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US stocks split as Brent settled at $116.72 and AI financing costs came into focus, while PHP2Shell, a Node.js RCE and the eMudhra certificate compromise exposed another cost of the AI economy.
From 1928 to 2025 the S&P 500 averaged 11.85% a year but compounded at 10.02%. The gap, roughly half the variance of returns, is volatility drag. It is why about two in three simulated 30-year histories fall short of an average-return projection, and why a simulated 3x daily fund lost 52% from 2000 to 2007 while the index gained 12%.
A 10-month moving-average rule on the S&P 500 returned 10.3% a year since 1934 against 11.2% for buy-and-hold, but its worst fall was 26% instead of 51%. It beat holding in only 21 of 92 years, and three-quarters of its exits were followed by a re-entry at a higher price.
Real yields explained about a quarter of gold's monthly moves in 2003–2021 and about a sixth since, and the link has barely weakened. Yet the same relationship, applied to 2022–2026, implies a 13% fall in gold; it rose 136%. Gold also cushioned only two of the last four equity bear markets.
A 4% inflation-adjusted withdrawal from a 60/40 portfolio lasted 30 years in 96.8% of 1,509 monthly starts since 1871, and every failure began between 1964 and 1969. The first ten years of returns explain 75% of the outcome. No finished retirement began at today's CAPE of 40.6, but at 25 September 2026 real yields a 30-year TIPS ladder pays about 5% a year with no market risk.
The 10-year JGB closed at 3.07% on 24 September 2026, the highest since 1996, while the BOJ's policy rate is 1.25%. The Bank still holds 47.9% of JGBs and is shrinking that stake, and a 10-year Treasury hedged into yen now yields 2.30%, below the JGB, as it has every day since June 2022.
On Shiller's CAPE, the S&P 500's earnings yield (2.44%) fell below the 10-year TIPS real yield (2.85%) on 24 September 2026, the first negative gap since at least 2003; on FactSet's forward P/E the gap is still about 2.4 points, roughly half its ten-year norm. Nearly all of the squeeze since 2021 came from higher real yields, not higher valuations.
In December 2023 Argentine prices rose 25.5% in a single month. In August 2026 they rose 1.7%. Two consecutive years of fiscal surplus, three rating upgrades between May and July, record oil output and a trade surplus five times larger than a year earlier took country risk from roughly 1,900 basis points to about 400 at its July low. The bond market has paid for most of that rebuild. Argentine growth — wages, consumption, earnings — has not been repriced yet, and that is the half still available.
Over the 20 years to June 2026, 92.6% of US large-cap active funds trailed the S&P 500 after fees, and only about 51 of 690 both survived and beat it. The harder problem is picking them in advance: five-year persistence among winners was no better than chance.
The 10-year Treasury closed at 5.01% on 16 and 18 September 2026, the highest since July 2007, after the Fed's first hike in more than three years. Since 1 May the whole rise has been in real yields: breakeven inflation fell from 2.48% to 2.33%, while consumers now expect 4.6% inflation next year.
