Bombs, Bonds, and Broadcom: What Moved Markets This Week | Week Ending 5 September 2026

The Week at a Glance

September opened the way it tends to: badly. Then it spent the rest of the week arguing with itself.

Markets sold off into Tuesday as a fresh round of US–Iran strikes, a jump in crude, and another leg higher in global bond yields reminded investors that August’s calm was borrowed confidence. Wednesday’s soft private-payrolls print stopped the slide. Thursday’s comments from a Federal Reserve governor produced the real rally. Friday’s official jobs report took most of it back.

The week ended almost where it began. The S&P 500 eked out 0.1%. The Nasdaq added 0.4%. The Dow finished down 0.3%. That is not a crash, and it is not a recovery. It is a tape still taking its orders from oil, bonds, and the next data print.

Three themes drove it. All three matter for what comes next.

1. US-Iran Flared Again — Oil Did What Oil Does

The week’s first catalyst was not data. It was the Strait of Hormuz, again.

This is month seven of the US–Iran war, not a new conflict. After a relatively quieter stretch, fighting resumed at the start of the week. Iran struck the crude tanker MT Sidr in the strait on Monday, killing two seafarers. The US answered with a large strike package — reports put the Tuesday operation near 60 targets — while escorting commercial vessels through the waterway. Neither side priced this as a one-day event.

The strait still matters for the same reason it did in February: it is the conduit for roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil. Markets do not need a full closure to reprice that risk. They just need the premium to stop decaying. It stopped decaying this week.

WTI jumped more than 5% on Tuesday alone and finished Friday near $91 a barrel — up about 9–10% on the week, the steepest gain since mid-July. Brent held near $95–96. US retail diesel printed a record. A modest fade into the Labor Day weekend is not a retracement. The geopolitical premium is still in the contract.

Rate-sensitive growth names and the Russell 2000 took the early-week pain. The Dow held up better on its energy weighting while crude was ripping. By Friday the small-cap index had clawed back to a flat week. Energy kept the bid.

The Aussie angle: the usual script says AUD softens when global risk deteriorates, which would lift the Australian-dollar value of unhedged US holdings even as Wall Street falls. That is not what happened this week. AUD/USD dipped on Tuesday, then rose through Friday to about 0.720 — up roughly half a percent on the week — because a commodity currency still answers to a $91 oil print. Geopolitics pulled one way. Crude pulled the other. FX is always in the room. This week it did not automatically hedge you.

2. Bond Yields Stayed High — Two Reprieves, Then Payrolls

The more structural story is still the global bond market.

Japanese 10-year yields touched 3.00% on Tuesday — the highest in three decades — before easing back to about 2.91% by Friday. US 10-year yields tagged a week high near 4.82% on Wednesday and closed Friday around 4.79%. That is not a crisis level. It is high enough, for long enough, to keep duration under pressure: real estate, utilities, and long-duration tech do not get a clean tape when the risk-free rate is sitting here.

What is driving it has not changed. Headline inflation is still being fed by energy — July CPI was 3.4% year-on-year, core 2.5% — and August CPI is not due until 11 September. The deficit has no credible restraint in sight. A 10-year above 4.7% is the market’s way of saying term premium is no longer theoretical. Higher-for-longer at the long end remains the base case even if the next Fed meeting is a coin flip.

The week then produced two release valves and one reversal.

Wednesday: the ADP National Employment Report showed private employers added 38,000 jobs in August — well below the ~48,000 consensus, and the slowest pace since January. Manufacturing, professional services and information cut jobs; education, health, construction and hospitality added them. Equities snapped a losing stretch. The Dow rose 295 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq each gained about 0.5%.

Thursday: Fed Governor Christopher Waller told Reuters he would support holding the funds rate at the 15–16 September meeting if August inflation data keeps cooling. “Give disinflation a chance,” he said — and also that he would back a hike if it does not. That was the session that mattered. The Dow jumped 624 points, or 1.2%, to 53,686. The S&P 500 gained 1.1% to 7,748. The Nasdaq rose 1.4% to 26,584. September hike odds fell from the low-60s to about 50/50. The 10-year yield finally gave something back.

Friday: the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported employers added 162,000 jobs in August. Unemployment held at 4.1%. Private payrolls rose 127,000 — 89,000 above ADP’s private-sector estimate. That is the split worth remembering. ADP is a nowcast. The BLS print is the one the FOMC sits in front of. Stocks sold off, yields firmed, and the Waller rally shrank. The S&P 500 closed 7,718.60, down 0.4% on the day.

Bottom line: equities are still reacting to the bond market more than they are setting the agenda. When yields fall, stocks breathe. When a jobs print says the labour market is not as soft as Wednesday thought, they suffocate again. Keep watching the 10-year. Keep watching 11 September CPI. Those two will decide whether Waller’s hold is a live option or a one-day quote.

3. Broadcom Printed a Record. Its Stock Fell.

On Wednesday evening, Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) reported Q3 FY2026 results for the quarter ended 2 August. Revenue was $29.6 billion, up 86% year-over-year. AI semiconductor revenue — custom accelerators and the networking that sits around them — came in at $16.7 billion, up 221% year-over-year and 54% sequentially. CEO Hock Tan guided Q4 AI semiconductor revenue to $21.7 billion, a 236% year-over-year increase.

The stock fell in after-hours trading. Prints varied with the timestamp; the range was roughly 3% to 7%.

This is now a recognisable pattern for a specific class of AI infrastructure company: the numbers become so extraordinary that “record quarter” is no longer the ceiling — it is the floor. The beat was real. The miss that moved the price was narrower and more familiar. Q4 total revenue was guided at about $34.8 billion against Street estimates clustered just above $35 billion. Gross margin is also being diluted by the rising memory content in XPUs. When a stock is priced for perfection, “very good, slightly light on the guide” reads as disappointment.

We are going deep on Broadcom on Monday — it is the next piece in our Picks and Shovels Series, and a $16.7 billion AI quarter that still could not lift the share price deserves more than a paragraph.

The Scorecard

Week performance is Friday 28 August close to Friday 4 September close. US markets are shut Monday 7 September for Labor Day.

The Read

September has historically been the weakest month of the year for US equities — and this week was a textbook reminder of the mechanism, not the outcome. A geopolitical flare-up, an oil shock that feeds the inflation tape, a 10-year that will not settle, and a labour-market signal that flipped from soft to firm in 48 hours. That combination compresses the margin for error. Any guidance miss at a high-multiple company gets punished. Broadcom just demonstrated the point with a record quarter.

None of that unmakes the structural case for AI infrastructure or for holding quality large-caps through a noisy month. A $16.7 billion AI-semiconductor print and a stock that falls on a $200 million light guide can sit in the same week. One is cash flow. The other is the multiple. Confusing them is how a volatile September turns into an unforced sale.

The useful recalibration is narrower. Markets do not move in straight lines. Oil can lift the Aussie dollar in the same week US–Iran strikes lift crude. ADP and the BLS can disagree by 89,000 jobs and both be “right” about different things. Building a view that survives that kind of week — rather than trading each session’s narrator — is the actual work.

Data Sources:

• Associated Press, “How major US stock indexes fared Friday 9/4/2026,” 4 September 2026 (index closes and weekly performance)
• S&P Dow Jones Indices / market data (S&P 500 daily closes, including 7,718.60 on 4 September)
• ADP Research, National Employment Report, 2 September 2026 (August private payrolls +38,000)
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation — August 2026, released 4 September 2026 (nonfarm payrolls +162,000; unemployment 4.1%)
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index — July 2026 (headline +3.4% YoY; core +2.5% YoY)
• Broadcom Inc., Q3 FY2026 earnings release and Exhibit 99.1, 2 September 2026; Q3 earnings call
• Reuters, Waller remarks and Thursday market wrap, 3 September 2026
• Reuters / CNBC oil wraps, 4 September 2026 (WTI and Brent weekly moves)
• USNI News, “U.S., Iran Trade Strikes in Strait of Hormuz,” 4 September 2026; US Central Command releases
• Wall Street Journal / Treasury market data (US 10-year yield path, week high 4.821%)
• Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2026; Japan Bond Trading Co. 10-year JGB yields (touched 3.00% on 1–2 September, ~2.91% on 4 September)
• Investing.com / Wise mid-market rates (WTI futures; AUD/USD week move to ~0.720)

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