Interesting TACs of the Week (August 31 – September 6, 2026)

 

Summary – A top-down review of interesting calls and comments made last week in Treasuries, monetary policy, economics, stocks, bonds & commodities. TAC is our acronym for Tweets, Articles, & Clips – our basic inputs for this article.

• Editor’s Note: In this series of articles, we include important or interesting Tweets, Articles, Video Clips with our comments. This is an article that expresses our personal opinions about comments made on Television, Tweeter, and in Print. It is NOT intended to provide any investment advice of any type whatsoever. No one should base any investing decisions or conclusions based on anything written in or inferred from this article. Macro Viewpoints & its affiliates expressly disclaim all liability in respect to actions taken based on any or all of the information in this article. Investing is a serious matter and all investment decisions should only be taken after a detailed discussion with your investment advisor and should be subject to your objectives, suitability requirements and risk tolerance.

 

1. Markets Last Week

1.1 US Indices:

• VIX up 1.1% to 14.57; Dow down 27 bps; SPX up 9 bps; RSP down 77 bps; NDX up 38 bps; RUT up 13 bps; MDY up 14 bps; XLU up 82 bps; SMH up 2.5%;  SOXL up 5.3%; NVDA up 5.9%.

Remember how we came into the week?

• The Market Ear@themarketear – Aug 29 – Nobody is trading and hedge funds have almost no net exposure (1st percentile).

The next day the gloom began beckoning.

• The Market Ear@themarketear – Aug 31 – Everyone is positioned for the correction. Imagine the pain if they’re wrong.

Then on Tuesday, September 1, we saw:

• Zerohedge – The Market Ear – Semis just got cheap again. Vol says the same thing;

Then on Tuesday (9-1) afternoon, Tom Lee became the old & true Tom Lee. That conversation between Tom Lee & Scott Wapner is really helpful for many to understand how smart people see small evidence of a rising sun among darkness. In particular, listen to Tom Lee say “the bottom might be today for equities“. The broader conversation went something like:

• “I am going to be contrarian; this is a set up for actually September to be a strong month; … people are cautious; … I think there is a wall of worry here that should be buyable…the bottom might be today for equities … “

Kudos to Signor Lee. How many people have the gumption to say on TV that the bottom might be today. And it proved to be true at least for the rest of the week. 

 

Then Jeff DeGraff came on later in the hour and said “Stay long; trend intact; credit intact“. He did add that he doesn’t think the setup is great & could trade down to 7,300 but then Q4 goes up. 

Remember how $NVDA acted last Friday – “…. NVDA began selling off shortly after Fed Chair Warsh began speaking and fell from $229 ish to $217.89 at Friday’s close“. 

What about this week? Look at a 5-day chart of $NVDA & notice how NVDA lifted up around noon on Wednesday September 2 and kept going up into Friday’s close. A total reversal of the sell-off on Friday, August 28. What a call by Tom Lee on Tuesday afternoon.

The bottom line for the market is this:

• Ryan Detrick, CMT@RyanDetrick – 9-3- The NYSE Composite is maybe the most important index in the world. It has a lot of US, but lots of other parts of the world in there as well. The NYSE common stock only A/D line is near a big trendline. We’ve seen some minor breadth weakness the past couple of weeks, but right here and now is a place the bulls need to defend.

 

1.2 MAG 7:

• AAPL up 8 bps; AMZN down 3%; GOOGL down 2.4%; META up 6.7%; MSFT down 2.7%; NFLX down 4.3%; SMH up 2.5%;  SOXL up 5.3%;  NVDA up 5.9%; MU up 9%; SNDK up 17.2%;  IBM down 30 bps; IGV down 4.5%; CRM down 1.3%; PANW down 10.3%; NOW down 2.4%; PLTR down 6.4%; 

Simple reason why AI is so critical:

 

 

1.3 Key Financials:

• BAC up 58 bps; C up 3.6%; GS up 45 bps; JPM up 29 bps; KRE up 1.3%; EUFN up 1.4%; SCHW down 79 bps; APO down 1%; BX down 4.4%; KKR down 87 bps; XHB down 1.3%; ITB down 2.6%; NAIL down 7.9%;

European financials keep doing great:

• Ryan Detrick, CMT@RyanDetrick – 9-5 – European financials at their highest level ever 🏆 Been leading for yrs and is another sign this 🐂 is fine, as this isn’t happening if trouble was lurking. @scottcharts now has a Saturday AM report (I love this, as Monday stuff gets lost in the shuffle) 👏 He shared today

 

Our financials aren’t doing badly either!

• J.C. Parets@JC_ParetsX – 9-5 – Financials just closed the week right near another new all-time high

 

1.4 – Dollar & Metals

• UUP down 35 bps; DXY down 50 bps; Gold down 53 bps; GDX down 39 bps; Silver up 62 bps; Copper up 54 bps; CLF up 7.8%;  FCX down 4.9%; MOS up 9.5%; Oil up 9.6%; Brent up 7.4%; OIH up 2.2%; XLE up 2.2%; PBR up 8.6%;

 

And the changed role of central banks:

• jeroen blokland@jsblokland – 9-5 – Central banks buying gold to diversify away from fiat reserves. Central banks moving gold to better prepare for systemic crises. Governments ‘helping’ other governments avoid selling government debt. Governments working the yield curve to influence interest rates. Governments running into trouble because of debt, deficits, and soaring interest expenses. Declining trust in governments and central banks. Inflation running above target for five years and above many interest rates. A structural rise in geopolitical tensions. The days when the price of gold was mainly about the opportunity cost of holding it relative to real interest rates are long gone. This chart from the @FT , showing how the relationship between gold and interest rates has broken down, is an excellent illustration of that. I wonder how long the “But gold does not generate cash flows” narrative will survive. And, perhaps more importantly, how asset managers, wealth managers, financial advisors, and the like will explain to their clients why they kept sticking to such an outdated view while the world around them was clearly changing.

And now the commodity that affects us daily:

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – WTI crude oil (log scale, of course) still shows a breakout... I outline my upside price target on @stockcharts https://articles.stockcharts.com/article/oil-just-broke-out-stock-market-bears-have-their-catalyst/

Then the record high:

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – Diesel’s record high @CNBC

 

1.5 – International Stocks:

• EEM up 2.3%; EMXC up 3%; FXI up 1%; KWEB down 1%;  BABA down 4.8%; EWZ up 6.5%; EWY up 4.8%; EWJ up 2.5%; EWG down 1.6%; INDA up 71 bps; INDY up 23 bps; EPI up 84 bps; SMIN up 83 bps; IBN up 1.4%; HDB up 43 bps;

10th consecutive week of gains, really?

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – Sep 4 – Emerging-market currencies are heading for a 10th consecutive week of gains... their longest winning streak since 2007. $EMB

 

1.6 Treasuries & Interest Rates – Is “W” a sign of this Fed?

• 30-year Treasury yield up 3.4 bps on the week; 20-yr yield up 3.9 bps; 10-yr up 5.6 bps; 7-yr yield up 5.8 bps; 5-yr yield up 6.1 bps; 3-yr yield up 4.3 bps; 2-yr yield up 2 bps; 1-yr down 0.9 bps;
• TLT down 81 bps; EDV down 61 bps; ZROZ down 67 bps; HYG down 73 bps; JNK down 73 bps; EMB down 44 bps:

A sensible description of today’s state below.

The tweet seems also based on the fear that we may be in a situation similar to September 2007. At that time, the Fed had NOT eased for the prior four years. Then, “on September 18, 2007, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) lowered the target federal funds rate from 5.25% down to 4.75%.” That led to an equity rally that led the S&P to a new all-time high in October 2007. 

As many might recall, the 2006-2007 Fed was worried about mounting inflation pressures driven by a growing economy and high energy costs. So they raised rates in June 2006 to 5.25%, the highest level in the preceding 5 years. Bernanke became the Fed Chair in February 2006 and his main worry, as we recall, was rising inflation fears. So it took him a lot longer to begin cutting rates which, in retrospect, proved to be a major mistake.

Today housing is not as much as a worry as it was in 2007. But the 2026 economy is not as strong as many perceive (just as their counterparts so perceived about 2007). So a cautious Fed is best expected to keep rates unchanged at the September 16 meeting. 

Our hope is that the three W” will maintain their mental balance and restrict themselves to being watchful against inflation without raising the Fed Funds rate now. Speaking of the three “W“, look at the sign again:

W

The three peaks of this sign make up the “W“, meaning Warsh, Waller, Williams. And the two pinpoint bottoms the old die-hard FOMC members.  As we enter the week, the three peaks are signaling sensible reticence about hiking the FF rate while the pin-point bottoms are dragging them down. We believe in our three “W” not just for this week and we think the sign also suggests that you buy the dip caused by the naysayers & enjoy the bounce up to the W-peaks.  

So Dumb, the non-believers would scoff! But remember only the believers go to Heaven!

 

2. God is in Heaven & All’s right with the World!

The faithful, the True Believers proved happily right again. It was an ending for ever. The heavily favored Michigan marched to an almost uncontested touchdown in the game’s opening drive against Western Michigan. Then everything turned. For the rest of the game & until the final minutes, Western Michigan humiliated Michigan. 

Even in what seemed to be the final drive in the final minute, Michigan’s Hail Mary went out of bounds touching an already out-of-bounds Western Michigan player. That left 1 second on the game clock. Then the Believers were rewarded.

Naturally, there was enormous hue & cry about favoritism for Michigan, the Big Blue & the Home team. So Big Ten released the video about the game clock showing 00:01 second on the block enabling the final winning throw. 

Next week comes Oklahoma to Ann Arbor. And believers like Dave Portnoy already are predicting a Big Blue win!

Despite our belief & love, we are not ready to imagine Michigan in the Final Four. Our new Final 4 contender is LSU with Lane Kiffin at the helm. You know what Ole Miss did last year. We think this LSU team is better.   

 

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