Global Weekly Equities Report - September 25, 2026

Executive Summary

Reporting period: Monday 21 – Friday 25 September 2026.

The bond market had its worst week of the cycle and equities bought the cause of it. The ten-year Treasury closed at 5.17%, up 16 basis points, touching 5.23% intraday on Friday — the highest since 2007. The move was led by the long end rather than the front: the thirty-year rose 15 basis points to 5.49% while the two-year added only 5 to 4.81%, steepening the two-to-ten spread from 25 to 36 basis points. This is a term-premium and supply story, not a policy story.

What is driving the supply is also driving the earnings. Heavy corporate issuance tied to artificial-intelligence capital expenditure is adding to a bond market already absorbing government deficits, and the same capital expenditure is what lifted semiconductors to a record Nasdaq close. The S&P 500 rose 1.21% to 7,743.41 and the Nasdaq 2.06% to 27,068.72, with Information Technology up 3.64%. Equities did not ignore the bond selloff; they bought the thing causing it.

Breadth stayed broken for a second week. The equal-weighted S&P 500 fell 0.18% and the Russell 2000 0.75% while the cap-weighted index rose 1.21% — a 1.4 percentage point dispersion on top of the 2.0 points recorded a week earlier. Utilities lost 3.16% and Energy 2.96%, the latter as crude slid for four consecutive sessions on Iran headlines. Outside the United States the moves were small: Europe rose between 0.16% and 0.50%, the Nikkei gained 2.07%, and the JSE fell 1.93%.