Lucky Smart — QAV Weekly Update 2026-09-18

Hi QAVVERS,

The world’s still turn­ing… and burn­ing. Lots of oil refiner­ies and pipelines are burn­ing. My dai­ly brief­ing says satel­lite imagery and three indus­try sources now indi­cate that last week’s attack dam­aged three pump­ing sta­tions on Sau­di Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, rather than the two pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. Three sources said full repairs could require five to six weeks. Anoth­er believes par­tial pump­ing may resume while repairs con­tin­ue. US offi­cials have sug­gest­ed half the capac­i­ty could return with­in days, but who believes any­thing they say any­more?

The Unit­ed States has now issued a 90-day emer­gency waiv­er allow­ing fuel-tanker dri­vers to oper­ate for up to 16 hours with­in a 24-hour peri­od, instead of 14. US diesel has reached a record US$6.29 per gal­lon, up from US$3.74 a year ear­li­er.

Chi­na has also inter­vened diplo­mat­i­cal­ly. After an appeal from Riyadh, Bei­jing pri­vate­ly asked Iran to restrain the Houthis, but it’s hard to see how that would ben­e­fit Iran unless the U.S. and Israel also agree to some of their demands.

Bris­bane diesel is now rough­ly 46 cents per litre dear­er than U91, a dif­fer­ence of about A$28 on a 60-litre fill. The cheap­est report­ed Bris­bane U91 is 211.5 c/L but Fuel­Radar says the area aver­age is 231.2, which is a full cent below the cur­rent Aus­tralian aver­age.

The US House passed leg­is­la­tion that autho­ris­es Trump to impose tar­iffs of up to 100% on coun­tries deemed major con­sumers of Russ­ian ener­gy. Poten­tial tar­gets include Chi­na and India, but also Japan and Euro­pean coun­tries still buy­ing Russ­ian prod­ucts. It also expands sanc­tions on Russ­ian offi­cials and enti­ties con­nect­ed to the war. This could fur­ther hurt Russ­ian rev­enues, but could also push dis­count­ed Russ­ian oil out of the mar­ket, putting more pres­sure on the glob­al sys­tem.

Any­way… let’s talk about the mar­kets.

AUSTRALIAN MARKET UPDATE

The All Ordi­nar­ies slipped rough­ly 1% over the five trad­ing days to Wednes­day, clos­ing around 8,910, extend­ing what has been a dif­fi­cult Sep­tem­ber for the local share­mar­ket, but has rebound­ed today:

• The US Fed­er­al Reserve raised its bench­mark inter­est rate by 25 basis points, its first increase since 2023, cit­ing ele­vat­ed infla­tion dri­ven in part by spi­ralling oil prices.

• The Fed move added pres­sure on the RBA to raise rates at its meet­ing on 29 Sep­tem­ber, with finan­cial mar­kets pric­ing in close to a 90% chance of a hike.

• Brent crude futures pushed to almost US$110 a bar­rel dur­ing the week after fur­ther Houthi attacks on Red Sea ship­ping routes, keep­ing infla­tion and rate-hike fears ele­vat­ed.

• The rate-sen­si­tive share­mar­ket was also pound­ed by a US 10-year bond yield that pushed above 5.02% dur­ing the Asian ses­sion on Mon­day, its high­est lev­el in years.

US MARKET UPDATE

The S&P 500 closed around 7,552 on Wednes­day and was bounc­ing intra­day on Thurs­day, leav­ing the index on track for a down week as the Fed­er­al Reserve’s first rate hike in three years dom­i­nat­ed trade:

• The S&P 500 had fall­en five of the last six trad­ing days head­ing into the Fed deci­sion, with the 10-year Trea­sury yield hit­ting above 5% to 20-year highs, and oil prices con­tin­u­ing to push high­er.

• US equi­ties climbed on Thurs­day, sup­port­ed by a drop in Trea­sury yields and oil prices as well as gains in key tech­nol­o­gy stocks, with the Dow adding 363 points or 0.7% and the S&P 500 up 1.1%.

• Brent crude slipped to around $104 a bar­rel on signs that sup­ply dis­rup­tions in the Mid­dle East are set to ease. But are they? Or is that just the usu­al line the U.S. trots out every few weeks?

So, let’s get into my week­ly updates and see where we are at.

All the Best,
Cam

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QAV MYTH KILLERS

Lucky Smart

In last week’s arti­cle I talked about long-term dou­ble mar­ket returns and whether or not they could just be luck. The sta­tis­tics sug­gest­ed that isn’t the case.

Read the full arti­cle →

STOCK ANALYSIS OF THE WEEK

Aus­tralian Mem­bers can check out the stocks we trad­ed in QAV Aus­tralian Light port­fo­lios this week.

Amer­i­can Mem­bers can check out the stocks we trad­ed in QAV Amer­i­can Light port­fo­lios this week.

Tony did a Pulled Pork on West African Resources (WAF), a gold min­er oper­at­ing in Burk­i­na Faso that is cur­rent­ly post­ing mar­gins above 100% on gold, while car­ry­ing some very real polit­i­cal risk includ­ing what hap­pens to your cap­i­tal if Burk­i­na Faso becomes a pari­ah state. Check out the full episode at the link below.

This week’s Amer­i­can pod­cast pulled pork was on One Main Finan­cial (OMF), a lender focused on the 100 mil­lion non-prime Amer­i­cans the banks won’t touch. Check the link below for the full deep dive.

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BUY LIST

Each week, we pro­duce a buy list based on our val­ue invest­ing sys­tem that we share with our QAV Club mem­bers. The intend­ed pri­ma­ry pur­pose of this buy list is for club mem­bers to use as a ref­er­ence for com­par­ing their own buy list. In the­o­ry, all of our buy lists should look pret­ty sim­i­lar each week.

AUSTRALIAN BUY LIST

QAV Val­ue Invest­ing Buy List (AU) 2026-09-12

U.S. BUY LIST

QAV Val­ue Invest­ing Buy List 2026-09-14

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PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE

We com­pare our per­for­mance to what we think is the most rel­e­vant bench­mark (SPDR 200 in Aus­tralia, S&P500 in the USA), but if you’re new to invest­ing, these com­par­isons might not mean much. Instead, you can com­pare our per­for­mance to the top-per­form­ing Super Funds in Aus­tralia and see why an ama­teur active investor (who has a sys­tem to fol­low) can out-per­form most of the “pro­fes­sion­als”.

We pub­lish a fresh per­for­mance snap­shot once a month. Week­ly noise does­n’t tell you much in a val­ue-invest­ing sys­tem — what mat­ters is the trend.

Sep­tem­ber 2026 per­for­mance snap­shot.

Aus­tralian Mod­el Port­fo­lio: No trades this week.

Amer­i­can Mod­el Port­fo­lio: No trades this week.

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Become a QAV Light Member today and start your investing on the right track

If you want to find out what we’re trad­ing in QAV Light each week, sign up to become a mem­ber. You’ll get an email from me every Mon­day let­ting you know what we’re buy­ing and sell­ing in that port­fo­lio. You can choose to copy our trades or not. It’s the eas­i­est way to start your rules-based invest­ing career… and you don’t even need to know the rules. I’ll fol­low the rules for you. It’s a good first step to even­tu­al­ly becom­ing a QAV Club mem­ber and learn­ing how to run the sys­tem by your­self.

QAV LIGHT: He already knows where they are.

(Note: Amer­i­cans inter­est­ed in join­ing QAV Light or Club please go here instead.)

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Add QAV America — US stocks, the same QAV method

Already a QAV mem­ber? You can add QAV Amer­i­ca as your sec­ond mem­ber­ship at 50% off — US-list­ed stocks, the same QAV approach, billed in AUD through this site (just one pay­ment to keep an eye on). Add QAV Amer­i­ca →

Not a QAV mem­ber yet? Join QAV first, then you can add QAV Amer­i­ca at the 50% mem­ber rate.

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THIS WEEK’S EPISODES

Dogs of Gold: Inside the West African Min­ing Gam­ble: QAV AU #947

OMFG: Lend­ing to the Oth­er 100 Mil­lion Amer­i­cans: QAV Amer­i­ca #70

STOCK NEWS AND UPDATES

COMMODITIES

This week the big changes to com­modi­ties were the fol­low­ing:

Com­mod­i­ty	Sta­tus
Steel	JOSEPHINE

DISCLOSURE

Please review our trad­ing and dis­clo­sure pol­i­cy.

SIGNING OFF

SSDD!

• Cam

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That’s it for the week!

QAV A GOOD SHAREMARKET!

Got a ques­tion? [email protected]