Brent opened near $108. WTI opened near $103.
Markets put the odds of a Wednesday Fed rate hike at roughly 85% to 90%.
Oil is getting more expensive while inflation is already sticky. That puts the Fed in a difficult spot.
Oil Is Adding More Inflation Pressure
A drone strike hit a key Saudi pipeline. Houthis advanced in the Red Sea, and new attacks targeted ships in the Gulf.
Brent was up roughly 3%. US diesel reached a record of roughly $6.20 per gallon.
Diesel prices matter far beyond the pump. Higher prices raise costs for trucking, farming, and goods.
Bloomberg also reported that the conflict in Iran is pushing up energy, shipping, and material costs. El Niño is adding pressure, and clothing consumers are expected to pay the higher costs.
Stocks reacted. S&P futures slipped, while Nasdaq-100 futures fell more than 1% in some readings.
August headline inflation had already risen 0.4% from the previous month and 3.4% from a year earlier. Core inflation rose 0.3% from the previous month.
The Fed meets September 15 and 16. A first increase since 2023 would move the federal funds range toward 3.75% to 4.00%.
Long-term borrowing costs are already high. The 10-year Treasury yield was roughly 4.96%. The 20-year and 30-year yields were around 5.2%, while the 3-month Treasury bill yielded around 3.85%.
US debt is above $40 trillion. Its average interest rate increased from 1.77% in 2020 to 3.49% today. Annual interest payments rose from $523 billion to around $1.3 trillion.
Treasury increased purchases of older long-term securities from as much as $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. The 30-year yield fell from about 5.34% to around 5.18% after the announcement.
But the Treasury market exceeds $30 trillion. A few billion dollars of buying may move yields at the margin. It cannot remove the deficits, inflation concerns, rising interest costs, or need for buyers.
Meta Looks for AI Revenue While Other Bets Demand Caution
Meta launched Muse, a personal AI agent with a free tier and subscriptions costing $20 or $100 per month, depending on usage.
Muse can book appointments, complete electronic forms, monitor home security cameras, perform coding work, and build integrations.
Meta says Muse runs in an isolated environment. It cannot see users’ actual passwords or payment details, and it asks for permission before sensitive actions.
Users must opt out if they do not want their interactions used for model training. Meta says it will remove critical personally identifying information first.
Wall Street wants evidence that heavy spending on data centers and infrastructure can produce returns. Muse is one attempt to build agent revenue from that spending.
Meta is also exploring whether it could take a share of shopping transactions completed through AI agents. It has not adopted a concrete plan.
Vistry Group presents a different kind of opportunity. Its share price is down roughly 80%, and its market value is £859 million.
The speaker calls it a cyclical special situation, not a compounder. If earnings per share recover toward £1 from a share price of £2.5, the speaker sees potential for a 3x to 5x return.
The risks are real. Vistry expects a £30 million first-half loss, while land-creditor obligations total about £1 billion. Insurers reduced guarantees on supplier commitments from 100% to 70%, and Vistry suspended buybacks.
The speaker does not know whether weaker margins are temporary or evidence of a structural housing problem. He plans to wait for stability across the next two earnings reports before potentially buying.
There is even less to judge in a separate Apple claim. Bloomberg says Mark Gurman believes the iPhone Duo will become one of Apple’s historic products, but there are no product details or supporting figures here.
One value-investing speaker also says valuations are at record highs, government debt is unsustainable, and enthusiasm around AI looks like a mania. He points to the Nasdaq’s 75% decline after the dot-com bubble 25 years ago, but does not predict the same outcome. He simply will not risk his wealth on someone else’s bet.
Pooling Money and Starting Early
Research cited by Ben Felix generally favors shared finances.
A 2022 analysis covering six studies and more than 38,000 participants found that couples who fully pooled their finances reported greater relationship satisfaction and were less likely to break up.
A 2025 paper found that pooling finances caused couples to communicate more openly and frequently about money. Larger differences in spending behavior were also associated with more marital conflict, even after controlling for debt and savings.
A study of 35,000 brokerage households found that men traded 45% more than women. Trading reduced men’s net returns by 2.65 percentage points per year, compared with 1.72 percentage points for women.
Both groups hurt their returns by trading. Men traded more and lost more.
Starting retirement saving later carries another cost. Under a hypothetical 7% return, investing $250 per month from age 22 would produce about $953,680 by age 67. Starting at age 40 would produce $240,672.
A 40-year-old would need to invest about $990 per month to reach roughly $954,000 by age 67 under the same hypothetical return. That return is not guaranteed.
BRICS Is Building Links, but Members Still Disagree
BRICS has 10 full members and 10 partner countries, representing 4.5 billion people.
Its practical focus is local-currency payments, not a shared domestic currency. The Financial Times reported that instant payment systems within BRICS countries processed more than $10 trillion during the previous 18 months.
Reuters reported that India was pushing to connect BRICS central-bank digital currencies for cross-border payments. A separate international unit of account remains on hold.
Russia favors faster movement away from the dollar, while India is more cautious. BRICS is building payment connections, but its members have not agreed on how far or how quickly to move away from the dollar.
Back in the US, oil is adding pressure to already-sticky inflation, while high yields and rising government interest costs leave the Fed and the bond market facing the same strain.