--- title: "This Week in Markets: Friday 28 August 2026" description: Nvidia's earnings alone drove the week's US index gain while the average stock stood still, and a single hot Australian CPI print flipped three of the big four banks onto a rate-hike call within 24 hours. image: https://d2ol7oe51mr4n9.cloudfront.net/user_3GpfS9yL2tylY89eFDCmA4LBqSJ/d8e56067-581e-4a5e-8ed6-d021fda4bb45.png --- [Skip to content](https://insights.threadgoldadvisory.com.au/threadgold-advisory-insights/this-week-in-markets-28-august-2026#main-content) Threadgold Advisory Pty Ltd Get started Get started ![Threadgold Advisory: This Week in Markets: Friday 28 August 2026](https://d2ol7oe51mr4n9.cloudfront.net/user_3GpfS9yL2tylY89eFDCmA4LBqSJ/d8e56067-581e-4a5e-8ed6-d021fda4bb45.png) # This Week in Markets: Friday 28 August 2026 ![Joel Threadgold](https://d2ol7oe51mr4n9.cloudfront.net/user_3GpfS9yL2tylY89eFDCmA4LBqSJ/91d9b760-24fa-4bf6-8a43-ee30f1a97152.jpg) Joel Threadgold August 28, 2026 Threadgold Advisory Desk · Covering: Tuesday 25, Wednesday 26 & Thursday 27 August 2026 US MARKETS Concentrated Nvidia did the heavy lifting on Thursday. The average stock barely moved. ASX Repriced One CPI print flipped the big banks' rate call and cost the index over 1%. COMMODITIES Mixed Gold eased off a three-month high as risk appetite returned, oil bounced on a fresh Hormuz incident. Dear Investor, **One company added US$435bn in market value in a single session this week, more than the entire ASX 200's four largest banks combined.** Nvidia reported Wednesday evening: revenue of US$96.2bn, up 106% on a year ago, and third-quarter guidance of US$107-108bn against a Street consensus sitting at US$104bn. Management also guided FY28 revenue growth to roughly 70%, nearly double the ~44% analysts had modelled. The stock jumped 8.7% Thursday, its biggest one-day move since April 2025, and dragged the Nasdaq up 1.57% with it. Here's the catch: the "average stock" fell on the same day. This was one name doing the work of an entire index, not a broad market re-rating. Closer to home, one number did something similar to the ASX. Wednesday's July CPI print showed trimmed mean inflation, the figure the RBA actually cares about, holding at 3.6% year-on-year but jumping 0.5% month-on-month, the largest monthly rise in a year and well above the 0.3% the market had pencilled in. NAB moved within hours to call a 25 basis point hike at the RBA's 28-29 September meeting. CBA and ANZ shifted their own calls to November. Only Westpac is still holding to a "no hike" view, and it looks increasingly lonely. The ASX 200 fell over 1% across Wednesday and Thursday and the Aussie dollar rose at the same time, equities down, currency up, the textbook signature of a market repricing for higher rates. In a sentence Nvidia's earnings alone drove the week's US index gain while the average stock stood still, and a single hot Australian CPI print flipped three of the big four banks onto a rate-hike call within 24 hours. 01 US Markets & Macro **Tuesday** was a holding pattern: the **S&P 500** rose **0.32% to 7,677.28**, the **Dow** added **160 points (+0.30%) to 53,579.94**, and the **Nasdaq** gained around **0.6%**, a quiet grind with technology and healthcare doing most of the lifting while the market waited on one number due after Wednesday's close. **Wednesday** was flatter still: the **S&P 500** slipped **0.12% to 7,675.70**, the **Dow** eased **0.08%** and the **Nasdaq** dipped **0.16%**, genuinely little changed, the whole session parked in front of Nvidia's print. **Thursday** is where the week actually happened. **Nvidia** reported EPS of **US$2.22**, more than double a year ago, on revenue of **US$96.2bn (+106% year-on-year)**. Third-quarter guidance of **US$107-108bn** beat the **US$104bn** consensus, and the FY28 revenue growth guide of roughly **70%** blew past the **~44%** analysts had modelled. The stock rose **8.7%**, its sharpest one-day gain since April 2025, adding an estimated **US$435bn** in market value in a single session. That was enough to carry the **Nasdaq Composite** up **1.57% to 26,541.35** and the **S&P 500** up **0.72% to roughly 7,730.99**, with the **Dow** adding **105 points**. Worth being precise about what actually happened underneath that headline: reporting suggested the average constituent stock fell on the day, this was a concentration story, one name, one number, carrying an entire index higher. Net across the three sessions, the S&P 500 finished the week **1.02%** above Monday's close, and essentially all of that gain landed in one Thursday. Fed Chair **Kevin Warsh** delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote as Chair today, Friday, 10am ET, titled "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy." It sits three weeks ahead of the 16 September FOMC meeting, where the market is currently pricing roughly one-in-three odds of a hike. His tone on that today is worth more attention than the headline itself. 02 Australian Market Performance **Tuesday** extended the index's gaining streak: the **ASX 200** rose **61.5 points (+0.68%) to 9,164.60**, with nine of eleven sectors closing higher. **Electro Optic Systems** (EOS +23.0%) led the board, **ARB Corporation** (ARB +13.9%) followed on its result, and **Ansell** (ANN +8.2%) rounded out the winners. On the other side, **Monadelphous** (MND -12.0%), **Liontown Resources** (LTR -8.7%) and **Pilbara Minerals** (PLS -6.0%) all fell hard. **Wednesday** told two stories in one session. The index ran to within **76 points** of its all-time high in early trade on **Woolworths** (WOW +3.4%, FY26 sales up 3.6% to $71.54bn, EBITDA up 6.7% to $6.09bn) and **BHP**, which faded from a 1.6% intraday high to close up just **0.35%** after a near-10% run over the prior seven sessions, a textbook "sell the fact" once the July CPI print landed mid-session and reversed the whole move. The index closed **36.8 points lower (-0.4%) at 9,127.8**. The other big mover was **WiseTech Global** (WTC), which fell as much as 11% intraday and closed down **8.5%** despite record FY26 revenue of US$1.39bn (+79%) and EBITDA of US$585.8m (+54%, above the top of guidance). The market ignored the scoreboard and focused entirely on FY27 revenue-growth guidance of just **6-10%**, plus an open ACCC investigation landing on the same day as the result. WiseTech is now down **39%** year-to-date and **64%** below where it traded a year ago. **Thursday** was the CPI hangover, a second straight losing session, the index down **90 points (-1.0%) to 9,038**, taking the two-day fall past **1.3%**. Losses were broad: retail, consumer names, non-energy minerals and financials all weak as bond yields across the 2-year, 10-year and 30-year all hit their highest levels since May. **Qantas** (QAN) also reported: full-year net profit of **$1.3bn**, down **19.8%**, underlying pre-tax profit down **13.8% to $2.1bn**, despite revenue rising **7.1% to $25.5bn**. Fuel costs rose **14.4%**, a **$610m** hit, on top of a **$420m** net cost tied to the Middle East conflict. Qantas will retire its ten A380s from 2028 and start phasing out its 30-strong A330 fleet this year. Net across the three sessions, the index fell **65 points (-0.71%)** from Monday's reference close, a mild-looking headline sitting on top of a genuinely sharp one-day CPI shock. 03 Commodities & Currency **Gold** spent the window coming off the boil. Spot peaked around **US$4,677/oz** on Tuesday, a three-month high, with bullion on track for its strongest monthly gain since September 1999 after adding more than **15%** in August alone. By Thursday it had eased back to roughly **US$4,577/oz** as Thursday's Nvidia-driven risk appetite pulled some safe-haven demand out of the metal, still comfortably up on the month, well shy of the all-time high of **US$5,597.23** set in January. **Brent crude** fell for a third straight session to **US$86.32** on Wednesday as an Iran-Oman framework for a temporary Strait of Hormuz shipping lane briefly took the war premium out of the price, then bounced back to **US$87.65** on Thursday after Iranian forces attacked an oil tanker in the strait, hours after Washington's latest sanctions push. **Iron ore** was the quiet one, holding near **US$95/mt**, within the US$93-100 range it has traded since June, Chinese mills still restocking even as the country's own steel output fell to its lowest July level since 2017. **AUD/USD** printed a fresh multi-week high near **0.7196**, the hawkish rate repricing supporting the currency at the same time it was hurting local equities, a clean divergence worth noting for anyone holding unhedged offshore assets this week. 04 Reporting Season & Stock Highlights Reporting season's final week produced the cleanest contrast we've seen all year. **Nvidia** and **WiseTech** both posted what most companies would call excellent trailing numbers, Nvidia's revenue up 106%, WiseTech's up 79%, both comfortably ahead of the prior corresponding period. The share prices went in opposite directions because the guidance did. Nvidia's ~70% FY28 growth guide beat what the market had modelled; WiseTech's 6-10% FY27 guide fell short, and an ACCC investigation landing on the same day gave the market a second reason to sell. **Woolworths'** solid, unspectacular FY26 result (sales +3.6%, EBITDA +6.7%) was rewarded precisely because it was solid and unspectacular in a week when investors were nervous about everything else. **Qantas** is the reminder that even a "resilient demand" story can't outrun a 14.4% jump in the fuel bill, retiring the A380 fleet is a multi-year structural response to a cost problem that isn't going away on its own. 05 Geopolitics & Trade Iran remained the dominant geopolitical story through the window. The Trump administration launched a fresh sanctions wave, dubbed **"Economic D-Day"** by the White House and **"Operation Economic Outcast"** by Treasury, targeting Iranian aviation, shipping, technology, and gold and crypto revenue streams, explicitly designed to sever the regime's remaining economic lifelines, with secondary sanctions threatened against any country that keeps trading with Tehran. For a moment it looked like tensions might actually cool: Iran and Oman floated a joint framework for a temporary Strait of Hormuz shipping lane plus a demining effort, and oil eased through Tuesday and Wednesday on the talk of it. That didn't hold. Iranian forces attacked an oil tanker in the strait on Thursday, hours after the new sanctions were announced, and Brent bounced straight back on the reintroduced supply-risk premium. Qatar's Prime Minister visited Tehran the same day, the diplomatic track still running in parallel with the military one. The US-Canada trade dispute stayed in a holding pattern rather than escalating further: the 50% US tariffs on roughly US$20bn of Canadian goods, imposed 21-22 August, remain in place, and Prime Minister Mark Carney's dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs are still scheduled for 8 September. Nothing new happened this week, which in a dispute Carney has described in explicitly adversarial terms is itself worth noting, the calendar is now doing the talking. 06 What We're Watching - **Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote as Fed Chair**, today, Friday 28 August, 10am ET. Three weeks out from the September FOMC meeting, his tone on rates matters more than the speech title suggests. - **The RBA's 28-29 September meeting**, now a genuine live hike risk. Watch whether Westpac breaks from its "hold" call, and whether CBA and ANZ pull their November calls forward. - **The Strait of Hormuz**, post-tanker-attack. Whether the Iran-Oman shipping framework survives this week's incident shapes near-term oil pricing. - **Canada's 8 September retaliatory tariffs.** Whether they land as scheduled or a fresh deal appears before then. - **US market breadth.** Thursday's rally was a Nvidia story, not a broad one. Whether that concentration persists or the rally widens out is the key question into next week. Positioning takeaway Two single data points, one company's earnings and one country's inflation print, moved more market value this week than everything else combined. That's not a market functioning normally, it's a market with very little conviction of its own, waiting for someone else to make the call. We're not chasing Thursday's Nvidia move or reading too much into one CPI print, both need more than a single data point to confirm a trend. What we are doing is treating the breadth question seriously: a rally carried by one stock and a rate cycle repriced by one release are both signs of a market with thin margins for error. That argues for staying diversified into strength rather than concentrating further into whatever moved hardest this week. [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 This communication is general information only and does not constitute personal financial advice. It is intended for wholesale clients as defined by the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. Any yield figures referenced are indicative and not guaranteed. Joel Threadgold (AR 001297336) is an Authorised Representative of RiverX Financial Services Pty Ltd (AFSL 556458), trading as Threadgold Advisory. ## Share this post [mailto:https%3A%2F%2Finsights.threadgoldadvisory.com.au%2Fthreadgold-advisory-insights%2Fthis-week-in-markets-28-august-2026](mailto:https%3A%2F%2Finsights.threadgoldadvisory.com.au%2Fthreadgold-advisory-insights%2Fthis-week-in-markets-28-august-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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