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While waiting for the outcome of this week’s Federal Reserve meeting, US markets performed well last week.

A huge 30% boost in the price of Oracle shares drove markets up and generated some fresh AI enthusiasm. The database software maker has seen demand for its cloud services increase as AI companies seek the vast datacentres they need to power their technology. Oracle showed off some hefty growth prospects in their annual earnings reports. They actually missed their earnings and revenue estimates, but what got investors really excited was the prospect of 77% growth in cloud infrastructure revenue in 2026. On the back of this, Oracle have set new cloud infrastructure revenue targets of $32bn, $73bn, $114bn and $144bn subsequently over the next four years.

We’ve seen decent returns across various asset classes over the last three months and again in August. Equity markets showed their ability to climb the “wall of worry” despite complex geopolitical tensions, trade policy developments and monetary policy uncertainty.

When the EU signed the dotted line and agreed to a 15% tariff rate with the US, it is fair to say they were not celebrating. However, there was a general view that the worst-case scenario had been averted, and Europe had at least established a measure of certainty.

The yield on 30-year UK government bonds hit its highest rate in 27 years reaching 5.75% on Wednesday. The wider global bond sell-off has seen the rate rise steadily over the last 12 months. Yields dropped down to 5.57% later in the week following increased odds of a US rate cut. We weren’t alone in seeing borrowing costs rise, with yields on 30-year German, French and Dutch bonds rising to their highest level since 2011.

In the US, the week got off to rocky start after Trump announced he was going to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud. Cook said she’ll sue the Trump administration and plans to stay in her role on the Fed’s rate-setting committee. An emergency court hearing on Friday ended without a ruling, kicking off a potential legal battle that could go all the way to the Supreme Court and have serious implications for the US central bank’s independence.

An interview with OpenAI chief Sam Altmann raised question marks about the pace of AI investments and sparked an equity sell-off last week. While comparing the current dynamic to the dot-com bubble, Altmann said, “Are we in a phase where investors are overexcited about AI. My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.” Before going on to add, “When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of Truth”. US markets, particularly the NASDAQ, fell in response but did bounce back on Friday following a speech by Fed Chair, Jerome Powell.