Ten years ago, the thing that separated a professional from a retail trader was information. They had terminals, analysts and speed. You had a delayed quote and a forum.
That gap is gone. You can now ask a machine to read every filing, summarise every earnings call and scan every chart before your coffee is cold.
So retail results should have improved. They have not.
That should bother you more than it does. When a constraint disappears and the outcome does not move, the constraint was never the real one. If information were what stood between most traders and consistency, the last few years would have produced a wave of newly consistent traders. Look around. They produced a wave of people with better tools making the same trades.
I watched this from the professional side before I started teaching. The desks I knew didn’t win because they saw things first. Plenty of them saw things first and still bled. The ones that lasted won because of what happened in the few seconds after they saw it. Did they take the trade their plan named, at the size their plan named? Or the trade their mood named, at a size their frustration picked?
That gap between seeing and doing is the part no tool has touched. A screener can hand you a clean setup in milliseconds. It can’t stop you skipping it because the last one lost. It can’t stop you doubling your size because you’re behind for the month. And it can’t make you take the exit you planned instead of the one you can bear. Every trader I’ve taught arrived believing they needed better information. Almost all of them were struggling on information that was perfectly good.
So the skill worth learning has moved. It’s no longer “how do I find trades”. The machines have made finding them the cheap part, and anything a machine makes cheap stops being an edge for anyone. The skill now is “how do I behave the same way every time I find one”. That’s a smaller skill than it sounds, and a more learnable one. But it’s the one almost nobody teaches, because a routine is harder to sell than a secret.
And if I were starting today, this is what I’d most want someone to tell me: this shift is good news. The old constraint was genuinely rigged against you, and you were never going to out-terminal a bank. The new constraint is behaviour, and behaviour is the one arena where a private trader with a full-time job holds an even hand. Nobody can buy a better version of “I follow my own rules”.
That is also why my own trades are public. Every trade I’ve taken since April 2024 sits in a dated log, losses left in, so you can check whether I followed my rules in the bad weeks too. See the log.
That’s what my free checklist is for. It’s the routine I run in about fifteen minutes a day, after the market closes, written out step by step. It won’t hand you a secret indicator, because by now you know what those are worth. It covers the part the machines left behind.
https://synapsetrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/everyone-has-the-tools-why-is-nobody-better-card.webp6301200Spencer Lihttps://synapsetrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/synapse-logo-horizontal-light.pngSpencer Li2026-10-09 09:00:002026-10-15 07:45:52Everyone has the tools now. So why is nobody better?
Last updated: 19 October 2026 · By Spencer Li, CFTe
For most people, the answer is no. IRAS says gains from selling shares in Singapore are “generally not taxable”, because buying and selling shares is “generally viewed as personal investments.” The word that matters is “generally”. If your buying and selling looks like a business, IRAS can treat the profit as income and tax it.
IRAS decides that case by case, using a set of tests often called the badges of trade. This post quotes what IRAS says, lists the 8 badges, and shows what each one asks. It is general education, so for your own position, check with IRAS or a tax adviser.
What does IRAS say about gains from shares?
The plain answer sits on IRAS’s page about what is taxable for individuals. It says: “Gains from the sale of a property, shares and financial instruments in Singapore are generally not taxable.”
Then it is more specific. “Profits or losses derived from the buying and selling of shares or other financial instruments (including digital tokens) are generally viewed as personal investments.”
On that same page, IRAS also says “You do not need to declare gains that are not taxable in your Income Tax Return.” So most people who buy and sell shares in their own name report nothing about those gains.
A reader on r/singaporefi summed up the confusion well in January 2025: “a purely hypothetical question regarding trading income got me curious, but I can’t find any answers in Singapore’s context.” The rest of this post is that answer, in IRAS’s own words.
When can trading profits become taxable?
When the activity looks like a trade, in the tax sense. IRAS’s page for companies explains the idea: “The word ‘trade’ is not defined in the Income Tax Act 1947. Whether a trade is being carried on is a question of fact.”
The pages name no single test and no trade count that tips you over. IRAS says “All the factors are taken into consideration when determining whether a trade exists, and no single factor is conclusive.”
Its page for individuals lists 4 criteria, written for property: “Frequency of transactions”, “Reasons for buying and selling”, “Financial means to hold the property for long term”, and “Holding period.” The individual page gives no separate list for people who trade shares. The same questions of frequency, motive and holding period are the natural place to start, but only IRAS can say how they apply to you.
What are the 8 badges of trade?
These are the 8 factors IRAS lists on its page about whether a trade exists. They are written for companies, and the quotes below are IRAS’s own words.
Badge
What IRAS says
What it looks at
1. Nature of subject matter
Some assets “are normally regarded as the subject of trading”
Whether the asset is one people usually trade
2. Length of ownership
“The shorter the holding period, the more likely it is regarded as held for trading.”
How long you usually hold
3. Frequency of transactions
“A high frequency of similar transactions is more indicative of trading than an isolated transaction.”
How often you buy and sell
4. Supplementary work
Work done “to make it more marketable or extra effort made to find or attract purchasers”
Any extra work you do to sell
5. Circumstances of the realisation
A forced sale or “sudden urgent need of cash” is “less likely to be indicative of trading”
Why you sold
6. Motive
“whether there was an intention to trade at the time of the acquisition”
What you intended when you bought
7. Mode of financing
“Short-term financing is more indicative of trading than long-term financing.”
How you paid for it
8. Other factors
Records, accounting treatment and “other evidence… to indicate its intention”
What your own records show
No badge decides it alone. A person who holds for weeks, trades often with borrowed money, and runs it like a business is in a different position from a person who buys an index fund once a month and holds for years. Most people sit somewhere in between, which is why the answer is “generally” and never “always”.
Share gains are generally untaxed, unless your trading looks like a business.
If you want a daily routine that keeps every trade on the record, the free 15-Minute Swing Trader’s Checklist is at the end of this post.
Are dividends taxable in Singapore?
For individuals, most are tax-free. IRAS lists as not taxable “Dividends paid to shareholders by a Singapore resident company under the one-tier corporate tax system (as the tax paid by a company is final), except co-operatives.”
Foreign dividends are also on the not-taxable list when they are “received in Singapore by resident individuals, except those received through a partnership in Singapore.” Tax withheld abroad on a foreign dividend is a separate matter, and depends on the other country’s rules.
How dividends and other corporate actions reach your account is covered in how SGX trading works.
What should a frequent trader actually do?
3 things, and none of them is a tax opinion.
Keep records. A dated log of every trade, with the reason you took it, is good trading practice anyway. IRAS’s eighth badge looks at “the availability of documentation or other evidence” of intention, so your own records matter. A trading journal does both jobs.
Read the IRAS pages yourself. Start with “Gains from sale of property, shares and financial instruments” and “What is taxable, what is not” on iras.gov.sg. They are short and plainly written.
Ask before you assume. If you trade often, use margin, or trade through a company, check with IRAS or a tax adviser before you file. They can look at your facts, which no article can.
With a question of fact. For most people buying and selling shares in Singapore, IRAS treats the gains as personal investments, and they go untaxed. For a few, the pattern looks like a business, and IRAS may treat the profit as income. Which side you are on depends on how you trade, and only IRAS can rule on it.
If someone had to describe your trading from your records alone, would it read like investing or like a business?
FAQ
Is trading income taxable in Singapore?
For most individuals, no. IRAS says gains from buying and selling shares are “generally viewed as personal investments”. They can be taxable if your activity amounts to a trade, which IRAS decides case by case.
Do I pay capital gains tax on shares in Singapore?
IRAS says gains from the sale of shares and financial instruments in Singapore are “generally not taxable”. Gains can become taxable when IRAS treats the activity as trading.
What are the badges of trade?
They are 8 factors IRAS uses to decide whether a trade exists: the nature of the asset, length of ownership, frequency of transactions, supplementary work, circumstances of the sale, motive, mode of financing and other factors such as records.
Do I need to declare share gains in my tax return?
IRAS says “You do not need to declare gains that are not taxable in your Income Tax Return.” If you are unsure whether your gains are taxable, check with IRAS or a tax adviser.
Are dividends from Singapore shares taxable?
IRAS says one-tier dividends from Singapore resident companies are generally not taxable for individuals. Foreign dividends received in Singapore by resident individuals are also not taxable, except through a partnership in Singapore.
Go deeper
The free 15-Minute Swing Trader’s Checklist has the daily routine, the questions to ask before every trade, and the five rules that keep you in the game.
About the author. Spencer Li is The 15-Minute Trader and the founder of Synapse Trading. He is a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe) with 15+ years of trading, run from 70+ countries. He holds a B.Acc and B.BM from SMU. Every trade he takes is public, dated, losses left in. He teaches rules-based swing trading in 15 minutes a day, one system for any market.
Educational content only, not personalised financial advice or tax advice. Trading carries risk, including loss of capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Synapse Trading is not licensed or regulated by MAS. For your own tax position, check with IRAS or a tax adviser.
https://synapsetrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/is-trading-income-taxable-singapore-card.webp6301200Spencer Lihttps://synapsetrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/synapse-logo-horizontal-light.pngSpencer Li2026-10-08 11:28:552026-10-26 16:51:05Is Trading Income Taxable in Singapore? What IRAS Actually Says
Same-day options explained: why theta and gamma peak on the last day, and the honest answer to trading them without it turning into a casino.
Last updated: 18 October 2026 · By Spencer Li, CFTe
A 0DTE option is an option with zero days to expiry, which means it expires at the end of the same trading day you trade it. On the S&P 500 index there is now an expiry every trading day, since Cboe added Tuesday and Thursday expiries in 2022, and the same-day contracts have taken over. In July 2026, Cboe reported that 0DTE options made up a record 66.2% of all SPX options volume. An earlier Cboe note, for August 2025, put retail traders at an estimated 53% of that same-day volume.
They behave like gambling for a mechanical reason. With only hours left, there is almost no time value to cushion you. Theta takes whatever remains by the close, and gamma is at its peak, so the option swings from near-worthless to several times its price and back on small moves in the index. The payoff looks like a lottery ticket: usually a small loss, now and then a large win, and very little in between.
Do note that we do not teach options at Synapse Trading, and I do not trade them myself. My own trading is end-of-day swing trading in shares, forex and ETFs. This post sits under our ultimate guide to options trading, and it answers a question I keep seeing, almost word for word: “how do I trade 0DTE options without it turning into gambling?”
What exactly is a 0DTE option?
Any option on its last day is a 0DTE option. A monthly option bought 30 days ago becomes one on expiry morning. What changed in 2022 is that the most traded index options now have an expiry every single day, so a trader can open and close a fresh same-day position each session, all year.
Cboe announced the Tuesday and Thursday SPX expiries in April 2022, saying they would “expand the product suite to provide expirations every trading day of the week.” The volume followed. In September 2026 the same-day contracts set a monthly record of 3.4 million a day on SPX alone, according to Cboe’s own figures.
So why the rush? Part of it is price. A same-day option costs less than a monthly one at the same strike, because there is so little time left to pay for. Part of it is speed. You find out by the close whether you were right, which feels a lot like a game that pays out the same evening. Both of those are the same feature seen from 2 sides, and that feature is the problem.
What happens to theta and gamma on the last day?
Let me show you with a worked example, hypothetical and in round numbers.
An index trades at 100. A call at the 101 strike, expiring at today’s close, costs 0.40. With the VIX at 16, a rough rule says the market expects about a 1% move in a day, so about 1 point here (the VIX divided by 16 gives the expected daily range in percent).
For this call to break even at the close, the index has to finish above 101.40. That is a 1.4% rise in a few hours, bigger than the move the market expects on a normal day.
This same-day call needs a bigger move than the market expects on a normal day.
The index closes at 100.90, up a respectable 0.9%. The call expires worthless. You lose 100% of the premium.
The index closes at 102, a strong day. The call is worth 1.00. You make 150% on the premium.
The index spikes to 101.50 at lunchtime and fades. For an hour the call was worth more than you paid, and by the close it is worth nothing.
That third line is the one that hurts. Gamma is so large on the last day that the option’s delta can swing from, say, 0.10 to 0.60 and back within a session, so the price lurches with every small move. Theta, meanwhile, is draining the time value hour by hour instead of day by day. You are not just betting on direction. You are betting on direction, size and timing, all inside one afternoon.
The same strike
30 days to expiry
0 days to expiry
Time value left
Plenty
Almost none
Theta
A slow daily bleed
Hourly, and all of it by the close
Gamma
Low, the option changes slowly
At its peak near the strike
What a 1% move does
Nudges the price
Can double it or wipe it out
Room to be early or wrong
Weeks
Hours
Why does that make 0DTE feel like a casino?
I have written before that trading is only gambling if you play like the gambler. The casino wins because it takes many small bets with the odds slightly in its favour, sized so that no single night can ruin it. The gambler loses because he does the opposite: big bets, chosen by feel, raised after a loss.
A same-day option pulls you towards the gambler’s side of the table. The bets are cheap, so it is easy to place a lot of them. Each one resolves fast, so the next one is always tempting. And the payoff is lopsided, so a single big win can paper over a long run of small losses, which is exactly how a slot machine keeps people at the stool.
You might think the fix is to sit on the other side and be the casino, selling the same-day options instead of buying them. It is a tempting idea. But the seller’s version has its own trap: many small wins, then one afternoon that takes back months, because the seller holds the lottery ticket’s tail.
The traders who have been through it say the same thing. One trader on r/options, 2 years into options, split his results by days to expiry in May 2026. His 0DTE trades lost at a 41% win rate while his longer-dated trades made money: “the data says 0DTE was just where my discipline broke.” In his case the leak was size. “i was sizing 0DTE 2-3x what i risked on longer-dated stuff,” he wrote. After cutting it: “the account isn’t bleeding for the first time in months.”
In his case the product was only half the problem. The other half was a size he picked, in his own words, “sizing emotionally because i could exit by close anyway.”
If you would rather start with the part of trading we do teach, the free 15-Minute Swing Trader’s Checklist covers the questions to ask before every trade, whatever you trade.
How do you trade 0DTE options without it turning into gambling?
The honest answer is that you can only make it less like gambling. The product’s shape stays the same whatever plan you bring to it. What a plan changes is whether one bad session can ruin you.
These are what I call the 3 lottery-ticket rules, and they are the rails I would hold anyone to before a single same-day trade.
The premium is the whole risk, and it fits your normal risk per trade. A bought option has no level to stop out at in the time available, so the premium you pay is the loss. If your rule is 1% of the account per trade, then on a SGD 50,000 account the premium is SGD 500 or less. No sizing up after a loss, ever. That is the moment the gambler takes over.
Only from a named place on the chart, decided before the session opens. The bottom of a range, a pullback in a clear trend, a failed breakout. If you cannot name the location before the market opens, there is no trade, only an itch.
Count them separately. Keep your same-day trades in their own column, the way the Reddit trader did, and judge them only after 100 to 200 of them. Fewer than that and you are looking at noise. If the column is losing while everything else is fine, the answer is in the data.
There is a fourth rule for anyone in Singapore, and it is practical rather than mathematical. The US market opens at 9.30 pm or 10.30 pm Singapore time, depending on the season, and closes at 4 am or 5 am. A same-day option expires at that close. If you have a day job, you are either asleep when your trade resolves, or awake at 4 am and paying for it the next day.
So which side of the table are you on when you open the options app late at night? Are you placing the bet the plan allowed, or the one that feels exciting?
FAQ
What does 0DTE mean?
0DTE means zero days to expiry. A 0DTE option expires at the end of the same trading day it is traded, so all of its remaining time value disappears within hours.
Are 0DTE options gambling?
They behave like gambling because the payoff is lopsided: usually a small loss, now and then a large win. Whether your trading is gambling depends on your size and your process, and a same-day option makes both harder to keep under control.
Why do 0DTE options lose value so fast?
Because there is almost no time left for the move to happen. Theta drains what remains of the time value by the close, and gamma is at its peak, so the price swings hard on small moves in the underlying.
Is selling 0DTE options safer than buying them?
Selling wins more often, but each loss can be many times the premium collected. The seller trades frequent small gains for rare large losses, so the risk moves rather than goes away.
Can you trade 0DTE options from Singapore?
Yes, through a broker that offers US-listed options, once it has approved your account for options. The US session runs from 9.30 pm or 10.30 pm to 4 am or 5 am Singapore time, so same-day options expire in the middle of the Singapore night. Our guide to choosing an options broker from Singapore covers the approval and cost checks.
Go deeper
This post covers the product. If you would rather start with what we do teach, the free 15-Minute Swing Trader’s Checklist has the daily routine, the questions to ask before every trade, and the five rules that keep you in the game.
About the author. Spencer Li is The 15-Minute Trader and the founder of Synapse Trading. He is a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe) with 15+ years of trading, run from 70+ countries. He holds a B.Acc and B.BM from SMU. Every trade he takes is public, dated, losses left in. He teaches rules-based swing trading in 15 minutes a day, one system for any market.
Educational content only, not personalised financial advice. Trading carries risk, including loss of capital, and isn’t suitable for everyone. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Synapse Trading is not licensed or regulated by MAS.
https://synapsetrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/what-are-0dte-options-card.webp6301200Spencer Lihttps://synapsetrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/synapse-logo-horizontal-light.pngSpencer Li2026-10-06 12:31:012026-10-26 16:51:08What Are 0DTE Options, and Why Do They Behave Like Gambling?
In 2011 I wrote a post called Avoid the Indicator Trap. My point was simple: “There are only five pieces of information we can get from charts: the open, high, low, close and volume.” Every indicator is a calculation on those five, so none of them can show you anything the price has not already shown.
That still holds. But a blank chart is not the only answer, and the reason matters for how you pick your indicators.
So what are the best indicators for swing trading? The ones that each answer one question you need answered before a trade. That comes down to five jobs: moving averages for the trend, volume for the fuel, RSI for the timing, ATR for the room a stock needs, and relative strength for which stock is strongest. If two indicators do the same job, one of them goes.
Give each indicator one job; if two do the same job, drop one.
Why do most swing traders use too many indicators?
Because each one feels like extra safety. A trader adds RSI, then MACD, then stochastics, then Bollinger Bands, hoping the next line will finally make the decision for them.
What actually happens is the opposite. As I wrote back then, “one may also get conflicting signals from different indicators,” and without reading the price itself, there is no way to settle the conflict. You end up waiting for five lines to agree, which they rarely do, or picking whichever one says what you hoped.
It is like driving with a dashboard full of warning lights. One light that means “low fuel” is useful. Twelve lights blinking at once just make you stop reading any of them.
What are the best indicators for swing trading?
Here is the short list, with the job each one does and a common setting. Most charting tools offer these settings as defaults or close to it.
Indicator
Its one job
Common setting
What it tells you
Moving averages
Trend
20, 50 and 200-day EMA
Which way the stock is going, and how healthy the trend is
Volume
Fuel
Volume vs its 20-day average
Whether big buyers are behind the move
RSI
Timing
14 periods
Whether the pullback has cooled off enough
ATR
Room
14 periods
How far the stock normally moves in a day
Relative strength
Selection
Stock vs the S&P 500
Whether the stock is beating the market
How do you use moving averages for swing trading?
Use three, and give each a job. The 20-day exponential moving average, or EMA, is where pullbacks in a strong trend often find support. The 50-day catches the deeper pullbacks. The 200-day tells you whether you should be buying at all.
A simple rule many swing traders follow is to look for longs only above the 200-day EMA, ideally with the three stacked in order: 20 above 50 above 200. When they are tangled and crossing each other, the stock is going sideways, and waiting is usually the better trade.
Do note that the averages are a picture of the trend, and they lag by design. They tell you what has been happening, and that is exactly why they are good at keeping you on the right side of it. The moving average indicator goes through the maths and the main types.
Why does volume matter so much?
Because volume shows you whether the big money is involved. A price move on light volume can be a few small orders. The same move on heavy volume usually means funds are buying.
The pattern to look for is volume shrinking as the stock pulls back, then expanding as it turns back up. A breakout that happens on volume well above the stock’s 20-day average is far more believable than one that happens on a quiet day. Volume indicators for trading covers the other ways to read it.
Want the questions to ask before every trade on one page? Our free 15-Minute Swing Trader’s Checklist has them, along with the daily routine. Get the free checklist →
Should you use RSI or MACD for swing trading?
A trader on a technical analysis forum asked exactly this: “rsi vs macd – which one to trust more?” It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that it matters less than you think.
Both RSI and MACD are built from closing prices. Both measure momentum. So they mostly tell you the same thing, a little differently, and using both is a bit like asking two friends who read the same newspaper for their opinion. Pick one, learn it well, and drop the other.
RSI works best as a timing tool inside a trend, rather than for calling tops and bottoms. In an uptrend, the useful read is RSI cooling off during a pullback, well short of oversold, and then turning back up. The classic “buy below 30, sell above 70” reading tends to fail in strong trends. As I warned in 2011, oscillators push traders to keep fighting a strong trend, so they end up “entering counter-trend and losing money.” The RSI indicator explains the calculation.
What is ATR used for in swing trading?
ATR, the average true range, tells you how far a stock normally moves in a day. It is the one indicator that says nothing about direction, and that is exactly why it is useful.
A stock that moves 4% on a normal day needs more room than one that moves 1%. If you ignore that and use the same stop distance on both, you will get shaken out of the jumpy one again and again, even when you were right about the direction. ATR is how you size that room, and the ATR indicator post covers how it is worked out.
How do you find the strongest stocks to swing trade?
Compare each stock with the market. Relative strength, in the sense meant here, is just the stock’s performance divided by the S&P 500’s. A rising line means the stock is beating the market.
It is an easy one to skip, and it earns its place. When the market pulls back, the stocks that hold up best are usually the ones that lead when it turns. Do note this is a different thing from RSI, despite the similar name. RSI compares a stock only with its own past.
Which indicators can you remove from your chart?
Anything that repeats a job already done. If you have RSI, you rarely need stochastics or MACD as well. If you have moving averages, you probably do not need a second set of bands around them. And anything you cannot explain in one sentence, in terms of what it tells you about buyers and sellers, is a good candidate to go.
A good test: if you deleted the indicator tomorrow, would any of your trades change? If not, it is decoration. Our post on why trading indicators fail goes deeper into their limits, and if you trade currencies, the best forex trading indicators covers that market.
One more line from 2011 is worth keeping. When I wrote Avoid the Indicator Trap, I noted that if you watch professional traders at a bank or a trading arcade, “their charts are mostly blank.” A few more lines than that is fine, as long as every one of them has a job and the price is still the main thing on the screen.
So count the lines on your chart right now. Could you say, for each one, what job it does that no other line already does? For the full set of indicator guides, see the technical trading indicators guide.
FAQ
What are the best indicators for swing trading?
Moving averages for trend, volume for conviction, RSI for timing, ATR for how much room a stock needs, and relative strength against the market for picking the strongest stocks. Use one indicator per job.
What is the best moving average for swing trading?
The 20, 50 and 200-day EMAs together. The 20-day marks pullbacks in strong trends, the 50-day marks deeper ones, and the 200-day tells you whether to look for longs at all.
Is RSI or MACD better for swing trading?
Neither is clearly better, because both measure momentum from closing prices. Pick one and learn it well. Using both mostly doubles the same signal.
What RSI setting is best for swing trading?
The standard 14 periods works well on a daily chart. In an uptrend, a pullback that cools RSI and then turns up before it reaches 30 is often more useful than waiting for 30.
How many indicators should a swing trader use?
Usually four or five at most, each with a different job. More than that tends to create conflicting signals.
Go deeper
Indicators help you read the chart, but a routine keeps you consistent. The free 15-Minute Swing Trader’s Checklist has the daily routine, the questions to ask before every trade, and the five rules that protect your account.
About the author. Spencer Li is The 15-Minute Trader and the founder of Synapse Trading. He is a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe) with 15+ years of trading, run from 70+ countries. He holds a B.Acc and B.BM from SMU. Every trade he takes is public, dated, losses left in. He teaches rules-based swing trading in 15 minutes a day, one system for any market.
Educational content only, not personalised financial advice. Trading carries risk, including loss of capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Synapse Trading is not licensed or regulated by MAS.
https://synapsetrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/best-indicators-for-swing-trading-card.webp6301200Spencer Lihttps://synapsetrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/synapse-logo-horizontal-light.pngSpencer Li2026-10-06 07:38:322026-10-27 17:06:22Best Indicators for Swing Trading: The Few That Earn a Place on the Chart
Have you ever watched a central bank raise rates for the first time in three years, the 10-year Treasury yield climb to a level last seen in 2007, oil gain 14%, and the Nasdaq still set a record close? That was September 2026. The S&P 500 slipped about half a percent to 7,651, the Dow fell about 4.3% to end a five-month winning streak, and the Nasdaq added almost 2% with two record closes along the way. Underneath, the Fed hiked to 3.75% to 4.00% on a 12 to 0 vote, the 30-year yield briefly topped 5.6%, gold lost more than 8%, and Bitcoin quietly logged a fourth green September in a row. So let’s go through what actually happened, and what I’m watching into October.
The month opened on the back foot. US stocks fell four sessions in a row into 10 September, the S&P 500’s longest losing run since March, and the Dow posted its worst first ten days of a September since 2008. On the worst of those days only 12% of stocks closed higher, and for once megacap tech led the decline rather than cushioning it.
Then came the odd part. Hot inflation data on 11 September pushed Fed hike odds to nearly 90%, and the S&P 500 rose 0.9% anyway. Why would stocks rally on a locked-in hike? Because it was already priced, and a day of relief in oil mattered more. The same thing happened on 16 September, the day of the hike itself. The Dow dropped 631 points and the S&P 500 closed at 7,551.81, its low for the month, then took the whole drop back in one session the next day.
From there the AI trade carried everything. On 21 September the Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.26% to 27,122, its first record close since June, with AMD up about 10% to cross $1 trillion in market value, Arm up 17%, Intel up 12% and Meta up 11%. A second record followed at 27,244 the next day, and the semiconductor index rose six sessions straight, its longest run since April. Do note that on the day of that second record, more than half of S&P 500 members still traded below their 200-day moving average. The index was at a high and the median stock was not, and that gap is the most important feature of this market right now.
Leadership rotated almost weekly. On 14 September, after Anthropic’s Dario Amodei published an essay calling for a slower pace of frontier AI development, the semiconductor gauge fell 5.9% while software rallied. A week later chips were setting records again. By sector, financials were the worst of the month, down more than 6%, and technology was the only S&P sector to finish higher. Everything that depends on borrowing costs, from REITs to utilities to small caps, kept making lows while the index held up.
Outside the US it was weaker. Europe’s STOXX 600 fell more than 2%, ending five straight monthly gains. Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed the month at 66,754, a small gain but its first quarterly decline since early 2025. China was the soft spot: the Shanghai Composite fell about 3.6%, the Shenzhen Component about 8% and the Hang Seng roughly 4%.
Macroeconomic and Central Bank Developments
So what did the Fed see that made it move? The labour market stopped cracking. August payrolls, released on 4 September, showed 162,000 jobs added against a forecast of 53,000, the strongest month since March, with unemployment steady at 4.1%. Two days earlier ADP had reported just 38,000 private hires, so the market was braced for weakness and got the opposite. In this cycle a hot jobs print is the hawkish outcome, and that inverted reaction function has defined the whole year.
Inflation did the rest. August producer prices rose 5.4% year on year against 5.3% expected, with the energy component up 24%. Headline CPI then rose 0.4% on the month and 3.4% on the year, both in line, but core rose 0.3% on the month, a tenth above forecast, with the annual core rate at 2.4%. Gasoline alone was up 27.4% from a year earlier and accounted for more than a third of the monthly increase. Hike odds went from about 70% to close to 90% in a day.
On 16 September the Fed delivered: a quarter point to 3.75% to 4.00%, its first increase since July 2023, on a 12 to 0 vote. The dot plot showed 12 of 18 officials pencilling in one more hike this year, 4 wanting two, and 2 wanting none. Kevin Warsh, in his first press conference at a live decision, called inflation the committee’s predominant concern. President Trump, who picked Warsh expecting cheaper money, posted that the Fed should “LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST”. A unanimous hike from a handpicked chairman is about as clear a statement of independence as a central bank can make.
Fed speakers lined up behind the move, with Philadelphia’s Anna Paulson saying “some modest further tightening may be warranted”, and by 25 September futures priced roughly a 76% chance of another hike on 28 October. Then the last data point of the month pulled the rug. August PCE inflation came in at 3.4% against 3.7% expected, with core at 3.0% against 3.3%, much of it down to a new statistical method for pricing software and services. Traders cut October hike odds to about 37%. And yet the 10-year yield rose to a new 2007 high the same day. When yields rise on soft inflation data, the bond market is telling you the problem is supply, and the Fed has less say over that than people assume.
The consumer looks tired. Conference Board confidence fell to 81.9, its lowest since 2014, and the average 30-year mortgage rate reached about 7.5%. On the other side, jobless claims dropped to 197,000 and the flash composite PMI jumped to 58.4 against 55.3 forecast. Hard data hot, soft data cold. That is a K-shaped economy, and the Fed is setting policy for the top of the K.
It was not only the Fed. The ECB raised its deposit rate to 2.50% on 10 September, its second hike of the year, with Christine Lagarde calling the move a “no brainer” as euro zone inflation hit 3.3%. The Bank of Japan hiked to 1.25% on 18 September, its highest since 1995, but the vote was 7 to 2 and Governor Ueda promised nothing further, so the yen weakened to around 157 per dollar despite the hike. Australia’s central bank raised to 4.60%, its fourth hike this year. Four major central banks tightened in one month, into an energy shock. None of us have traded through that before.
Geopolitical Developments
If August was hope, stalemate and escalation, September was the month the Iran conflict reached a second chokepoint.
It opened with US strikes on Iranian targets around the Strait of Hormuz after attacks on two tankers, Iranian retaliation against American bases in the Gulf, and WTI up 5.2% to $90.22 on 1 September. Washington adopted a “tanker for tanker” policy, an Iranian attack on a Saudi tanker killed two Filipino sailors, and Trump rejected talks.
On 8 September Houthi missiles and drones struck Saudi Aramco’s 400,000 barrel a day Jazan refinery, wounding at least 73 people. Three days later the Houthis seized Perim Island after Yemeni government forces withdrew, completing their control of both lanes of the Bab el-Mandeb strait. That hands Iran and its proxies leverage over two of the world’s most important oil corridors at once. The same day, drone attacks blamed on Iraqi militias shut the 1,200 kilometre East-West pipeline, the route that carries Gulf crude to the Red Sea and bypasses Hormuz entirely. Saudi Arabia suspended loadings at Yanbu, Brent settled at $109.21 on 15 September, physical dated Brent cleared $130, and US diesel hit a record $6.26 a gallon. By 18 September Aramco was telling European refiners they would get no crude at all in October.
Then it eased. The pipeline restarted on 22 September, and Middle East crude exports actually rose to 12.8 million barrels a day for the month, the most since February. Iran floated a seven-day plan to reopen Hormuz, Reuters reported the two sides discussing a phased deal, and Brent fell five sessions straight to below $100. On 28 September Trump rejected Iran’s proposal and Brent jumped back to about $107. Two days later he denied reports that Washington would ease sanctions. The obstacle, per Reuters sources: neither side wants to give up its leverage first. Hormuz traffic still runs at roughly a dozen transits a day against well over a hundred before the war.
Trade stayed busy. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs took effect on 8 September, hitting about $20 billion of US imports at 15% to 50%. Copper broke on 10 September after Reuters reported the White House still had not decided on a 15% levy on refined imports, and Freeport-McMoRan fell 7.2% in a day, yet by 22 September copper had risen six sessions straight to $14,797 a tonne on the LME, within sight of its record. Xi Jinping’s state visit on 23 to 25 September extended the US-China tariff truce to 10 January, and both sides published lists for a “30 for 30” deal, each cutting tariffs on about $30 billion of goods, with semiconductors left out and no start date given. And Congress passed a stopgap on 1 September funding the government through 11 December. One risk removed from October and planted in December.
Corporate Earnings and Stock Market Movers
September is quiet on the earnings calendar, but the reports that landed showed exactly how the market is sorting the AI trade. A beat on its own was not enough. The companies that got paid showed AI revenue with clean balance sheets. The ones that got sold showed AI revenue with a financing question attached.
Table 2: September 2026 Earnings Movers
Company
Revenue
Adjusted EPS
Stock reaction
Dell
$46.97 billion, up 58%
$7.04
up 16% next day
Broadcom
$29.6 billion, up 86%
$3.32
down 6% to about $346
Oracle
$19.3 billion vs $19.1 billion expected
$1.92 vs $1.74
down about 7% on the week to $139.54
Adobe
$6.76 billion, up 13%
$6.13 vs $6.07
down about 2% after hours
Costco
$95.72 billion vs $94.97 billion
$6.75 vs $6.54
up 0.3% after hours
Carnival
$8.44 billion vs $8.39 billion
$1.43 vs $1.35
up 13.4% to $25.11
Micron
$54.23 billion vs $51.07 billion
$33.42 vs $31.61
down about 1% after hours
Dell set the tone on 1 September. Revenue came in at $46.97 billion, up 58%, with adjusted earnings of $7.04 per share, far above consensus. AI server revenue doubled to $16.4 billion, AI orders hit a record $60.9 billion and the backlog reached $95 billion. Management raised full-year revenue guidance by $25 billion to $192 billion and earnings guidance to $25.50 per share. The stock surged 16% the next day.
Broadcom showed the other side a day later. Fiscal third-quarter revenue was a record $29.6 billion, up 86%, with adjusted earnings of $3.32 per share, up 96%. AI semiconductor revenue reached $16.7 billion, up 221%, and management raised the full-year AI outlook to $58 billion. So why did the stock fall 6% to about $346? Because the current-quarter revenue guide of $34.8 billion came in under the $35.03 billion analysts wanted. A $230 million shortfall on a $35 billion number was enough.
Oracle was the most instructive story of the month. Fiscal first-quarter revenue rose 30% to $19.3 billion against $19.1 billion expected, adjusted earnings were $1.92 per share against $1.74, cloud infrastructure revenue more than doubled to $7.4 billion, and remaining performance obligations hit $664 billion. The stock rose 6% early the next day, then turned negative by the afternoon. What changed? Investors looked past the backlog to the bill: capital spending of $28.5 billion in one quarter against $8.5 billion a year earlier, negative free cash flow of $5.4 billion and about $125 billion of debt. On 24 September Oracle issued a force majeure notice on Project Jupiter, its $18 billion New Mexico data centre for OpenAI, citing delays in securing power and permits. The stock fell about 7% on the week to $139.54, its credit default swaps hit a record, and the project’s loans traded at 89 to 91 cents on the dollar. The AI build-out is now a credit story as much as an equity story.
Adobe beat and was sold anyway. Third-quarter revenue was a record $6.76 billion, up 13% and about $70 million ahead of estimates, with adjusted earnings of $6.13 per share against $6.07. The company raised its full-year outlook to $26.58 to $26.63 billion of revenue and $24.45 to $24.50 per share. On the same call it announced that Shantanu Narayen will hand the chief executive role to Anil Chakravarthy on 1 December. The stock slipped about 2% after hours to around $243.50. Markets rarely like a CEO change they did not ask for, however orderly.
Costco delivered exactly what was priced. Fiscal fourth-quarter earnings of $6.75 per share beat the $6.54 consensus, revenue of $95.72 billion beat $94.97 billion, and comparable sales rose 9.4% against a 9% forecast, with digital comps up 19.5%. Stripping out gasoline and currency, comps grew 6.7%, and 15 cents of the earnings came from one-off tariff refunds. The stock rose 0.3% after hours. Compare that with Walmart’s warning in August about customers trading down against fuel prices and you can see both halves of the American consumer in one month.
Carnival had the month’s best reaction. Earnings of $1.43 per share beat the $1.35 expected on revenue of $8.44 billion against $8.39 billion, with record net income of $1.9 billion. Despite a $150 million fuel headwind, the company raised full-year earnings guidance to $2.24 per share from $2.22, and 2027 bookings are at record occupancy and pricing. The stock jumped 13.4% to $25.11 on 29 September. People are still spending on experiences, even at $100 oil.
Micron closed the month on 30 September after the bell. Revenue was $54.23 billion against $51.07 billion expected, nearly four times the $11.32 billion of a year earlier, with adjusted earnings of $33.42 per share against $31.61. Data centre revenue rose 11-fold. Guidance for the current quarter was about $61.5 billion against roughly $57 billion expected. And the stock slipped about 1% after hours, because management guided gross margins to about 86%, a point under estimates. A stock up more than 500% in a year needs everything to go right.
Outside the earnings calendar, the biggest single-stock story was Fair Isaac. It fell almost 17% on 4 September after regulators let all mortgage lenders use the rival VantageScore system, then plunged 27% on 29 September, its worst day in more than 30 years, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac moved to a single pricing grid for both scores. A monopoly priced as a monopoly has a long way to fall when it stops being one.
A few others worth noting. MongoDB fell about 26% after its chief executive left for Meta. Nvidia added $150 billion to its buyback, the largest increase on record, and rose more than 3%. Generac jumped more than 30% after hours when Amazon took warrants tied to a supply deal worth up to $8 billion for data centre generators. And Nike quietly exited the S&P 100 on 21 September after 18 years, with the shares down about 43% for the year near $38.
Commodities, Bonds, and Other Assets
If you only read one section of this wrap, make it this one. The bond market was the story of September, and it was not a Fed story.
The 10-year Treasury yield started the month at 4.76%. It cleared 4.90% on 10 September for the first time since November 2023, touched 5.04% on 15 September for its highest since 2007, dipped under 5% for two sessions after the Fed decision, and then never looked back. It closed the month at 5.29%, within a couple of basis points of its 2007 peak. The 30-year did more, rising from 5.25% to 5.64% and briefly topping 5.6% on 29 September, a level last seen in June 2002.
Now, here’s what makes this different from a normal tightening cycle. On 9 September the Treasury tripled its long-dated bond buybacks to $6 billion, and yields rose anyway. A 20-year auction cleared at 5.42% and three note auctions in the final full week drew weak demand. When an enlarged buyback cannot hold the long end, the problem is term premium: investors want more compensation for lending to the government for 30 years, whatever the Fed does overnight. The 10-year real yield rose roughly 44 basis points in September, the fastest monthly rise in four years. The MOVE index of bond volatility went from about 80 to a peak of 104.58 on 24 September. Equity volatility slept through it, with the VIX near 15 at month end. One of those two markets is going to be wrong.
And it is global. UK 30-year gilt yields reached 5.89% on 1 September, the highest since 1998, and Japan’s 10-year yield touched 3.00% the same day for the first time since 1996. Rising Japanese yields pull Japanese capital home, which lifts borrowing costs everywhere else. The dollar index rose from about 99.4 to around 101.
Oil finished September up about 14% at $103.53 for Brent, but the path was wild. Brent went from $91.09 at the end of August to a $107.63 settle on 10 September, up 6% in a day, with WTI above $100 for the first time since May. It peaked at $109.21 on 15 September, fell five sessions straight to $98.74 as the pipeline restarted, jumped back to about $107 when Trump rejected Iran’s plan, and settled at $103.53 on the last day. Do note that the rally happened while physical supply was improving. The price carries a geopolitical premium, not a shortage, and premiums can leave as fast as they arrive.
Gold had a rough month. It started near $4,470, fell 2.8% into a war escalation on 1 September, which is the opposite of what a haven is supposed to do, and closed near $4,168, down about 8.5%. Silver ended at $61.13, down about 13.5%. What happened? Real yields rose 44 basis points and the dollar rose 1.5%, and that combination beats the haven bid every time. Gold fell on the very days oil rose, so the market is treating it as a rates trade and not a war trade right now. It is still up substantially for the year, so this reads as a correction inside a trend, but the trend has stopped being easy.
Bitcoin and Ethereum
Bitcoin spent September doing two things that are not supposed to happen together. It rose while the Fed hiked and yields hit 19-year highs, and it shrugged off the death of its own regulatory bill.
It started the month near $78,500 and fell with everything else, trading below $77,000 by 11 September. Then on 15 September the Senate voted 49 to 50 against advancing the Clarity Act, which needed 60 votes, ending market-structure legislation for the year. Bitcoin dropped about 4.2% to roughly $75,850, and Coinbase, Circle and Bullish fell with it.
That was the low. Three days later it was back above $81,000 as traders looked past the defeat to the SEC’s new innovation exemption, which opens a route for tokenised stock trading. On 21 September it cleared $86,000, its highest since January and roughly 50% above its low of two months earlier, with close to $900 million of leveraged positions wiped out in 24 hours, $648 million of them bets against the price. Spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $999 million that day, their largest intake since October 2025, and Bitcoin touched about $87,300 the next day. Late in the month the exchange Bitget lost about $352 million to hackers and Bitcoin barely moved. It finished near $83,600, up about 6%, its fourth green September in a row, though still well below its record near $126,000 from last October.
Ethereum did a little better, rising from about $2,467 to about $2,677, a gain of roughly 8.5%, after clearing $2,600 on 20 September for its highest level since the start of the year.
Concluding Thoughts
September leaves the S&P 500 inside a range, and I think that range is the clearest way to see this market. The floor is 7,551.81, the closing low on the day of the Fed hike. The ceiling is the record close of 7,798.99 from 13 August. Above it, the AI trade has carried the index to within 2% of a record while more than half its members sit below their 200-day averages. Below it, the median stock is already in a downtrend. The breakout direction decides which reading was right.
Inside a range, let the breakout tell you which way the market is going.
What breaks the range? Most likely the bond market. If the 30-year closes back under 5.30% after the 2 October payrolls report, the pressure on everything rate-sensitive eases and the ceiling comes into play. If it holds above 5.45%, the stocks that have been making lows will eventually drag the index with them. Third-quarter earnings start in mid-October, the next Fed meeting is on 28 October, and the Hormuz talks could land a deal or collapse on any given day.
I’m often asked whether a Fed hike means the bull market is over. My honest answer is that I don’t know, and this month argues both ways: the economy added 162,000 jobs while consumer confidence sits at a 12-year low. What I do know is that when bond volatility doubles and equity volatility sleeps, one of them is about to catch up. In 1987 bonds broke in April and stocks topped in August. The lead can be months, so I’m not calling a top, but I am paying attention.
Personally, I’ve spent the month doing less. When leadership rotates every week and the index hides what the average stock is doing, the edge goes to whoever is still around when the trend becomes clear again. Position sizes stay small enough that a 400-point gap in either direction is an annoyance rather than a disaster. I let the price action tell me when the range resolves, instead of guessing which way it goes.
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