The weekly read — Week of Sep 25 – Oct 02, 2026

Week of Sep 25 – Oct 02, 2026

The take

The year's story remains the commodity rally—DBC is up 45.5% YTD and commodities added 60 bps to Balanced. The four-week window reversed: gold slid 6.5%, long Treasuries fell 5.4%, and the Fed's first hike since 2023 sent the 10-year yield to 5.25%. Tech surged late-month—QQQ gained 4.4% over four weeks while SPY was flat—but the strategies' holdings delivered the week's losses, not the rally readers hold.

The week at a glance

• This week — Long bonds and gold fell 3% each; tech rallied 0.7% but strategies' own holdings dropped 1%.
• Past 4 weeks — Fed rate hike drove the 10-year yield to 5.25%, hammering gold and Treasuries; tech climbed 4.4%.
• Year-to-date — Commodities up 45.5%, EM up 24.3%, tech up 39.3%; the bond-heavy sleeves lag, and diversification worked.

This week: oil jumped on Iran tensions and gold tumbled 3.4%

Gold fell more than $100 on 28 September to a seven-week low near $4,125 as a jump in oil prices from the US–Iran standoff in the Strait of Hormuz pushed odds of an October Fed hike above 70%. TLT dropped 1.9% and GLD gave up 3.4%. Lean Balanced lost 1.1%, with the bond sleeve alone costing 49 bps. Meanwhile QQQ climbed 0.7% and XLK rose 1.8%, yet the portfolios hold neither—they own SPY, VEA and EEM, which together contributed −30 bps to Balanced. The week shows what the model strategies don't own matters as much as what they do: a reader in QQQ saw tech rally, while Balanced saw its defensive sleeves slide.

Past 4 weeks: the Fed's first hike since 2023 sent yields to 5.25%

On 16 September the Fed raised rates 25 basis points to 3.75–4.00%—its first hike since July 2023—in a unanimous 12–0 vote, and the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield surged to 5.25% and the 2-year yield rose close to 5%. TLT fell 5.4%, gold dropped 6.5%, and Lean Balanced lost 2.6%. Commodities held: DBC rose 2.0%. Tech diverged sharply—QQQ gained 4.4% while SPY added only 0.2%—but the four-week window captures that rotation, not a calm month. Dual Momentum Pivot5 dropped 1.9% despite holding three equity sleeves, because VEA and EEM both fell. The bond selloff, not equity weakness, defined the month: Balanced's TLT allocation alone cost 136 bps over four weeks.

Year-to-date: the commodity rally continues to define 2026, tech leads equity

DBC is up 45.5% year-to-date and contributed 609 bps to Lean Balanced; EM equities gained 24.3% and developed ex-US rose 14.9%. SPY added 13.7%, but tech within it moved harder—XLK is up 39.3% and XLC fell 5.4%, a 45-point spread the model portfolios don't directly capture. Gold and long Treasuries are both negative: GLD −4.1%, TLT −8.0%. The strategies that avoided bonds or tilted into commodities led: Dual Momentum Pivot5 returned 14.3%, Balanced 9.9%, and 60/40 just 4.8%. Lean All-Weather 15% Vol, which uses 1.6× notional exposure and allocates roughly equal risk across SPY, TLT, DBC and GLD, returned 13.2%—the leverage amplified the commodity gain and mitigated the bond drag. Diversification worked this year, but only if you held the right diversifiers: commodities and EM, not bonds or gold.

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Sources: CBS News · London Gold Exchange · BullionVault · Discovery Alert · GuruFocus · CNBC · Axios · Yahoo Finance