DEV Community: Ruslan Averin

Тренды недвижимости и стратегии высокой доходности: Аверин Руслан в разборе на alzanbak.com

Ruslan Averin — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:28:50 +0000

В сентябре 2026 на сайте alzanbak.com опубликован англоязычный разбор ключевых трендов рынка недвижимости и стратегий высокой доходности, в котором цитируется аналитик Аверин Руслан.

Материал описывает, как рост стоимости заимствований охлаждает сделки с односемейными домами, тогда как арендный спрос в крупных агломерациях компенсирует спад покупательской активности. Наиболее устойчивыми к циклическим спадам названы логистические хабы и специализированные складские объекты, а пригородные коридоры с новой инфраструктурой, по мнению автора, дают ранним инвесторам более высокий прирост стоимости, чем центральные районы. Отдельно отмечено, что многофункциональные проекты с зелёными зонами удерживают арендаторов лучше однопрофильных коммерческих зданий.

Аверин Руслан отмечает, что управление активом требует постоянных физических улучшений и своевременного пересмотра арендных договоров, а цифровые платформы с предиктивной аналитикой повышают чистый операционный доход и удовлетворённость арендаторов.

Источник: alzanbak.com. Больше аналитики — averin.com.

Аверин Руслан на портале vwdrive.com.ua: почему портфель 60/40 больше не защищает инвестора

Ruslan Averin — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:25:49 +0000

На портале vwdrive.com.ua в сентябре 2026 вышел материал о выборе инвестиционных стратегий и определении трендов фондового рынка, героем которого стал аналитик Аверин Руслан.

Автор публикации описывает смену эпохи «лёгких денег» периодом высокой инфляции и жёсткой монетарной политики, из-за которой переоценка сильнее всего затронула технологический сектор. В тексте говорится, что классический портфель «60/40» из акций и облигаций уже не защищает от волатильности в полной мере, поэтому нужна более гибкая диверсификация с альтернативными инструментами: ликвидной недвижимостью, облигациями с плавающим купоном и сырьевыми товарами. Отдельно подчёркнута географическая диверсификация как способ снизить валютные и страновые риски.

Аверин Руслан отмечает, что на фондовом рынке предпочтение стоит отдавать компаниям-лидерам с минимальной долговой нагрузкой и сильной ценовой властью, а итоговый результат определяют дисциплина, отказ от импульсивных решений и регулярная ребалансировка портфеля.

Источник: vwdrive.com.ua. Больше аналитики — averin.com.

Портал steelland.org: Аверин Руслан о ликвидности и стресс-сценариях для жилья Одессы

Ruslan Averin — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:23:58 +0000

На портале steelland.org в сентябре 2026 опубликован разбор инвестиций в жилую и коммерческую недвижимость Одессы, построенный на принципах, которые Аверин Руслан применяет в исследованиях распределения капитала. Материал напоминает, что недвижимость остаётся относительно неликвидным активом: продажа крупного объекта занимает значительно больше времени, чем реализация биржевых инструментов, поэтому размер каждой позиции должен соответствовать возможностям и горизонту инвестора. Отдельно разобрана коммерческая недвижимость, где срок договора, эксплуатационные расходы и качество арендатора значат не меньше, чем площадь. Автор рекомендует закладывать в модель три сценария, базовый, оптимистичный и стрессовый, с учётом падения спроса, простоя, внепланового ремонта и роста коммунальных тарифов.

Аверин Руслан отмечает, что корректная доходность считается как чистый годовой денежный поток относительно всего вложенного капитала, а не как арендная плата, делённая на цену квартиры.

Источник: steelland.org. Больше аналитики — averin.com.

Аверин Руслан на портале viewport.com.ua: недвижимость Одессы как доходный портфель

Ruslan Averin — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:18:57 +0000

В сентябре 2026 на портале viewport.com.ua вышел материал о том, как Аверин Руслан предлагает собирать доходный портфель из одесской недвижимости. Публикация рассматривает рынок города как набор разных форматов: доступное жильё под долгосрочную аренду, коммерческие помещения и премиальные апартаменты у моря. Авторы подчёркивают, что покупка одного объекта редко бывает оптимальной стратегией, и предлагают распределять капитал между сегментами, чтобы снизить зависимость от одного из них. Для сравнения вариантов в тексте названы ключевые показатели: ROI, срок окупаемости и соотношение стоимости объекта к потенциальному денежному потоку. Перед сделкой рекомендуется финансовый аудит, который выявляет факторы, способные ухудшить будущую доходность, от переоценки стоимости до недостаточного спроса на аренду.

Аверин Руслан отмечает, что структура такого портфеля должна опираться на бюджет инвестора, горизонт вложений и целевую доходность, а не на вид из окна или близость к морю.

Источник: viewport.com.ua. Больше аналитики — averin.com.

Finland's €290 Million Is Package Number 34: Who Pays for Ukraine's 2027 Budget, and Where the $32.6 Billion Hole Is

Ruslan Averin — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:50:56 +0000

Investment analysis by Ruslan Averin — originally published at averin.com.

Finland's president approved the country's 34th package of defence materiel for Ukraine on 15 September: about €290 million, the second-largest Finland has sent, contents undisclosed, drawn from army stocks and Finnish industry. It takes Finnish military aid since 2022 to €3.6 billion. The same afternoon, in Kyiv, the Cabinet sent the Rada a draft budget for 2027 that needs $52.6 billion from abroad and, by the finance minister's own count, has sources for only $20 billion of it. Our analysts put the two numbers side by side because that is how the war is financed: one country's package at a time, against a hole measured in tens of billions.

The 2027 budget in four numbers

Line	2027 draft	Change vs 2026
Revenues	5.648 trillion UAH, of which 2.493 trillion from international partners	+8.7%
Expenditures	7.271 trillion UAH	+13.5%
Deficit	1.623 trillion UAH, about 15% of GDP	2026: 12%
Defence and security	4.885 trillion UAH, 43.8% of GDP	+517.9 billion
External financing need	$52.6 billion	2026: $52 billion
Domestic borrowing	544.4 billion UAH at about 14.8%	+124.9 billion

Defence takes two of every three hryvnias the state spends: 2.299 trillion on weapons, the rest on pay and support. The Ministry of Defence alone is 66.8% of expenditures. The macro assumptions are 8% inflation, a hryvnia at 48.3 to the dollar at the end of 2027 against 44.63 today, a minimum wage of 9,546 UAH, up from 8,647 in 2026, and VAT raised from 20% to 21%; more than 131 billion UAH of revenue exists only if the Tax Code changes pass. Outlets disagree on the growth assumption, 1.3% in one reading and 4.5% in a "basic scenario" that assumes a significant improvement in security from 2027, which tells its own story about how the document was built.

Serhiy Marchenko, the finance minister, was unusually direct on 4 September: "We are already seeing certain liquidity problems and foresee a certain deficit in our budget", and "we have not had such a situation since 2022". Some non-war payments, shelters and infrastructure among them, may be postponed into next year. "We expect a very difficult winter. Escalation means that we need to find the resources to get through it."

Where 2026's money came from

Source	2026, received or committed	Status
EU Ukraine Support Loan, budget part	€16.7 billion planned; €8.3 billion paid by 11 September; €4.7 billion in processing	on track; about €20 billion expected by year-end
EU Ukraine Support Loan, defence part	€28.3 billion, fully allocated by 11 September, including €6.1 billion on that day for Ukrainian drones and US Patriot interceptors	decided
EU Ukraine Facility	€1.5 billion in March, about €2.8 billion in June; €29.5 billion of €50 billion disbursed since 2024	8th payment expected
G7 ERA loans, $50 billion	$37.9 billion received in 2025; about $7.8 billion more by mid-April 2026	nearly exhausted
IMF EFF, $8.1 billion	$1.5 billion in February, about $0.69 billion in July	second review under way since 31 August
World Bank	$6.29 billion disbursed cumulatively to 31 August; $841 million new commitment on 4 September	continuing
Japan	$850 million budget support through World Bank projects; $6 billion humanitarian and technical	continuing
United States	no new appropriation; about $13 billion of older contracts still delivering; PURL $6.7 billion of US weapons bought by allies in twelve months	allies pay

Through August the general fund had received 569.6 billion UAH in grants and 312.7 billion in partner loans, roughly $19.8 billion at today's rate, against own revenues of 2.29 trillion. The National Bank counted about $54 billion of direct budget support for the year as "sufficient to cover the deficit"; the ministry called the $52 billion need "secured" in May. The gap is not in 2026. It is in the fourth quarter's cash flow, which is what Marchenko's liquidity warning describes, and in 2027, where $32.6 billion has no name next to it.

The Kiel Institute's August release shows the shape of the shift. European allocations in May and June were about €11 billion, €4.3 billion of it military; the largest bilateral military donors in the first half were Germany at €700 million, Denmark €600 million and the Netherlands €500 million, with the United Kingdom giving about €1.5 billion in financial and humanitarian aid. Military aid is running at "just over €2 billion a month" against more than €2.5 billion in earlier years, and monthly financial aid in the first half was 41% below 2025. "Europe continues to depend on the access to US weapons systems to sustain its military support for Ukraine", the institute's Federico Mellace said; more than 90% of PURL deliveries are American-made, bought by Norway ($1.36 billion), the Netherlands ($1.16 billion), Germany ($900 million), Canada ($834 million) and Sweden ($546 million). Finland's package is bilateral and from its own stocks, which is the older model.

The €210 billion that is still sitting in Brussels

The obvious source for $32.6 billion is the one that was rejected in December. About €210 billion of Russian central bank assets are immobilised in the EU, €193 billion of them at Euroclear in Belgium. The plan for a €140 billion "reparations loan" against those balances did not pass; EU leaders instead borrowed €90 billion jointly and lent it to Ukraine interest-free for 2026–27, with Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia opting out. Ukraine has received €6.6 billion from the windfall profits on the assets, which also service the G7's $50 billion ERA loans so that Ukraine does not.

In late August the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden wrote to the Commission asking for a way to use the assets themselves, on the grounds that €90 billion "is not sufficient as the war is intensifying" and that Canada and Japan contributed less than hoped. Belgium's answer has not changed: Prime Minister Bart De Wever calls the Euroclear money "the goose that lays the golden eggs" and wants an uncapped guarantee from all 27 member states before Belgium carries the legal risk; a Russian court has already ordered Euroclear to pay more than €200 billion in damages. Marchenko's proposal is a framework that shares the liability across the whole Union. The European Council in October, which also opens the next long-term EU budget, is the decision point. Without it, the 2027 need is met the way 2026 was: by the EU borrowing more.

Inside the country: bonds, reserves, the rate

Domestic borrowing carries a growing share. Through August the finance ministry placed 343.4 billion UAH-equivalent of government bonds and redeemed 239.5 billion in hryvnia, a net 48.5 billion; the 2027 plan is 544.4 billion UAH at an average of about 14.8%, and last week's auctions cleared at 15.17% for one year and 16.10% for two and a half. Individuals hold a record 163 billion UAH, up from 111 billion at the start of 2025; banks hold 926 billion and the National Bank 656 billion of a stock near 2 trillion. There is no monetary financing: the deficit is covered by partners "without emission", as the NBU Council's Vasyl Furman put it in August, and reserves of $48.7 billion on 1 September, down from $51.2 billion in a month, are the buffer that absorbs the timing gaps between tranches. The NBU still forecasts $69.7 billion by year-end, which requires the EU's fourth-quarter payments to arrive on schedule; nine weeks of dollar sales above $1 billion show what the buffer is being used for meanwhile.

The key rate, 15.5%, is decided again on Thursday. Ratings are CCC at Fitch and CCC+ at S&P after the December 2025 restructuring of GDP warrants, which removed about $20 billion of payment risk to 2041; external commercial debt service is about $0.9 billion a year until the first restructured Eurobond matures in 2029. The private market, in other words, is not where 2027 will be financed. Cumulative international financing since 2022 passed $200 billion this month, more than the country's pre-war GDP.

What the team assessed

Three conclusions. First, Finland's €290 million is real money and the wrong unit. The 2027 external need is $52.6 billion, roughly one Finnish package every two to three days; bilateral packages now matter for what they contain, air defence above all, not for what they add up to. Second, the hole is a European political decision, not a market one: either the immobilised assets are mobilised in October or the EU borrows again, and the hryvnia's 48.3 assumption for the end of 2027 is the ministry's way of saying it expects the second, later and smaller. Third, for a hryvnia saver the sequence is clear. Fourth-quarter liquidity strain means more domestic bonds at 15–16.5% and a central bank that cannot afford to look soft, which is why the 17 September decision leans toward 16%. Analysts note that the state's own promises, from the 2027 pension changes to the 65% rise in teachers' pay, are written in a budget whose external side is 62% unfunded. Our analysts would read every 2027 commitment with that number next to it.

More market analysis by Ruslan Averin at averin.com.

Also available: Русская версия · Українська версія · RFC Capital Research edition.

Kyiv Rents in September 2026: 18,000 UAH for a One-Room Flat, No Autumn Jump, While Uzhhorod and Lviv Rise 33%

Ruslan Averin — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:50:25 +0000

Investment analysis by Ruslan Averin — originally published at averin.com.

Every September since the full-scale invasion Kyiv rents have jumped. Students arrive, families return from summer, displaced people move before the heating season, and landlords reprice by 10 to 20% in three weeks. In September 2026 that did not happen. LUN's median asking rent for a one-room flat in the capital was 18,000 UAH on 10 September, down 2.7% on the month and 0.5% below a year earlier. Two-room flats fell 3.7% to 26,000 UAH. The seasonal spike moved 600 kilometres west, to Uzhhorod and Lviv.

The Kyiv numbers

Segment	Median asking rent, 10 Sept 2026	Month on month	Year on year
One room	18,000 UAH	−2.7%	−0.5%
Two rooms	26,000 UAH	−3.7%	−3.8%
Three rooms	44,200 UAH	−5.0%	+2.2%

LUN's earlier snapshot of 1 September had one-room flats at 19,000 UAH, or $420, down 12% in dollar terms from September 2025, when the median reached 20,000 UAH. The range inside the city is wide. Pechersk asks 38,100 UAH for one room, Holosiivskyi 24,000, Shevchenkivskyi 23,000, Podil 22,000; the mid-market is Solomianskyi at 17,700, Darnytsia and Obolon at 16,000, Sviatoshyn at 15,000; the left-bank dormitory districts are Dniprovskyi at 13,000 and Desnianskyi at 10,000. The biggest annual declines are on the left bank, with Dniprovskyi down 17% for one room and 19% for two, and in Shevchenkivskyi and Darnytskyi, down 11%.

DIM.RIA's separate series, which counts averages in dollars, shows 11,150 active long-term listings in Kyiv on 16 September at an average of $1,200 per flat and $16 per square metre; of 96 micro-districts, 38 fell on the month, 40 were flat and 18 rose. On OLX, one-room rental supply is up 6% year on year while one-room sale listings are down 18%: owners, the portal says, "increasingly choose stable rental income over a discounted sale".

Why the season failed

Svitlana Roshchina, who heads the Kyiv branch of the realtors' association, told Glavcom on 10 September that "the usual autumn surge in demand is absent this year; demand exists, but without the rush that always comes at the start of the academic year". The reason is in the dates. On 1 September a ballistic, cruise-missile and drone attack killed eight people in Holosiivskyi and Darnytsia; on 8 September 32 cruise missiles and 166 drones killed five and injured 35, hitting residential blocks in five districts; on 9 September a nine-storey building in Dniprovskyi and a 24-storey block in Darnytskyi were struck. Tenants, the association says, now avoid the Lukianivka and DVRZ areas, and the centre that once asked $3,000 a month asks $1,000.

The demand did not disappear; it relocated. LUN's analysts told KYIV24 on 4 September that Kyiv landlords "cut prices and are more willing to bargain" while "remote workers and families with children are the most mobile toward the west". LIGA, citing LUN, put the western surge at 33% year on year in dollar terms "after the September shelling of the capital". The 2024 and 2025 Septembers, when Kyiv rose 15–20% on the back of 20–25% growth in student inquiries, were the pattern; 2026 is the exception. The students still came: 222,342 bachelor entrants and 72,489 master's entrants enrolled nationally, 7,835 undergraduates at Shevchenko University and 8,148 at KPI. The 432,900 displaced people registered in Kyiv, a number that has grown 160% since 2022, are still here. What changed is where the marginal tenant is willing to sign.

The map of Ukraine, September 2026

City	One-room median, UAH	Two-room, UAH	Year on year	Source and date
Uzhhorod	29,100	30,300	+40% one-room; +33% in dollars	LUN, 4–11 Sept
Lviv	26,300–26,900	31,400	+31%; +33% in dollars	LUN, 4 Sept
Ivano-Frankivsk	21,500	25,900	from 18,000 in spring	LUN, 4 Sept
Kyiv	18,000	26,000	−0.5% / −3.8%	LUN, 10 Sept
Rivne	12,300	10,000–19,000	+1,000–2,000 UAH	LUN, 14 Sept
Sumy	6,000	—	−25%	LUN, 1 Sept

Uzhhorod is now the most expensive city in the country to rent a one-room flat, 75% dearer than Kyiv, with 43% fewer listings than a year ago. Lviv has gone from about 20,000 UAH in the spring to 26,300; Ivano-Frankivsk from 18,000 to 21,500. LUN's 1 September annual changes for the cities it did not publish levels for were Vinnytsia +34%, Zaporizhzhia +27% and Odesa +15%; DIM.RIA has Odesa one-room at 15,300 UAH in August, up 11%, with 26,100 in Arkadia. At the other end, a realtor in Zaporizhzhia lets one-room flats from 5,000 UAH and describes the city's capacity to absorb newcomers as "a glove that keeps stretching". Kharkiv's LUN figure of 15,000 UAH for 1 September conflicts with a June reading of 9,000 and an OLX median of 7,000 and should be treated with caution.

For readers abroad, Numbeo's September figures for a one-bedroom flat outside the centre are 3,646 PLN in Warsaw, 2,897 PLN in Krakow, €995 in Berlin, 20,931 CZK in Prague and 2,146 RON in Bucharest; Kyiv on the same basis is 15,962 UAH, which Numbeo calls 49.6% cheaper than Warsaw. Uzhhorod at 29,100 UAH, about $650, is now within reach of Krakow.

The landlord's arithmetic

A median one-room flat on Kyiv's secondary market costs $68,500 in September 2026 by LUN, up 5% in a year; the OLX figure is $72,000 and DIM.RIA's average is $89,500, so the series must not be mixed. At 18,000 UAH a month, or roughly $4,800 a year at 45 UAH per dollar, the gross yield on the LUN pair is 7.0%; with the 1 September rent of $420 it is 7.4%. Market practitioners quote 4–6% net in foreign currency and a payback of 10 to 14 years; the National Bank's financial stability report calls price-to-rent and price-to-income ratios "historically low", which is the polite way of saying that prices have lagged rents since 2022. The seven-year doubling of Ukrainian apartment prices has not been matched by rents in the capital.

Item	2026 rule
Individual landlord	18% income tax + 5% military levy = 23%; declaration by 1 May, payment by 1 August
Sole trader, group 3	5% single tax + 1% military levy; social contribution 1,902.34 UAH a month
Bill 15111-д	18% → 5% on declared rental income; passed second reading 9 June 2026; signature and start date not confirmed
Contract registration	via Diia from June 2026, free, about 15 minutes; fines 1,700–3,400 UAH for individuals
Electricity	4.32 UAH per kWh, extended to 31 October 2026; 2.64 UAH for electrically heated homes from 1 October
Declared base	about 900 individuals declared rental income last year; some 56,000 sole traders let property under the simplified system

The last row explains the first. With so few declarations, the state is choosing between a lower rate and a registration requirement, and in 2026 it is doing both. Landlords who rely on displaced tenants also collect on the state's side: the Prykhystok programme pays 450 UAH a month per hosted person, and the displaced themselves receive 2,000 UAH per adult or a rent subsidy where rent exceeds 20% of income.

Rent or єОселя

At $68,500 and 45 UAH per dollar the flat costs about 3.08 million UAH. With 20% down, a 7% єОселя loan over twenty years costs about 19,150 UAH a month, against 18,000 UAH in rent. In June 2026 a city-by-city comparison found renting cheaper in Kyiv by 2,300 UAH a month but buying cheaper in Uzhhorod (rent 21,944 UAH against a 15,700 UAH payment), Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lutsk. September has widened that gap in the west and narrowed it in Kyiv. Kyiv and its region still account for 56% of all programme loans, and the programme's own numbers were covered here on Tuesday. The rate the National Bank sets on Thursday changes none of these payments; it changes what the state pays to subsidise them.

What investors tracked in September

Analysts who follow the Kyiv market note three things. Rents in the capital are flat in hryvnia and falling in dollars for the second year, which caps the yield case at 7% gross and something near 5% net. Buildings with autonomous heating, generators or solar let 20–30% faster and at a premium of up to 30%, a spread that widened in the blackout winter of 2025–26 and will matter again from October. And the western cities, where rents rose faster than prices, now offer the arithmetic that Kyiv offered in 2023. Investors who compared four ways into Kyiv property this month will find that the rental route is the one whose numbers moved least, and not in their favour.

More market analysis by Ruslan Averin at averin.com.

Also available: Русская версия · Українська версія · RFC Capital Research edition.

NBU Rate Decision on 17 September 2026: 15.5% or 16%, and What It Means for Deposits, OVDP, єОселя and the Hryvnia

Ruslan Averin — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:49:55 +0000

Investment analysis by Ruslan Averin — originally published at averin.com.

One day after the Federal Reserve, the National Bank of Ukraine decides. The Board meets on Thursday 17 September and the governor's briefing is at 14:00 Kyiv time. The key rate is 15.5% after a half-point increase on 30 July that most banks did not expect, and the central bank's own forecast has already told the market where it wants to go: 16% by the end of the year. The only question for Thursday is whether that happens now or at the next meeting in October.

What the NBU said it would do

Governor Andriy Pyshnyi on 31 July: "The National Bank's forecast envisages that the key rate could be raised once more to 16% by the end of the year", adding in the same breath that "the forecast has never been and should not be taken as a commitment". The published path from the July Inflation Report is 16% in the fourth quarter of 2026, 16% through the first quarter of 2027, easing from the second quarter to 14% by the end of 2027 and 11.2% by the end of 2028. In April the path had been 15% until mid-2027. The monetary policy committee voted nine to two for the July increase and the majority "expects further tightening in 2026".

Date	Decision	Level	Note
30 January 2026	−0.5	15.0%	first cut since 2024
20 March, 1 May, 19 June	hold	15.0%	three holds
30 July	+0.5	15.5%	vote 9–2; "unexpected"
17 September	?	15.5% or 16.0%	NBU path: 16% in Q4
October, December	—	—	two more meetings in 2026

Analysts who publish a view lean toward the hike. Dragon Capital wrote after the July meeting that it "now expects another 50bp hike in September, to 16.0%, before beginning an easing cycle in 2Q27". ICU's weekly note in early September called a mid-September increase probable. On the other side, Raiffeisen's Serhiy Pecherytsin argued in the spring that the rate could stay unchanged almost to year-end, and Bohdan Danylyshyn, formerly of the NBU Council, wrote on 9 September that August inflation "is mostly cost-driven, logistical, energy-related and administrative. This is not classic demand inflation." The bankers' survey the NBU normally runs before a meeting had not appeared by the afternoon of 16 September.

The inflation that forced the question

Consumer prices rose 8.1% in the year to August, from 7.7% in July and 7.2% in June, the low point. The monthly reading was only 0.1%, but the composition is uncomfortable: fuel up 38.7% year on year after the oil spike in late July, services up 13.4%, administered prices up 13%, transport up 23.8%. Core inflation is also 8.1% and rose 0.5% in the month. The NBU's comment on 12 September said August ran "slightly above the forecast trajectory" of the July report because of fuel and water tariffs. Its year-end forecast is 10%, raised from 9.4%, with 6.9% for 2027 and the 5% target reached only at the end of 2028. Business expectations for the next twelve months are 11.6%.

The monetary policy committee summary put the stakes plainly: "with an inert NBU stance inflation could not only return to double digits quickly but stay there". Against that, the real economy grew 0.4% year on year in the second quarter after a 0.6% contraction in the first, six regions were without power on 16 September after new strikes, and the government's own 2027 budget assumes growth of 1.3%. A central bank tightening into a supply shock is the same dilemma the Fed faces on Wednesday, with hryvnia numbers.

Five instruments, one decision

Instrument	Where it stands, 15–16 September	If 16% on Thursday	If hold at 15.5%
UAH deposits, 12-month index (UIRD)	13.99%; best offers 17.5%	+0.2 to +0.5 points by October	flat; promotional 17–17.5% stays
OVDP, primary auction	1 year 15.17%; 2.5 years 16.10%	15.5–16.5% range; more retail demand	unchanged; Q4 supply rises anyway
NBU 3-month certificates	ceiling = key rate + 3.5 points = 19.0%	ceiling 19.5%	19.0%
New business loans	15.3% average	+0.2 to +0.3 points	flat
Hryvnia	44.63 per dollar; 44.4–44.8 seen to end-September	marginal support	no change; interventions do the work

Deposits are the retail story. The twelve-month hryvnia index moved from 13.77% at the end of 2025 to 14.07% in August and 13.99% on 15 September; the three-month index is 13.78%. Banks are paying up to 17.5% on twelve months at the top of the table. Dmytro Zamotaiev of Globus Bank expects 14.5–16% on nine-to-twelve-month terms this autumn and promotional rates to 17.5%, but says competition "will look less and less like a classic rate race". Interest is taxed at 23%, 18% income tax plus the 5% military levy: 17.5% for six months turns 100,000 UAH into 106,737.50.

OVDP are the alternative, and they are tax-free for individuals. The finance ministry sold 2.01 billion UAH on 15 September at 15.17% for one year and 16.10% for two and a half, the same levels as the week before. Individuals held a record 163 billion UAH of government bonds on 1 September, up 48% since January; the 2027 budget plans 544.4 billion UAH of domestic borrowing at an average of about 14.8%, which ICU reads as modest upward pressure on yields in the fourth quarter regardless of Thursday.

The mortgage that does not move

єОселя is the one rate in Ukraine that the NBU cannot touch. The programme lends at 3% to military personnel, veterans, medics, teachers and scientists and at 7% to displaced people and those without housing, for the first ten years, with the state covering 70% of the down payment and 70% of the first year's instalments for some categories. In 2026 to the week of 8 September it had issued 5,763 loans for 11.4 billion UAH; the latest week alone was 172 loans for 365.3 million UAH, 81 of them at 3%. No source ties the compensation formula to the key rate, so a move to 16% changes the state's cost of the subsidy, not the borrower's payment. The market rate outside the programme is not published, because outside the programme there is almost no market; the new-build repricing described here on Tuesday runs on instalment plans and єОселя, not on bank loans.

Hryvnia: interventions, not the rate

The official rate on 16 September is 44.63 to the dollar and 51.51 to the euro, a 5.1% depreciation since 1 January. The NBU's net sales have exceeded $1 billion a week for nine consecutive weeks, peaking at $1.329 billion in the first week of September before easing 10% to $1.195 billion in the week to 11 September, the first decline in that run; the mechanics were set out here on 14 September. Reserves fell 5% in August to $48.66 billion, four months of imports, and the NBU's July forecast still targets $69.7 billion at year-end on the strength of EU disbursements. Serhiy Mamedov of Globus Bank sees 44.4–44.8 to the end of September with 45 as "a possible upper bound of the cash market in short-term demand spikes". The government's draft budget for 2027, submitted on 15 September, assumes 48.3 at the end of next year, 8% inflation and VAT raised from 20% to 21%; the financing side of that budget is the subject of a separate analysis.

Andriy Shevchyshyn's line from July still holds: the rate decision "should not materially affect the depreciation trend, but it is a factor restraining the weakening of the hryvnia". Thursday's move, whichever it is, will be worth a few kopecks. The $1.2 billion a week is what holds 44.63.

What analyst Ruslan Averin expects

A hike to 16% is the more likely outcome, because the NBU wrote it down in July, inflation has since come in above the path, and the committee's own language leaves little room for patience. A hold would need the Board to accept Danylyshyn's argument that fuel and tariffs are not a monetary problem, which the July summary explicitly rejected. In analyst Ruslan Averin's view the practical consequences are small either way: a saver choosing between a 17.5% promotional deposit and a 16.10% tax-free 2.5-year OVDP is already getting the tightening the NBU wants to deliver, and a hike adds a fraction of a point to both. The larger risks for hryvnia assets sit elsewhere: in the $32.6 billion of unfunded external need in the 2027 budget, and in a winter that the finance minister has called the hardest since 2022.

More market analysis by Ruslan Averin at averin.com.

Also available: Русская версия · Українська версія · RFC Capital Research edition.

Zuckerberg vs Anthropic on an 'AI Slowdown': What the Week of Essays Did to Chip Stocks, Meta and $800 Billion of Capex

Ruslan Averin — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:49:24 +0000

Investment analysis by Ruslan Averin — originally published at averin.com.

In eight days the AI industry has had a resignation, a manifesto, a chorus of co-signatures, a presidential "hoax", and on Tuesday a rebuttal from Mark Zuckerberg that the New York Times headlined as taking aim at Anthropic. The stocks moved before most of it was written. The Philadelphia semiconductor index lost 5.86% on Monday, Oracle is down 28% for the year, and Meta, the company that said no to slowing down, is the one that went up.

I am not going to adjudicate whether an agent swarm can take over the internet in six to twelve months. I hold positions in this sector and my question is narrower: did anything in the last week change what the money is going to do?

The week, in order

Date	Event
8 Sept	Jacob Coxon resigns from Anthropic: labs are "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives"; 90 million views in a day
10 Sept	Oracle guides FY2027 capex to $90–95 billion with a $40 billion raise; ORCL −5.4%, Micron −4.9%, SOX −2.7%
12 Sept	Dario Amodei publishes "We Must Pace the Frontier"; Altman ("I agree with Dario"), Musk ("Dario is right") and Hassabis co-sign
13–14 Sept	LeCun, Sacks, Burry, Palihapitiya and Beijing push back; Jensen Huang at the All-In Summit: "Slowing down is definitely the wrong strategy"; Trump by phone: "It's a hoax"
14 Sept	SOX −5.86%; NVDA −3.4%, AMD −4.4%, AVGO −4.8%, MU −5.3%, TSM −3.5%, SMCI −8.4%, CRWV −6.8%; 10-year crosses 5%
15 Sept	Zuckerberg's post; Alexandr Wang follows; META +0.7% to $670.24, +4.2% over three sessions; NYT: Meta's "Watermelon" model due "in the coming weeks"

The essay is long and more careful than the headlines. Amodei's proposal is that frontier labs "slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models", starting with a unilateral step: third-party evaluators from METR embedded inside Anthropic with employee-like access. He is explicit that "pacing does not mean halting model training or technical progress". The frightening line, the one Fortune pulled, is the 6–12 month horizon for a persistent botnet doing "hundreds of billions of dollars in damage".

Zuckerberg's answer is that each lab paces itself. "Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens." Meta, he said, delayed Muse "for several months to focus on safety and security. We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would." And then the sentence aimed across the bay: committing "the significant majority of compute towards serving people rather than racing towards recursive self-improvement is one of the best ways to ensure we develop this technology safely".

The market got the causality backwards

The tidy story is that Amodei wrote on Saturday and chips fell on Monday. The tape says otherwise. The sell-off began on Wednesday 10 September with Oracle's numbers: fiscal-2026 capex of $55.7 billion, up 162%, free cash flow of −$23.7 billion, a $90–95 billion plan for the year that started in June and $40 billion of new debt and equity to pay for it. That is not a slowdown story; it is a financing story, and it landed in the same week the 10-year Treasury went to 5% and Brent to $108. Bond yields, not essays, set the discount rate on a data centre that pays back in 2031.

Two details confirm it. Cybersecurity stocks rallied on Monday, Okta +5%, CrowdStrike and Palo Alto +4.5%, which is what happens when the market takes Amodei's cyber warning literally. And Meta, the one large model builder that publicly refused to slow down, rose 9.3% in the week from 8 to 15 September while Nvidia fell 6.0%. If the market believed capability progress was about to pause, the company spending $130–145 billion this year on it would not be the winner.

Capex is not slowing, it is being refinanced

Company	2026 capex guidance	Previous	Date
Amazon	$220 billion	$200 billion	30 July
Alphabet	$195–205 billion	$180–190 billion	22 July
Microsoft	~$175 billion (calendar 2026)	$190 billion before accounting change	29 July
Meta	$130–145 billion	$125–145 billion; $115–135 billion in January	29 July
Oracle	~$70 billion net, $90–95 billion gross (FY2027)	$55.7 billion actual FY2026	10 September
Total, midpoints	≈ $800 billion

Every number in the second column was raised in the summer; none has been cut since. Amazon blamed "soaring memory chip prices" for its $20 billion increase, which is why Micron is up 225% for the year even after last week. Alphabet's CFO said 2027 capex will "significantly increase". Consensus for 2027 across the group is $920 billion, Goldman's base case is $1.1 trillion with an upside case of $1.4 trillion, and Morgan Stanley is at about $1.1 trillion. The suppliers confirm it from the other side: Nvidia's July quarter revenue was $96.2 billion, up 106%, with a $108 billion guide for the current quarter; Broadcom's AI semiconductor revenue was $16.7 billion, up 221%, with $21.7 billion guided.

What the essay could change is the mix, not the total. "Pacing" as Amodei describes it shifts hours from training the next frontier model to evaluating the current one; Zuckerberg's version shifts compute from training to "serving people", which is inference. Both are GPU-heavy. The names with the most to lose from a training pause are the ones leveraged to a single customer's training schedule, which is why CoreWeave, down 18.9% in the week and 40% from its high, and Oracle, with $300 billion of OpenAI commitments in the tally, took the worst of it. Nvidia at 17.6 times forward earnings did not.

Follow the incentives, then the revenue

The sceptics' argument is not a technical one. Michael Burry: "Let's all take a moment to understand how self-serving it is for OpenAI, Anthropic and other execs of big hyperscalers to talk of slowing things down." David Sacks: "stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack." The company asking for a speed limit closed a $65 billion round at a $965 billion valuation in May, reported a run-rate of $65 billion in revenue at the end of July, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025, and has filed confidentially for a listing this autumn at a reported $2 trillion target. Its competitor's chief executive co-signed the essay the same day while running a company with $1.15 trillion of compute commitments and a projected $27 billion cash burn this year.

I do not think the cynicism is the whole story, but it is the part an investor can price. A lab that already leads on enterprise usage, Anthropic was in 43.5% of businesses on Ramp's card data in August against 39.7% for OpenAI, benefits from a norm that makes the next model slower for everyone. A lab that is behind, and Meta's Llama 4 was passed by Chinese open models in the spring, benefits from no norm at all. Meta has Watermelon in training at "an order of magnitude more compute than Muse Spark", Connect on 23–24 September, and a paid agent, Hatch, at up to $199.99 a month. Zuckerberg's post is a product announcement in the grammar of a safety debate.

The demand evidence cuts both ways

The bear case on adoption is real and dated. The Census Bureau's business survey has 17–20% of US firms using AI, 37% of those with 250 or more employees. MIT's "GenAI Divide" study, from August 2025, found 95% of pilots produced no measurable profit-and-loss effect within six months. The bull case is more recent and comes from invoices: Microsoft reported more than 30 million paid Copilot seats and a $37 billion AI run-rate; ServiceNow crossed $1 billion of AI contract value; Salesforce's Agentforce is at $1.5 billion of annual recurring revenue, up 240%. Ramp's data has the median firm spending $11.95 per employee per month on AI, and the top 1% $7,400. The distribution is the story: a few companies are already paying real money, most are not yet.

That distribution is what a 5% 10-year punishes. The S&P 500 trades at 19.1 times forward earnings; Palantir at 91.2 and AMD at 45.6 need the adoption curve to steepen on schedule, and the Fed today is not going to help them. Micron at 6.4 and Nvidia at 17.6 need only for the 2026 budgets in the table above to be spent.

What I would do

Own the toll roads, not the racers. Nvidia and Broadcom get paid whether the compute goes to training or to serving; their risk is the financing of customers like Oracle, not the philosophy of Anthropic. I would not buy CoreWeave on the dip, because the thing it is leveraged to, one customer's training cadence, is precisely what the essay proposes to slow. Meta at 20.7 times earnings, up 1.5% for the year after a 9.3% week, is the interesting one: the ad business grew 27% last quarter and the AI spend is now framed as serving 3 billion people rather than chasing a benchmark, which is the framing the market rewarded this week.

In analyst Ruslan Averin's view the week's real lesson is that the AI trade has stopped being about whether the technology works and started being about who pays the interest. That question is answered at 14:00 ET today, not on X.

More market analysis by Ruslan Averin at averin.com.

Also available: Русская версия · Українська версія · RFC Capital Research edition.

Fed Decision Day, 16 September 2026: Three Scenarios for 14:00 ET, With the 10-Year at 5% and a Hike 92% Priced

Ruslan Averin — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:48:53 +0000

Investment analysis by Ruslan Averin — originally published at averin.com.

The Federal Reserve announces at 14:00 ET today, and for the first time since 26 July 2023 the expected word is "raise". Futures price a quarter-point move to 3.75–4.00% at 91 to 93%, sixteen of twenty banks call it, and the 10-year Treasury spent Tuesday above 5% for the first time since July 2007. Kevin Warsh has been chair since 22 May; this is his first meeting where the decision, the dot plot and the press conference all point the same way.

I hold long Treasuries, so I have a view on the outcome and a bigger stake in the reaction. The number that matters to me is not the funds rate. It is what the 10-year does at 14:31.

What is on the table

The target range for the fed funds rate has been 3.50–3.75% since the 10 December 2025 cut. The Committee held five times in 2026, and the votes tell the story of the drift: 10–2 in January with Miran and Waller wanting a cut, 8–4 in April with the most dissents since 1992, 12–0 at Warsh's first meeting in June, then 9–3 in July with Hammack, Kashkari and Logan voting to raise. The July minutes said "several" participants thought "policy tightening would likely be necessary if inflation did not decline". It did not.

Indicator	June SEP assumption	Latest print	Direction for the Fed
PCE inflation 2026	3.6%	3.7% y/y (July)	above
Core PCE 2026	3.3%	3.3% y/y (July)	on target
CPI headline	—	3.4% y/y, +0.4% m/m (Aug)	sticky
CPI core	—	2.4% y/y, +0.3% m/m (Aug)	lowest since 2021
Energy CPI	—	+16.3% y/y; gasoline +27.4%	shock
Unemployment 2026	4.3%	4.1% (Aug), payrolls +162,000	stronger
Brent	—	$108.75 settle, 15 Sept	+20% in September
10-year Treasury	—	5.041% high, ~5.00% close	highest since 2007

The awkward part is visible in the second and fourth rows. Core inflation is at a five-year low, headline is stuck at 3.4% because of oil, and the Saudi East-West pipeline has been shut since 11 September with no restart date. A central bank is not supposed to raise rates into a supply shock. This one is being asked to, because the bond market has already decided that 3.5% with $108 oil and a 3.7% PCE is not a restrictive setting. Mark Cabana at Bank of America put the choice bluntly: hike "or risk a disorderly selloff at the long end".

Three scenarios for 14:00

The rate is the smaller of today's two decisions. The larger one is the Summary of Economic Projections. In June the median dot for end-2026 was 3.8% and for end-2027 3.6%, with nine of eighteen participants already above the current range. The market has moved far past that: 4.18% implied for the December meeting, about 56 basis points across the next three, and a path toward 4.4–4.6% in 2027.

Scenario	Probability	Statement and dots	2-year	10-year	Dollar and gold
A. Hike, hawkish dots	~85%	+25bp; 2026 median 4.1% or above; 2027 raised; "further firming may be appropriate"	up 5–10bp	flat to lower; curve flattens	DXY above 100; gold toward $4,250; EUR/USD ~1.148
B. Hike, one and done	~7%	+25bp; 2026 median 3.9%; Warsh stresses supply shock and patience; Waller dissents	down 10–15bp	up; curve steepens	Dollar softer; gold $4,400–4,450; bitcoin $79,500–82,000
C. Hold	~8%	No change; hawkish trio dissents; statement promises action "if inflation does not decline"	down sharply	up 10bp or more on credibility	Dollar weaker; gold above $4,500; EUR/USD 1.165–1.17

The probabilities are my reading of the FedWatch numbers, the Robinhood prediction market (88 cents on a hike, 15 on a hold) and the bank calls; the market levels in the last column are the ranges FXEmpire published on 15 September for the same three cases. Scenario B is the one Robin Brooks of Brookings had in mind when he wrote that "there's no way he can live up to all the hikes priced, so the press conference will likely disappoint markets". It is also the scenario Goldman is implicitly in: a hike today, but still two cuts pencilled for 2027.

Why the long end, not the funds rate, is the trade

For a mortgage borrower, a homebuilder or a holder of long bonds, the funds rate is a rumour and the 10-year is the fact. Freddie Mac's weekly average was 6.76% on 10 September; Mortgage News Daily's daily index went 7.07%, 7.12%, 7.17%, 7.22% over the four sessions to Tuesday, the highest since January 2025. Lennar reports about two hours after the statement and will have to guide its November quarter against those numbers; I wrote up that setup yesterday.

Here is the part that is counter-intuitive and, in my experience, usually right. Scenario A, the hawkish hike, is the friendliest outcome for the long end. A Fed that raises and signals more takes inflation premium out of the 10-year and puts it in the 2-year; the curve flattens and the 30-year at 5.36% gets a bid. Scenario C, the hold, is the one that hurts: the 2-year rallies, but the 10-year sells off on credibility, exactly what Deka's Joachim Schallmayer told Handelsblatt this morning ("if the Fed does not act, uncertainty remains and long-term rates keep rising"). Der Aktionär's framing for the DAX is the same: resolve flattens the curve and supports exporters; reluctance steepens it and puts the index's 25,170 support at risk.

That is why I am not hedging the long Treasuries into the meeting. The outcome I fear for them, a dovish surprise, is also the outcome the Fed has spent three weeks steering the market away from. Warsh at Jackson Hole: "We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do."

What the tape says before the bell

Europe is trading the DAX view. The index closed at 25,402 on Tuesday, opened higher and sat at 25,459 at midday, up 0.2%, with the Stoxx 600 up 0.4% for its first gain in three sessions. S&P 500 futures are up 0.2% at 7,675 after Tuesday's close of 7,585.73, the sixth loss in seven sessions; VIX is 16.96. The dollar index is 99.65, EUR/USD 1.1539 and below its 100-day average, USD/JPY touched 155.43 overnight. Gold is $4,339 spot, up 1.3% from a $4,291.60 settle; the three-week slide from $4,603 that I described on Tuesday has paused, not reversed. Brent is $107.93 after the API reported a 7.1 million barrel build in US crude stocks; bitcoin is $75,800, down 1.5%.

The 2-year is 4.66%, the 10-year 4.99%. Thirty-three basis points of curve is the whole argument in one number: the market thinks the Fed goes to 4.5% and stops, and it wants a term premium on top of that for the deficit and the oil.

What history says about the day and the quarter

Fed days are not as dramatic as they feel. Since December 1999 the S&P 500 has moved +0.23% on average on decision days and finished higher 52.6% of the time; the average move in either direction is about 2%, versus 1.25% on other days. The last hike, 26 July 2023, produced a close of −0.02% on the S&P 500 and a 10-year at 3.887%, "little changed". The December 2015 lift-off gave stocks +1.5% on the day. The March 2022 first hike saw the indices give back most of their intraday gains after the statement and rally during the press conference.

The quarter after is a different matter. Goldman's Ben Snider counts seven hiking cycles over twenty years with an average 2% decline in the S&P 500 over the first three months; Schwab's series since 1946 gives an average six-month drawdown of 12.2%. The index is up 10.8% for 2026 on a forward P/E of 19.1 with earnings growth of 31.6% pencilled in for the calendar year. A 4% funds rate does not break that. A 5.5% 10-year would.

The rest of the week

Today is not the only decision. NAHB's builder index prints at 10:00 ET, four hours before the Fed; the August reading was 35. Lennar reports after the close with consensus EPS of $1.30 against $2.00 a year ago. Housing starts for August come on Thursday morning. The Bank of England decides on Thursday with Bank Rate at 3.75% and a hold as the base case, roughly a one-in-three chance of a hike. The Bank of Japan decides on Friday at 1.00%, with a rise to 1.25% about 63% priced. The National Bank of Ukraine meets on Thursday at 15.5%, having surprised with a hike in July. The ECB already moved on 10 September, its deposit rate to 2.50%, and said "inflation is set to remain well above target for an extended period". A synchronized tightening in a supply shock is the macro backdrop for everything from Treasuries at 5% to the AI capex debate.

What I would do

Nothing before 14:00, and nothing at 14:01. The first print of the statement moves the 2-year; the dot plot table, posted at the same minute, moves the 10-year; the press conference at 14:30 moves everything again. In analyst Ruslan Averin's view the useful discipline on a day like this is to decide in advance which of the three scenarios changes a position and by how much. For my long Treasuries the answer is: A, nothing; B, trim a quarter on the steepening; C, buy the sell-off, because a Fed that holds today hikes 50 in October.

More market analysis by Ruslan Averin at averin.com.

Also available: Русская версия · Українська версія · RFC Capital Research edition · How to choose a strike and expiration before a Fed day.

Ukraine New-Build Prices Autumn 2026: +7–10%, eOselya 11.7bn UAH, Cheapest One-Room Flats

Ruslan Averin — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:15:44 +0000

Investment analysis by Ruslan Averin — originally published at averin.com.

Ukraine's primary housing market goes into autumn with three numbers that point the same way. Developers expect finished flats to gain 7–10% per square metre in September–October and early-stage projects 3–5%. The state mortgage programme eOselya has lent 11.7 billion hryvnia since January, with 100 of last week's 146 loans going to new-builds. And on 15 September parliament passed, at first reading, a bill that lets displaced families add a mortgage to a housing voucher. Demand is being subsidised into a market whose costs are rising.

Investors tracking the Ukrainian market will want the detail rather than the headline, so this note sets out the cost side, the price side by city, the state credit flow week by week and the widening gap between the cheapest and the dearest one-room flats in the country.

Why the autumn repricing

The argument comes from the cost side. Marianna Bihunets, commercial director of the developer GAZDA, told 24 Kanal on 15 September that construction cost per square metre in the western regions has risen about 10% in the first eight months of 2026, that imported materials from Poland and the Czech Republic cost 10–15% more than Ukrainian ones which are being substituted, and that developers are building 2027 financial models on 47–48 hryvnia per dollar and 15–20% cost growth. Her forecast: "In September–October the average price per square metre in the most popular new-builds may rise by at least 3–5%", and for finished complexes "individual flats there may add 7–10%".

The official statistics agree on direction. The State Statistics Service's index of construction prices, as tracked by Minfin, rose every month of 2026: 1.1% in January, 1.8% in February, 9.4% in March, 3.1% in April, 1.9% in May, 1.5% in June and 1.2% in July, a cumulative 21.5% by July against 5.6% for the whole of 2025. The August reading is not yet published. The hryvnia was 44.62 to the dollar on 15 September; the NBU's key rate has been 15.5% since 30 July, with the next decision on 17 September.

What a square metre costs now

City	Segment	Price per m², UAH	Change
Kyiv, September 2026 (LUN)	average minimum, all classes	59,400	+8.4% year on year
Kyiv	economy	37,000	−6.6%
Kyiv	comfort	54,900	+17.8%
Kyiv	business	80,700	+11.9%
Kyiv	premium	143,400	+4.4%
Kyiv, September 2026 (DIM.RIA)	average	55,849	range 32,741–211,770
Lviv, June 2026 (LUN)	comfort / business	61,600 / 69,700	+23% / +20%
Odesa, June 2026 (LUN)	comfort / business	38,100 / 57,600	+2% / +27%
Dnipro, June 2026 (LUN)	comfort / business	~41,000 / ~53,000	+15% / +10%

Two patterns stand out. Comfort class is where the price growth is, up 17.8% in Kyiv and 23% in Lviv, while economy class in Kyiv has fallen 6.6%. And the premium for a finished flat over one due for delivery by year-end is 20–30%, widening to 50–60% against projects scheduled for 2027. GAZDA expects 60–70% of active buyers in September–October to look for finished or nearly finished stock, and puts more than half of potential buyers in the western cities of Lviv, Uzhhorod, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lutsk and Ternopil.

eOselya: 11.7 billion hryvnia and counting

The state programme is now almost the entire Ukrainian mortgage market: 93–97% of new mortgages by bank and NBU survey counts, because commercial rates outside eOselya run from 16.99% to 20–23% with a 20% down payment. Inside the programme the rate is 3% for military, medics, teachers, scientists and security personnel and 7% for veterans, displaced people and families without housing, rising to 6% and 10% from the eleventh year, on loans up to 5 million hryvnia for up to 20 years.

Weekly report	Loans	Million UAH	Loans since January	Billion UAH since January
28 July 2026	141	278.0	4,815	9.4
3 August	164	340.0	4,979	9.7
10 August	117	258.6	5,096	10.0
17 August	157	327.6	5,253	10.3
7 September	172	365.3	5,763	11.4
15 September	146	308.0	5,909	11.7

Last week's 146 loans were 100 on the primary market, 61 of them in buildings still under construction, and 46 on the secondary market; 81 borrowers took the 3% rate, 38 of them military and 30 veterans, and 65 took 7%, 47 of them families without housing and 18 displaced people. Kyiv region took 61 loans, Kyiv city 15 and Lviv region 13. The average loan works out at about 2 million hryvnia. Since October 2022 the programme has financed more than 28,000 families for 50 billion hryvnia; 43.7% of borrowers were aged 26–35, and Kyiv region and Kyiv city together account for just over half of all lending.

Bill 15335: vouchers plus mortgages

On 15 September the Verkhovna Rada voted 278 in favour of bill 15335 at first reading. It amends the laws on mortgages, property registration and notaries so that a displaced person from occupied territory, under Cabinet resolution 1176 of September 2025, can combine a housing voucher of up to 2 million hryvnia with a bank loan and pledge the purchased home as collateral. Resale and refinancing would stay prohibited except for foreclosure by the lender. War veterans and people disabled by the war come first.

The scale of the queue explains the vote. By July 42,987 families had applied for vouchers, 35,173 had been approved, and 3,296 had been funded for 6.59 billion hryvnia, with 3,228 purchases completed. The programme's need is put at 64 billion hryvnia; the Council of Europe Development Bank is contributing 80 million euros in two tranches, the first this September, enough for roughly 2,000 vouchers. In the large cities a voucher alone does not buy a flat, which is why the right to top it up with a mortgage matters. The bill still needs a second reading.

The cheapest and the dearest one-room flats

The regional spread is the widest it has been. By LUN's medians reported on 15 September, a one-room flat on the secondary market costs $74,500 in Lviv, up 16% in a year, and $72,000 in Kyiv, up 5%. Uzhhorod, Lutsk, Vinnytsia and Rivne sit at $56,700–60,600; Chernivtsi and Ternopil at $54,000–55,000 after rises of 28%; Ivano-Frankivsk about $45,000 and Khmelnytskyi about $42,000.

Then the map breaks. Dnipro is $32,000, down 8% in a year. Sumy is $24,900, Kharkiv $23,500–24,000, up 7%, Mykolaiv $23,500 and Zaporizhzhia $16,900, the lowest median among the regional centres. Sloviansk and Kramatorsk list at $3,000–14,000. DIM.RIA's regional averages for August tell the same story from the other end: Kherson region $15,500, down 9% in a month, Zaporizhzhia region $17,500, Mykolaiv region $20,000, against Kyiv city at $89,500 and Lviv region at $81,000, with Cherkasy, Chernivtsi and Zakarpattia regions posting the largest monthly gains at 7–10%.

The extreme is a house. UNIAN reported on 15 September a three-room village house of 50 square metres on 16 sotkas near the Dniester in Onut, Chernivtsi region, listed for $3,000; other houses in the region list at 5,000–12,500 euros, mostly old stock without gas, with a stove and a well. In the city of Chernivtsi itself the average private house is about $140,000.

What the numbers say together

Analysts reviewing the September data read it as a market splitting in three. In the western cities and Kyiv, subsidised credit and rising build costs push finished new-builds up 7–10% while economy-class stock stagnates. In the frontline regions prices are flat or falling in dollars, and a state voucher, once bill 15335 passes, becomes the only bridge to a purchase. And between them sits a state programme lending about 300 million hryvnia a week at 3–7% in a country where the central bank rate is 15.5%, which is why comfort-class new-builds in Kyiv have gained 17.8% in a year while the hryvnia has been defended with $1 billion a week of NBU dollar sales.

In analyst Ruslan Averin's view the autumn repricing is real for finished stock and marginal for the pit stage, where the 50–60% discount to completed flats already prices the 2027 cost inflation developers are quoting. A buyer with eOselya eligibility is paying 3–7% for money that costs the market 17–23%; the arithmetic of that subsidy is larger than any 7–10% autumn move.

More market analysis by Ruslan Averin at averin.com.

Also available: Русская версия · Українська версія · RFC Capital Research edition.

Super El Niño 2026: Sugar, Rice, Palm Oil Priced; Cocoa and Coffee Not Yet — Stocks, ETFs

Ruslan Averin — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:15:13 +0000

Investment analysis by Ruslan Averin — originally published at averin.com.

The US Climate Prediction Center's weekly update on 14 September 2026 printed the Niño-3.4 sea-surface anomaly at +2.0°C, the line above which an El Niño is classed as very strong, and raised the probability of a 'historic' event, one exceeding every El Niño since 1950 in the October–December season, to 75% from 69% a month earlier. The subsurface Pacific is running more than 10°C above average at depth. The WMO on 3 September said it had never issued an update 'so unequivocal'.

Our analysts have been asked the same question by three clients this week: what does one buy. The honest answer is that the markets that respond first to El Niño have already moved, the markets it hurts most have not, and the difference is a matter of which crop year is exposed. This note sets that out commodity by commodity, with the equities on either side.

What is happening in the Pacific

The Oceanic Niño Index went from −0.4°C in the December–February season to +1.8°C in June–August. The traditional weekly reading crossed +2.0°C on 14 September, with the eastern Pacific Niño-1+2 region at +3.7°C. The WMO's seasonal ensemble has the September–November mean near +3.6°C, with a peak in November–December and near-certain persistence into February 2027. The benchmarks are 1982–83 at a peak ONI of +2.1°C, 1997–98 at +2.4°C, 2015–16 at +2.6°C and 2023–24 at +2.0°C.

The last of those is the useful analogue for prices. The 2023–24 event drove cocoa to a record $12,646 a tonne in December 2024, raw sugar to 28.14 cents a pound in November 2023, the highest since 2011, India's rice export ban of July 2023 and the first cancelled anchovy season in Peru's history. The 2015–16 event cost the world economy an estimated $7.8 trillion in lost productivity on a Dartmouth study. Munich Re's chief climate scientist Tobias Grimm called the current setup "a dangerous mix: as global warming continues, the world is also heading for a Super El Niño".

Who gets drought and who gets flood

Region	Effect	Commodities exposed	Status, September 2026
Indonesia, Malaysia	drought, fires	palm oil, robusta, cocoa	fires visible on satellite; palm stocks at 8-month high
India, Thailand	weak monsoon	rice, sugar, pulses	monsoon 14% below normal; India importing sugar
Australia east and south-east	dry spring	wheat, barley, canola	USDA raised wheat to 31 million tonnes on the current crop
Vietnam Central Highlands	dry	robusta	exposure is the 2027/28 flowering
West Africa	variable	cocoa	2026 problem so far is excess rain and black pod
Peru, Ecuador coast	floods, warm water	anchovy, fishmeal	anchovy quota cut 36% to 1.9 million tonnes
Southern Brazil, Argentina	wet	soybeans, corn benefit; sugar harvest disrupted	Conab has Brazil sugar down 2.9%
US southern tier	wetter winter	winter wheat southern edge	Atlantic season: 0 hurricanes by 10 September

Rabobank's Carlos Mera made the point that matters for a portfolio: "The mistake would be to treat El Niño as a single weather story. Procurement teams need to map it commodity by commodity and origin by origin."

Already in the price: sugar, rice, palm oil

Sugar is the cleanest El Niño trade of 2026 and it has largely happened. Raw sugar rose 21.5% in August, the largest monthly gain since October 2010, after India, which with Brazil and Thailand supplies about 70% of exports, moved to import 1 million tonnes duty free for the first time in about a decade; Indian domestic prices rose about 40% in two months. The contract sits near 18 cents, a 17-month high, up 12.6% for the year; the FAO's sugar sub-index jumped 11.9% in August alone. The International Sugar Organization has a 2026/27 deficit near 260,000 tonnes. Citi calls sugar its highest-conviction bullish setup in agriculture with a three-month target of 19 cents.

Rice has moved with the monsoon. Rainfall over India from 1 June to 31 August was 13.8% below normal, August alone 16% below, and the southern peninsula 27% short by 7 September. USDA's September report cut India's milled rice crop to 147 million tonnes from 154 and noted the first year-on-year fall in ten years; world rice output is 533.9 million tonnes. Thai 5% broken rice is $483–485 a tonne, Indian parboiled at a one-year high, and CBOT rough rice is up 35% in 2026, the highest since July 2024.

Palm oil is up about 10% for the year and gaining on the narrative, Indonesia's B50 biodiesel mandate plus El Niño, but Malaysian stocks rose 7.5% in August to 2.82 million tonnes, an eight-month high, which caps the near term. The 2015–16 precedent is that palm output falls with a six-to-twelve-month lag, so the production hit belongs to 2027.

Not yet in the price: cocoa and coffee

Cocoa is down 19% in 2026 and arabica coffee 30%. Both are unwinding record highs, both carry rising exchange stocks, cocoa at a two-year high of 3.44 million bags, and both are exactly where the El Niño risk is largest, because West Africa and Ecuador supply about 70% of cocoa and Brazil, Vietnam and Indonesia the bulk of coffee.

The cocoa balance is already tightening under the price. StoneX has cut its 2026/27 surplus from 267,000 tonnes in January to about 25,000 in August. Ivory Coast's main crop is seen at 1.35–1.45 million tonnes against about 1.6 million, with more than 20% of flowers and cherelles lost to excess rain in May–June; Ghana's COCOBOD expects a 16% decline; forward sales slowed on El Niño concern. Citi's third-quarter view was a return to $6,000 within a year if El Niño damages the West African crop. Every significant El Niño in 55 years has cut cocoa output. Hershey has guided to "good visibility into cocoa deflation for next year" with a 41.6% gross margin; Mondelez has a $500 million cocoa charge in its 2026 guide. Those are the equities on the wrong side of a 2027 cocoa shortage.

Coffee is the more ambiguous case. Brazil's 2026 crop is a record 66.7 million bags, arabica 45.8 million, and August exports were up 45%, which is why arabica is at 286 cents from a 52-week high of 432. Against that, ICE certified arabica stocks are at a 27-year low of 223,712 bags, and the September–October flowering sets the 2027 crop. StoneX's Leonardo Rossetti cautions that "El Niño has coincided with both higher and lower Brazilian coffee output in past seasons". Robusta, where Vietnam's dry season is the exposure, nearly doubled year on year by August on Rabobank's count. Starbucks and Keurig Dr Pepper have a cost tailwind now and a 2027 risk.

Grains: the rally is not El Niño

Wheat is up 36% in 2026 and hit a three-and-a-half-year high of $7.67 on 28 August; corn is up 24% and soybeans 25%. Our analysts would not attribute that to the Pacific. USDA's September report raised world wheat ending stocks to 276.3 million tonnes on larger crops in Russia, Australia and Ukraine, and raised Australia by 3 million tonnes to 31 million on "very favorable conditions". The wheat move is Black Sea logistics and US heat. Corn is the one grain with a real cut: US yield down to 178.5 bushels an acre, stocks to 1.567 billion, world stocks to 272.1 million tonnes with India reduced on the monsoon. FAO's August index was 133.3, up 1.9% on the month, and its chief economist Máximo Torero said it was "a warning that the risk premium is returning to food markets".

The equities

Exposure	Names	Direction
Processors, traders	ADM, Bunge	earn on volatility and spreads
Nitrogen fertilizer	CF Industries, Nutrien	farmers protect yield; urea already up on lost Iranian exports
Potash	Mosaic	lags in dry sowing conditions
Protein	Tyson, Hormel	feed costs up with corn, soy, fishmeal
Cocoa cost-takers	Hershey, Mondelez, Lindt, Barry Callebaut	2027 shortage risk against current deflation guidance
Coffee cost-takers	Starbucks, Keurig Dr Pepper, JDE Peet's	tailwind now, 2027 flowering risk
Sugar producers	São Martinho, Adecoagro, Shree Renuka	already re-rated in August
Natural gas	APA, EQT, Range, EOG	warm US winter is bearish for demand
Insurers	Allstate, Progressive, Travelers	quiet Atlantic; H1 insured losses lowest since 2020
ETFs	DBA, MOO, CORN, WEAT, SOYB, CANE	broad or single-crop

The team's view

The team assesses the trade in three layers. The first, sugar and rice, is done for now; the entry was August and the remaining upside is a September monsoon below 91% of normal, which the Indian Meteorological Department forecasts. The second, palm oil and nitrogen, is a six-month position with the Malaysian stock build as the near-term headwind. The third, cocoa and coffee, is where the asymmetry is: prices down 19–30% for the year, exchange stocks high, and a very strong El Niño arriving at the flowering of the crops that set 2027 supply. That is the layer where analyst Ruslan Averin would spend the risk budget, in the cost-takers' put options rather than in the futures, because the futures need the weather to arrive and the confectioners' guidance only needs it to be feared.

The macro overlay is the same one that runs through oil and gold this week: food inflation returning while the Fed is raising rates. FAO's index turned up in August; the sugar sub-index alone added 11.9%. A central bank fighting energy prices does not need a second front in food.

More market analysis by Ruslan Averin at averin.com.

Also available: Русская версия · Українська версія · RFC Capital Research edition.

Gold Is Below $4,300 the Day Before the Fed Hikes: 23% Off the January Record, Three Weekly Declines, Real Yields at 2.63%. Where the Floor Is

Ruslan Averin — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:14:29 +0000

Investment analysis by Ruslan Averin — originally published at averin.com.

Gold traded at $4,285 an ounce on 15 September 2026, below $4,300 for a second day and at its lowest since early August, with the Fed's first rate increase since 2023 due at 2:00 pm New York time on Wednesday. Three straight weekly declines have taken about 5.5% off the price since the 21 August close at $4,603. From the record of $5,589 on 28 January the drawdown is 23%, and for the year gold is now marginally negative against its end-2025 close of $4,315.

I have held gold through the whole 2026 round trip and wrote up the record in June and the miners. This is the pre-Fed note: what has actually moved the price, who is buying and who is selling, where the technical floor is, and what the banks think the number is on the other side of Wednesday.

The three weeks

Week ending	Spot close	Move	What happened
14 August	$4,373	+0.5%	weak retail sales cut hike odds to 29%
21 August	$4,603	about +5%	third weekly gain, dollar index below 99
28 August	$4,456	−3.1% on the Friday	Warsh at Jackson Hole revives the September hike
4 September	about $4,423	mild decline	payrolls +162,000 against +53,000 expected
11 September	$4,348	−1.8%	PPI 5.4%, CPI core +0.3%, hike odds 87%
15 September, intraday	$4,285, low $4,263	−1.5% from Friday	oil above $105, 10-year at 5%, hike odds 92%

Every leg down has the same shape: a data point that raised the probability of a Fed hike. The path of that probability on CME futures runs from 29% on 14 August, to 36% before Warsh's speech, 58% after it, 65% after payrolls, about 60% on 10 September, 87–90% after the CPI on 11 September, and 92–93% on 14–15 September. Gold's chart is that series inverted.

The mechanism is the real yield, not the dollar

The variable that explains the 23% drawdown in one number is the 10-year inflation-protected Treasury yield. It was 1.90% on the day gold made its record in January. It was 2.41% on 14 August. On 15 September it was 2.63%, after the nominal 10-year touched 5.04%, the highest since 2007. A 70 basis point rise in the real return on the risk-free asset is the price of holding an asset that pays nothing, and gold has paid it.

The dollar is the secondary driver this time. The dollar index was 99.3–99.6 on 15 September, an over-one-week high on its fourth straight gain, but it is roughly where it was in mid-August and only about 1% above the sub-99 level of 21 August when gold peaked. Anyone attributing the fall to the dollar is reading the wrong chart.

Oil is the trigger, and here the inflation-hedge argument has failed the way it usually does. Brent went from $88 in mid-August to $108 after the shutdown of Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline on 11 September. In theory that is bullish for gold. In practice, as UBS's Giovanni Staunovo put it on 14 September, "the renewed rise in oil prices could reinforce inflation concerns and keep the Fed on a hawkish footing". Jim Wyckoff said the same on the same day: higher crude "suggests the major central banks of the world are going to have to tighten their monetary policies to control inflation, and that's bearish for the metals". The ECB has already raised its rate to 2.50% on 10 September; the Bank of Japan is expected to move on Friday.

Who is buying and who is selling

The flow data are the contradiction in this market. The World Gold Council counted $18 billion of inflows into gold ETFs in August, 121 tonnes, the second-largest month on record, taking global holdings to a record 4,189 tonnes and assets under management to $615 billion. Europe had its biggest month ever at $7.9 billion, with the UK alone at $4.4 billion; North America added $7.7 billion. Year to date the funds have taken in 160 tonnes. Those flows chased the August rally, and September's numbers are not out yet.

Central banks were still net buyers in July at 23 tonnes: China 20 tonnes in its 21st consecutive month, taking reserves to 2,366 tonnes and 60 tonnes for the year; Poland 8 tonnes to 640, on its way to a stated 700; the Czech Republic 2 tonnes in its 41st month. Russia and Turkey were net sellers. Official-sector buying for 2026 is running at about 130 tonnes against 160 in the same period of 2025, slower but intact.

The seller is the speculator. CFTC data show managed-money net longs on Comex gold at 134,972 contracts on 8 September, down about 9,800, or 6.8%, in two weeks, with 145,804 longs against only 10,832 shorts. That is still a long book, which is the risk: if $4,265 goes, there is more to liquidate.

The levels

Gold is sitting on its 50-day moving average, quoted at $4,267–4,271, and on the 61.8% retracement of the July–August rally at $4,292. Below that the levels traders cite are $4,263, the intraday low of 15 September; $4,230, the lower Bollinger band; $4,216 and $4,203; $4,196; and then the $4,000 area that has been the low for the year. Above are the 100-day average at $4,331, $4,369, $4,447 and the 200-day at $4,539; FXEmpire calls the chart bearish while it is below $4,530.

Silver has done worse: $63.2 on 15 September from $69 on 21 August, including a 5.6% drop on 10 September alone. Platinum is $1,769. The miners have given back more than the metal: Newmont is $121.87, down 16% in three months from a record $134.86 on 25 August, and GDX is $93 against a 52-week high of $117.18, with Agnico down 33% and Kinross 29% over three months.

What the banks think is on the other side

Bank	Forecast	Date
Goldman Sachs	$4,900 end-2026; $4,400 if the Fed hikes	19 June
UBS	$4,600 December 2026, $5,000 March 2027, $5,200 June 2027; assumes two hikes	10 September
JPMorgan	2026 average $5,243, cut from $5,708	18 June
Commerzbank	$4,800 end-2026, cut from $5,000 on the oil shock	3 June
Citi	$4,000 near term, cut from $4,300	9 June

Goldman's hike scenario is the one to take seriously, because the hike is now the base case: "structurally constructive but tactically cautious, with near-term downside risk and medium-term upside risk". The World Gold Council's own August commentary said that "what a hike achieves isn't clear and on paper wouldn't be great for gold". Kitco's weekly survey still had 64% of Wall Street analysts bullish for this week, with Marc Chandler naming $4,460–4,510 as a technical objective "however, the outcome of the Fed meeting is the key".

What I am doing

Holding, not adding, until 2:30 pm on Wednesday. The decision itself is priced; the dot plot is not. If the median shows two more hikes in 2026, real yields have another leg and gold tests $4,200 with the $4,000 low behind it. If it is one and done, the October 2023 script for Treasuries applies to gold too, and the 200-day at $4,539 is the first target. The asymmetry I see is in the flow data: record ETF holdings and a central-bank bid that has not stopped are a floor that did not exist at the 2023 lows, and the speculative book, while still long, has already given back a third of its August build.

In analyst Ruslan Averin's view the gold trade this week is the same trade as the 10-year Treasury: both are pricing the same real yield, and both turn on the same press conference. The difference is that the bond pays 5% while you wait.

More market analysis by Ruslan Averin at averin.com.

Also available: Русская версия · Українська версія · RFC Capital Research edition.