* Up by 12.0% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF that tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Down by 1.1% last week

* Down by 3.6% over the past month

* Down by 1.5% over the last three months

* Up by 9.4% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $116.83 (up by 6.3% last week)

* GOLD .. $4,187 (down by 4.3% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 81,755 (down by 0.1% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE: 7.33%

Data courtesy of Mortgage News Daily which calculates a daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate from several different sources including surveys from Mortgage News, Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.875% (3.875% a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 7.00% (7.00% a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 4.22% (4.26% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.69% (4.74% a week ago)

* 5 YEAR TREASURY 4.81% (4.90% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 4.99% (5.10% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.32% (5.44% a week ago)

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury as of Friday’s market close.

* Decided upon by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee at periodic meetings 8x a year. Used as a basis for overnig…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit simonbrady.substack.com

Deadly Houthi attacks in Saudi Arabia over the weekend and Trump clearly throwing his weight behind Putin by lifting some Russian energy sanctions and shutting down satellite access to the Ukrainian military pushed oil prices higher again as the eleventh bull market in stocks since the 1950s celebrated its fourth birthday (during which time the S&P 500 has risen by 117%) to start a week packed with Q3 earnings reports and critical inflation data.

While bond traders took the day off for Columbus Day, energy price concerns offset broad earnings optimism when stocks opened on Monday and the indexes finished a quiet session moderately lower.

The previous week’s scare caused by the Financial Times’ OpenAI revenue story was a warning shot across the bow of the whole Big Tech/AI ecosystem and emphasized just how vulnerable this corner of the stock market is to any perceived downturn in the fortunes of just a handful of companies.

An alarming chip/semiconductor selloff in South Korea overnight on the back of potential Chinese competition generated more tech jitters in New York on Tuesday morning, but center stage was occupied by a flurry of pre-market earnings reports.

Index heavyweights JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and United Healthcare all initially jumped higher after announcing largely impressive results but Citibank, Wells Fargo and Johnson & Johnson sank after disappointing to varying degrees. The net effect on stocks of the slew of earnings reports, lightly easing interest rates and concerns surrounding geopolitics and Big Tech/AI leaned neutral-to-negative and the indexes closed fractionally in the red.

Bank of America failed to meet expectations with its earnings on Wednesday morning and confirmed a $1.2 billion fine for money laundering and sanctions-busting. Morgan Stanley also failed to wow Wall Street and both stocks were punished by an increasingly grumpy stock market which is not in the mood to tolerate earnings misses.

But the big news was the final CPI report before the midterms (early voting is already under way in seventeen states), which is also likely to anchor the conversation at the next Fed interest rate meeting on October 28th. It showed annualized US retail inflation accelerating to 3.7%, driven mainly by increased fuel costs. This was deemed to add a little weight to the recently-diminishing probability of an October increase in the Fed Funds Rate.

Short/medium term interest rates shifted higher but the stock indexes got trashed, especially the NASDAQ with more of the tech stock carnage in South Korea spilling over into US markets. CoreWeave, a poster child for stretched valuation stocks with zero profitability and massive and increasingly costly debt, got totally hammered.

Asian markets had another rough session and the tech wreck in the US continued into Thursday morning as money rotated out of Big Tech/AI stocks into more defensive names and into bonds which had a strongly moderating effect on interest rates.

Things were’t helped by PPI data showing the biggest jump for years in annualized wholesale inflation, now up to 6.3%. Retail sales are gradually slowing, as the American consumer begins to finally show the first signs of spending fatigue.

The pullback in interest rates, however, triggered something of a recovery in stocks as the session wore on and the indexes clawed their way back to finish flat for the day.

As soon as US markets opened on Friday money continued to fly out of Big Tech/AI stocks and into other sectors like Financials and Healthcare but mainly into bonds and cash.

It was announced that the US federal budget deficit widened to nearly $2 trillion for the 2026 fiscal year, a 12% increase on the $1.78 trillion gap recorded for last year. Federal government spending rose by about 6%, while tax receipts increased about 3%.

The combination of the never-ending conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine’s resumption of strikes on Russian energy infrastructure sent the oil price screaming higher to top $110 for the first time since May.

The result was another miserable day for the stock indexes which closed deep in the red, with the tech-heavy NASDAQ-100 getting battered amidst another bloodbath in the semi-conductor and memory universe ahead of tech earnings kicking off in the next few days.

For the week, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ-100 large cap indexes, US small caps and international stocks all finished substantially lower.

Some other things I’m thinking about ..

* Tariffs, rising interest rates, persistent inflation and soaring fuel costs have driven the average price for a new vehicle to above $50k, according to a recent analysis by Kelley Blue Book. Another survey found that vehicle pricing was the most cited reason for customers walking away from a purchase at 66%. Financing costs came in as the second most frequent reason at 47%. The average price of gas at the pump has now been above $4.00/gallon for 160 days this year, breaking 2022’s all-time record.

* It may not have always felt like it, but when the S&P 500 fell by 1.1% on Wednesday, it snapped a run of extraordinary stock market stability with 52 trading sessions having passed since a 1%+ down day in the index, the longest such streak on record.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in managed investment accounts which exclusively use ETFs, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

The ‘American Dream’ Now Costs More Than $5.3 million.

.. AND I QUOTE:

“A lot of investors have no clue what they are investing in. Most companies out there cannot find any bloody return on investment, I’m telling you. People are just wasting money spending tokens.”

Hock Tan, CEO of Broadcom, one of the biggest winners of the AI boom.

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Down by 2.0% last week

* Up by 0.1% over the past month

* Up by 2.9% over the last three months

* Up by 11.9% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Down by 5.5% last week

* Down by 1.0% over the last month

* Up by 2.0% over the last three months

* Up by 15.5% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF that tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Down by 3.0% last week

* Down by 5.3% over the last month

* Down by 7.5% over the last three months

* Up by 9.9% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF that tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Down by 1.6% last week

* Down by 3.6% over the past month

* Up by 0.4% over the last three months

* Up by 10.6% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $109.95 (up by 5.1% last week)

* GOLD .. $4,187 (down by 0.1% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 81,755 (down by 1.1% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE: 7.37%

Data courtesy of Mortgage News Daily which calculates a daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate from several different sources including surveys from Mortgage News, Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.875% (3.875% a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 7.00% (7.00% a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 4.26% (4.25% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.74% (4.80% a week ago)

* 5 YEAR TREASURY 4.90% (5.02% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 5.10% (5.24% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.44% (5.60% a week ago)

Data courtesy …

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A distinct lack of meaningful economic data or earnings reports during the week put financial markets at the mercy of the newsflow surrounding the Iran war, US domestic politics a month away from the midterms and European economic woes, particularly in France, which is beginning to look like Greece circa 2010 with local interest rates having surged from 3.50% in late June to 4.90% today.

Stocks meandered higher on Monday with the price of Nvidia reaching a new all-time high and closing in on a valuation of $6 trillion barely a year after first breaking through $4 trillion, which is particularly astonishing when you consider that just six months ago it was floundering at down 11% for the year.

Wall Street’s concerns about an October Fed Funds Rate hike continued to recede following the previous week’s cool Jobs Report. The session’s gains were enough for the NASDAQ-100 to score its 23rd all-time record high of 2026.

Bond traders took a break from turbo-charging interest rates on Tuesday and stocks reacted positively with the NASDAQ-100 adding weight to its record level and the S&P 500 closing above 7800 for the first time ever and joining the party by reclaiming its own new all-time record high for the 27th time this year.

An intensification of Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and increased Houthi activity in Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea on Wednesday dramatically reversed the recent steady drift lower in oil prices. Interest rates resumed their climb with the highly impactful 10-Year Treasury rate reaching its highest level in 24 years.

The minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last meeting confirmed what we all knew, that the FOMC is strongly leaning towards another quarter-point rate increase on either October 28th or December 9th this year, although the probabilities strongly favor the latter over the former. This all dampened enthusiasm for stocks, especially in the case of the more interest rate-sensitive Small Caps and the indexes retreated from their record levels.

The Q3 earnings season kicked off on Thursday with uninspiring results from PepsiCo and then Delta Airlines, but things properly ramp up this week with the big banks reporting.

Stocks continued to be vulnerable to gravity from the newsflow, particularly a revitalized surge in energy prices resulting from increased Middle East tensions and infuriatingly contradictory messaging around when or even whether the US will resume its bombing campaign in Iran. A Financial Times report cast doubt over OpenAI’s revenue claims, sending tremors through the Big Tech/AI ecosystem. This rattled the stock indexes which sank further.

A number of speeches from Fed officials heavily implied to markets that an interest rate hike later this month is off the table (see INTEREST RATE EXPECTATIONS below) although we do have some inflation data coming out between now and then and this, along with a pause in the rise in oil prices and a welcome drop in long term interest rates, led to a stock rebound on Friday with the indexes closing the session nicely higher.

For the week, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ-100 large cap indexes closed higher but US small caps and international stocks finished lower.

Some other things I’m thinking about ..

* Q4 of midterm election years are historically very lucrative for stock investors with far higher levels of expected return than in other years. Since the 1950s, the S&P 500 has averaged a bounce-back of 31.8% from its low point in a midterm year. Every single midterm election since 1946 has been followed by positive one-year returns in stock prices.

* The early-year pace-setters, US Small Cap and international stocks, continue to seriously lag US Large Cap performance over recent weeks and months (see LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS below) with rejuvenated Mega Cap Tech driving this most recent rally; notably Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple.

* These three stocks now collectively comprise over 21% of the weighting of the S&P 500 index, the highest representation by any three stocks in history. With this kind of heavy concentration, it only takes a handful of winners to generate outperformance of the index itself versus the average stock inside the index. Equally, a downturn in performance in just a tiny handful of stocks could send the overall indexes tumbling.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in managed investment accounts which exclusively use ETFs, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent continues live in his own little fantasy world, making ridiculously happy-clappy claims and predictions in recent weeks and months (which have all proved to be dead wrong) purely to try and bolster Trump’s collapsing approval ratings and shattering his credibility with financial markets. That is not a good thing.

.. AND I QUOTE:

“Tell people how the bicycle is ridden, not necessarily how the bicycle’s been built.”

Jennifer D. Morgan, author of “Hearts, Minds And Wallets” and founder/CEO of Connective Communication.

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Up by 1.2% last week

* Up by 2.7% over the past month

* Up by 3.9% over the last three months

* Up by 14.2% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Up by 0.2% last week

* Up by 6.0% over the last month

* Up by 5.6% over the last three months

* Up by 22.3% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF that tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Down by 0.9% last week

* Down by 3.0% over the last month

* Down by 5.0% over the last three months

* Up by 13.3% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF that tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Down by 0.7% last week

* Down by 1.7% over the past month

* Up by 1.2% over the last three months

* Up by 12.4% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $104.54 (up by 1.9% last week)

* GOLD .. $4,220 (up by 1.2% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 82,645 (down by 2.6% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

S&P 500 INDEX: WALL STREET ANALYSTS’ 2026 YEAR-END PRICE TARGETS:

Average: 7,970 .. 2.0% above Friday’s close of 7,812 (last week: 3.2% above)

Data courtesy of LSEG Datastream.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE: 7.48%

Data courtesy of Mortgage News Daily which calculates a daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate from several different sources including surveys from Mortgage News, Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.875% (3.875% a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 7.00% (7.00% a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 4.25% (4.19% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.80% (4.83% a week ago)

* 5 YEAR TREASURY 5.02% (5.06% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 5.24% (5.28% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.60% (5.63% a week ago)

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury as of Friday’s market close.

* Decided upon by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee at periodic meetings 8x a year. Used as a basis for overnight interbank loans and for determining high yield savings interest rates.

** Wall Street Journal Prime Rate as of Friday’s close. Moving in lockstep with the Fed Funds interest rate, this measure is used as a basis for determining certain consumer loan interest rates such as credit cards, auto loans, personal loans, home equi…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit simonbrady.substack.com

Over the weekend, Trump killed the tentative Hormuz deal (which had basically just re-stated the previous memorandum of understanding from earlier in the summer) that had sparked a rally in equities the previous week and disappointed global markets reacted by sending interest rates and energy prices spiraling higher again, pulling stocks lower in Asia and Europe. Despite reported apparent broad investor confidence (complacency?), Wall Street was on edge and suffered the same fate on Monday as US stock indexes and bond prices tumbled.

Consumer sentiment has plunged to levels not seen in years according to data released on Tuesday with persistent deep worry among Americans about the current cost of living and the outlook for inflation, their job security and general economic conditions. The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) revealed a worse-than-expected decline in job openings ahead of Friday’s employment data.

Stocks spent the day treading water, closing essentially unchanged but interest rates continued to rip higher with the 10-year Treasury rate back at pre-Great Financial Crisis levels.

Long-dated bonds experienced a nightmare session with the 30-year interest rate soaring to its highest level in almost a quarter of a century as bond traders continued to dump on Treasury Secretary Bessent and his recent pitiful efforts at interest rate manipulation in time for the midterms. The only major Treasury maturity with a rate below 5% is now the 2-year and even that may not last much longer.

Energy prices eased with persistent rumors of backchannel negotiations between Iran and the US maybe getting somewhere in spite of Trump’s public intransigence as the supposed “three-week skirmish” moved into its eighth month.

Wednesday’s PCE inflation reading came in cooler than feared at 3.4%, which was a relief for markets. We also learned that consumer spending rose in August at the fastest pace in over a year.

Stocks went nowhere on the final day of the month and Q3 although Wall Street did interpret the PCE data as reducing the probability of a Fed Funds Rate increase at the October meeting. Index heavyweight Micron released a sensational earnings report after the close, shattering estimates.

October and Q4 kicked off on Thursday with traders really wanting to carry the stock market nicely higher after the benign PCE numbers and Micron’s blowout earnings but were mostly unable to do so in the face of the onslaught of the bond vigilantes who are wrecking bond prices by relentlessly pushing longer dated interest rates higher, although short end rates reversed lower on cooling expectations for a Fed rate increase.

The indexes did eventually squeak out small gains for the session with a late-day charge after bond traders took their foot off the gas, but the rabid enthusiasm for equities does seem to be stalling.

Friday was Jobs Day and the report showed a weakening labor market and didn’t add any urgency for the Fed to imminently raise rates. Far fewer jobs were created than expected and prior months’ data was adjusted lower. The unemployment rate inched higher to 4.2%.

Even bond traders need to book profits at some point and dip-buyers finally crawled out from their hiding places and took advantage of the data on Friday to buy bonds and drive down interest rates.

Stocks responded positively to the sound of the door starting to close on the probability of a Fed hike later this month (see INTEREST RATE EXPECTATIONS below) and a dip in energy prices brought about by the decision of G7 countries to release 100 million barrels of crude oil and diesel from their reserve stockpiles, to finish nicely in the green for the session.

For the week, the S&P 500 and US small caps finished fractionally lower and international stocks fell by more but the NASDAQ-100 moved higher.

Some other things I’m thinking about ..

* Like a chihuahua yapping at a polar bear, US Treasury Secretary and Trump sock puppet Bessent arrogantly boasted to the bond market on September 9th; “I am the house now. Bet against me if you want” in an attempt to engineer a reversal of the tide of rising interest rates in order to try and boost the president’s plummeting approval ratings and the Republicans’ chances at the midterms. Bond traders rolled up their sleeves, took him up on his challenge and have completely kicked his ass (as they always do with any politician dumb enough to take them on) by taking interest rates much higher since then.

* The average 30-year mortgage rate blew through 7.50% last week (see below) and the number of applications fell by 6% month-on-month. The housing market is grinding to a halt with homeowners with COVID-era and other lower rate mortgages more incentivized than ever to stay put which is crushing supply and first-time buyers still frozen out by both spiking mortgage rates and lofty prices which is impacting demand.

* Skyrocketing interest rates are not just an issue in the US. The world’s other major economies are having the same problem.

I JUST SENT OUT MY QUARTERLY MARKET REVIEW FOR Q3 WHICH YOU CAN VIEW HERE.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in managed investment accounts which exclusively use ETFs, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

Twelve financial rules to live by.

.. AND I QUOTE:

“Change before you have to.”

Jack Welch, former CEO of GE.

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Down by 0.2% last week

* Up by 0.6% over the past month

* Up by 2.4% over the last three months

* Up by 12.9% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Up by 0.7% last week

* Up by 5.7% over the last month

* Up by 3.7% over the last three months

* Up by 22.0% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF that tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Down by 0.2% last week

* Down by 4.3% over the last month

* Down by 5.8% over the last three months

* Up by 14.4% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF that tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Down by 1.1% last week

* Down by 2.0% over the past month

* Down by 2.2% over the last three months

* Up by 13.2% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $102.61 (down by 1.7% last week)

* GOLD .. $4,172 (down by 3.4% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 84,810 (up by 0.1% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

S&P 500 INDEX: WALL STREET ANALYSTS’ 2026 YEAR-END PRICE TARGETS:

Average: 7,970 .. 3.2% above Friday’s close of 7723 (last week: 2.9% above)

Data courtesy of LSEG Datastream.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE:

Data courtesy of Mortgage News Daily which calculates a daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate from several different sources including surveys from Mortgage News, Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.875% (3.875% a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 7.00% (7.00% a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 4.19% (4.24% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.83% (4.81% a week ago)

* 5 YEAR TREASURY 5.06% (5.01% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 5.28% (5.18% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.63% (5.50% a week ago)

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury as of Friday’s market close.

* Decided upon by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee at periodic meetings 8x a year. Used as …

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit simonbrady.substack.com

Geopolitics was very much on the market’s mind after record electoral successes for extremist parties in weekend German regional elections and attendees gathering in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) - but notably not the leaders of China, Russia, India or Palestine - while the Iran war rumbles endlessly in the background.

However, China’s premier Xi Jinping skipping the UNGA to meet with Trump in Washington was set to be the week’s pivotal event, covering issues from tariffs to technology related to the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

Wall Street was in a very cheerful mood on Monday after the oil price dipped back below $100 and interest rates fell sharply with the important 10-Year Treasury rate briefly dropping back below 5% again as Federal Reserve officials began to publicly explain their decision the previous week to raise the Fed Funds Rate.

The indexes roared higher and closed within touching distance of new all time-highs, particularly the NASDAQ 100 which was strongly boosted by surges in Meta, Intel and AMD as AI enthusiasm returned with a vengeance with Trump inviting all his tech bro CEO buddies to Thursday’s lavish dinner with Xi, along with senior executives from the big banks.

Energy prices continued to drift lower on Tuesday morning with flickering hopes of some kind of move towards a diplomatic resolution to the Iran war resulting from meetings on the sidelines of the UNGA. The exception was diesel, potentially the most damaging price victim of the current war, which moved to new record highs.

Trump’s rambling, belligerent and conceited address to UN delegates, which included a threat to “annihilate” Iran, was met with stony silence, eye-rolls and some walkouts but contained nothing of value to markets other perhaps than his bizarre idea to change the name of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Super Intelligence (SI).

Stocks and bonds shrugged off the speech as irrelevant and it was essentially momentum from Monday’s big jump that pushed the indexes upwards and the NASDAQ-100 closed at another new all-time record high.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its outlook for 2026 and 2027 with the US blowing away the rest of the world in projected economic growth.

Tuesday’s giddy optimism gave way to negativity, however, on Wednesday as markets digested the complete lack of anything constructive in Trump’s speech, a defiant response at the UN from the Iranian president, rapidly waning expectations of anything meaningful coming out of the Trump/Xi summit and the potential domestic and international fallout from the growing risk that the US may soon cease exports of diesel.

After taking a short break, interest rates aggressively resumed their upward march as traders doubled down on bets of another Fed Funds Rate increase next month (see INTEREST RATE EXPECTATIONS below) and are repricing the entire curve higher (see INTEREST RATES below).

The key 5-year Treasury rate broke through 5.00% for the first time since 2007 and the 30-year reached its highest level since 2004, closing in on 5.50%. Stock indexes dropped precipitously from their record levels on what was a pretty ugly day all around for financial markets.

The bond rout deepened overnight with interest rates around the world continuing to soar driven by rampant bond vigilantes. The US and China agreed to kick the can down the road again by extending their trade truce until January 10th but AI competition, the war in Iran, Taiwan and critical minerals were still on the table to be discussed at the Trump/Xi summit.

Stocks recovered from a rocky start on Thursday to close a muted session unchanged with negotiators apparently exploring some kind of a phased deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. As expected, little of consequence came from the Trump/Xi extravaganza despite the pomp and pageantry, but of course that didn’t stop both sides making desperate but ineffective PR attempts to try and put lipstick on a pig for their respective domestic audiences.

Shorter term interest rates and oil prices did stabilize somewhat on Friday and the stock indexes got back some of their mojo, closing moderately higher for the session, led once again by tech names. For the week, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 large cap indexes and international stocks all finished nicely in the green but US small caps were lower.

It’s still very much a bull market in stocks. But the bears are starting to find a few things to feast on, particularly in the chaotic state of the bond market.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in managed investment accounts which exclusively use ETFs, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

“While you weren’t looking, the stock market went and put all your eggs in one basket.” Diversification using straight up index funds is becoming harder.

.. AND I QUOTE:

“Great to welcome Jake Paul to the Treasury Department today.”

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a ludicrous post on X, a message that would have been unthinkable until recently. It was naturally treated with the mockery it deserved.

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Up by 1.3% last week

* Up by 0.7% over the past month

* Up by 5.8% over the last three months

* Up by 13.1% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF that tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Up by 3.2% last week

* Up by 4.7% over the last month

* Up by 5.4% over the last three months

* Up by 21.2% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF that tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Down by 0.8% last week

* Down by 5.7% over the last month

* Down by 6.0% over the last three months

* Up by 14.6% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF that tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Up by 0.6% last week

* Down by 1.7% over the past month

* Up by 2.2% over the last three months

* Up by 14.5% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $104.38 (up by 1.0% last week)

* GOLD .. $4,321 (down by 2.2% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 84,500 (up by 3.9% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

S&P 500 INDEX: WALL STREET ANALYSTS’ 2026 YEAR-END PRICE TARGETS:

Average: 7,970 .. 2.9% above Friday’s close of 7743 (last week: 3.3% above)

Data courtesy of LSEG Datastream.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE:

Data courtesy of Mortgage News Daily which calculates a daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate from several different sources including surveys from Mortgage News, Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.875% (3.875% a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 7.00% (7.00% a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 4.24% (4.14% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.81% (4.76% a week ago)

* 5 YEAR TREASURY 5.01% (4.86% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 5.18% (5.01% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.50% (5.34% a week ago)

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury as of Friday’s market close.

* Decided upon by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee at periodic meetings 8x a year. Used as a basis for overnight interbank loans and for determining high yield savings interest rates.

** Wall Street Journal Prime Rate as of Friday’s close. Moving in lockstep with the Fed Funds interest rate, this measure is used …

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit simonbrady.substack.com

After spending his weekend advocating for the breakup of the United Kingdom and watching golf, Trump resumed his relentless pressure on the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates to begin a week in which the central bank was widely expected to have to raise them for the first time since 2023 to fight inflation, putting him on a collision course with his own hand-picked Fed chairman.

An Iranian-backed attack shut down a 7 million barrel/day Saudi pipeline on Sunday night, reducing Saudi oil production to its lowest levels in decades and triggering yet another big oil price spike.

Existential AI safety concerns exploded and an openness to tighter regulation expressed by the OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs over the weekend sent tech hardware and chip stocks into a violent tailspin when US markets opened on Monday after pretty dreadful sessions in Asia and Europe. The indexes gradually recovered over the course of the day and closed only moderately lower.

Interest rates resumed their climb with the impactful 10 year Treasury rate, which is the pivot for all sorts of consumer and business loans from mortgages to car loans to business lines of credit, breaking through 5% to its highest levels since 2007 right before the Great Financial Crisis. It has now risen by a full percentage point since the outbreak of the Iran war in February.

Treasury Secretary Bessent was lambasted by members of the House Financial Services Committee (as well as some protesters) on Tuesday. Stocks tumbled to close lower again and interest rates continued to grind higher as traders watched him constantly fumble his lines and answer pointed questions very evasively, if at all. It’s clear that the confidence of both Congress and financial markets in his stewardship of the US economy is quickly evaporating.

Retail sales data held up much better than expected on Wednesday morning as Americans continue to soothe their deep economic pessimism by spending money.

Wall Street had priced in a 93% probability of a quarter-point Fed Funds Rate increase to 3.875% going into the FOMC interest rate-setting announcement. And lo, it came to pass and was a unanimous decision with no dissent on the committee.

The quarterly Dot Plot projections were also released and showed that almost all the committee members are penciling in another rate increase at one of the two remaining meetings this year with maybe more to come in 2027 and they see further upside risk to inflation in the coming months with no achievement of the Fed’s 2% target for at least three years.

Attention swiftly turned to the tone of Fed Chairman Warsh’s press conference. He gave clipped, pithy answers and dodged any questions about any contact from Trump and the fact that the Fed is now in apparent policy conflict with Bessent and the US Treasury and most certainly with the president, who quickly repeated his ridiculous assertion that interest rates should somehow be below 1% and concerningly claimed that he instructed Warsh how to cast his vote.

These three powerful institutions normally work together harmoniously in a properly-functioning economy but are now completely out of sync. The market’s takeaway was that the quarter point hike could be the first of an upcoming series of increases.

Shorter term interest rates shot higher, rising for a seventh consecutive session, longer term rates stabilized and stocks dumped with uncertainty lingering about how far and for how long Fed rate increases will go and traders shifted their gaze from this Fed meeting to the weeks and months ahead and didn’t particularly like what they saw.

Dip-buyers finally stepped in on Thursday, taking advantage of a pullback in energy prices and interest rates retreated from their recent spike. Markets seemed to feel a little better about the expected rate hike and stocks bounced back hard, quickly erasing all of Wednesday’s losses to close solidly higher.

Friday’s session was a quiet one as markets digested the events of the last few days with stocks mostly unchanged, but interest rates moved north again (see INTEREST RATES below). For the week, the NASDAQ-100 finished higher but the S&P 500, US small caps and international stocks closed lower.

Some other things I’m thinking about ..

* The S&P 500 closed right at its technically important and closely-watched 50-day moving average, but still above its 100-day.

* Employing the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle, the European Union invited Canada to become a mostly symbolic associate member in a reaction to Trump’s toxic hostility towards them both. This naturally enraged the US president who threatened “very serious” new tariffs in response to this “hostile act”.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in managed investment accounts which exclusively use ETFs, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

“96% of stocks are a waste of your precious time.” The math of stock-picking success is brutal.

.. AND I QUOTE:

“The only way to be sure of having tomorrow’s big winners in your portfolio is to own all stocks.”

Professor Hendrik Bessembinder, Carey School of Business at Arizona State University in his landmark study, One Hundred Years In The US Stock Markets.

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF, tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Down by 0.3% last week

* Down by 1.0% over the past month

* Up by 2.0% over the last three months

* Up by 11.7% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF, tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Up by 0.9% last week

* Up by 0.8% over the last month

* Down by 2.6% over the last three months

* Up by 17.4% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF, tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Down by 1.7% last week

* Down by 5.8% over the last month

* Down by 3.9% over the last three months

* Up by 15.4% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF, tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Down by 1.5% last week

* Down by 1.3% over the past month

* Down by 1.0% over the last three months

* Up by 13.8% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $103.32 (down by 1.2% last week)

* GOLD .. $4,416 (up by 0.6% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 81,340 (up by 4.8% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

S&P 500: WALL STREET ANALYSTS’ 2026 YEAR-END PRICE TARGETS:

Average: 7,901 .. 3.3% above Friday’s close of 7651 (last week: 3.3% above)

Data courtesy of LSEG Datastream.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE:

Data courtesy of Mortgage News Daily which calculates an average 30-year fixed mortgage rate from several different sources including surveys from Mortgage News, Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.875% (3.625% a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 7.00% (6.75% a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 4.14% (4.00% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.76% (4.56% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 5.01% (4.95% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.34% (5.37% a week ago)

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury as of Friday’s market close.

* Decided upon by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee at periodic meetings 8x a year. Used as a basis for overnight interbank loans and for determining high yield savings interest rates.

** Wall Street Journal Prime Rate as of Friday’s close. Moving in lockstep with the Fed Funds interest rate, this measure is used as …

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After a news-light long weekend, markets woke up on Tuesday to Canada announcing its promised like-for-like retaliatory tariffs on many US goods while at the same time plotting a massive trade deal with Europe, oil prices hurtling back towards $100 with a further escalation of hostilities in the Middle East and Trump nonsensically barking that the Fed should somehow immediately cut its interest rate from 3.625% to 0.50%, in an environment where the central bank may well need to raise it later this week to combat sticky inflation.

With a busy week ahead of new inflation data, a European Central Bank (ECB) meeting with interest rates spiking around the world to multi-decade highs in some cases, Apple’s launch event, increasing war and tariff tensions and goodness knows what else coming from an increasingly erratic US president, the stock indexes dropped with Amgen and Novartis leading the charge lower after disappointing drug trial results. Qualcomm, however, surged after signing a data center partnership with Amazon.

Clearly under orders from his master who is looking to bend financial markets to his will with the midterms in mind, Treasury Secretary Bessent declared war on the bond market on Wednesday, giving his nasal, nerdy version of a “Bring It On, Motherf**ker” speech squarely aimed at the Wall Street bond vigilantes who have pushed interest rates higher lately, telling them “I am the house now. Bet against me if you want”.

Bond traders (or “Bloomberg terminal bros” as Bessent dismissively called them) may well take him up on that suggestion since governments have had a historically close to zero win rate whenever they have taken on the bond market. Indeed, their initial reaction to the Treasury Secretary’s Little Rambo-style challenge was to stare him down by taking interest rates to new three-year highs.

After the dismal failure of his first attempt at intimidation and market manipulation last month, Bessent tried again; this time announcing a Treasury buy-back of $6 billion of longer-dated government debt. Yet again, bond traders called his bluff, shrugged off the gimmick and kept on raising rates like crazy (see INTEREST RATES below).

Continued US attacks on Iran drove the oil price back up through $100 again and the odds of an imminent Fed Funds Rate increase continued to move higher. Stocks reacted accordingly by registering a third straight day of losses.

As is common on new product launch days, Apple’s stock price dropped in response to this year’s rather underwhelming event which was completely dominated by the splashy new foldable iPhone release.

While Bessent was desperately waving a stick at the bond market in order to try to help Republicans at the midterms, Trump dangled a carrot in front of the electorate on Thursday, floating a probably illegal $5k payment to every US voter if the party retains control of both houses of Congress, a measure that would cost the US taxpayer an estimated $1-$2 trillion and send inflation skyrocketing.

Just like his promises of a $5k per person DOGE dividend and $2k per person tariff dividend, Trump’s latest idea is obviously a total non-starter and won’t ever happen of course, but there is a group of voters out there who are dumb enough to believe it might and that’s what the president is counting on.

PPI came out pre-market and showed wholesale inflation running at an annualized rate of 5.4%, higher than forecast. Citing enhanced global inflation risk, the ECB raised European interest rates by a quarter of a point. Americans remain miserable about their economic prospects with consumer sentiment readings continuing to plummet. Stocks and bonds fell meaningfully as energy prices continued to explode higher.

After the closing bell, Oracle released a blowout earnings report and the stock shot higher in the after-market but Adobe disappointed and its stock price fell. But Friday’s big event was the pre-market July CPI release which showed annualized retail inflation stuck at a still-hot 3.4%, well above the Fed’s official target of 2.0%.

This was deemed to make a Fed Funds Rate increase this week much more likely (see INTEREST RATE EXPECTATIONS below) to the extent that if the central bank doesn’t raise rates on Wednesday, its entire credibility and the perception of its freedom from political interference will be in question.

Expected rate hikes are pretty much already priced into stocks and bonds by now, however, and the indexes surged to close higher after four straight days of losses as oil prices eased back from their recent spike. Over the course of the holiday-shortened week, however, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ-100 large cap indexes, US small caps and international stocks all lost ground.

Some other things I’m thinking about ..

* The average 30-year mortgage interest rate in the US rocketed last week to smash through 7.00% (see AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE below) as a result of new multi-year highs in the impactful 10-year Treasury rate.

* At an average of $4.30 gas (with reports of up to $10 gas in parts of California) and $6.00 diesel at the pump, American consumers and businesses have never in history paid this much for fuel in the month of September.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in managed investment accounts which exclusively use ETFs, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

Worried about the bonds in your portfolio? You’re missing the point.

.. AND I QUOTE:

“It’s going to get funky. Running through it all is Trump and oil, so volatility is probably the only certainty.”

Charlie Jamieson of Jamieson Coote on the outlook for the bond market

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF, tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Down by 1.1% last week

* Down by 1.0% over the past month

* Up by 3.6% over the last three months

* Up by 12.1% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF, tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Down by 0.8% last week

* Down by 1.2% over the last month

* Down by 0.3% over the last three months

* Up by 16.4% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF, tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Down by 1.9% last week

* Down by 4.6% over the last month

* Down by 0.5% over the last three months

* Up by 17.4% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF, tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Down by 1.0% last week

* Down by 0.5% over the past month

* Up by 2.1% over the last three months

* Up by 15.5% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $104.54 (up by 7.6% last week)

* GOLD .. $4,390 (down by 1.3% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 77,430 (down by 3.0% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE:

* 7.12%

Data courtesy of Mortgage News Daily.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.625% (unchanged from a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 6.75% (unchanged from a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 4.00% (3.91% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.56% (4.37% a week ago)

* 5 YEAR TREASURY 4.75% (4.54% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 4.95% (4.78% a week ago)

* 20 YEAR TREASURY 5.39% (5.25% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.37% (5.24% a week ago)

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury as of Friday’s market close.

* Decided upon by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee at periodic meetings 8x a year. Used as a basis for overnight interbank loans and for determining high yield savin…

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The shortage of any important news over the weekend was highlighted by the fact that the story of Trump’s Lake Ontario stunt grabbed the headlines even as polls emerged to show that two-thirds of Americans do not approve of his tariff policy, with the midterms around the corner.

This is in stark contrast to Canada where the more that Prime Minister Carney sticks it back to the US, the more popular he becomes with his electorate. These opposing political dynamics will definitely have an impact on the short term trajectory of the US/Canada relationship.

A resumption of US strikes in the Strait of Hormuz and the inevitable Iranian response triggered an oil price bounce and a moderate stock selloff on the final trading day of August on Monday. Nonetheless, the month still proved to be a positive one for the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ indexes, which both enjoyed their best Augusts since 2021.

Interest rates jumped across the board with the probability of Fed Funds Rate increases before year-end continuing to rise. The highly impactful 10-year rate surpassed 4.75% for the first time in 20 months and mortgage rates reached another 2026 peak (see AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE below).

The global bond rout deepened on Tuesday as long term interest rates around the world reached more multi-decade highs on growing inflation fears. Long term rates in the US rose back above where they were when Treasury Secretary Bessent made his clumsy and visibly unsuccessful intervention attempt to bring them down just a couple of weeks earlier.

September is historically the worst month of the year for stocks and everything that did well in August - Bitcoin, gold and stocks - fell hard as the calendar flipped over. Pretty much the only thing that moved higher on what was a rough day all round for global financial markets was the price of oil, despite Trump’s dismissal of the enduring conflict which is rapidly depleting US military hardware as just “a little war”.

Dell impressed Wall Street with its Q2 earnings and the stock surged on Wednesday. Exchanges of fire intensified in Iran, further spiking oil prices back above $95. US interest rates, however, finally took a breather from their seemingly relentless march higher and the stock indexes closed lightly in the green for the session.

With attention starting to turn to Friday’s unemployment numbers, interest rates pulling back from recent highs (following FOMC voting member Christopher Waller’s surprise comments that he saw promising signs of disinflation) and no coherent or credible developments in the war or tariffs, stock indexes seemed comfortable moving very solidly higher on Thursday, although chip-makers continued to flounder.

On Friday, we got to see the August Jobs Report which showed a sharp reversal from the previous month’s shockingly bad release with job creation crushing estimates this time around, but the overall unemployment rate holding at 4.1%. The good news for US workers was not so great for stocks, as the data was deemed to somewhat increase the chances of one or two Fed Funds Rate hikes this year.

Weirdly, Trump reacted by citing the blowout report in a bizarre social media post to further pressure the Fed to lower interest rates which, of course, is contrary to all established sensible economic theory. If the voting members of the FOMC don’t “get smart” and “be patriots” by cutting interest rates, he said, he will cut off all two-way trade with every one of the estimated 97 countries around the world (including China, Mexico, Germany and Japan) that have a trade surplus with the US.

The combination of an increased likelihood of Fed rate hikes and Trump’s outlandish threats initially sent stocks spinning lower before gradually clawing their way back on to finish the day largely unchanged going into the long weekend.

Over the course of the week, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ-100 large cap indexes, US small caps and international stocks all made gains.

Anglia Advisors clients are now able to access customized model portfolios in managed investment accounts which exclusively use ETFs, many of which carry no management fee - contact me for more details.

If you are not yet a financial planning or investment management client of Anglia Advisors and would like to explore becoming one, please feel free to reach out to arrange a complimentary no-obligation discovery call with me.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK:

There have been 228,000 newly-minted millionaires in the US since the end of March. Here’s the very simple way they did it.

.. AND I QUOTE:

“Fighting drags on with no end and no winner in sight. The wider Middle East is now an arena for war and surging oil prices are taxing the global economy.”

Bloomberg economic analyst note

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS:

* SPY is a US Large Cap ETF, tracks the S&P 500 index, made up of 500 stocks from a universe of the largest US companies.

* Up by 0.5% last week

* Down by 0.1% over the past month

* Up by 1.7% over the last three months

* Up by 12.7% so far this year

* QQQ is a US Large Cap ETF, tracks the NASDAQ-100 index, made up of the largest 100 non-financial companies listed on the tech-heavy NASDAQ exchange.

* Up by 0.4% last week

* Down by 0.7 over the last month

* Down by 2.9% over the last three months

* Up by 17.3% so far this year

* IWM is a US Small Cap ETF, tracks the Russell 2000 index, made up of the bottom two-thirds in terms of company size of a universe of 3,000 of the largest US stocks.

* Up by 0.8% last week

* Down by 1.9% over the past month

* Up by 1.4% over the last three months

* Up by 19.0% so far this year

* VXUS is an International Non-US ETF, tracks the MSCI ACWI Ex-US index, made up of over 8,500 of the largest names from a universe of stocks issued by companies from around the world excluding the United States, in both developed and emerging markets.

* Up by 0.8% last week

* Up by 2.3% over the past month

* Up by 2.5% over the last three months

* Up by 15.5% so far this year

* BRENT CRUDE OIL .. $95.85 (up by 6.0% last week)

* GOLD .. $4,477 (up by 0.3% last week)

* BITCOIN .. $ 79,890 (up by 2.7% last week)

Data courtesy of finviz.com as of Friday’s close.

INTEREST RATES:

* FED FUNDS RATE * 3.625% (unchanged from a week ago)

* PRIME RATE ** 6.75% (unchanged from a week ago)

* 3 MONTH TREASURY 3.91% (3.90% a week ago)

* 2 YEAR TREASURY 4.37% (4.34% a week ago)

* 5 YEAR TREASURY 4.54% (4.48% a week ago)

* 10 YEAR TREASURY *** 4.78% (4.73% a week ago)

* 20 YEAR TREASURY 5.25% (5.21% a week ago)

* 30 YEAR TREASURY 5.24% (5.22% a week ago)

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury as of Friday’s market close.

* Decided upon by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee at periodic meetings 8x a year. Used as a basis for overnight interbank loans and for determining high yield savings interest rates.

** Wall Street Journal Prime Rate as of Friday’s close. Moving in lockstep with the Fed Funds interest rate, this measure is used as a basis for determining certain consumer loan interest rates such as credit cards, auto loans, personal loans, home equity loans/lines of credit and securities-based lending.

*** Used as a basis for determining mortgage interest rates.

AVERAGE 30-YEAR FIXED MORTGAGE RATE:

* 6.71%

Data courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

INTEREST RATE EXPECTATIONS:

Where will the Fed Funds interest rate be after the next rate-setting meeting on September 16th?

* 0.25% higher than now .. 40% probability (41% a week ago)

* Unchanged from now .. 60% probability (59% a week ago)

* 0.25% lower than now .. 0% probability (0% a week ago)

With three more rate-setting meetings this year, what is the most commonly-expected number of remaining Fed Funds interest rate changes in 2026?

* Two increases, 41% probability (a week ago: two increases, 40% probability)

Data courtesy of the CME FedWatch Tool and is derived from futures market pricing as of Friday’s market close based on the current Fed Funds interest rate of 3.625%.

FEAR & GREED INDEX:

“Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful.” Warren Buffett.

Data courtesy…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit simonbrady.substack.com