Gold is down a quarter from its January record while a shooting war closes the Strait of Hormuz, which is not how the hedge was sold to anybody. Good morning and welcome to today's market chronicle. It's Tuesday, September 29, 2026.
Yesterday's close was ugly in a quiet way. The S&P gave up about three quarters of a percent to 7,683.69, the Nasdaq a little more, the Dow around 350 points, and none of it had anything to do with a company. It had to do with the ten-year touching 5.27 percent on Monday, the highest since the summer of 2007. I remember where I was sitting the last time that number printed.
Here is the part nobody seems willing to say at normal volume. Futures markets put the odds of a Federal Reserve hike in October at roughly seventy percent. A hike. Not a pause, not a skip, an increase, in a cycle everyone spent eighteen months declaring finished, and the equity market answered by falling less than one percent and then opening flat. Either the tape has decided a 5.3 percent thirty-year is compatible with the multiple it is paying, or it has not looked.
The gold thing genuinely annoys me. A friend who runs money out of a Geneva family office has kept physical metal in a Freeport vault since 2011, and his entire argument, repeated at every lunch for fifteen years, was that gold stops caring about yields the moment men start shooting at tankers. Iran is attacking commercial ships, the Houthis put six ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia over the weekend, Trump rejected Tehran's seven-day plan to reopen the strait, and gold has fallen from about $5,589 in January to the low four thousands. In 1980 the same chokepoint sent gold to a record. The parallel does not hold, because in 1980 the discount rate was what gold was fleeing and now it is what gold is losing to, and I am aware that explanation is a little too neat.
Ahead today: job openings at nine, expected near 7.2 million against 7.27 million prior, consumer confidence expected 90 against 89, and a parade of Fed speakers. If Brent moves twenty cents none of it will matter. It rarely does when a chokepoint is the macro story.
The book. Amgen (AMGN) went on a week ago at 392.05 and last traded 418.13, so up about six and a half percent across five sessions while the S&P was down about one over the same stretch. The reasoning was that a competitor's failed Lp(a) trial had marked down an entire company for an asset that was never carrying much of the valuation. The tape currently agrees with that, which is not the same thing as the reasoning being correct. Nothing further to report.
Levels as I write: gold near $4,116, Brent at $105.28 on Monday's close and firmer since, Bitcoin at $83,503, S&P futures a shade lower, the ten-year around 5.24 percent. The futures print I would not swear to, the screens disagree by a few ticks and the day is young.
Somebody is badly wrong about the strait, and the bill for it is going to be itemized. See you tomorrow.
Salomon