Weekly Market Commentary

The Noble Weekly Review

Week of September 21 – 25, 2026  •  Published September 28, 2026

Market Scorecard — Last Week

Gabe's Weekly Perspective

The S&P finished up 0.67% and most people will read that as a quiet week. It was not. The real action was in the bond market, where long term Treasuries fell almost 3% and the thirty year yield reached levels we have not seen since 2004. I am going to do something this week that I usually avoid, which is tell you where I think rates are headed. My view is that they come down, and that this tightening cycle is aimed at the wrong problem. I lay out the reasoning below, along with the case against me, because I could be wrong and you deserve to see both sides.

Moving Higher

Under Pressure

What Moved Markets Last Week

The Bond Market Did the Talking

Long term Treasury bonds fell 2.94% last week, which is a large move for an asset class most people think of as the steady part of their portfolio. The ten year Treasury yield climbed roughly 23 basis points across three sessions to about 5.20%, and the thirty year finished near 5.48%. That is the highest the long end has been since 2004. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions, so when you hear that yields hit a twenty year high, what that means in practice is that existing bonds lost value.

Why Yields Are Climbing

The conventional explanation is straightforward. Business surveys released during the week showed US manufacturing and services activity running hotter than forecasters expected. The Fed's own September projections now put inflation at 3.7% by year end, a full percentage point above what it projected in March, and 16 of the 18 participants expect at least one more rate increase this year. Consumer surveys showed inflation expectations rising. The bond market is repricing for a world where rates stay higher for longer.

That is the explanation. I want to give you a different reading of what is actually driving the inflation the Fed is responding to.

The Iran Question

The reason oil has stayed above $100 a barrel, and therefore a large part of the reason inflation has been stubborn, is the conflict with Iran and the disruption to the Strait of Hormuz. On Friday, after the market week had closed, Iran's foreign minister offered to reopen the strait within seven days and restart talks with the United States, subject to conditions that included an end to the naval blockade and the release of Iranian assets. The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump rejected the proposal.

Here is why this matters more than almost anything else on the page. Look at the inflation timeline. In February of this year, before the conflict broke out, inflation was running at 2.4%, which is close to the Fed's target and was part of a downward trend. The war began in late February. By March inflation had jumped to 3.3%, the largest monthly increase since 2022. It peaked at 4.2% in May, with energy prices up nearly 18% from a year earlier. By August it had eased back to 3.4% on its own, as the initial shock worked through. The Dallas Fed has published research specifically quantifying the war's contribution to US inflation. This was an energy supply shock, not an overheating economy.

Where I Think This Goes

So here is my view, offered as opinion rather than fact. I think rates come down, and I question how much good this hiking cycle does in the meantime.

Raising interest rates does not produce a barrel of oil. It does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The inflation we are fighting came from a supply disruption halfway around the world, and the tool being used against it works by suppressing domestic demand. I also do not believe it slows the spending that is actually happening. The enormous capital investment going into artificial intelligence is committed, financed and underway, and it is going to proceed whether the funds rate is 4% or 5%. Oil stays expensive regardless of what the Fed does. My expectation is that when this conflict resolves, or when supply increases through some other route, inflation falls for reasons that have very little to do with monetary policy.

The encouraging part is that the bond market is already doing much of the tightening on its own. We have seen this before. In late 2023, long term yields rose sharply and Federal Reserve officials said plainly that it changed what they needed to do. Mary Daly of the San Francisco Fed said the need for further action was diminished because financial markets had already done the work. Lorie Logan of the Dallas Fed made a similar point. The Fed then stopped hiking. Last week's move in the long end does the same kind of work, which in my view reduces the case for the Fed to keep pushing.

Now the other side, because it deserves a fair hearing. The Fed disagrees with me, and it has better data than I do. Those business surveys last week were genuinely strong, and a hot economy suggests there is real demand pressure here and not purely a supply story. If spending proves more resilient than I expect, then inflation is stickier than my read allows and the Fed will be right to keep going. I am telling you what I think, not what I know, and we do not build portfolios on any single forecast, including mine.

Meta Delivered, Then Gave Some Back

Meta rose 10.49% on the week, its third strong week in a row. The company held its annual Connect event on the 23rd and 24th, where it introduced a $1,299 virtual reality headset, expanded its Ray-Ban smart glasses lineup, and built its Muse assistant into the glasses themselves. Analysts responded quickly, with several raising their price targets, including JPMorgan moving to $920 and Tigress Financial to $995. The stock touched a fifty two week high of $777.59 on Thursday.

Then Friday happened. Meta fell 3.33% in a single session to close at $751.66. Nothing went wrong at the company. What changed was the bond market, and expensive growth stocks are the most sensitive thing in the market to rising long term rates. It is a useful illustration of something we talk about often: a company can execute well and still have its stock move on factors that have nothing to do with the business.

Leadership Keeps Getting Narrower

For the third consecutive week, the market's gains came from a very small group. The Nasdaq rose 2.28% while the Dow fell 0.49% and the Russell 2000, which tracks smaller companies, dropped 1.50%. Small companies are no longer just lagging behind. They are declining outright, which makes sense given that smaller businesses tend to carry more floating rate debt and feel rising borrowing costs faster than large ones do. Meta and Microsoft together accounted for most of what the index gained. Strip those two out and the picture looks considerably different.

What This Means for Your Portfolio

Two honest takeaways. The first is that higher yields are genuinely a mixed picture rather than simply bad news. Bonds you already hold have lost value, and that shows up on your statement. But money you invest into bonds going forward earns meaningfully more than it did a year ago, and for anyone building retirement income, that is a real improvement in the opportunity set. The second is that concentration cuts both ways. A market carried by a handful of very large companies has delivered good returns this year, and it also means the index is more exposed to a small number of names than most people assume when they think of themselves as diversified.

I have given you my view above, and I hold it with appropriate humility. What matters more than my forecast is that your portfolio does not depend on it being right. That is the actual discipline here. If you would like to look at how you are positioned, particularly on the fixed income side where last week's move was felt most, that is a worthwhile conversation this fall.

On the Radar — September 28 – October 2

• Wednesday, September 30
  Oura Inc. (OURA) IPO (Price: $40.00-44.00)
• Wednesday, September 30
  Accelevation Holdings Corp. (ACCV) IPO (Price: $20.00-24.00)
• Wednesday, September 30
  Siyata Ptt (PTT) IPO