Oil past 95 and the 10-year at 4.80 on the same day

Brent crude hit $95.06 a barrel on Tuesday. The 10-year Treasury rate hit 4.80%. The S&P 500 dropped 0.7% to 7,632.60.

Oil at $95 pushes up the cost of everything you buy, and that keeps inflation sticky, and sticky inflation makes the Fed more likely to raise rates. So your mortgage rate goes up, your car loan goes up, your credit line goes up. Every part of that chain got worse today.

The 10-year Treasury rate, the interest the US government pays to borrow for a decade, rose to 4.80%. Highest in nearly 20 months. And not just America. Germany, Japan and the UK are all at or near peaks not seen since 2008.

If you're about to refinance a house, you already know what that means for your rate.

US government debt crossed $40 trillion in late August. Now Treasury Secretary Bessent stood up at a G20 gathering and said US bonds have outperformed the rest of the world since Trump took office. But think about what he's actually doing there, right? He needs you to keep buying that debt. He needs foreign governments to keep buying it. So he's out there bragging about performance on the same afternoon borrowing costs hit a 20-month peak, and you're supposed to feel reassured by that.

The Dow fell 419 points to 52,767. Nasdaq lost 1%. And the VIX, a measure of how nervous stock traders are, jumped nearly 10% to 16.34.

Brent at $95.06. WTI at $90.52. Both up more than 5%.

Iran has shipped almost no crude through the Strait of Hormuz for about 7 weeks now, the longest halt on record, and US Central Command confirmed new strikes on Tuesday after fresh attacks on shipping. This conflict has been running for 6 months. The blockade has done what years of sanctions could not, which is actually cut off the oil.

Now tropical storm Edouard is tracking toward 3 big East Texas refineries. They're still running. But if Edouard forces shutdowns you get a supply problem from the Persian Gulf and a processing problem on the Texas coast at the same time, and if you drive or heat a home that is two squeezes landing on you at once. Phillips 66 reported earnings of $9.41 a share and is guiding for strong margins into 2027.

Forget the headlines about talks. Count the tankers.

Fed Governor Michael Barr said Tuesday he'd back a rate hike unless inflation shows convincing signs it's heading back to 2%. At least the 3rd Fed voice in a week to lean that way. Chair Kevin Warsh has said the same thing repeatedly since late August.

So Bessent says high energy prices are a temporary shock the Fed should ignore. Barr says inflation is inflation. Who's right? If you hold stocks, if you hold bonds, if you're carrying any debt at all, the answer to that question is what sets the price of your next 12 months.

And then there's the ISM manufacturing index, a monthly survey of factory activity, which came in at 54.6 in August, down from 55.6 in July, below the 55.3 forecast. Still above 50, so factories are growing. But the pace slowed and input prices stayed hot.

That's the part nobody wants to talk about. Growth is cooling and costs are climbing. Do you raise rates into a slowdown? Nobody at the Fed has answered that yet.

The biggest tech companies are borrowing billions to build data centres and buy chips for AI. Every one of those bond sales competes with Treasuries for the same pool of buyers, and when more bonds chase the same money, buyers demand a higher return.

You feel that even if you've never bought a bond in your life. Your mortgage rate, your business loan, the interest on your credit card, all of it floats on top of this market where governments and trillion-dollar companies are both scrambling for cash.

Gold spot sits at $4,328.63, down from a previous close of $4,451.13.

Roughly $123 gone in one session. On a day of military strikes. You'd expect gold to go up, right? But when the 10-year rate jumps to 4.80%, a government bond pays you real income and gold pays you nothing, so if you're a fund manager who needs to cover losses somewhere else, you sell the thing that doesn't earn. That looks like what happened.

Silver spot is $64.01, down from $66.44. Copper spot is $6.55 per pound.

MongoDB beat on both lines by wide margins, revenue at $772 million against a $735 million estimate and earnings per share at $1.90 versus $1.62. Its cloud database product Atlas keeps growing at about 29% a year. Gross margin rose to 73.8%.

NIO missed on revenue at $4.7 billion, 1.4% below estimates, but lost less money than expected, negative $0.04 per share against a forecast of negative $0.07. The loss is shrinking. Still no steady profit though.

MiniMed beat on revenue at $843 million but missed earnings at $0.10 per share versus $0.12, a 19.4% miss, with spending on new products eating into the bottom line. Swiss Life hit revenue at $12.4 billion right on target but missed earnings by a hair, $22.98 per share versus $23.13. And West African Resources hit its earnings target exactly at $0.38 per share, with revenue jumping to around $1.2 billion on gold prices and the newer Kiaka mine.

Jobs report lands Friday. If hiring stays weak and prices stay hot, the Fed's September decision gets harder. Warsh has said 'may' on a hike at least 3 times in the past week. The question for you is whether that turns into 'will' before the meeting. Edouard is still heading for the Texas coast.

Issue compiled from the Tuesday, 1 September 2026 desk notes. Page published Friday, 25 September 2026. Metal prices are spot at the time of writing. Figures come from the sources set out in the editorial standards. Corrections: [email protected].

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