Oil jumps 9% on Hormuz escalation as Fed hike odds swing wildly, yet S&P 500 ends flat

WTI settled at $91.22, up 9.32%, and September rate-hike odds whipsawed from two-in-three to a coin flip on conflicting Fed remarks, while the S&P 500 closed up just 0.09% at 7,718.6.

Deepakshi

Kristal Research & Marketing team

4 Sept

Key takeaways — AI summary

The S&P 500 finished the week at 7,718.6, up 0.09%, and the Nasdaq 100 at 29,544.16, up 0.38%, masking a violent week: a Monday–Wednesday drop from 7,711 to 7,632, a 1.06% Thursday rally on a Fed speech, and a 0.38% Friday give-back.
WTI crude rose 9.32% to $91.22 (Brent above $95) on US strikes against IRGC targets on Larak Island and two supertankers hit in the Strait of Hormuz; gold fell 0.60% to $4,477.2 and the 10-year Treasury yield ended at 4.784%, up 5 bps, with the 30-year at 5.24%.
Rate-hike expectations whipsawed: after Chair Warsh's Jackson Hole remarks pushed September odds near 70%, John Williams and Governor Waller signalled a possible hold, cutting odds to a coin flip before Friday's payrolls pushed them back.
August nonfarm payrolls rose 162,000 versus consensus near 53,000, with prior months revised up, unemployment held at 4.1% and wages up 3.1% year over year; ISM Services showed activity at 61.7 and prices paid at 72.3 but employment in contraction at 47.8.
Corporate movers included Dell (+13.54%, record $47bn revenue, $95bn backlog), Snowflake (+16.91%), Broadcom (−2.53%, guiding FY27 AI revenue to $115bn), Credo (−19.94%), MongoDB (−14.01%), and NVIDIA's roughly $13bn agreement to acquire Hugging Face.

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