Overnight, while the US slept

Equities snapped a three-day losing streak on a bond-market breather: the S&P 500 rose 0.46% to 7,666.60, the Nasdaq Composite added 0.45% to 26,217.83 and the Dow gained 295.07 points (+0.56%) to 53,061.95. The rally was not about earnings — it was about yields finally taking a pause.

Rates & DXY: the US 10-year Treasury yield touched 4.818% intraday, a level last seen in November 2023, before backing off into the close. The dollar index (DXY — a basket measuring the US dollar against major peers) fell 0.80% to a 2.5-month low. The shape here matters more than the level: the front end of the yield curve is pinned by roughly 60–66% market-implied odds of a 25bp Fed hike on 16 September, while the long end just got a new buyer. That's a flattening impulse, and a flattening curve driven by the long end rallying is a different animal from one driven by the front end selling off.

The dominant driver — the US Treasury stepped into its own bond market: the Treasury announced it will at least double the maximum size of its liquidity-support buyback operations for longer-dated coupon bonds to at least $4 billion per operation, effective 9 September. That is a direct, mechanical bid for exactly the paper that had been in freefall. Long yields eased, the dollar tumbled, and gold jumped. Note carefully what it is not: it does nothing to the policy rate. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's Jackson Hole message — that better summer inflation readings "do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved" — is still the front-end story, and several analysts have now openly framed the Fed and the Treasury as pulling at odds with each other.

Applying the framework to gold: what we have is a supply-side inflation shock (a price rise caused by disrupted supply rather than strong demand) — Brent near $95 with the Strait of Hormuz closed and US strikes on Iranian tankers. Normally that chain runs oil up → inflation sticky → central bank hawkish → real rates (interest rates after subtracting inflation) up → gold down, and it worked brutally on Tuesday, when gold fell 2.86% to settle near $4,325 on hawkish repricing. What changed yesterday is that the transmission got partly blocked at the long end by the Treasury's buyback. That is why gold bounced without the underlying story changing. My read: the policy channel is still open where it counts — the Fed sets the front end and looks set to hike — so I stay structurally bearish gold and treat yesterday's bounce as a better selling level, not a reversal.

Gold: trading 4,388.05 / 4,388.25. Yesterday's session range 4,282.46–4,397.58; the session before, 4,322.91–4,461.51. So gold has traded a $179 round trip in two days and now sits $105.69 off the low with RSI(M15) at 66.77 — approaching overbought (a momentum gauge above ~70 that flags a move stretched in the short term). Right in the middle of a wide range, leaning up into resistance.

Crypto: Bitcoin 77,220.60 (RSI M15 49.17, ATR $175.89); prior-session range 76,143.83–77,746.53. Ether 2,389.45 (RSI M15 48.74, ATR $7.09); prior-session range 2,352.77–2,426.42. This is the part of the night I find most telling. Crypto was handed a falling dollar, easing long yields and an explicit liquidity announcement, and it did nothing — Bitcoin finished mid-range, Ether the same. US spot Bitcoin ETFs shed roughly $236m on 1 September, with BlackRock's IBIT responsible for about 85% of it, after August delivered the strongest inflow month of 2026 at about $3.5bn. An asset that can't rally on its best news of the week is not accumulating.

Key FX:

• EURUSD 1.15883 — RSI 52.44 (neutral), ATR 2.5 pips. Prior-session H/L 1.16091 / 1.15663. Spiked to the highs on the Treasury news then gave most of it back; no conviction either way.
• GBPUSD 1.34865 — RSI 40.83, ATR 4.7 pips. Prior-session H/L 1.35191 / 1.34747. Underperformed the euro on the dollar's bad day, which is not a good look for sterling.
• USDJPY 158.691 — RSI 35.00 (soft), ATR 7.6 pips. Prior-session H/L 160.394 / 158.210. The night's biggest move: a 218-pip collapse. BOJ board member Hajime Takata, one of the committee's most hawkish, left the door open to an outsized rate move and to back-to-back hikes, and the yen rallied as much as 1.2% to 158.22. Traders are on high alert for Ministry of Finance intervention (Japan's finance ministry buying yen directly to defend it) — but note the yen no longer needs the help.
• AUDUSD 0.71673 — RSI 51.99, ATR 2.8 pips. Prior-session H/L 0.71757 / 0.71215. Rallied 54 pips on the weak dollar and now waits on China.
• NZDUSD 0.58411 — RSI 41.39, ATR 4.0 pips. Prior-session H/L 0.58971 / 0.58022. The RBNZ raised the Official Cash Rate 25bp to 2.75% by consensus, citing June-quarter inflation at 4.1% driven largely by Middle East fuel prices — and the kiwi fell, because the hike was fully priced and the guidance stressed a gradual path. Textbook sell-the-fact.
• USDCHF 0.81263 — RSI 38.11, ATR 3.4 pips. Prior-session H/L 0.81569 / 0.81095. The franc is quietly strong, which fits the safe-haven bid better than gold does right now.

Cross-asset snapshot:

Asset	Now	vs Prior Close	Vector
S&P 500	7,666.60	+0.46%	Risk-on, three-day slide snapped
US 10Y	~4.75–4.80%	Off an intraday 4.818% high	Modestly dovish at the long end
DXY	2.5-month low	−0.80%	USD sharply lower
Gold	4,388.15	+$105.69 off the 4,282.46 low	Bouncing into resistance — bearish structurally
Bitcoin	77,220.60	−$525.93 from the 77,746.53 high	Weak — failed to use good news
Brent	~$95	Elevated, +13% on the month	Hormuz closed, supply-side

Normal session ahead — no holidays, decent liquidity, and one genuinely important US data point.

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