Oil prices soar to $108 for the first time since May as bond yields jump

But rising yields may also be attributable to a pledge by Trump on Wednesday night to give a $5,000 “dividend” to all U.S. adults if Republicans retain the House and Senate in November. While details of the pledge remain unclear, it would cost more than $1 trillion and could add to the country’s already significant $40 trillion debt pile.

Rising yields and oil prices sent U.S. stocks tumbling. The S&P 500 fell 0.6%, the Nasdaq composite fell 0.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 350 points.

On Thursday morning, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that wholesale business inflation rose 0.4% from June to July. On an annual basis, the producer price index rose 5.4% from a year ago. PPI is often viewed as an early warning signal for what may happen with consumer inflation, which will be released Friday.

The report was also “worrisome” in part due to where in the economy the price increases had appeared, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG.

“They were heavily in diesel and heating fuel,” she wrote on X. “The latter tends to get into other prices with a lag and can be extremely broad based.”

Concerned with inflation, Federal Reserve policymakers will be closely watching the figure to determine if they should hike U.S. interest rates in their policy meeting next week.

“If inflation comes in hot, I would consider a rate hike,” Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said last week.

But he also said there remained “considerable uncertainty” over how the Iran war, Ukraine war and ongoing trade wars would affect the economy.

But Swonk suggested a rate hike now could help prevent even higher inflation that could require a more dramatic hike down the road. “The longer [the Fed] waits, the more it may have to do in the future,” she said.

One bank that decided not to wait was the European Central Bank, which announced higher interest rates for eurozone countries Thursday. It cited inflation as a trigger behind that decision. The decision came just a day after Europe notched its highest average gas prices since 2023.

“The conflict in the Middle East continues to generate inflation pressures, and inflation is set to remain well above target for an extended period,” the ECB’s governing council said in a statement. The ECB also raised its inflation forecast for the next two years due to the energy shock.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde told reporters that “extended period” meant at least into “the first half of 2027.”

Lagarde said it was not just the Iran war pushing prices higher, either. “The conflict in the Middle East and recent developments in Russia’s unjustified war against Ukraine have pushed the path of energy prices up further,” she said.

“The outlook remains highly uncertain, with risks to the upside for inflation and to the downside for economic growth,” the ECB said.

After the ECB’s rate decision and the PPI data release, market odds for a Fed rate hike next week rose to about 75%.

Sovereign bond yields around the world are also soaring, with Germany’s 10-year bond reaching a new 15-year high Thursday, while 30-year bonds issued by the French government reached highs last seen in 2003.

“If these moves and levels persist, let alone get worse, they will ring alarm bells across most economies,” noted economist Mohamed El-Erian, the chief economic adviser at Allianz, wrote.

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