Iggy's Journal: The Fed Chair's Jackson Hole Speech Just Picked a Side Between Banks and REITs
31 August 2026, AM
Overnight Read:
US markets were closed over the weekend, so what follows is Friday's session, the most recent completed close. Wall Street pulled back modestly, Dow down 0.02% to 53,559.99, S&P 500 down 0.25% to 7,711.76, Nasdaq down 0.52% to 26,402.42. The driver was Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's keynote at Jackson Hole, a firmer-than-expected line on inflation that pushed back on near-term rate cut hopes and lifted the 10-year Treasury yield to 4.70%, which is exactly the kind of move that pressures rate-sensitive growth names. VIX eased slightly to 14.23. Brent fell 0.43% to $89.31, down 5.38% over the full week, on easing Strait of Hormuz risk. USD/SGD sat at 1.2745.
Back home, ACRA data for the first seven months of 2026 showed business closures up 12.8% year on year to 38,146, driven heavily by 2,127 construction firm closures, while new registrations still outpaced that at 49,305, led by a 26.7% jump in info and communications firms. And ComfortDelGro confirmed it's submitted a joint venture bid with RATP Dev for the Copenhagen Metro rail operating contract, tender results still pending.
My Personal Take:
The Business Times framed Warsh's hawkish turn as favouring banks over struggling S-REITs, and I think that's the right lens for today, not a hot take. Higher-for-longer Treasury yields generally help bank margins and hurt REIT valuations, which are priced against exactly that benchmark rate. Worth watching how DBS, OCBC, and UOB trade against how the REIT names on my coverage list trade this week, since a genuine divergence here isn't noise, it's the mechanism actually working as expected.
On ComfortDelGro, I want to flag this now rather than after the fact. This is a bid, not a win, so nothing changes about my Zone 4 gearing call today. But I noted in my own coverage that a win on either the Copenhagen tender or the UK franchise bids would likely mean fresh capex before contracted revenue shows up, which is exactly the kind of thing that could widen the 2.9-point gearing breach I'm already watching, not narrow it. Filing this one under things to watch, not things to react to.
Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.
Cheers, Iggy 🦖