Our forecasting track record

What changed, in plain words

• Government bonds: The Treasury doubled its long-bond buybacks and the relief lasted one session. The 30-year rate closed Thursday at 5.234%, near its highest since 2007, after peaking this week at 5.34%; the buying itself does not begin until 9 September. — Long-term government debt is getting harder to sell.
• Oil: Brent closed above 93 dollars for the first time since 24 July as Washington escalated sanctions on Iran. The close was 93.78; US crude for October rose 2.7% to 86.64, and Washington said it has a blockade in place and will impose "the toughest sanctions in history". — Fuel costs are rising on a supply standoff, not on demand.
• Chips: The broad chip fund fell 4.5% over five sessions while Micron jumped 4.0%, and Nvidia reports on 26 August. Equipment maker ASML fell 5.3% over the same five sessions. — The AI trade no longer moves in one direction.
• Gold and the dollar: Gold held near 4,522 dollars an ounce while the dollar hit its lowest since late May. The World Gold Council also reported central banks bought 288.9 tonnes in the second quarter, up 62% year on year and the strongest second quarter in its records. — Gold rising on debt news is a vote about the currency.
• The Fed: Wednesday's minutes showed many policymakers think further rate rises could become necessary if inflation does not moderate. New Chair Kevin Warsh gives his first Jackson Hole keynote on 28 August. — Rate relief looks less likely than a month ago.
• Credit and breadth: The parts of the market that usually crack first did not — risky companies were paying 2.73 percentage points above government debt to borrow, with no widening trend, and the average S&P company held up better than the index over the week. — Stress is concentrated in long-term government debt rather than spreading through the rest of the market.
• On the radar: Copper-linked names we monitor but never own kept climbing — Freeport-McMoRan rose 3.1% on Thursday and 13.8% over a month, with COMEX copper at 6.46 dollars a pound after an early-August record — while data-centre power supplier Vertiv fell 13.1% over the month despite second-quarter revenue rising 24%. — The raw materials for the AI build-out keep getting dearer while some of the equipment makers are being marked down.
• Trade policy: No new US tariff action appeared overnight; the Section 301 forced-labour tariffs covering 60 economies, in force since 24 July at 10% or 12.5%, remain the standing measure. — Nothing new to price in on tariffs today.

Headline: the intervention worked for one session, and that is the finding

Wednesday's announcement was the news; Thursday's reversal was the information. The Treasury said on 19 August it would at least double its buybacks of longer-dated debt, from 2 billion to 4 billion dollars per operation, running 9 September to 4 November and aimed squarely at the 10-to-20 and 20-to-30-year sectors that have seen what dealers describe as a buyers' strike since late June. The 30-year yield fell about 9 basis points to 5.196%, the 10-year 5.7 to 4.647%, the dollar weakened against every G10 currency and gold added more than 4%. By Thursday's close the 30-year was back at 5.234% and the 10-year at roughly 4.70%. Pre-open Friday the 30-year sat near 5.25% with equity futures up 0.3-0.5%.

That one-session half-life is the cleanest read available on where the marginal buyer is. A 2-billion-dollar-per-operation increase against a multi-trillion-dollar market was never going to reprice the long end on its own merits; the question was whether the signal — that the debt manager is now willing to act on the curve's shape — would pull private duration buyers in behind it. For a session it did. Then it did not. Commentary converged on the same phrase from different directions: a circuit breaker, buying time rather than solving anything.

The cross-asset confirmation is what makes this a fiscal story rather than a rates story. Gold rose more than 4% on the day the government announced it would support its own bond market, and the dollar fell against every major peer on the same news. That is not the pattern of a growth scare, where gold and the dollar typically rise together as government bonds rally. It is the pattern of a currency-and-credibility question. The official sector is voting the same way with a longer lag: the World Gold Council's Q2 figures show central banks bought 288.9 tonnes, up 62% year on year and the strongest second quarter in its series, led by Poland at 51 tonnes with the People's Bank of China also adding.

The Fed is arguing in the other direction, which tightens the vice rather than relieving it. Wednesday's minutes showed many participants prepared to raise rates further if inflation does not moderate, with several already willing to hike in July. Against that, Brent is on course for a roughly 6% monthly gain after a 5.95% rise the week before, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to routine commercial traffic since the mid-June memorandum broke down in early July — one transit on 16 August against roughly 73 a day normally, and the IEA warning that global stockpiles are draining. A supply-driven energy shock is the least helpful kind of inflation for a central bank that has withdrawn written guidance, which is why Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote on 28 August carries more weight than a set-piece speech normally would. Note the venue problem on the odds: September hike probabilities were quoted anywhere from roughly one in three upward this week depending on whether the source was futures or a prediction market, so we quote the range and the source, never a point estimate.

The running semiconductor theme did not resolve this week either. The broad chip fund fell 4.5% and ASML 5.3% over five sessions, while Micron rose 4.0% on Thursday — a group trading on positioning rather than a single demand signal, six weeks after the late-July episode that took more than a trillion dollars off chip market values on China DRAM capacity and AI-capex doubts. Nvidia's report on 26 August is the next hard datum.

On the radar, the copper complex is the quiet confirmation of the build-out thesis while the equipment layer weakens: COMEX copper at 6.46 dollars a pound after an intraday record of 6.77 on 7 August, Freeport-McMoRan up 13.8% and the copper-miners fund up 14.9% over the month, against Vertiv down 13.1% over the same month despite reporting Q2 revenue up 24% to 3.27 billion dollars. Radar names are monitored and never traded; those are market prices, not engine numbers. For portfolio context the last committed close in the mock book was 20 August at 101,240 — the prior close, not today's.

And the counterweight, which deserves as much space as the warning: nothing in the usual early-warning set is flashing. High-yield spreads sat at 2.73 percentage points on 19 August with the widening flag off. The 2s10s curve is at plus 0.50 percentage points and not inverted. The S&P is 1.96% off its trailing one-year high with the VIX at 16.0 on Thursday's close against a 30 threshold. Breadth actively disconfirmed the concentration read: equal-weight fell 1.10% over five sessions against 1.96% for the cap-weighted index, and the Russell 2000 rose on Thursday while the Dow and S&P fell. A long-end move being absorbed rather than transmitted is a materially different world from one where it is transmitted, and today it is being absorbed.

Readings

Fact-check log

Standing theses — re-scored

• #5 Sovereign-debt / rates stress — CONFIRMING, and now the dominant theme (EVT-0433, EVT-0434). The confirm signals named in the thesis are all present: a long end that will not hold a rally, an official-sector reaction function that has itself become news, and a 30-year yield at levels last seen in 2007. The new information is not the level but the half-life — a debt-manager intervention that lasted one session says the marginal private buyer of 20-to-30-year paper is still absent. Coverage audit reads 3 covered / 0 partial / 0 gap, but 2 of 3 rest on the traded book only. — The strain in long-term government debt is the story of the week, and the Treasury's attempt to fix it did not hold.
  For your money Long-term government rates are the anchor for mortgages, business loans and what safe savings pay, so a stuck-high one changes household costs slowly but broadly. This isn't a reason to make a big move — it is a reason to expect borrowing to stay expensive for a while and to plan around that calmly.

  What to watch Matters more if the buyback operations run next month and long rates still climb; matters less if private demand returns and the long rate settles below its recent range without official help.
• #7 Equity concentration / breadth — DISCONFIRMED this week (EVT-0442). The thesis predicts narrowing breadth as the tell. This week did the opposite: equal-weight beat cap-weight by 86 basis points over five sessions and small caps rose on a day the megacap indices fell. Note the honest asymmetry — the dollar leg of this thesis is confirming (a weaker dollar driving gold), while the participation leg is not. Do not net them into a single score. — The average company held up better than the biggest ones this week, which argues against the crowding-unwind worry rather than for it.
  For your money Broad-index savings are unusually dependent on a handful of very large companies right now, so weeks where the average company leads are the reassuring kind. This isn't a reason to make a big move — knowing how concentrated a plain index tracker has become is the useful part.

  What to watch Matters more if the index makes new highs while the average company falls behind again; matters less while equal-weight keeps pace or leads.
• #6 Energy & critical commodities — CONFIRMING on both legs (EVT-0436, EVT-0437, EVT-0441). Supply-driven price spike, closed chokepoint, draining inventories on the oil leg; a record COMEX print on 7 August and continued copper-name strength on the materials leg. The disconfirm condition — demand-driven softness or supply normalising — is not present. — Both the oil and the metals sides of this thesis are behaving as the thesis expects, and for supply reasons rather than demand ones.
  For your money Supply-driven commodity rises show up in fuel, food and building costs regardless of how the economy is doing, and they are the hardest kind of price rise for a central bank to offset. This isn't a reason to make a big move or to stockpile anything — diversification and patience handle a slow supply story better than chasing it.

  What to watch Matters more if the shipping chokepoint stays closed while oil stockpiles keep falling; matters less if a transit deal lands or metals demand visibly softens.
• #2 De-dollarization / parallel rails — CONFIRMING on the official-sector leg (EVT-0438, EVT-0439). Q2 central-bank buying of 288.9 tonnes, up 62% year on year and the strongest Q2 on record, with Poland at 51 tonnes and the PBoC adding, is the reserve-diversification signal the thesis names — and it happened while prices were falling for part of the quarter, which rules out simple momentum chasing. The mBridge/e-CNY volume leg remains unmoved this week. Today's one new prediction (P-0100) sits on this axis because no open prediction covered official-sector demand.
• #1 AI-credit fragility — no new signal. High-yield spreads at 2.73 percentage points with the widening flag off is a direct disconfirm of the credit leg. The financing-leg disconfirmer remains open as P-0088.
• #4 Compute as a strategic resource — unresolved, running theme (EVT-0433 context). Chip prices moving on positioning rather than demand for a sixth week. Per the standing discipline, the falsifier is a named tracker reporting a month-over-month DRAM contract-price decline (P-0064, open), not a share-price move — so this week's 4.5% chip-fund fall does not re-score the thesis. Nvidia's 26 August report is the next hard datum.
• #8 AI restructures IT services — price action DISCONFIRMING, fundamentals unresolved. Radar name Accenture is up 28.7% over a month, which is not what a structurally derated sector looks like. But the thesis is explicitly scored on managed-services bookings (P-0005), not on the share price, so this is a flag to watch rather than a re-score. The honest note: if bookings turn while the shares run, the thesis was about the wrong variable.
• #9 Labor-market deterioration — no new data. The next jobs report date is deliberately absent from our calendar rather than guessed; the 11 September inflation print is the nearer catalyst.
• #3 Crypto to compute rotation — not assessed today; no material crypto signal in the sweep.

Research, not financial advice. Portfolio results are mock capital.
Project snapshot — changes waiting for review: 1 · tracked forecasts open: 62 (checking now: 5) · track record so far: 0.128245 · practice portfolio updated: 2026-08-20.
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