Stocks Rise As Oil Prices Ease

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Looking for strategies to help you protect your portfolio in these uncertain times? Visit robblack.com, robblack.com, powered by EP Wealth.

Rob Black (0:11)

September 21, Monday, 2026 Hopefully we had a very nice weekend, and now it's time to get back to Wall Street of Work.

Over the weekend, I had heard stories come out of Reuters about the Houthis and the Middle East, and President Trump coming back from Camp David early, warnings from the State Department about the Middle East and Americans need to be on guard. I would have thought oil would have been higher this morning. Today is Yom Kippur, and there would be a significance to the Middle East group potentially striking on Yom Kippur. But oil is lower. Interest rates are lower. Not exactly what we would have thought from over the weekend. ORA has publicly filed for an IPO. They looked to raise $2.2 billion more on that shortly. Lot of headline news about Nike and how they're losing important athletes like Killian Mbappé. Some people like that move. Some people don't, Stiefel analyst Peter McGoldrick slashed his earnings per share estimates on Nike by whopping $0.20 for the fiscal years of 2027 and 2028 He cited near-term risk from increased promotional activity on Nike products in the United States. So they're having to run sales on their product movement. Soccer icon Killian Mbappé ended his long-term business tie-up with Nike last week and announced he will now be joining Swiss Sports Giant on, ticker symbol ONON. Communist stock will be kicked out of the SP for 100 day. Nike's will ending an 18-year term on the index. Wow, I went deep down into Nike there. It's not like me. Let's go back to Friday. I've been dealing with a lot of family issues of an ailing mother-in-law who was in hospice and still alive. But let's go back to Friday because I don't do live shows on Friday. I heard a rumble Friday when Warren Buffett bowed out as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, a position he had held since 1970 Longtime listeners to this program knows that I think he is the goat, but the greatest of all time, that I tried to beat and make fun of early in my career in the 1990s. And then I just grew to appreciate what he did. He bought companies that were cash flow rich and he held them.

Didn't pay dividend instead of push that back in the company stock. I like Warren Buffett enormously. The 96 year old Oracle of Omaha transformed Berkshire from a struggling textile manufacturer to one of the world's most valuable companies and himself into one of the world's richest people. His son is going to become the chairman of the board. Buffett will remain on the board, but he stepped down from the chairman role. Year to date, the Dow is up 7.5%. The S&P mid cap 400 is up 10.5%. The S&P 500 up 11.8%. The NASDAQ up 14%.

The Russell 2000 up 15%. A little later in the program this morning, I'm going to talk about how I expect the last three months of the year to push the markets higher and why. The Dow is riding a three week losing skid. The NASDAQ and the S&P 500 were basically flat last week. Everything makes sense right now. When oil goes higher, thoughts that inflation goes higher. When inflation goes higher, our yields move higher. On the bond market, there is that national debt story. There is the Social Security starting to increase the negative fully funded status in six years when the next round of politicians that were going to be elected in November, when those senators are coming out of office, something is going to have to be done in their term. That problem means higher payroll tax on Social Security, just increase the limit that high earners will have to contribute. That should add about $3,000 to the average American worker on their taxes. That's the proposed idea at this point in time. Will it get support? I don't know. So tinkering with the tax rate on Social Security and or the total limit ceiling seems to be the only two things that people are going to understand has to happen. The oil and bond markets hold a lot of sway over how stocks are working right now.

There's some big events coming up. Metta's annual developer conference on Wednesday. Earnings from Costco on Thursday after the market closes. President Trump's planned summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday as well. Like I said, things got a little dicey over the weekend with reports including indicating the Houthis had launched an attack on Riyadh and that the President Trump had left Camp David early to return to the White House. Wake up this morning and nothing seems to be problematic. The hope on that, I believe, is rooted in the US restraint in leading a counterattack, although President Trump made it known that the US has several options for dealing with Iran, including wiping Iran out with a potential nuclear option.