Gilts Broke to Their Highest Since 2008. September Opens Under That Weight.

Monday closed August with equities lower and yields higher. Overnight, the story that started Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz kept running, and this time the break came out of London's bond market first. By the time New York opens the first session of September, futures are pricing all of it at once.

That is the sequence. Not a forecast.

What Monday actually did

Equities finished the last cash session of August below Friday:

• S&P 500 7,686.14, down 25.62 points (-0.33%)
• Dow 53,185.90, down 374.09 points (-0.70%)
• Nasdaq Composite 26,370.89, down 31.53 points (-0.12%)
• Russell 2000 2,956.45, down 15.92 points (-0.54%), session low 2,944.34

VIX finished at 14.92, up 3.4%. Contained, not confirmation, but the tape had a reason. U.S. forces had struck Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island Sunday, and Iran answered Monday with strikes on U.S. bases in Jordan. WTI settled the month up more than 3%, back above $86. The 10-year Treasury yield pushed toward 4.77%, its highest since January 2025. Gold gave back more of last week's spike, futures settling near $4,481.

All three indexes still finished August with a monthly gain. Monday's red candle didn't undo the month. It set up the handoff.

What overnight actually did

Late Monday, the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency reported a tanker had been struck by three unidentified projectiles while exiting the Strait of Hormuz off Oman. No casualties reported, no confirmed cause yet. President Trump told reporters the U.S. is "going to hit them hard." That headline is the oil story. It is not a license to trade the next one before it prints.

The market that actually broke overnight wasn't equities. It was the bond market, and it broke in London first. The UK 10-year gilt yield ran to about 5.22%,