Wall Street down 0.87% on oil price rise, ECB meeting Thursday
Update on markets since this morning: at the reopening after Labor Day the Dow Jones loses 0.87%, energy rises and the healthcare sector drops 2.24%. Analysts expect a 25 basis point hike from the ECB.
The continuation of the September 8 session came from New York, where markets reopened after the Labor Day holiday.
The Dow Jones lost 0.87 percent, while the S&P 500 traded below the previous day’s levels, around the 7,700-point mark (Teleborsa). The composition of the session tells more about what moved the index than the overall balance does.
| S&P 500 Sector | September 8 Change |
|---|---|
| Energy | +1.77% |
| Utilities | +0.64% |
| Healthcare | −2.24% |
Crude oil as the dominant variable
New tensions in the Middle East have pushed oil prices to their highest since late July, according to Reuters data (Investing.com Italia). Brent rose more than 1 percent, remaining just below $98 a barrel, with WTI at $92.20.
The rise in the energy sector and the decline in the broader index, in the same session, are two sides of the same story: the rise in the commodity’s price rewards those who extract it and squeezes the expected margins of those who consume it.
The two dates markets are pricing in
Analysts expect a 25 basis point interest rate hike at Thursday’s European Central Bank meeting, while the Federal Reserve meeting is set for September 15 and 16 (Teleborsa, Investing.com Italia / OraFinanza). The expectation of a hike is an expectation held by market operators, not an announced decision: this newspaper reports it as such and does not formulate its own forecasts.
Friday’s calendar includes the U.S. inflation data. Crude oil at its highest since late July feeds into consumer prices with a delay, but it does feed in: this is why Friday’s reading is being watched more closely than usual in a week that already contains a monetary policy decision.
An Italian appointment
At 5 p.m. today, Consob will present, in a remote meeting, the report “Capital markets in Italy – Mid-year update 2026,” dedicated to the dynamics of Italian capital markets in the first half of the year, with in-depth analysis on the macro-financial framework, on private equity and private credit, on equity markets and on the evolution of the primary market (Teleborsa). The news currently comes from a single source — the authority’s events calendar as reported by Teleborsa — and has no independent confirmation.
What we don’t know
We do not know the final closing values of the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq: the excerpts report the session’s trend and the Dow Jones balance. We do not know how much of the healthcare sector’s decline stems from the macroeconomic context and how much from sector-specific factors: the sources record the change, not the explanation.
The content of the Consob report is not yet public at the time of writing: the meeting is set for 5 p.m. today.
Sources: Teleborsa, Investing.com Italia (Reuters dispatch of September 8, 2026), OraFinanza based on market data and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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