What moved this week and what it means for expats in SE Asia

For two months this page has followed two stories: where American interest rates are heading, and what is happening in the Gulf. A third arrived this week and it beat both. Total US government debt crossed $40 trillion, five months after it crossed $39 trillion. The 30-year Treasury yield reached 5.34% on Tuesday, its highest since 2007. The Treasury responded by buying back more of its own long-dated bonds, in operations above $4 billion, to hold borrowing costs down. Every major American index fell on the week, and the bond market did the damage.

Oil rose for a second week. Brent closed Friday at $94.39, up 6.63%, after President Trump used a Truth Social post to threaten an "economic D-Day": sanctions on any country that continues to trade with Iran. The shipping picture behind that price is worse than this page has previously described it. The 60-day US-Iran arrangement expired on 18 August with no deal. Under it, flows through the Strait of Hormuz peaked at 6.1 million barrels a day, against roughly 15 million a day in 2025. Al Jazeera counted 236 vessel crossings in the first 19 days of August, against a pre-war norm near 130 a day. Five commercial ships were attacked in the strait in the week after the arrangement lapsed, and at least one seafarer was killed. The true volume is unknown, because much of the remaining traffic runs through Omani waters with its tracking switched off. One correction is owed. This page said the strait was running at about half its pre-war volume. By vessel count it is closer to a tenth.

Those are Friday's closing levels, and the Gulf is mid-event as this is published. Brent eased to around $93.50 over the weekend. Iran's president said on 21 August that Tehran wants the war to end soon, and oil barely moved on it, so the risk runs both ways. The US Treasury Secretary sets out the detail of the sanctions on Monday. Read the oil number above as a close, not as a live price.

Britain followed oil for a third straight week, but the larger move was American. The 10-year gilt yield edged up to 5.0561%, about 1.6 basis points on the week. Bank Rate stays at 3.75%. Long-dated government yields are now rising on both sides of the Atlantic. For anyone holding a defined benefit transfer decision, higher yields still mean lower transfer values, and the direction of travel runs against transferring out. Three dates now matter more than the yield does. The Autumn Budget is 65 days away, on 28 October. The window for formal representations to the Treasury closes on 9 September, which is sixteen days. And the statutory deadline for pension schemes with 100 or more members to connect to the pensions dashboards is 31 October, three days after the Budget. Anyone treating late October as the moment to start acting has about two weeks, not two months.

American equities lost the week and recovered on the Friday. The S&P 500 fell 1.43% to 7,674.37, ending a three-week run. The Nasdaq lost 2.05%, the worst of the three. The Dow fell 0.85% and the Russell 2000 1.65%, giving back part of the record it set the week before. All four rose on Friday. Asia reversed: Japan's Nikkei fell 3.95% after last week's record run, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 3.55%. China up, Japan down, the exact inverse of the week before. Gold rose 4.98% to $4,590.51, a third consecutive weekly gain and a three-month high, and this time the buyer was pricing American government debt. The volatility index closed at 15.13, off its low for the year but still pricing very little. Futures markets cut the odds of a September rate rise for a third straight week, to roughly 32%.

The safest asset class in the world had a bad week, and no client statement will describe it that way. American government bonds are what people mean when they say the safe part of a portfolio. This week the 30-year yield reached a 19-year high and the US Treasury started buying its own long bonds back to stop the price falling further. That is worth saying plainly to anyone who assumes government bonds do not move. They have a price, the price moved, and it pulled equities down with it. In a government bond, safe describes who will repay you at maturity. It says nothing about what the bond is worth on the day you need to sell it.

Gold is the second thing worth naming, because it has now traded three different stories in three months. In July it ignored a live war. In early August it bid a soft inflation report. This week it bid American sovereign debt, rising 4.98% to a three-month high. If you hold gold because you are worried about one specific event, six months of evidence now says gold does not price that event. Held as structural ballast, sized to do an unremarkable job across a range of outcomes, it earns its place. Held as insurance against a headline, it keeps failing an exam it was never sitting.

A globally diversified core built through Irish-domiciled accumulating UCITS funds held no view on any of this. It did not need the Hormuz arrangement to hold or to lapse, and it needed no call on where the 30-year Treasury goes next or whether Japan or Hong Kong would lead. That is what structure over selection means in a week like this one. And one thing is already settled and worth acting on well before the Budget: the National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Act received Royal Assent on 29 April, and the £2,000 cap on salary-sacrifice relief lands on 6 April 2029.