Daily newsletter · Thu 17 Sep 2026
 | Sharespective Wall Street, before morning tea | Daily newsletter Thu 17 Sep 2026 |
 The Hike Lands Plus: SK Hynix wants to make memory chips inside Intel's half-built Ohio plant. |
Good morning, and welcome to Thursday. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate a quarter point on Wednesday, the first increase since 2023, and every voting member put their hand up for it. Markets had priced that in for weeks. What they had not priced in was the press conference, where Kevin Warsh made it plain he thinks inflation is still the problem. The Dow ended 630 points lower.
The damage landed unevenly. The NASDAQ Composite finished three points lower, which on a 25,978 index is a rounding error, while the Dow lost 1.21%. Intel and SpaceX each had a good day for reasons that had nothing to do with the Fed, which is one way to avoid the argument entirely.
Market snapshot
S&P 500 7,552.25 ▼ 0.44% | | NASDAQ 25,978.42 ▼ 0.01% | | NZX 50 13,623.00 ▲ 1.03% |
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ASX 200 8,696.50 ▲ 0.28% | | Intel US$100.91 ▲ 3.88% | | SpaceX US$149.84 ▲ 4.43% |
| ECONOMY |
The Fed raised rates for the first time since 2023 and signalled another before Christmas
The Federal Open Market Committee lifted the federal funds target range to 3.75%–4.00% on Wednesday afternoon in Washington, a quarter-point rise approved 12 votes to nil. It is the first increase since July 2023. The statement called activity solid, inflation elevated, and the rise a way of getting back to the 2% goal sooner. Earlier that morning the Commerce Department reported August retail sales up 1.2%, against the 0.7% that economists surveyed by FactSet expected. The case for waiting got thinner as the day went on.
What the dot plot says. The dot plot is the grid where each of the 18 officials anonymously marks where they think rates end the year. Sixteen of them pencilled in another rise in 2026, and four of those marked two. Only two think the job is done at one. Nothing is marked for 2027. There is one cut pencilled in for 2028 and at least one more for 2029. The committee now sees headline PCE inflation at 3.7% and the core measure at 3.4%, each a tenth higher than in June, and does not have inflation back at target until 2029.
Warsh spent his press conference on the same point. Asked about energy, he said the Fed cannot affect any individual price, and that its job is to stop a change in relative prices broadening out into second and third-order effects. Oil moved in his favour that afternoon: WTI settled at US$102.43, down 3.2%, as Saudi Arabia routed cargoes around its damaged pipeline. Shares went the other way while he spoke. The S&P 500 closed at 7,552.25, the Dow at 51,462.55 and the NASDAQ Composite at 25,978.42, with the 10-year Treasury yield just above 5%.
What to watch the October meeting. The median official wants one more rise before the year is out, and after October there is only December left to deliver it. |
| SEMICONDUCTORS |
SK Hynix is in talks to make memory chips inside Intel's Ohio plant
Reuters reported on Wednesday that SK Hynix is discussing US production with Intel, which would be the first time the Korean company has made memory chips on American soil. Two structures are on the table. SK Hynix could lease part of the semiconductor complex Intel is building in Ohio, or the two could form a joint venture alongside cloud companies wanting a supply they can count on. Intel closed at US$100.91, up 3.88%, and SK Hynix's US-listed shares gained about 3%. SK Hynix says nothing has been decided, and Intel called the report speculation while repeating its commitment to Ohio.
Why Intel wants the tenant. Memory chips store data, and the AI build-out has made the fast kind scarce enough that buyers are willing to fund factories to get it. Intel does not make memory. What it has is capacity, plus a foundry arm built to make chips for other companies. Persuading them to sign up has been the hard part. Ohio is the biggest piece of that bet, with up to US$100 billion pledged and two plants that are not due to finish until 2030 and 2031. A signed tenant would change how that timeline reads.
Micron, the only American memory maker of any size, closed roughly flat at US$935.80. Its home-soil advantage rests on CHIPS Act money and the argument that memory made in America is safer memory, and a Korean rival producing in Ohio would test that.
The open question whether talks become a lease. Intel's Ohio site has slipped twice already, and a partner who signs in 2026 is still waiting until 2030 for a wafer. |
| SPACE |
SpaceX shares climbed before Starship's first run at orbit
SpaceX closed at US$149.84 on Wednesday, up 4.43%, ahead of the flight that 13 test launches have been building towards. Starship Flight 14 is set for 22 September at 12:15 UTC, and it is the first time the vehicle will try to reach orbit rather than arc most of the way round the planet and come down. The plan runs about 10 hours: 26 Starlink V3 satellites deployed at roughly 275km, six orbits, a deorbit burn on a single Raptor engine, then a splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile. SpaceX will only commit to orbit if enough hardware is working to bring the ship down again.
Why the flight shows up in the accounts. Starlink is the part of SpaceX that makes money, and it reached 12 million subscribers in the June quarter with revenue up 66%. The V3 satellites are the upgrade that keeps that growing, and they are too big for the Falcon 9 to carry economically. Group revenue was US$7.8 billion in the quarter, 92% higher than a year earlier, against capital spending of US$18.4 billion. Starship is the bridge between those two numbers.
The share price has been a rougher ride. SpaceX listed on 12 June at US$135 and opened at about US$150, raising US$85.7 billion in the largest IPO ever run. Three months on, Wednesday's close leaves the shares roughly back at that first-day open. The August result beat on revenue and still knocked 8% off the stock after hours, on that capital spending line.
The tell the deorbit burn. Reaching orbit proves the rocket flies. Coming back on command makes it reusable, which is the whole economic case for building it. |
Newsworthy numbers
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49-50 the Senate procedural vote that stalled the CLARITY Act, 11 short of the 60 it needed. The bill would have split oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC, and bitcoin was trading below US$76,000 by Wednesday. | | A$1.85 the price of a standard Australian stamp since 1 September, up 15 cents. Australia Post argued for the rise on the grounds that letter volumes are back where they were in the 1930s. |
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NZ$3.8 billion New Zealand's current account deficit for the June quarter, published by Stats NZ on Wednesday. That is NZ$666 million narrower than the March quarter, and the annual deficit is now 3.2% of GDP. | | 8 million bees the hive population at Southall Farm & Inn in Tennessee, one of thousands of hotels that now keep bees for guests to look at. It has three national honey awards to show for it. |
Worth a read
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01 | Labour to make employer contributions to KiwiSaver compulsory if elected — Employer contributions would become compulsory from July 2028 and rise to 6% by 2032, with the default employee rate set at 4%. Employers would keep paying even when the worker pauses their own contributions. |
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02 | The Centrelink and cost-of-living changes landing this month — From 20 September the Age Pension rises 3.2% to $1,135.40 a fortnight and rent assistance goes up $4.40. About 5.3 million Australians are affected and the bill is roughly $4 billion. |
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03 | Lab-grown diamonds are TikTok's best friend — Live auctions open at a dollar and lab diamonds go for US$100 to US$200 a carat, often less than the gold setting they end up in. US live shopping should clear US$20 billion this year. |
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04 | First Diplodocus fossils found outside of the United States — Fourteen tail vertebrae dug out at Teruel in Spain, from an animal about 25 metres long that died roughly 150 million years ago. Every other confirmed Diplodocus since 1878 has come from one rock formation in the American west. |
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05 | Eating alone — An extract from Gabe Bullard's book on convenience, and what delivery apps did to restaurants that never wanted to be delivery restaurants. It opens with a US$19.09 bacon and egg sandwich from a kitchen with no dining room. |
Wrapping up
The Bank of England decides today at noon in London, which is 11pm tonight in Auckland and 9pm in Sydney, with markets narrowly favouring a hold at 3.75% and pricing roughly a 45% chance of a rise. The Bank of Japan follows on Friday and is expected to lift its policy rate to 1.25%, a move all 52 economists in Bloomberg's survey agree on. At home, June-quarter GDP lands at 10:45am today, with the banks looking for growth of 0.1% to 0.3% and the Reserve Bank forecasting flat.
FedEx reports after Thursday's US close, where consensus sits at US$3.71 a share on revenue of about US$21.74 billion. The line to watch is US domestic package volume, because parcels track household spending faster than official data. Darden reports the same day. New Zealand's August trade figures are out on Friday, and in Australia the August labour force report is due on 24 September, five days before an RBA meeting that now has an 85% chance of a rise to 4.60% priced in.
Both currencies gave ground to the Fed on Wednesday. USD/NZD finished at 1.7500 and USD/AUD at 1.4102.
Back tomorrow, once Warsh has stopped talking.