--- title: "This Week in Markets: Friday 04 September 2026" description: RBA hike odds surged past 50% on a stronger GDP print, the ASX whipsawed through a four-week low and back on an Iran oil shock and its unwind, gold round-tripped from a 2.9% fall to a fresh high near $4,500, and reporting season quietly delivered its best beat-to-miss ratio in five years while every image: https://framerusercontent.com/images/OQBD8PYMkMJk52Yo4fF2DMsc1m4.png --- [Skip to content](https://insights.threadgoldadvisory.com.au/threadgold-advisory-insights/this-week-in-markets-04-september-2026#main-content) Threadgold Advisory Pty Ltd Get started Get started ![Threadgold Advisory: This Week in Markets: Friday 04 September 2026](https://framerusercontent.com/images/OQBD8PYMkMJk52Yo4fF2DMsc1m4.png) # This Week in Markets: Friday 04 September 2026 ![Joel Threadgold](https://d2ol7oe51mr4n9.cloudfront.net/user_3GpfS9yL2tylY89eFDCmA4LBqSJ/91d9b760-24fa-4bf6-8a43-ee30f1a97152.jpg) Joel Threadgold September 4, 2026 Threadgold Advisory Desk · Covering: Tuesday 01 September through Friday 04 September 2026 (2pm) US MARKETS Bullish Wall Street's best session since early August overnight, S&P 500 +1.06% to 7,748, as Nvidia's $12.9bn Hugging Face deal and a dovish Waller signal drove the tape. ASX Choppy Three sharply different sessions in three days: -0.95% Wednesday on the bond-market rout, +0.46% Thursday as tensions eased, giving back half a 50-point rally by 2pm today. COMMODITIES Whipsawed Gold fell 2.9% Tuesday on rate-hike repricing, then ripped back to a fresh high near $4,500 by Friday morning. Oil spiked over 5% on Iran strikes, then eased as tensions cooled. Dear Investor, **The RBA's odds of a rate hike on 29 September have gone from an afterthought to better than even across four sessions.** A stronger-than-expected June quarter GDP print (0.4% quarter-on-quarter, 2.1% annually) on Wednesday pushed market-implied hike probabilities from around 10% a week ago to somewhere between 54% and 67%, depending on which desk you ask. **NAB** and **Deutsche Bank** have now pencilled in a September move to 4.60%. **CBA** and **ANZ** are holding out for November. **Westpac** thinks the board sits on its hands for the rest of the year. Three of the big four banks, three different calls, and none of them looking especially confident. Layer on top of that a genuine three-session whipsaw. Wednesday was ugly: a US bond-market rout and fresh US strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure sent the **ASX 200** to a four-week low, materials down 3.6%, lithium stocks cut in half a dozen ways. Thursday reversed most of it as Hormuz tensions eased. Then last night Wall Street had its best session since early August after **Nvidia** dropped US$12.9 billion on **Hugging Face** and Fed Governor Waller signalled he'd be comfortable holding rates in September if inflation keeps cooling. That rally showed up on the ASX this morning as an early 50-point pop that had halved by 2pm. Two central banks, two different inflation stories, and a local market that can't decide which one to believe. In a sentence RBA hike odds surged past 50% on a stronger GDP print, the ASX whipsawed through a four-week low and back on an Iran oil shock and its unwind, gold round-tripped from a 2.9% fall to a fresh high near $4,500, and reporting season quietly delivered its best beat-to-miss ratio in five years while everyone was watching the geopolitics. 01 US Markets & Macro Tuesday's overnight session set the tone for the week's first leg down: the **S&P 500** fell 0.71%, the **Nasdaq** 1.03%, the **Dow** 419 points, as fresh US strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure sent **WTI** up 5.06% to **US$90.70** and the US 30-year Treasury yield pushed toward a 19-year high of 5.275%. Fed rate-hike odds for September jumped to roughly 70% from around 40% a week earlier. That is not a market pricing in a soft landing. It didn't last. Wednesday's session flipped on a single stock: **Dell** jumped 15.8% after lifting its full-year revenue guidance by US$25 billion on AI server demand, dragging the **S&P 500** (+0.46%), **Nasdaq** (+0.45%) and **Dow** (+0.56%) off a three-day losing streak. **Broadcom** told the opposite story, guiding AI chip revenue to double but missing near-term estimates, and slipped after hours. Then last night was the standout: the **S&P 500** rose 1.06% to **7,748**, the **Nasdaq** 1.40% to **26,584**, the **Dow** 1.18% to **53,686**, Wall Street's best session since early August. **Nvidia's** US$12.9 billion purchase of AI platform **Hugging Face**, its second-largest deal ever, was the headline. Fed Governor **Christopher Waller** did the heavy lifting underneath it: he said he'd support holding rates steady at the 15-16 September FOMC meeting if the data keeps confirming disinflation, noting the Fed's preferred 3-month annualised inflation gauge has fallen from 4.76% in February to 3.05% now. Two different central banks, two different reaction functions, in the same 72 hours. 02 Australian Market Performance The **ASX 200** has now traded through a genuine three-session round trip. **Tuesday:** -0.1% to **9,066.7**, energy (+1.2%) and materials (+0.6%) holding up while consumer cyclicals (-1.7%), technology (-1.4%) and consumer staples (-1.4%) took the rate-sensitive hit. **Judo Capital** (+7.3%) and **Liontown Resources** (+6.7%) led the gainers; **Pinnacle Investment Management** (-9.9%) and **REA Group** (-3.9%) led the fallers. The Australian 10-year bond yield hit **5.16%**, its highest since April 2011. **Wednesday** was the low point: -0.95% to **8,978.4**, a third straight loss and a four-week low, as the bond-market rout met the overnight Iran oil shock. Materials copped it hardest, down 3.6%, with lithium the epicentre: **Core Lithium** -9.2%, **Pilbara Minerals** -5.3%, **Vulcan Energy Resources** -5.1%, **Liontown Resources** -5.0%. Financials held roughly flat (+0.02%) and energy was the standout gainer as oil ripped higher. **Thursday** reversed most of it: +0.46% to **9,020.1**, snapping the losing streak as easing Hormuz tensions lifted gold stocks (+2.2%) and banks (three of the big four up 0.7-1.8%). **SGX iron ore** futures jumped 1.7% to **US$99.55 a tonne**, a seven-week high, lifting **Fortescue** (+2.0%) and **Rio Tinto** (+1.3%). Today, in afternoon trade at 2pm, the **ASX 200** sits at **9,001.6**, down 0.21%, having given back half of an early 50-point rally sparked by the Nvidia-driven Wall Street session. **BHP** is off around 2%, leading miners lower. Note this is an intraday reading, not a close: the market has another two hours to trade. 03 Commodities & Currency **Gold** is the week's most useful lesson in what actually drives it. It fell roughly 2.9% on Tuesday to around **US$4,325/oz** as hawkish Fed repricing lifted the US dollar and real yields, then reversed hard, touching **US$4,428** on Thursday (+0.9%) and running further to somewhere between **US$4,486 and US$4,505** by Friday morning on the Nvidia-fuelled risk rally and Waller's dovish tilt. Gold is trading as a rates and risk-appetite instrument this cycle, not a steady geopolitical hedge. That distinction matters for anyone sizing a gold allocation on the assumption it moves opposite to risk assets. **Oil** moved the other direction entirely. Fresh US strikes on Iranian infrastructure sent **Brent** up 5.1% to **US$95.13** and **WTI** up 5.7% to **US$90.65** overnight Tuesday, before Brent eased 1.2% to **US$94.51** on Thursday as tensions cooled. **Iron ore** closed the week at a seven-week high of **US$99.55 a tonne**, supported by Chinese steel-mill restocking, a constructive read for **BHP**, **Rio Tinto** and **Fortescue** if it holds. The **AUD/USD** has strung together three straight days of gains, trading around **0.7210** this morning, up from 0.7166 on Tuesday, as rising RBA hike odds do the currency's work for it. 04 Reporting Season & Stock Highlights Buried under the geopolitics this week: Australian reporting season just posted its best scorecard in five years. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that earnings beats outpaced misses for the first time since 2020, with 32% of S&P/ASX 300 companies beating consensus by more than 5% against 20% missing by more than 5%, a net 12% beat. **Ausbil** called it the strongest performance in a number of years. The dispersion tells the real story: **Macquarie** research found AI-enabling names, roughly 21% of the ASX 300 by market cap, delivered the biggest earnings surprises (around +23% on average) and the most FY26 upgrades (+27%), while AI-disrupted names managed surprises of only around 3%. The market is not rewarding a broad re-rating. It is rewarding a specific and narrow theme, and punishing everything adjacent to it. Away from the AI dispersion trade, the standout individual mover was **Dell** offshore, up 15.8% on its US$25 billion guidance lift, a direct read-through for anyone holding AI infrastructure exposure. Locally, **Judo Capital's** 7.3% Tuesday gain suggests business-lending credit quality is holding up better than the macro backdrop implies, while the lithium complex, **Core Lithium, Pilbara Minerals, Vulcan Energy Resources** and **Liontown Resources** all down between 3% and 9% on Wednesday, remains the most volatile corner of the index. Bell Potter upgraded **GrainCorp** to Buy with a $7.15 target on strong crop reports, and lifted **Nufarm** to Buy at $3.75. 05 Geopolitics & Trade Iran remains the dominant driver behind this week's oil and equity swings. Fresh US strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure Monday night into Tuesday drove the Brent and WTI spike that hit the ASX on Wednesday. By Thursday, signs of reduced tit-for-tat hostilities pulled Brent back from its highs and helped risk sentiment recover, both offshore and locally. The pattern is worth remembering for the next flare-up: a genuine supply-side shock to Brent this week added over 5% in a single overnight session, then unwound more than half of that move within 48 hours as the situation cooled. Energy-driven CPI shocks can reverse as fast as they arrive, which is exactly the kind of variable the RBA has to look through, not just react to. 06 What We're Watching - **RBA, 29 September.** Hike-odds trackers now range from 54% to 67%, up from around 10% a week ago, following Wednesday's GDP beat. NAB and Deutsche Bank call a hike to 4.60%. CBA and ANZ lean November. Westpac says hold through year-end. That is real disagreement among people paid to have a view, and it means the next fortnight's data (particularly any oil-driven CPI signal) carries more weight than usual. - **The Fed, 15-16 September.** Waller's comments put a hold squarely back on the table, contingent on the data staying soft. A Fed hold and an RBA hike in the same fortnight would be a genuine divergence point for AUD and for anyone running currency-hedged offshore exposure. - **Iron ore and the China restocking signal.** A seven-week high on SGX futures is a tentative positive for the miners. One data point is not a trend. We want to see it hold above US$95 through next week before treating it as more than a bounce. Positioning takeaway This is a week where the loudest headline, the Iran-driven oil and gold whipsaw, was not the most portfolio-relevant one. The RBA repricing from 10% to above 50% odds of a September hike in four trading days is the number that matters most for domestic bond duration and rate-sensitive equities from here. We are not chasing the gold round-trip or the lithium sell-off. We are watching the RBA data run into 29 September more closely than the geopolitics, because that is the variable most directly in the path of Australian portfolios. [Book a conversation about portfolio positioning](https://www.threadgoldadvisory.com.au/book) Warm regards, Joel Threadgold Threadgold Advisory Private Wealth Adviser | M: 0483 958 272 | AR: 001297336 General Advice Warning: This communication contains general information only and does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on this information, consider its appropriateness to your circumstances and seek professional advice. Joel Threadgold (AR 001297336) is an Authorised Representative of RiverX Financial Services Pty Ltd (AFSL 556458). Preflight Checklist — PASS - \[x\] No em-dashes (search for —) - \[x\] No banned words - \[x\] No Marcus Today verbatim content - \[x\] Australian spelling throughout - \[x\] All 6 numbered sections present with substantive content - \[x\] Specific numbers in every section - \[x\] Sentiment bar completed (3 columns, one-word + description) - \[x\] "In a sentence" callout present - \[x\] "Positioning takeaway" callout present - \[x\] General Advice Warning in footer - \[x\] No personal financial advice language - \[x\] Subject line under 65 characters (50 chars), content-driven, sentence case - \[x\] Day-of-week verified: Friday 04 September 2026 confirmed via `date -j` - \[x\] Intraday language checked: today's ASX figure written as "in afternoon trade" / "at 2pm" (section 02), not a close. "Iron ore closed the week" in section 03 refers to Thursday's iron ore close, not today's ASX. - \[x\] Marcus Today not used this run (session lapse not tested, but daily Today in Markets posts + fresh web research gave stronger sourcing); sourced from CNBC, Investing.com, Fool.com.au, MarketIndex, Bloomberg, ABC/ABS, Trading Economics, FXStreet, Invezz ## Share this post [mailto:https%3A%2F%2Finsights.threadgoldadvisory.com.au%2Fthreadgold-advisory-insights%2Fthis-week-in-markets-04-september-2026](mailto:https%3A%2F%2Finsights.threadgoldadvisory.com.au%2Fthreadgold-advisory-insights%2Fthis-week-in-markets-04-september-2026) ## Keep reading ### [![Threadgold Advisory: This Week in Markets: Tuesday 29 September 2026](https://framerusercontent.com/images/4r7Uk6edTOyPlcrlw6g9U45ZWY.png) This Week in Markets: Tuesday 29 September 2026](https://insights.threadgoldadvisory.com.au/threadgold-advisory-insights/this-week-in-markets-29-september-2026) ### [![Threadgold Advisory: This Week in Markets: Monday 28 September 2026](https://framerusercontent.com/images/hd5S0Zy7Phv8vCNuFnnNYUjr8.png) This Week in Markets: Monday 28 September 2026](https://insights.threadgoldadvisory.com.au/threadgold-advisory-insights/this-week-in-markets-28-september-2026) # RiverX Investment Management --- Privacy Policy · Legal · © 2026 Threadgold Advisory Pty Ltd. 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