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The quarter ends today. Stocks added about 3% and the “safe” half of a 60/40 portfolio took the real loss, as the 10-year yield jumped 82 basis points. The textbook had it backward.
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September 30, 2026 • Morning edition • No hype, just perspective.
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FINAL DAY — the $1.10 share price ends tonight, September 30th. Strip a company down to five numbers and you learn most of what you need. $1.10 — the current price of one share of Green Coffee Company. $26M — its 2025 revenue, up from $1M in 2021. 3,000+ — retail locations carrying its product across 21 states. 2,000+ — investors already committed. 20% — the maximum bonus shares available depending on how much you invest. 
Put together, those numbers describe a real, growing, revenue-generating coffee business — Colombia’s largest producer, vertically integrated in Colombia, holding the exclusive U.S. and Canada rights to Juan Valdez — that individual investors can own early, with no accreditation required. Here’s the “why now.” Shares are $1.10 until September 30th. After that, the price changes. The company is still private, so liquidity is limited and returns are never guaranteed. Read the full offering, size the position sensibly, and decide before the 30th. Our share price is changing after September 30th. Review the offering before September 30th → Private investments are speculative and illiquid. Returns are not guaranteed. Review the offering circular before investing. Under Regulation A, a company may change its share price by up to 20% without requalifying the offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. |
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The Quarter Rewarded Risk and Punished Safety
The third quarter closes today. Stocks, the part you were supposed to fear, added about 3%. The “safe” part, long Treasury bonds, handed you the real loss as the 10-year yield jumped 82 basis points. For anyone who de-risked in the spring, the quarter ran exactly backward.
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The Scoreboard
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• Stocks held: Through Tuesday, the S&P 500 was up about 3.1% for the quarter, at 7,683.73 from 7,449.36 on June 30. The Nasdaq added 2.5%.
• The Dow didn’t: The Dow actually fell about 1.9% over the quarter, to 51,332.87 from 52,319.20. The gain was narrow, carried by a handful of large tech names.
• Bonds broke: The 10-year Treasury yield jumped from 4.44% on June 30 to 5.26% Tuesday, up 82 basis points, per Treasury data. The 30-year rose to 5.59%, a level last seen in 2007.
• The cost of “safe”: A 10-year note bought July 1 has lost roughly 6% of its price as its yield climbed. Long bonds, the sleeve sold as ballast, fell hardest.
• Today: August PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, lands at 8:30 a.m. ET; July ran 3.7% headline and 3.3% core, per the BEA. Q4 begins tomorrow.
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Details
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The quarter that inverted the textbook
The standard picture of a balanced portfolio is simple. Stocks are the engine and the risk; bonds are the ballast that steadies the ride when stocks fall. You accept a lower return on the bond side in exchange for a cushion. For most of the past forty years, that trade held. This quarter, it ran in reverse.
Start with the engine. From the June 30 close to Tuesday, the S&P 500 rose about 3.1% and the Nasdaq 2.5%. Modest after the spring’s double-digit run, but green, through a Fed hike, a war, and oil that spent weeks above $100. The part of the portfolio you are told to worry about did its job.
One caution on the engine: it was a narrow win. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, thirty blue-chip names with less tech weight, actually fell about 1.9% over the quarter, to 51,332.87 from 52,319.20. The index-level gain came from a small group of large technology stocks. Strip those out and the average American’s portfolio of familiar blue chips likely looked flat to lower, even before the bond damage. The calm on the headline number hid a market that was harder underneath than it appeared.
Now the ballast. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed from 4.44% on June 30 to 5.26% Tuesday. Eighty-two basis points in three months. Because bond prices fall as yields rise, a 10-year note bought at the start of July has lost around 6% of its price; a 30-year bond, whose yield reached 5.59%, lost far more. The steadying sleeve of the portfolio was the sleeve that bled.
Why it happened. Bonds cushion stocks when rates fall in a scare, the usual reflex when growth wobbles. This quarter the fear was the opposite: not that growth would stall, but that inflation and deficits would keep the Fed higher for longer. When the worry is rates themselves, the thing that hedges a stock scare becomes the source of the loss. Stocks and bonds fell and rose together, so the second sleeve stopped being insurance.
Where that leaves you. For a 60/40 holder, the equity side carried the quarter and the fixed-income side gave much of it back. The reflex after a scary spring was to trim stocks and add bonds for safety. That reflex lost money. Bonds still belong in a portfolio, and at a 5.26% starting yield a Treasury bought today pays you far more to wait than one bought in the spring did. The lesson is narrower: know what your “safe” money is actually exposed to, because a long bond carries real price risk when yields move, and duration is its own kind of bet.
That question gets tested at 8:30 this morning. August PCE is the last major inflation read before the Oct. 27–28 Fed meeting. A hot number keeps the pressure on yields and extends the quarter’s bond pain into the next one. A soft number is the first thing in months that would argue the other way. Either way, the fixed-income side of your portfolio, not the stock side, is where it lands first.
The quarter’s safest-looking asset delivered its biggest loss. That is the lesson, and it reprints the moment yields climb again. Q4 opens tomorrow with the answer already moving.
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Harold Winston
Thirty years reading markets for a living.
No hype, just perspective.
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