Daily newsletter · Mon 28 Sep 2026
 | Sharespective Wall Street, before morning tea | Daily newsletter Mon 28 Sep 2026 |
 The Narrow Climb Plus: the Reserve Bank of Australia is expected to take the cash rate to its highest since 2011. |
Good morning. American stocks finished last week higher, and a very short list of them did the work. The S&P 500 rose 1.21% over the five sessions to 7,743.41 and the NASDAQ Composite added 2.06%. Seven of the eleven S&P 500 sectors fell anyway.
Cheaper oil bought most of that, and the weekend took some of it back. Iran offered on Friday to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days, and Donald Trump rejected the plan on Saturday. Tonight's open gets to price it.
In company news, Meta Platforms, one of our preferred stocks, rose about 13% over the week as buyers chased anything attached to its Muse assistant. Elsewhere, Sanford gained 8.9% on the NZX as a weaker kiwi flattered exporters. Finally, Precinct Properties fell to its lowest in more than 14 years as New Zealand bond yields climbed.
Not everyone got invited.
Market snapshot
S&P 500 7,743.41 ▲ 1.21% | | NASDAQ 27,068.72 ▲ 2.06% | | NZX 50 13,811.11 ▲ 0.52% |
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ASX 200 8,665.00 ▼ 0.76% | | USD/NZD 1.77 ▲ 0.89% | | USD/AUD 1.42 ▲ 1.33% |
| UTILITIES |
The safest corner of the American market was the worst place to be last week
Utilities were the weakest of the eleven S&P 500 sectors last week. The Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund, which holds the big American power companies, closed Friday at US$39.45, its lowest since April 2025 and close to 20% below this year's peak.
A power company competes with a government bond. Regulated utilities borrow heavily to build, and hand most of what they earn back as dividends. Both are priced off long bond yields. The US 10-year Treasury finished Friday at 5.18%, its highest since 2007.
A Treasury pays that with no operating risk attached. The average American power company pays less, and has to run a grid to do it. Money that came for the dividend leaves when the risk-free rate passes it.
The odd part is that demand has never looked better. Data centre construction is adding electricity load across the country, and NextEra Energy, Southern Company and Duke Energy are about 28% of the fund. None of it helped.
What to watch Wednesday's August PCE price index in New York. Our read is that nothing about these businesses changed last week. Their dividends stopped looking generous next to a government bond, and that reverses when yields do. |
| CRYPTO |
Bitcoin touched its highest price since January and then lost its nerve
Bitcoin reached US$87,397 last Monday, the most it has been worth since January. By Friday it was back near US$84,700, which still left the week 4.7% higher. It has risen 51% from July's low of US$57,700.
So who was doing the buying? Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds took in US$715 million on Monday alone and more than US$2.3 billion across four sessions. About US$750 million of bets against bitcoin were closed out above US$86,000.
Strategy, the software company that spends its balance sheet on bitcoin, holds 846,000 coins. That is about 4% of every bitcoin that will ever exist. Its shares ran hard on Monday and gave much of it back by midweek.
Bitcoin is still down about 3% for 2026. Monday's high sat just under the US$87,498 it closed at on the last day of 2025, so nine months of work has bought a return to level.
The open question whether the ETF money stays once the price stops rising. Net inflows during a falling week would say more than Monday's high did. |
| SPORTSWEAR |
Nike goes into Thursday's result with one broker calling for two more years of pain
Nike reports its first quarter after Thursday's close in New York. The shares are down about 44% this year. On Friday, six days out, Bank of America cut them to underperform from neutral.
The argument is about timing rather than trouble. Analyst Lorraine Hutchinson pushed her expected sales recovery from spring 2027 out to the 2028 financial year, and cut her 2027 earnings estimate 11% to US$1.43 a share. That is roughly 14% below consensus.
China is the sore spot. Revenue in Greater China fell 17% in the quarter Nike reported in June. North American wholesalers are also still working through unsold stock, which pushes out the next order.
Consensus for Thursday is revenue of about US$11.3 billion and adjusted earnings of 44 US cents a share. The line that has not moved yet is the full-year margin target, and that is the one to read first.
The tell Greater China. Thursday gives Nike a chance to answer the note, and what answers it is whether that 17% fall has started to shrink. I'd treat anything said about spring 2027 as a forecast until the China line turns. |
Newsworthy numbers
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5.11% the intraday high on New Zealand's 10-year government bond yield last week, its most since November 2023. The Reserve Bank's next review is a month away. | | 86% the gross margin Micron guided to for the quarter it reports on Wednesday, on revenue of about US$50 billion. Its memory for AI servers is sold out for the year. |
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A$4.5 trillion Australia's superannuation pool, or about 159% of the country's annual output. It is the world's fourth-largest pot of retirement savings, and second by the 2030s. | | 232 orbital rocket launches worldwide this year to 26 September, 225 of them successful, with 136 from the United States. Space is now a traffic problem. |
Worth a read
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01 | Mortgage shock: rate rise could cost borrowers another $427 a month — 90% of the 41 economists Finder surveyed expect the Reserve Bank of Australia to move on Tuesday. On the average loan of $736,259, that puts repayments about $427 a month above where they started the year. |
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02 | The secret monopoly making everything more expensive — Carter Dougherty on the proposed settlement of the swipe-fee case against Visa and Mastercard. American merchants paid US$198.25 billion in card fees in 2025, about US$1,200 a family. |
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03 | Is the camera in the room with us right now? — Danny Jensen counts the lenses that have moved into the house. 61% of American households keep a security camera, up from 52% in 2024, and there is now a US$499 toothbrush that films your teeth. |
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04 | To read 2,000-year-old burned scrolls, scientists burn their own — Douglas Seiler's team wrote on replica papyrus in lead-laced ink, charred it and scanned it. Lead shows up to 25 times brighter than burnt papyrus under X-ray, which could open 1,800 unread Herculaneum scrolls. |
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05 | The ex-cop who stole millions to become a real-life Robin Hood — Austria's largest armed robbery took more than US$3 million from a security van at a Vienna cash machine in 2013. A former police tactical officer planned it to fund an orphanage in Africa, and the machine's street camera undid him. |
Wrapping up
Last week was a rally the bond market did not endorse. The Reserve Bank of Australia decides on Tuesday at 2.30pm in Sydney and 5.30pm in Auckland, with a quarter-point rise to 4.60% priced at about 93%. That would be its highest since 2011.
America's August PCE price index lands on Wednesday, after core inflation ran at 3.3% in July. Micron reports the same day, and its language on memory pricing is the line to find. Australia's August CPI follows on Wednesday, New Zealand's building consents Thursday and the US jobs report Friday.
The kiwi fell for a fifth week running and USD/NZD is at 1.77, with American yields doing the work and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand not meeting until 28 October. USD/AUD is at 1.42, the Aussie at a seven-week low into Tuesday.
The week ahead
- Tue 5.30pm NZ · 2.30pm Sydney — Reserve Bank of Australia decision; a quarter-point rise to 4.60% is priced at about 93%.
- Wed 2.30pm NZ · 11.30am Sydney — Australia's August consumer price index, the morning after the RBA votes.
- Thu 1.30am NZ · Wed 10.30pm Sydney — America's August PCE price index; core inflation ran at 3.3% in July.
- Thu (Wednesday after the US close) — Micron's fourth-quarter result; the language on memory pricing is the line to watch.
- Thu 10.45am NZ · 7.45am Sydney — New Zealand's August building consents, after 40,908 new dwellings in the year to July.
- Fri (Thursday after the US close) — Nike's first-quarter result; Greater China revenue fell 17% last time.
- Sat 1.30am NZ · Fri 10.30pm Sydney — America's September jobs report; about 90,000 jobs expected and unemployment at 4.1%.
First Monday on daylight saving. Enjoy the extra light, and back tomorrow.