Energy stocks, gold, and Treasurys fall as crude jumps 7% to $103

West Texas Intermediate jumped 7.3% to $103.05 a barrel. The funds that usually pay you in an oil shock did not: long Treasurys, gold, and the energy sector fund AXLE all finished lower with the S&P 500, which fell 0.6% to 7,592.30 for a fourth straight session, matching the S&P 500 fund ASPY. It was not a disorderly session.

WTI was at that print as of 4:24 p.m. Eastern. Brent crude was at $108.35, up 7.1%. The oil-futures fund BUSO closed up 5.6% at 4 p.m. and tagged a 52-week high along the way, a smaller gain than crude's late-afternoon print.

The Cboe Volatility Index was at 18.01, up 9.4%, not a crash reading.

Diesel did the work in the PPI

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the producer price index for final demand rose 0.4% in August, seasonally adjusted, and 5.4% from a year earlier. Goods prices rose 1.1%. Energy rose 4.2%. Diesel fuel jumped 24.1% and accounted for more than a third of the increase in goods. Services rose 0.1%. The slice that strips out food, energy, and trade margins, a gauge the Fed watches for underlying pressure, rose 0.3% on the month and 4.7% on the year.

That is an oil-and-freight print, not a broad services reacceleration, and it was already in the August wholesale data before this week's jump in crude. Initial jobless claims for the week ended September 5 were 206,000, down 1,000, so the labor market did not supply a separate scare. Bonds sold off anyway. The long-Treasury fund BTLT, which holds Treasurys with maturities of 20 years and more, fell 1.2%, tagged a 52-week low of $80.66 in the session, and closed at $80.78. The 10-year Treasury yield was 4.95% on the official curve dated September 10. High-yield credit fund BHYG fell 0.4%, its fourth down session, and finished a few cents from its 52-week low.

A Reuters poll completed Wednesday found 65 of 93 economists still expect the Federal Reserve to hold the funds rate at its September 15-16 meeting. Reuters reported Thursday that traders were leaning slightly toward a hike. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, speaking on September 3, said that if signs of disinflation continued in the data due over the next two weeks, he would be inclined to support holding the rate at its current setting. If August data showed that improvement had been fleeting, he said, raising the policy rate at that meeting may be appropriate. A CPI print that keeps energy in the consumer indexes would support today's bond selloff. A print that leaves it in wholesale goods would make the duration dump look like a reaction to diesel.

Crude funds rallied. Energy stocks did not.

BUSO is up 12.2% over five sessions and 24.1% over one month. It has gained 129% this year. All eight energy-futures funds rose Thursday, a median 3.9%.

AXLE fell 0.6%. Exxon Mobil, its largest holding at about 20%, rose 0.6%. That was not enough. Baker Hughes dropped 6.7% and was the largest drag, subtracting 0.24 percentage points. That came a day after the company raised 2026 sales and profit forecasts to include Chart Industries, an industrial-equipment maker it acquired this year, and said deal-related interest, transaction, and integration costs would leave it converting 40% to 45% of profit into cash. Williams fell 3.1% after a federal appeals court this week vacated a New Jersey water permit for its Northeast Supply Enhancement gas pipeline. Marathon Petroleum fell 1.8% and SLB 1.8%.

If you hold energy stocks rather than oil futures, Thursday did not pay you for the crude rally. The two products are often treated as substitutes. They were not.

Gold did not behave like a war hedge either. The gold fund BGLD fell 1.7%. Gold futures were at $4,364.40 as of 4:14 p.m. Eastern, down 2.2%. The dollar index was only 0.3% higher. Gold moved with long Treasurys, which is the pattern when yields are the louder story.

Copper miners fall as White House tariff plan stalls

Copper-miner funds all fell, a median 7.0%. The Global X copper miners fund CCOPX dropped 7.0%. Freeport-McMoRan fell 6.6% and subtracted 0.43 percentage points from the materials fund AXLB, which closed down 1.2% for a fifth straight session. The White House has not decided on refined-copper tariffs, unwinding a premium that had been built for a U.S. levy. Precious-metals miners fell in concert, a median 3.7% across 18 funds.

Apple could not carry the chipmakers

The Nasdaq-100 fund AQQQ fell 1.1%, a third down session, and the technology sector fund AXLK fell 1.4%, the weakest of the 11 sector funds. Apple rose 3.6% a day after it unveiled its first foldable iPhone and was the largest positive contributor to ASPY, adding 0.25 percentage points. Nvidia, at an 8.2% weight, subtracted 0.19 points with a 2.4% decline. Micron fell 4.9%, Intel 5.6%, and Advanced Micro Devices 3.4%. In AQQQ, those four chip names more than erased Apple's lift.

The communications fund AXLC gained 0.6% because Charter, Comcast, Take-Two, and AT&T outweighed a 1.4% drop in Meta Platforms, which is about 19% of the fund. Consumer staples fund AXLP eked out 0.1%. Everything else in the sector set was lower, with a 2.0 percentage point gap from communications down to technology: a broad decline, not a rotation.

Small caps had a worse day than the S&P 500. The Russell 2000 fund AIWM fell 1.0%, a third down session, and is down 4.4% over one month. The Dow industrials fund ADIA fell 0.6%, matching the S&P 500's four-session streak.

The S&P 500 is still 2.8% below its 52-week high, and AQQQ is down only 0.1% over five sessions. This week has been a slow leak, not a washout. Friday's CPI is the test of whether the leak is diesel already sitting in wholesale prices, or energy showing up in the index the FOMC will have in front of it next week.