US and Iran are fighting again and Fed is about to raise interest rates - 7.9.2026

AUD/USD - Investors are buying the Australian dollar because Australian central bank looks likely to raise its own interest rates soon, which makes holding Australian dollars more rewarding. At the same time, people are buying US dollars because of the war worry mentioned above. So these two buying pressures are canceling each other out.

EUR/GBP nothing much is happening here, no real news, so the price is just sitting still.

EUR/USD - Euro is holding steady because people expect Europe's central bank to raise interest rates at its next meeting too. That's giving the Euro enough support to resist the US dollar's strength.

USD/JPY both currencies have their own reason to be bought right now: the dollar because of possible Fed rate hikes, the yen because Japan's central bank might also raise rates (they already stepped in last week to stop the yen from getting too weak). Neither side is clearly winning, so the exchange rate is stuck in the middle.

ASX 200 - Investors are buying energy company stocks because rising oil prices mean more profit for those companies. But at the same time, they're selling stocks that get hurt by rising interest rates. These cancel out, so the index barely moved.

Dow Jones fell on Friday - investors sold shares because the strong jobs report made a Fed rate hike look more likely, and rate hikes are bad news for stock prices.

GB 100 / FTSE 100 also fell Friday: rising oil prices push up inflation worries, and rising bond yields - both make investors less willing to pay high prices for stocks.

Nasdaq has the most tech stocks, and tech stocks are the ones that get hurt most when interest rates might rise. A small number of huge tech companies now make up about a third of the whole US stock market's value, so when investors get nervous, those stocks move this index a lot. That's what happened Friday.

Nikkei jumped almost 2%. Investors were buying Japanese chip and tech companies, SoftBank and Advantest, after strong results from US chip companies last week.

S&P 500 fell on Friday for the same reason as the Dow and Nasdaq — investors sold stocks because of the rate-hike worry, though utilities and basic industry held up a bit better than the rest because they're less affected by interest rates.

Brent Oil prices are rising because investors think there's a real chance oil supply gets disrupted, not just because the news sounds scary. When a country actually starts attacking oil tankers, buyers assume oil might genuinely stop flowing, so they bid the price up now rather than wait and see.

WTI Oil - same story as Brent, fear that fighting in the Middle East will cut off real oil supply.

Bitcoin — BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF has been buying a lot lately, over $700 million in a single day, the biggest daily buying since January. But this buying comes and goes in bursts, a big buying day is often followed by a selling day, so it hasn't been enough to push the price up steadily. Traders are willing to buy when the price dips, but every time the price gets close to $80,000-$82,000, it gets pushed back down, which is stopping people from getting more aggressive with their buying.

Ethereum - investment funds are buying Ethereum too, in decent amounts. For now, it's simply following the same wave of asset buying that's affecting Bitcoin.