Bulls & Bears
The 10-year went from 4.96% to 5.21% in five sessions. That is a 25 basis point move in a single week. Mark called it a "six sigma event" on Thursday's morning call. The 30-year hit 5.46%, the highest print since 2004. Freddie Mac's 30-year mortgage rate crossed 7.03% for the first time since January 2025. And somehow, in the middle of all that, the Nasdaq managed to set a record high on Tuesday at 27,244. Try explaining those two facts to someone who doesn't follow markets. Good luck.
Monday started with the Trump-Xi summit. Lots of handshakes, very little substance. The 90-day tariff truce got extended to January 10. Bessent and He Lifeng had AI and trade talks that produced a "framework for dialogue," which is diplomatic code for we agreed to keep talking. Oil dipped below $100 on the Hormuz diplomacy hopes. Brent touched $99 intraday before bouncing. Bitcoin surged past $86,000 on the back of SEC tokenisation moves and monster ETF inflows. The mood was cautiously optimistic for about twelve hours.
Tuesday was the AI trade's day. Meta's Muse app hit number one on the App Store and the stock ripped 11.4%. AMD crossed a $1 trillion market cap. ARM jumped 17%. Intel gained 12%. The Nasdaq punched through to 27,244. PMI came in at 58.4, a five-year high, and everyone spent about thirty seconds celebrating before realising what it meant. An economy running that hot isn't "resilient." It's overheating. And the bond market heard the message loud and clear.
Wednesday and Thursday were the reckoning. The 10-year blew through 5% and kept going. The Dow dropped 350 points on Wednesday. S&P gave back 60. Barr, Williams, Goolsbee, Musalem, Paulson, Hammack, all of them lined up behind more hikes. October FOMC odds for a hike hit 78%. Vanguard's Arvind Narayan told clients "this is not the time to be a hero." He wasn't wrong. Oracle declared force majeure on Blue Owl's data centre financing, which sent a chill through the entire hyperscaler trade. BHP suspended operations at Escondida after a worker fatality.
Friday brought a partial bounce. The Nasdaq clawed back some ground. But the weekly numbers tell the real story: S&P +0.7%, Nasdaq +1.57%, Dow −1%, Russell −1%. The tech and AI names dragged the averages into the green while everything else bled. Mark's morning call verdict: "miraculous hold" by the Nasdaq. We'd add: miraculous, suspicious, and probably temporary.
- Mon 22 Sep — Trump-Xi summit extends tariff truce to Jan 10. Bessent-He Lifeng AI/trade framework. Brent briefly below $100 on Hormuz diplomacy hopes. Bitcoin past $86K on ETF flows + SEC tokenisation.
- Tue 23 Sep — Meta Muse #1 app drives +11.4%. AMD hits $1T market cap. ARM +17%, Intel +12%. Nasdaq record 27,244. PMI 58.4 (5yr high). Copper near $14,661/t record.
- Wed 24 Sep — Bond shock: 10Y blows through 5.10%. Dow −350, S&P −60. Fed hawks line up: Barr, Williams, Goolsbee, Musalem all signal more hikes. Oracle force majeure on Blue Owl data centre deal.
- Thu 25 Sep — 10Y hits 5.21%. 30Y at 5.46%, highest since 2004. Freddie Mac 30Y mortgage crosses 7.03%. BHP suspends Escondida after worker fatality. Oct hike odds 78%.
- Thu 25 Sep — Vanguard: "not time to be a hero." Houthi-Saudi missile exchange pushes Brent back to $106.60. Buffett steps down as Berkshire chair.
- Fri 25 Sep — Nasdaq partial bounce. S&P weekly +0.7%, Nasdaq +1.57%. Tech carried the week while the Dow (−1%) and Russell (−1%) took the hit.
- Ongoing — RBA decision Monday 29 Sep. Cash rate expected to rise to 4.60%. 924 Australian construction companies in external administration.
| Index | Level | Week | Signal / Commentary |
|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 | 7,704 | +0.7% | Headline says green. Reality says the AI names did all the work while everything else went sideways or worse. Under the bonnet, breadth was poor. |
| Nasdaq Composite | 26,939 | +1.57% | Hit 27,244 on Tuesday before the bond shock pulled it back. Meta +11%, AMD to $1T, ARM +17%. Mark's "miraculous hold" verdict stands. For now. |
| Dow Jones | 51,350 | −1.0% | Old economy getting crushed between yields and oil. Industrials and transports can't catch a bid when the 30-year is at 5.46%. |
| Russell 2000 | — | −1.0% | Small caps hate rate hikes. They hate 5%+ bond yields even more. The Russell is telling you the real economy story the Nasdaq is ignoring. |
| ASX 200 | 8,702 | −0.3% | Holding up better than expected ahead of Monday's RBA. Resources firm, banks soft. SPI futures −32 into the close. RBA hike to 4.60% is 95% priced. |
| FTSE 100 | 10,690 | +0.5% | Schnabel exits ECB for IMF. European bond markets unsettled. FTSE held up on energy and mining names catching the commodity bid. |
| Nikkei 225 | 65,514 | +0.3% | BoJ hiked to 1.25% last week (31-year high). Yen stable. Japanese equities digesting a world where rates are actually positive in Tokyo. |
S&P +0.7%. Nasdaq +1.57%. If you only read the weekly scoreboard, you'd think it was a quiet week. It wasn't. The 10-year moved 25 basis points in five days. The 30-year hit levels not seen in over two decades. And the only reason the index-level numbers look green is because Meta, AMD, ARM, and Intel had the kind of week that makes everything else invisible.
The Dow and Russell both lost 1%. That's the market without the AI trade. Industrials are getting squeezed by oil-driven input costs. Small caps are getting repriced by bond yields that were supposed to come down this year and have gone in the opposite direction. The ASX held up reasonably well at −0.3%, partly because the resources names caught a bid from copper near record highs and oil above $106. But the banks are softening into Monday's RBA decision. CBA looks tired. The rate-sensitive names have nowhere to hide.
From 4.96% to 5.21% in one week. Mark called it a six sigma move on Thursday's call, and he wasn't exaggerating. Bond maths people will tell you a move that size in a market this deep shouldn't happen outside of a crisis. The 30-year printed 5.46%, the highest since 2004. Freddie Mac's benchmark mortgage rate hit 7.03%. If you bought a house at 3% in 2021, congratulations. If you're trying to buy one now, you're competing with the US Treasury for capital.
The catalyst was PMI at 58.4 on Tuesday. Five-year high. That number changes the conversation. An economy running that hot doesn't need rate cuts. It probably needs more hikes just to stop it running away. Every Fed speaker this week seemed to get the same memo. Barr, Williams, Goolsbee, Musalem, Paulson, Hammack. All hawkish. October FOMC hike odds are at 78%.
The hyperscaler trade got its first real scare. Oracle declared force majeure on Blue Owl's data centre financing, citing construction cost blowouts. When the companies building AI infrastructure are telling their capital partners they can't deliver on terms, you've got a problem that goes beyond one deal. Mark's take: hyperscalers are now competing with Treasuries for investor capital. At 5.21% risk-free, the hurdle rate for everything else just went up.
Bank of Canada's governor flagged rate hike risks. St Louis Fed's Musalem argued for more increases. The BoJ already hiked to 1.25% last week. The RBA goes Monday with a near-certain hike to 4.60%. We're counting central banks like they're dominoes now.
✓ Trump-Xi truce extended to Jan 10. Bessent-He Lifeng AI dialogue launched. Diplomacy reducing near-term tail risk on tariffs, even if the substance is thin.
Oil had one of the wildest weeks we've seen. Monday and Tuesday, Brent dipped below $100 on Hormuz diplomacy hopes and the Trump-Xi summit optics. Saudi Aramco was ramping Gulf loadings, which the market read as supply coming back. For about 36 hours, it felt like we might get a break. Then the Houthi-Saudi missile exchange on Thursday ended that conversation. Brent closed the week at $106.60, up 3.4%.
But the diesel story is worse than the crude story. US average diesel hit $6.49 a gallon this week. Mark flagged stations in California and Florida that are completely out of stock. "North of eight bucks" in some areas. Refiners have been running flat out and, as Mark put it, "these plants aren't designed to run this hard all the time without maintenance. A lot of them cancelled maintenance because they want to make hay while the sun shines." There are growing calls for an export ban. Diesel at these levels feeds straight into food prices, freight costs, and construction inputs. It's an inflation accelerant that the Fed can't do anything about.
Copper pushed near the $14,661/t record. The supply story hasn't changed: BHP's Escondida suspension after a worker fatality tightened an already tight market. Mark's been bullish copper for two years through BHP: "This has been our biggest holding. We recently trimmed in the mid-60s. Copper could get a lot worse before it gets better in terms of supply." The critical minerals trade is alive. Mark called the REMX ETF and MP Materials "extraordinarily cheap" on Ausbiz this week.
Gold eased 0.5% to $4,267. Rising real yields are doing their thing. But at these gold prices, the miners are still printing free cash flow that makes most other sectors look ordinary. Iron ore at $95.65 is holding steady, caught between Chinese demand hopes and the reality that property starts haven't picked up.
The VIX is at 15.67. Let that sink in. The 10-year just moved 25 basis points in a week, the 30-year mortgage crossed 7%, diesel is at record highs with stations running dry, and vol is sitting below 16. Something is wrong with that picture. Either the equity market is right and this bond move is a non-event, or the VIX is about to catch up in a way that will be very unpleasant for anyone who's been selling puts.
The Australian construction data should worry everyone on this side of the Pacific. We've gone from an average of about 200 companies in external administration to 924 in the last couple of months. Mark put that number in context on Ausbiz: it's not a statistic, it's a systemic event. Fletcher Building is a sell. The construction cost spiral is real, and a rate hike on Monday will tighten conditions further.
The AI doom fears from last week haven't gone away. Anthropic's Amodei, Altman, and Musk all called for a slowdown on frontier AI development. Anthropic quietly set up a biology lab. Google disclosed that Gemini was used in a hacking operation. These aren't fringe concerns anymore. If regulators decide the pace of AI deployment needs to slow, the earnings multiples on the chip and infrastructure names need to come down. Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson flagged S&P 7,100 as a downside scenario if conditions worsen.
The ASX closed at 8,702. Down 0.3% for the week, which honestly felt like a win given what happened in bond markets globally. The RBA meets Monday with 95% odds of a hike to 4.60%. It's done. The question now is whether Bullock signals one-and-done or opens the door for November. After this week's yield explosion, we'd bet on the latter.
Mark gave detailed stock views on Ausbiz this week. Premier Investments is on his buy watchlist: "I'm starting to get really keen on the likes of JB Hi-Fi and Premier in particular. There'll probably be some of the best buying opportunities you'll get for the next 3 or 4 years." He's waiting for the entry point. But the positioning is clear: consumer discretionary at the right price is the next trade.
Global Lithium (GL1) +50.4%
Titan Resources lobbed a $333 million takeover bid. The stock hadn't done much for months and then this. The lithium space is being consolidated while prices are depressed. If you're going to buy a lithium company, you do it when nobody wants them. Titan clearly agrees.
Westgold (WTM) +31.4%
Hit gold at Spur. Discovery drill results in this market are like finding cash on the ground. With gold at $4,267, any new ounce in the ground gets capitalised immediately. Unhedged producers are the place to be.
Catapult (CAT) +5.76%
Quiet mover. Sports analytics benefiting from recurring revenue growth. Not a macro story, just a company executing well while everything around it argues about interest rates.
Ramelius (RMS) +6.2%
Gold miners catching a bid as real yields push gold down from highs but gold-in-AUD remains elevated. Ramelius producing at costs that make sense even if gold pulls back another 5%. Margins are thick.
Perpetual (PPT) −15.1%
Rejected EQT's approach. Market didn't like the board saying no. When your stock drops 15% for turning down a bid, the market is telling you it thinks you're worth less than what was on the table. Ouch.
Telix Pharma (TLX) −11.7%
ITM Isotope deal weighed on the stock. Last week's FDA win already priced, and now there's acquisition-integration noise. Mark's call: hold, and load up on dips.
Tuas Limited −23%
Brutal week. Telco competition intensifying in Singapore. The market is re-rating anything that doesn't have a clear earnings growth path higher. At these yields, hope isn't a strategy.
Myer Holdings Statutory loss $276.5M
A quarter-billion-dollar statutory loss. Consumer discretionary at the wrong end of the cycle with the wrong cost structure. This is what happens when rates go up and foot traffic doesn't.
Meta Platforms (META) +11.4%
Muse hit number one on the App Store. An AI product people actually want to use. The stock gained more in one session than most companies gain in a quarter. Mark's view on Ausbiz: we're entering the next phase of the AI trade, moving from infrastructure to monetisation. Meta is showing what that looks like.
AMD +10% ($1T mkt cap)
Crossed a trillion-dollar market cap this week. The AI chip race has two real players now. AMD's data centre GPU revenue is accelerating at a rate that even the bulls didn't model correctly eighteen months ago.
ARM Holdings +17%
The inference chip story is real. As AI moves from training to deployment, ARM's architecture becomes the backbone. Mark's been saying: "the next phase moves from data centres and GPUs to agentic AI, inference chips, CPUs, and memory." ARM is right in the middle of that.
Intel (INTC) +12.2%
The comeback narrative is alive again. Two straight weeks of double-digit moves. Whether Intel can actually execute on foundry is a separate question, but the market wants to believe, and right now belief is enough to move the stock.
Stitch Fix (SFIX) −21.6%
Cautious guidance. The consumer discretionary names that depend on discretionary spending are getting punished for honesty. When mortgage rates cross 7%, nobody's buying a curated wardrobe box.
MGM Resorts (MGM) −11%
Barry Diller withdrew his bid. When a deal falls apart, the seller gets hammered. MGM is back to trading on fundamentals, and the fundamentals include a consumer getting squeezed by fuel and housing costs.
Oracle (ORCL) −3.5%
Declared force majeure on Blue Owl's data centre financing deal. Construction costs and financing costs both blowing out at once. This is the canary for the whole data centre capex cycle. If Oracle can't make the numbers work, who can?
KB Home (KBH) −3%
Homebuilder selling off on the 7.03% mortgage rate print. At these rates, the affordability maths doesn't work for most first-home buyers. The housing trade is broken until yields come down, and yields aren't coming down.
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Mark Gardner on Ausbiz “The Call”Stock views across 11 names. BEN (sell/avoid), EMR (buy if you have the stomach, prefers Graincorp Gold), ING (avoid on bird flu/input cost risk), PMV (hold, on the buy list), BHP (hold, trimmed mid-60s, copper supply bull), CIA (sell), FBU (sell — 924 construction insolvencies), PNI (hold), GNP (buy — AI infrastructure picks-and-shovels), SGH (hold, loading on dips). Telix stock of the day: hold.
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Mark Gardner on Ausbiz “The COB: The AI Spark”Meta Muse driving AI rebound. AMD $1T. RBA hike near-certain (cash rate to 4.60%). Critical minerals "extraordinarily cheap" — REMX ETF, MP Materials. Cybersecurity picks: BUG/CYBER ETF, Palantir, GitLab for AI governance. Next phase of AI trade: agentic AI, inference chips, monetisation. Oil/diesel crisis ongoing.
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Morning Call — YouTube & SpotifyDaily pre-market wrap. Tuesday: Nasdaq record, copper records, Bitcoin $86–87K, Meta +11%, Capstone Copper pick. Wednesday: bond yield "six sigma move," US 10Y at 5.11%, bull trap warning. Thursday/Friday: 10Y settles at 5.21%, 30Y highest since 2004, NASDAQ "miraculous hold," Oracle force majeure, Vanguard "not time to be a hero," BHP Escondida suspension. Weekly scores: S&P +0.7%, Nasdaq +1.57%, Dow −1%, Russell −1%.
Big media week for Mark. Two Ausbiz appearances plus the full run of morning calls. The stock views segment on Sunday covered 11 names in detail, and the AI Spark segment on Tuesday called the critical minerals trade and the next phase of the AI cycle ahead of the Meta-led rally. The morning calls through Wednesday to Friday tracked the bond market shock in real time.
"The market is wrestling with a three-headed macro headwind: higher oil, higher bond yields and a more hawkish Fed."
"Rate hikes do not solve Iran, oil, the AI boom, or inflation."
"This is not the time to be a hero."
"The rapid increase in yields and elevated bond market volatility are creating a more meaningful headwind for equities."
"The hyperscalers are now competing with Treasuries for investor capital. At 5.21% risk-free, why would you fund a data centre at 8% when you can clip 5.2% doing nothing?"
Next week is all about the RBA and whether the data confirms the bond market's story. If PMIs, ISM, and payrolls all come in strong, the October FOMC becomes a formality and we're looking at rates heading higher still. If something cracks, we might get a reprieve on yields. Either way, Mark's not chasing anything until the dust settles. The buy-back window hasn't opened yet. Patience is still the trade.
| Date | Company | Ticker | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon 22 | Meta Platforms | META | +11.4%. Muse app #1 on App Store. AI monetisation thesis validated in a single session. The stock that showed the AI trade isn't dead, just evolving. |
| Tue 23 | AMD | AMD | +10%. Crossed $1T market cap. Data centre GPU revenue accelerating. Two-horse race with Nvidia now has a second credible entrant. |
| Mon 22 | Global Lithium (ASX) | GL1 | +50.4%. Titan Resources $333M takeover bid. Lithium consolidation at depressed prices. Strategic value trumping spot market pessimism. |
| Wed 24 | Oracle | ORCL | −3.5%. Force majeure on Blue Owl data centre deal. Construction + financing cost blowouts. Canary for entire hyperscaler capex cycle. |
| Tue 23 | Stitch Fix | SFIX | −21.6%. Cautious guidance. Consumer discretionary under pressure from 7% mortgage rates and record fuel costs. Honesty got punished. |
| Thu 25 | Myer Holdings (ASX) | MYR | Statutory loss $276.5M. Wrong cost structure at the wrong point in the cycle. The poster child for what rate hikes do to marginal retailers. |
We'll be blunt. The 10-year moved 25 basis points in five days. The 30-year hit a level it hasn't seen since George W. Bush was president. Mortgage rates crossed 7%. And the S&P finished the week up 0.7%. Something doesn't add up. Either the bond market is wrong, or the equity market hasn't caught up. We know which way we'd bet.
The Nasdaq's "miraculous hold" is entirely a function of the AI trade. Meta, AMD, ARM, Intel. Take those four names out and you've got a market that looks a lot like the Dow: down 1%, struggling, and unable to shake the weight of 5%+ yields. The AI boom is real. We own the names. But even real booms don't survive a regime change in the cost of capital without at least a wobble. And Oracle declaring force majeure on a data centre deal is not a wobble. It's a warning.
Mark's been clear all week: this is not the time to add. Hyperscalers are competing with Treasuries for capital. At 5.21% risk-free, the hurdle rate for every equity investment just went up. Data centre financing costs are blowing out. Construction companies are going under at four times the normal rate. Diesel is at record highs with stations literally running out. These aren't problems that a strong PMI reading fixes. These are structural pressures that take time to work through the system.
On the ASX, the RBA hike on Monday is done. Position accordingly. We're avoiding banks, especially CBA. We're cautious on anything consumer-facing while diesel runs the show on transport and logistics costs. We still like energy at these prices: Santos and Woodside are printing cash. Gold miners remain the free-cash-flow story of 2026. And Mark's got Premier Investments and JB Hi-Fi on his buy watchlist for when the consumer discretionary names get cheap enough. That time isn't now. But it's getting closer.
The critical minerals trade is the one that excites us most right now. Mark called REMX and MP Materials "extraordinarily cheap" on Tuesday, and he's right. From a strategic standpoint, these are assets the world needs and isn't making enough of. The AI build-out runs on copper, rare earths, and lithium. GL1's 50% pop on a takeover bid tells you the smart money agrees. We'd rather own the raw materials the future is built from than the companies arguing about whose chatbot is better.
Stance: bearish. Not panicking. Not selling everything. Just recognising that a 25-basis-point weekly move in the 10-year is not something you buy into. Cash is yielding 5%. There is no rush. The buy-back date hasn't arrived yet, and when it does, we want dry powder, not a portfolio full of hope.
