Wall Street closes lower as oil prices jump, indexes notch monthly gains
By Stephen Culp and Niket
Nishant
Mon August 31, 2026
Last week, investors took some comfort in Warsh’s comments since, even though hawkish, at least provided more clarity. But over the weekend, the markets reassessed the whole inflation outlook getting worse and worse and with today’s spiking oil prices, attributed entirely to the war and reinforcing the bleak inflation outlook, all three indexes dropped like rocks. And dropped right out the gate and stayed there all day. The Nasdaq, down over 250 as late as 3 pm, made an 11th hour comeback mainly due to evidence that AI was still alive and well despite recent weakness.
As today’s expert put it, “There was no reason to come into work today thinking it’s a great day to buy stocks.” The odds of a September rate hike jumped to 65% vs 57% Friday and 35% Thursday. Despite all this, all three indexes still notched gains for the month, the Nasdaq its largest ever % growth for an August and the Dow its fifth consecutive monthly boost. Today’s selloff was sufficiently vigorous that it very nearly matched the average volume of 15.58 billion, closing at 15.65 billion.
DJ: 53,559.99 -9.45 NAS: 26,402.42
-138.93 S&P: 7,711.76
-19.23 8/28
DJ: 53,185.90 -374.09 NAS: 26,370.89
-31.53 S&P: 7,686.14
-25.62 8/31
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