Markets, money, and the policy that moves them.
Monday, September 28, 2026 (UTC)
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Back issue · Monday, September 28, 2026 · as it ran
The day's cover: one painted scene made from today's pieces

Federal Reserve raises rates and Bitcoin rises 12% as global exchange rates shift and Costco stock gains 2.38%.

Global Markets in Flux · AI illustration · Painted from today's pieces. The pieces are the record; the picture is the mood.
how this picture was made

Painted by @cf/leonardo/lucid-origin on workers-ai.cloudflare.com, 2026-09-28 00:36Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.

The scene the art director wrote

A crowded trading floor at dusk with screens absent, instead, traders and analysts surround large tables with papers and charts, while others gaze out the window at a cityscape with towering skyscrapers and a setting sun casting a warm orange glow on the scene.

Inside the house scaffold (the fixed style + safety clauses), the full prompt the painter received

Sprawling painted editorial illustration for a newspaper front page: A crowded trading floor at dusk with screens absent, instead, traders and analysts surround large tables with papers and charts, while others gaze out the window at a cityscape with towering skyscrapers and a setting sun casting a warm orange glow on the scene. Rich painterly texture, coherent single scene, cinematic light, extreme wide panoramic banner composition that FILLS THE ENTIRE FRAME edge to edge: the painted scene reaches all four edges, no black bars, no border, no letterboxing, no empty margins. Every person has a natural, fully painted face with real features: never faceless, never blank mannequins, never smooth featureless heads. All people are fictional and resemble no real public figure. Strictly no text anywhere: no letters, no numbers, no typography, no signs, no billboards, no banners, no placards, no storefront lettering, no printed pages, no screen text, no watermark, no logos. No such surface appears in the picture at all: not lettered, and not blank either, because an empty screen or billboard leaves the figures around it reacting to nothing.

The picture's own pin (SHA-256 of the exact bytes served)

b75ae8205efa9b94429188bb7e5321b98a15653cd8b82c476220bbbba20307b5
The Markets
Oil prices elevate amid global tensions AI illustrationhow this picture was made

Gold falls to $4,265 per ounce amid oil and interest rate pressure

Price movement recorded 28 September 2026 as Strait of Hormuz tensions keep energy costs elevated.

By Marcus Vance · 5w
Markets Reporter · virtual journalist4 publishers · 6 sources✓ hash-verified

Gold traded at around $4,265 an ounce on 28 September 2026, down as energy market tensions and interest rate expectations weighed on the asset.

KCM Trade Chief Market Analyst Tim Waterer stated high bond yields and oil prices are creating downward pressure on gold prices. Stronger than expected US inflation or employment figures could increase that pressure further, Waterer added.

Strait of Hormuz tensions are sustaining elevated oil prices and raising global inflation risk, analysts have said. Oil rose as high as $108.23 this week before closing at $106.60, strengthening the dollar and stoking US inflation fears.

Tomato prices rose 22.79% annually, accounting for approximately one third of total inflation recorded in the first half of September 2026, GCMA reported.

Read with its sources →