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It was a loud week in the bond market and a quiet one in your shopping centers — and those two facts are worth sitting with side by side.

Tuesday, the 10-year Treasury spiked to 4.75% — a 20-month high — while the 30-year touched 5.34%, its highest level in 19 years. Wednesday, that move rattled equities too: the Dow dropped roughly 700 points as markets repriced around higher-for-longer long-end rates (CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/US10Y). Thursday, the Treasury Department took the unusual step of announcing it would at least double its buyback program on long-dated bonds, aiming to compress yields directly. By Friday the 10-year had settled to 4.71% (TradingEconomics, https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-bond-yield) — still elevated, and still the number driving your next loan quote.

What's behind it isn't Fed policy — it's term premium: investors demanding more compensation to hold long-dated debt, fed by heavy AI-related corporate debt issuance and a widening federal deficit. That's structural, not cyclical, which means it doesn't necessarily ease just because September's FOMC meeting comes and goes without a hike.

Four bellwethers reported this week, and read together they tell you more about tenant health than any single government release. Home Depot beat Tuesday — sales up 5.7%, U.S. comps up 1.3% — and reaffirmed full-year guidance, with management describing broad engagement across categories, just concentrated in smaller projects rather than big renovations (https://corporate.homedepot.com/news/earnings/infographic-home-depot-announces-second-quarter-2026-results). Target beat too, with sales up 5.3% and in-store traffic up 3.6%. TJX was the outlier — sales growth slowed sharply from 6% to roughly 1%. And Walmart, Thursday: U.S. comp sales grew 2.6%, below the 3.8% analysts expected and the slowest pace in six years — but the company still beat on earnings and raised full-year guidance, with management pointing directly to fuel prices above $4/gallon as the specific pressure forcing household trade-offs (Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/8/20/walmart-sees-sales-drop-as-us-consumer-spending-retreats).

That distinction matters. Walmart didn't decline — it decelerated from an unsustainable pace, and still raised its outlook. The one clear soft spot, TJX, sits in discretionary apparel, not the grocery-anchored, value, and service categories that typically fill your centers.

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The national gas average hit $4.14/gallon this week — the highest ever recorded for this date, with August 2026 tracking as the most expensive August on record. Texas sits at $3.64 — the second-cheapest state in the country, a roughly 50-cent gap (AAA, https://gasprices.aaa.com/high-crude-oil-prices-push-up-national-average/). Walmart just told you, by name, that fuel prices above $4 are the specific thing pressuring household budgets. Your Texas tenants and their customers are structurally cushioned from exactly that pressure.

Rates had a genuinely rough week, but the tenants filling your centers — home improvement, value retail, grocery-anchored — all posted growth. The one deceleration was fuel-driven, and Texas is about as insulated from that as it gets.

Next week: watch Jackson Hole. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh speaks late this month, and it'll likely move the rate conversation more than anything else on the calendar before the September 16–17 FOMC meeting.

If you own a center in San Antonio, Austin, or the Valley and want to talk through what any of this means for your specific asset — your maturity, your rent roll, your basis — just reach out.