This Week in Markets: Friday 14 August 2026

Covering trading sessions: Tuesday 11, Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 August 2026

Preheader: The RBA held rates at 4.35% and wouldn't rule out a hike, Wall Street cleared 7,800 for the first time on cooling inflation, and the ASX's reporting season delivered Telstra pain and Treasury Wine relief in the same week.

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Dear Investor,

The Reserve Bank held its cash rate at 4.35% this week and somehow made a hold feel like a warning. The decision itself, a second straight pause, was exactly what every major bank had forecast. What wasn't priced in was the tone. Governor Michele Bullock told the post-meeting press conference the board was "determined to ensure that expectations of higher inflation do not become embedded in price and wage setting decisions," and declined to rule out a further hike. The ASX 200 spiked as much as 25 points on the initial headline before giving nearly all of it back, closing up just 18 points (0.19%) at 9,250.6. Markets spent the winter debating when the RBA would cut. Now they're debating whether it hikes again first.

Wall Street had the more benign week, on paper. US inflation data landed soft twice, first July's CPI on Wednesday, then producer prices on Thursday, taking pressure off the Federal Reserve and pushing the S&P 500 to a fresh record above 7,800 by Thursday's close. But the week didn't start that way. Tuesday's session was dominated by Alphabet's capex shock (GOOGL -3.61%) and a hardening Iran-US standoff over the Strait of Hormuz that pushed oil and gold higher on the same day, an unusual pairing that told you more about hedging than direction. Domestically, reporting season hit full stride Thursday: Telstra's soft guidance and IAG's miss dragged the ASX 200 down as much as 0.73% intraday before ANZ's strong quarterly update and a surprisingly resilient Treasury Wine Estates pared the losses.

In a sentence: The RBA held rates and wouldn't rule out a hike, Wall Street cleared 7,800 for the first time on cooling inflation rather than strong growth, and the ASX's reporting season is doing exactly what reporting seasons do, rewarding Treasury Wine's writedown and punishing Telstra's soft guidance in the same session.

01. US Markets & Macro

Tuesday's session set an uneasy tone. Alphabet (GOOGL -3.61%, GOOG -3.38%) led a broader tech pullback after lifting its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as much as US$205 billion, a figure that included a 100% year-on-year jump in quarterly capex to US$44.9 billion and pushed free cash flow negative for the first time since the company listed. The market's read was blunt: even Alphabet's balance sheet has a limit, and the AI infrastructure build is now large enough to show up in free cash flow, not just in guidance slides. On Holding (ONON -19%) added to the tech-adjacent damage on a weak Q2 sales miss. The S&P 500 fell 0.32% to 7,728.20, the Dow dropped 184 points and the Nasdaq lost 0.6%, with oil and gold both climbing the same day the US rejected Iran's Strait of Hormuz demands.

Wednesday's US Consumer Price Index did the heavy lifting from there. Headline CPI rose 0.1% in July, taking the annual rate to 3.4%, down a tenth from June, while core inflation held at 0.2% month on month and 2.5% annually. Shelter, the component that has driven most of this cycle's stickiness, rose just 0.1% and accounted for roughly two-thirds of the entire headline move. That is not a dramatic report. It is a boring one, and boring was exactly what a market pricing meaningful odds of a Fed hike wanted: the S&P 500 rose 0.3%, the Nasdaq roughly 0.5%, and the implied chance of a September hike fell below 50%, from odds nearer even money a day earlier.

Thursday extended the relief. July producer prices came in softer again, and the market's implied probability of a Fed hike fell further, from above 55% the previous week to under 35%. The S&P 500 gained 0.65% to close at a record 7,799, briefly trading above 7,800 intraday for the first time. The Nasdaq rose 0.81% to 26,803 and the Dow added 0.13% to 53,840. Workday (WDAY +18%) was the standout, on reports of buyout talks with private equity firm Silver Lake, while Harmonic (+9%) beat earnings and raised guidance. Not every AI-adjacent name shared in the relief: Cerebras Systems fell on a disappointing result and Amazon slipped on an intensifying legal dispute over its AI training practices, a reminder that "the AI trade" now means very different things depending on whose balance sheet you're looking at.

02. Australian Market Performance

Tuesday's RBA decision was the week's defining domestic event, and the market's reaction told you how finely balanced the outlook has become. The cash rate held at 4.35% for a second straight meeting, in line with every major bank forecast, but Governor Bullock's press conference leaned hawkish, declining to rule out a further hike and warning that "a period of subdued growth will be required to bring inflation down substantially." The ASX 200 spiked as much as 25 points on the headline before surrendering most of it, closing up 18 points (0.19%) at 9,250.6. A cash rate that was supposed to be near the start of an easing cycle is instead looking like it might not be finished tightening.

Wednesday brought the pullback the hawkish tone set up. The ASX 200 fell 41.2 points (0.45%) to 9,209.4 on broad-based selling, echoing an overnight Wall Street tech wobble. A-REITs (-1.02%), consumer discretionary (-0.81%) and telecommunications (-0.79%) led the falls, while utilities (+2.54%) was the standout gainer. Declining stocks outnumbered advancers 604 to 492. Codan (CDA +9.3%) and Alcoa (AAI +7.9%) were the pick of the winners; Seek (SEK -14.1%) was by far the worst performer on the index heading into its own full-year result, with Premier Investments (PMV -10.5%) and Temple & Webster (TPW -6.3%) also sharply lower.

Thursday was reporting season doing what reporting season does, rewarding discipline and punishing disappointment in the same session, often from companies in the same sector. The index fell as much as 68 points (0.73%) intraday to a low of 9,141.3 before paring the loss to close down 21 points (0.23%) at 9,188. Telstra (TLS -5.2%) led the damage after a soft FY26 result: total income slipped 0.9%, underlying earnings rose a modest 4% to $8.3 billion and reported profit grew roughly 3% to $2.4 billion, all short of what the market wanted. IAG's result also disappointed and added to the pressure. On the other side, ANZ (+4.36% to $37.98) delivered a strong third-quarter update, cash profit up 1% to $1.90 billion, and Treasury Wine Estates (TWE +5%) posted a $1.08 billion full-year loss, scrapped its final dividend and booked $1.3 billion of writedowns against its US business, and the market rewarded the write-off rather than punishing the loss. Seek was downgraded to Hold by Bell Potter following its own result, the analyst citing "macro-based headwinds" even as underlying operations improve.

03. Commodities & Currency

Gold had the more straightforward week of the two major commodities. It touched an intraday high of US$4,495 an ounce on Tuesday, its highest level in almost two months, before settling closer to US$4,440 as the Strait of Hormuz standoff kept a bid under safe-haven demand. By Thursday, fading rate-hike expectations from the softer producer price print added a second tailwind, and gold pushed to US$4,471.9, up 0.7% on the day, lifting Newmont and Northern Star Resources with it. Iron ore was the far less interesting story, essentially flat around US$95.09 a tonne, going nowhere while everything else moved.

Oil told the more complicated story. Brent rose 1.36% to US$88.91 and WTI gained 1.3% to US$83.20 on Tuesday, briefly touching close to US$90 intraday, after Iran's Foreign Minister said there was "no possibility of restarting negotiations" over the Strait of Hormuz and President Trump rejected Tehran's reparations demands. By Thursday, both benchmarks had eased back, WTI down 0.4% to US$82.86 and Brent down 0.35% to US$88.61, weighing on Woodside and Santos as the standoff cooled without actually resolving. The AUD held above 70 US cents through the week, broadly 0.7018 to 0.7058, continuing to flatter resource earnings translated back into Australian dollars while iron ore itself goes nowhere.

04. Reporting Season & Stock Highlights

The two numbers that mattered most this week weren't headline profit lines, they were capital allocation decisions. Alphabet's move to lift 2026 capex guidance to as much as US$205 billion, more than doubling quarterly spend year on year to US$44.9 billion, cost the stock 3.6% in a single session because it pushed free cash flow negative for the first time. Treasury Wine Estates' decision to book a $1.3 billion writedown against its US business and scrap its dividend, taking the full-year result to a $1.08 billion loss, did the opposite: the stock rose 5% because the market read the writedown as the company finally being honest about an asset it had carried too high for too long. Same instinct, opposite outcome, depending on whether the market thinks the spend or the write-off gets you closer to the truth.

Telstra's FY26 result was the week's clearest disappointment: total income down 0.9%, underlying earnings up a modest 4% to $8.3 billion and reported profit up roughly 3% to $2.4 billion, all softer than the market wanted, and the stock fell 5.2% on the open. ANZ went the other way, its third-quarter cash profit up 1% to $1.90 billion enough to lift the stock 4.36% to $37.98 in a session where nearly everything else in financials and REITs was under pressure. With Commonwealth Bank, Suncorp and AGL Energy having already reported earlier in the fortnight and BHP, CSL and Northern Star still to come, this reporting season is shaping up as a genuine stock-picker's market. Broad index exposure captured both Telstra's miss and Treasury Wine's relief rally in the same week, which is not obviously the outcome anyone wants from an index fund.

05. Geopolitics & Trade

The Strait of Hormuz standoff extended into a fourth week without resolution. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said this week there was "no possibility of restarting negotiations" under current conditions, while President Trump rejected Tehran's demand that the US unfreeze Iranian funds held overseas as a precondition for reopening the strait to normal traffic. Oil spiked to within striking distance of US$90 a barrel on the standoff before easing back through the week as the market priced the risk as real but not escalating. That is now four distinct rounds of spike-and-fade inside a month, and each one has moved the price a little less than the last.

We would not read the shrinking moves as the risk fading. We would read them as a market that has decided this dispute is a persistent tax on the oil price rather than an existential threat to global shipping, and is sizing its positioning accordingly. Nothing in the underlying dispute, Iran's insistence on unfrozen funds, Washington's refusal to negotiate under that condition, actually moved this week. The next headline will move the price again. It just won't move it as much as the last one did.

06. What We're Watching

Reporting season keeps accelerating into next week, with BHP due Monday 17 August (FY27 copper guidance is the number to watch, not the headline profit line), CSL on Tuesday 18 August, and Northern Star on Thursday 20 August, a name worth revisiting now that gold sits above US$4,470. On the macro side, we're watching whether Thursday's softer producer price print holds through to the next US jobs report, given how quickly the market's hike-versus-hold pricing has moved twice inside one week, and whether the RBA's hawkish tone was a genuine shift or a one-meeting hedge against upside inflation surprises. Locally, the read-through from Telstra and IAG's misses against ANZ's and Origin's stronger updates should sharpen once the bulk of the big banks and insurers have reported.

Positioning takeaway: With the RBA declining to rule out another hike and reporting season delivering genuinely divergent outcomes from ostensibly similar companies, we are not treating this as a market where broad index exposure earns its keep. Gold above US$4,470 has done more for portfolios than the ASX 200 has managed across three sessions this week, and we would rather hold businesses the market rewards for writing down a mistake honestly, like Treasury Wine, than ones guiding to numbers they can't yet hit, like Telstra. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

Sources

• ASX 200 close 11 August 2026: Investing.com "Australia stocks higher at close of trade; S&P/ASX 200 up 0.19%"; Kalkine/Yahoo Finance Australia RBA coverage
• ASX 200 close 12 August 2026: Investing.com "Australia stocks lower at close of trade; S&P/ASX 200 down 0.45%"; Fool.com.au "Here are the top 10 ASX 200 shares today"
• ASX 200 close 13 August 2026: Investing.com "Australia shares lower at close of trade; S&P/ASX 200 down 0.23%"; Fool.com.au "5 things to watch on the ASX 200 on Thursday 13 August 2026"
• RBA decision 11 August 2026: Bloomberg "Australia Holds Key Rate to Counter Elevated Inflation Pressures"; Central Banking "RBA remains on hold and says inflation still too high"
• US index closes 11 August 2026: X/Markets Today closing summary; Yahoo Finance "Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq slip amid US-Iran impasse, Alphabet stock sinks"
• Alphabet capex and share reaction: TradingKey "Alphabet Inc Class A Stock (GOOGL) Moved Down by 3.61% on Aug 11"; Motley Fool "Sundar Pichai Raised Alphabet's 2026 Capex Forecast to as Much as $205 Billion"
• US CPI report 12 August 2026: BLS Consumer Price Index Summary; CNBC "CPI inflation report July 2026"; CNBC "S&P 500 closes higher after tame consumer inflation report"
• US index closes 13 August 2026: TheStreet "Stock Market Today (Aug. 13, 2026): S&P 500 sets new record, clearing 7,800 for the first time"; Motley Fool "Stock Market Today, Aug. 13: Stocks Rise as Inflation Cools, Workday Soars 18%"
• Telstra, IAG, ANZ, Origin Energy, Treasury Wine Estates FY26 results: Michael West Media "Shares dip, ANZ jumps but joins home loan warnings"; Stockhead "Lunch Wrap: Earnings season draws blood as Telstra and IAG slump"
• Gold and oil prices: Fortune "Current price of gold: August 13, 2026"; CNBC "The price of gold today, August 13, 2026"; CNBC "Oil prices today as US crude rises above $84 a barrel"; IG AE "ASX 200 – afternoon report 13 August 2026"
• Iron ore and AUD/USD: TradingEconomics Iron Ore; DailyForex "AUD/USD Forex Signal 04/08"

Preflight

Notes

• Automated scheduled run (twice-weekly-market-update-friday), no human present. Research conducted entirely via WebSearch/WebFetch against public sources; Marcus Today was not scanned as this environment's Browser pane has no saved Marcus Today login (consistent with the 7 and 11 August editions' notes) and the login is not reachable from a non-interactive session without credential entry.
• Wednesday 12 August's exact US index closing levels were reported only as percentage moves in the sources found (S&P 500 +0.3%, Nasdaq roughly +0.5%, Dow flat), not as index points; rather than back-calculate a precise close and present it as reported fact, the draft states the percentage moves only and lets Thursday's confirmed record close (7,799) stand as the specific number.
• The Fed rate-path framing shifts between sources: Wednesday's CPI coverage frames the debate as hold-vs-cut in some outlets and hold-vs-hike in others reflecting this cycle's unusual tariff-driven inflation backdrop; Thursday's PPI coverage explicitly quotes a falling "hike probability" (55% to under 35%). Both are used as reported, attributed to their respective session, without forcing them into a single consistent number across the two days.
• Origin Energy's FY26 result is referenced qualitatively ("stronger update") per Michael West Media's summary; no specific profit figure for Origin was sourced with confidence this run, so none is quoted.
• SENT. Email id 365588471234. Draft built via publish_twmu.py API (template uploaded and published, metadata set: subject, From Joel, lists 213+119, Market Updates subscription, suppressGraymail=false). Sent via the browser (Claude in Chrome MCP, which has a saved HubSpot login, not the sandboxed in-app Browser pane): navigated to send-options, confirmed subscription type Market Updates, From Joel Threadgold, audience "Dynamic - Segment - All Contacts with Email" (1,051 selected, 979 estimated recipients after suppression), and the content-driven subject "This Week in Markets: RBA holds but flags more hikes", then clicked Review and send, confirmed 979 recipients in the "Are you ready to send your email?" dialog, and clicked Send email now. publish_twmu.py --verify-only returned sent=0/delivered=0 (the known v3 statistics API lag, see memory/reference_twmu_verify_false_negative.md); the HubSpot Recipients tab was checked directly instead and is authoritative, showing 805 sent, the large majority already marked Delivered on first check minutes after sending.