The US Treasury announced it would at least double the amount of its longer-term Treasury Bond purchases in an attempt to moderate interest rate pressure from the rise in oil prices due to the Iran War. There was also good news from the manufacturing and services sectors on inflation. Despite very strong growth numbers for August, input cost inflation dropped to its lowest level since the start of the Iran War.  Both of these factors likely contributed to Treasury yields remaining flat to marginally down in the face of the strong economic growth and a spike in oil prices from the latest twist in the Iran War.  Globally, business activity reports remained steady at solid levels. The S&P 500 ended the week at -1.43% with Foreign Developed at -0.54% and Emerging Markets... (click for more)

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was apparently not well understood. Iran went back to harassing shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the US resumed military strikes in Iran and oil prices predictably spiked. That led Treasury Bond yields to rise which hammered US Interest sensitive Bonds and popped the bubble on the AI trade. Yet the economic news remained quite bullish with manufacturing holding its solid growth rebound, the services sector moved to higher levels of solid growth and employers holding on tightly to current employees. Therefore, it is not surprising that the main business and consumer sentiment indexes have remained moderately positive, despite the headlines. While housing is still sluggish,...... (click for more)