Hello again, and welcome to our Monthly Market Compass for September 2026. These chart-heavy market summaries go out at the beginning of each month.
These notes are not investment advice and are for informational purposes only. Always do your own research. Sources can be found below each graphic.
As usual, we divide these monthly notes into several sections: an introduction and inflation section, an economy section, a liquidity section, a Fed-focused section, a geopolitics and commodities section, a crypto section, and an equities section. A market conclusion follows these sections. Enjoy!
Introduction and Inflation:
Welcome back for a new month!
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The issues we’ve been talking about for months continue to dominate the US.
The tech/AI productivity boom vs. the debt/inflation spiral is the frame some market watchers are putting on things:
Elon Musk being one of them:
Interest rates are going higher:
A large amount of debt, along with increasing interest rates means big interest payments for the US federal government:
Which looks bad as a percentage of GDP:
Digging into those interest rates, global bond markets continue to look bad:
Seen differently:
And again:
Japan is moving quickly on that front:
It used to be that the Yen was the place to do a carry trade - but the market is now finding a new place to get loans:
Japan, of course, holds the most US Treasuries of any country, making it ground zero:
The ongoing turbulence in Japan has been nice for Japanese equity holders:
When 10yr rates in the US go above 5%, the S&P 500 often responds negatively:
Gold has been the off-ramp for all this, as China has apparently found:
China is buying gold, apparently, with the money from the US Treasuries it is selling:
As gold has mostly kept pace with global money supply:
The gold bugs point to a large upside for gold given the setup:
Outpacing inflation has become the sport of kings:
Here also:
Maybe there are ways we will dodge more inflation?
This month saw the US Treasury intervene in a 20-year UST auction:
Marking the beginning of what some are calling a form of QE:
Meanwhile, the Fed has QE rumblings of its own:
The challenge in all of this is generational: US Boomers have a great setup and are reluctant to vote to remove it:
All kinds of ideas are getting floated to address the US debt problem, like clearing fraudulent claims off Social Security:
Though proposals to expand entitlement spending keep finding new adherents:
And unfortunately, the prediction markets seem like they know what they are talking about:
