The August Monthly Treasury Statement showed a federal deficit of $166.8 billion, taking the fiscal 2026 shortfall to $1.97 trillion, broadly unchanged on the prior year’s pace, against a stated national debt of $40 trillion. For each $1 of revenue collected this year, the government spent $1.41, leaving 28.9% of fiscal ’26 outlays financed by borrowing. Headline August numbers were affected by calendar shifts; adjusting for spending pulled into July lifts the August deficit to $248 billion, which is $7 billion above August 2025. Receipts in August totalled $360.03 billion, including net tariff receipts of $12.84 billion, the first positive month since April, while tariff refunds fell to $10.54 billion from $33.38 billion in July. With one month left, receipts were $4.85 trillion, up 3.3% year on year.
Outlays remained elevated: $526.83 billion in August, or about $608 billion after calendar effects, compared with $689 billion in August 2025. Spending for the first 11 months reached $6.81 trillion, up 2.2% from the same period in 2025; last year’s total was just over $7 trillion, averaging $583.3 billion per month or $19.2 billion per day. CBO projections put net outlays at $7.449 trillion in FY2026, $7.772 trillion in FY2027 and $8.151 trillion in FY2028. Treasury gross interest was $97.7 billion in August versus $117.57 billion in July, taking year-to-date interest expense to $1.27 trillion, about 13% higher, after $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2025, up 7.3% on 2024; net interest outlays were $86 billion in August, and over 11 months interest exceeded national defence at $876 billion and Medicare at $979 billion, with only Social Security higher at $1.5 trillion.
Fiscal Deficits and Debt as Drivers of Market Risk
We cannot afford to obsess over whether the Federal Reserve will implement another quarter-point rate hike this month. With the national debt rapidly closing in on $40 trillion, the massive fiscal deficit is the real driver of market risk. This endless supply of new government debt will inevitably distort the treasury yield curve.
We recommend that derivative traders position for a steeper yield curve in the coming weeks. With the 10-year Treasury yield currently trading near 4.10%, the pressure of financing a $1.97 trillion deficit will likely force long-term yields higher. Buying put options on long-duration Treasury ETFs, like TLT, provides an excellent way to capture this move.
Positioning for Yield Curve Changes and Rate Volatility
On the short end of the curve, we should bet against the narrative of sustained high interest rates. Because net interest payments reached a staggering $1.27 trillion over the first eleven months of fiscal 2026, the government cannot afford high rates for much longer. We favor buying call options on SOFR futures, anticipating that the Fed will have to pause or reverse course sooner than expected.
Rate volatility is currently cheap because mainstream analysts are ignoring this fiscal reality. We should exploit this by purchasing long straddles on interest rate swaps. As the market begins to price in the government’s unsustainable spending habits, we expect a sharp spike in rate volatility.
