Newsletter — week of September 14, 2026

Market performance

The S&P 500 ends the week nearly flat, down a marginal 0.1%, but this apparent calm masks a turbulent week. The Dow Jones lost more than 1.5% on the week, penalized by the stocks most sensitive to interest rates, while the Nasdaq, by contrast, rose thanks to a rebound in semiconductors. This divergence reflects a market that remains selective, favoring large technology stocks with strong balance sheets over more cyclical sectors, in a context dominated by the Federal Reserve’s monetary-policy decision.

Market news

The Fed raises rates for the first time since 2023

On Wednesday, the U.S. central bank voted unanimously for a 25-basis-point hike, bringing its key rate to a range of 3.75% to 4%.

This decision, widely anticipated by the market, responds to inflation deemed still too high, fueled in large part by the surge in energy prices over recent weeks. The updated projections show that a large majority of Fed officials still envisage one more hike by the end of the year.

The risk here is that the Fed raises rates too much and breaks the growth of the economic cycle, which could trigger a recession and therefore a market decline. Although this point must be watched carefully, in our view we are still far from that level: the cycle remains solid, and the capex (capital expenditure) of the big technology companies strongly supports growth—and it isn’t this rate hike that will stop these companies from investing heavily.

We are very skeptical about this rate hike, which makes no sense following an oil supply shock. Raising rates will not solve supply problems. The only positive aspect is that, if the Fed continues its hikes, Donald Trump may have no other choice but to end the escalation in the Middle East if he wants to avoid a recession. That, however, is a distant and speculative prospect; we don’t try to predict the future, simply to position ourselves to come out as well as possible whatever the scenario.

Geopolitics: the good and the less good

After climbing to $111 a barrel of Brent at the very start of the week following an attack on Saudi Arabia’s « East-West » pipeline and the suspension of loadings at the Yanbu terminal, oil fell for three straight sessions to end the week around $104:

This pullback is explained by Saudi Arabia’s announcement that it would restore part of its export capacity in the coming days, and by the setup of workaround solutions to keep delivering its crude.

However, this calm is only relative: the shipping company CMA CGM, for example, announced this week the introduction of an « emergency fuel surcharge »—that is, extra fees billed to its customers on top of the normal shipping price—to offset the lasting rise in the cost of marine fuel. This measure, which takes effect on October 1, shows that even though the price of oil fell a little this week, shipping companies continue to anticipate high costs over the long run, proof that the tension remains very real underneath.