Macroeconomics: The Day Ahead for 22 September 2026

Geopolitics and the UN General Assembly Take Centre Stage

Today’s schedule is all about central bank speakers and geopolitics, with a whirlwind of bilateral meetings as the annual UN General Assembly gets under way in New York, at which the conflicts in the Persian Gulf, Red and Black Seas will obviously feature very heavily.

The statistical schedule is unlikely to feature on markets’ radar, with a wider-than-expected UK PSNB budget deficit underlining the serious challenges that PM Burnham and Chancellor Healey face as they put together the late October annual Budget.

AI Euphoria Proves Resilient

Yesterday’s sharp rally in tech stocks served to show that AI euphoria (and related FOMO) has not evaporated, even if it remains subject to longer-term gnawing doubts around returns on extraordinarily high levels of investment and security/safety concerns.

Oil Prices: Diplomacy Hopes or Positioning Washout?

The sharp setback in oil and refined product prices was also instructive, given that the justification for the move referred to hopes for a return to diplomacy based on the US President’s comment that he might be open to meeting with Iran’s President on the sidelines of the UNGA, along with hopes for a rebound in shipments from Saudi Arabia and through the Strait of Hormuz.

But that looked like post hoc rationalization, with the sharpness of the move looking much more like specs getting ‘stopped out’, as the attached chart of Brent volatility and options skew would suggest.

Indeed, the threat of a US diesel export ban, as US retail diesel prices touched $6.51 with only six weeks before the US mid-term elections, appears to be a more important consideration in terms of both physical supply bottlenecks and “on the ground” inflation risks.

Federal Reserve Signals and Interest Rate Risks

Today’s barrage of central bank speakers follows enlightening comments from Chicago Fed’s Goolsbee and St Louis Fed’s Musalem, whereby the Goolsbee comments were of greater interest given that he is typically in the middle on the hawk-dove spectrum, whereas Musalem generally leans to the hawkish side.

Of particular note were the observations:

“Oil, tariffs, and commodity prices — forecasters have spent more than a year pushing back the date when inflation was supposed to peak and start falling. … That’s not a comforting pattern.”

“We need evidence that these shocks are actually fading, or it’s hard to see a credible path back to 2% inflation — and harder still to justify continuing to look through them.”

“If the through line is that it’s coming from overheating demand, I think the implication is the rate response is more aggressive and more and more front-loaded.”

While these comments did not offer much in the way of guidance on timing, they imply that for the time being, every FOMC meeting is ‘live’ in terms of a potential further rate hike, and the focus shifts to the generally neutral Jefferson and Barkin, and the dovish-leaning Williams today.

Meanwhile, comments from ECB’s Lane overnight suggesting that inflation should get back to target by the middle of 2027 and noting that spillover effects have been very limited (thus far), were rather more neutral.