Economic and Market Update – August 2026

August 2026 Reporting Season & Portfolio Update
August gave us a lot to read: an exceptionally strong US Q2 reporting season, the July run of US economic data, the first weeks of the Australian FY26 reporting season, and an RBA that held in August with a slightly more dovish-sounding Statement on Monetary Policy (SoMP). We have done some digging to bring you the story behind the wall of numbers, and this month the digging yielded returns, because nearly every headline needed one adjustment before it was usable. US earnings needed the Alphabet and Amazon mark-to-market gains stripped out, US payrolls needed the summer education swing removed, Australian property market charts needed seasonal adjustment, and the RBA’s inflation forecasts needed their oil assumption re-dated. Those adjustments confirmed the breadth of the US season and left much less standing in Australia, and we close with how the data has set our positioning.

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