The Fed publishes a projection chart this afternoon that does not contain the projection of the man who runs the Fed. Good morning and welcome to today's market chronicle. It's Wednesday, September 16, 2026.
Yesterday was the sixth down day in seven. The S&P gave up not quite half a percent to close just under 7,590, the Nasdaq about eight tenths, the Dow off 328 points, and the ten year touched a hair above five percent intraday, the highest since July 2007. The interesting part is where the damage did not land. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) added about two percent and Qualcomm (QCOM) more than four, so the chip complex eulogized on Monday spent Tuesday repairing itself. The tape has begun separating the firms that must pay for the buildout from the firms that get to use it. That sorting is a month old and nobody has named it.
At two this afternoon the committee goes a quarter point, to a top of four percent, the first increase since July 2023. Ninety-two percent priced. There is no information in the decision. The information is in the projections published alongside, which show where the committee thinks rates go, minus the one view that decides it. Warsh has declined to submit a dot of his own since June, on principle, and the principle is defensible. The effect is that a room of professionals will spend the afternoon reading a chart to work out what one man thinks, and he is the only participant not in it.
The part I keep circling. The last time the ten year printed five percent, in July 2007, Warsh was on that board. Thirty-seven, the youngest governor the institution had ever appointed, and his assigned job was to be its ear on the markets. Whatever there was to hear that summer, he was meant to hear it. Then the autumn happened. I am not suggesting the two connect, and I would be irritated with anyone who wrote that as a forecast. But I doubt he looked at his screen yesterday and thought about nothing.
Retail sales for August land at half past eight, five and a half hours before the decision, enough time for a number to be discussed and forgotten. July was down six tenths on the month, and independent retailers reported August same store sales about a percent below last year. If the consumer is bending under hundred dollar crude, that series shows it first. Today it is the warm-up act.
We closed W. R. Berkley (WRB) yesterday, in on August 17 at 70.58 and out at 71.28, up about one percent while the S&P was down roughly two over the same twenty sessions. Call it three points of relative. It ended because the clock said so. Twenty sessions is the outer limit at this desk, Berkley arrived there whole, and the exit was arithmetic rather than judgment.
Gold is somewhere around 4,300 an ounce and the screens disagree by nearly eighty dollars, which tells you something about the week. WTI 104.69, Brent 108.03, Bitcoin near 75,900, the ten year 5.01 percent, S&P futures up about two tenths. Crude down slightly now counts as good news.
A quarter point today, and nobody willing to say what comes after it.
Stay sharp.
Salomon