Tomorrow will test whether the new concessions can win enough Democratic support to open Senate debate.

The first test is expected tomorrow, Tuesday, September 15, at 7:15pm UK, which is 2:15pm ET. It needs 60 votes. This is a vote to limit debate on taking up the bill. It would be meaningful progress, but it would not make CLARITY law. (Senate Press Gallery)

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🤖 The AI builders call for a slowdown: Dario Amodei asked the industry to pace itself, and Sam Altman and Elon Musk agreed.

• 🛢️ Saudi Arabia shuts the way around Hormuz: the East-West pipeline carries 7 million barrels a day and has no restart date.

• 🏦 The Fed’s first forecasts since June: a rise on Wednesday is close to 90% priced, so the dot plot carries the news.

• ⛽ Trump tells Ukraine to spare Russian diesel: American diesel passed $6 a gallon last week for the first time ever.

• 🏛️ The crypto vote turns on 9 Democrats: the Senate decides on Tuesday whether to debate the CLARITY Act at all.

• 📉 SoftBank falls 11% on a delayed listing: OpenAI pushed its stock market debut to 2027 and repays $25.9 billion on Tuesday.

• 💵 Washington sanctions a large bank on Monday: Treasury has not named it, and the target is Iran’s remaining oil revenue.

• 🇬🇧 Britain’s inflation figure lands Wednesday: gilt yields sit near their highest since 2007 and the Bank decides on Thursday.

• 🥇 Gold and silver lost ground while oil ran: bullion fell to around $4,288 an ounce on Monday and silver to $62.84.

• 📈 The plan has not changed into Tuesday’s vote: Chart of the Day covers $1.63, $1.31, $1.23 and the $1 shelf.

🧠 One Big Thing

So. The people who built artificial intelligence spent the weekend asking the industry to build it more slowly. Dario Amodei of Anthropic published the argument on Saturday. Sam Altman of OpenAI agreed within hours, and Elon Musk agreed after that. By the time Seoul closed on Monday, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix had lost roughly $91 billion of market value between them. AI names now dominate the big American indices, which is how a selloff in Seoul memory chips reaches an ordinary tracker fund in London before breakfast. The Federal Reserve decides on Wednesday, at 2:00pm in New York, which is 7:00pm UK.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

7 million barrels a day

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : 42.19% The Elmet Group Co. surged after the Department of War announced a $450 million committed investment to secure the domestic tungsten supply chain, including $200 million drawn at closing. The package also carries a Defense Logistics Agency contract worth up to $2 billion with a $150 million minimum commitment to supply the National Defense Stockpile.

• : 25.09% Armata Pharmaceuticals, Inc. jumped after the FDA granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to AP-SA02, its bacteriophage therapy for complicated Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections, on Phase 1b/2a data showing 100% of treated patients maintained clinical response at 28 days versus 75% on placebo.

• : 16.87% Definium Therapeutics, Inc. rose after reporting positive topline results from its Phase 3 Panorama study of DT120 ODT in generalised anxiety disorder, with the trial hitting both primary and secondary endpoints just days after the FDA granted the drug Breakthrough Therapy designation in major depressive disorder.

• : 5.35% CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. gained as investors rotated out of AI infrastructure and into cybersecurity, helped by CEO George Kurtz publicly pushing back on the weekend calls to slow AI development and by price target raises from RBC, Raymond James and Wedbush following Fal.Con 2026.

• : 5.06% Palo Alto Networks, Inc. climbed on the same rotation into software and security names seen as less exposed to an AI capex slowdown, with no company-specific catalyst behind the move.

• : 4.90% ServiceNow, Inc. advanced on back-to-back price target increases, with Needham lifting its target to $155 from $115 and BTIG moving to $170 from $150, amplified by the broader shift into software.

Losers

• : 13.82% SELLAS Life Sciences Group moved sharply lower in pre-market with no specific catalyst identified, following a 14.42% fall in the prior session.

• : 9.22% Corning Incorporated dropped after launching an at-the-market equity distribution programme of up to $2 billion with Goldman Sachs, raising dilution concerns in a stock up roughly 91% year to date on AI infrastructure demand.

• : 8.38% Nebius Group N.V. fell after Nvidia put its revenue-sharing agreements with AI cloud companies on hold, removing a key pillar of financial support for neocloud providers and dragging peers CoreWeave and IREN lower alongside it.

• : 7.68% Lam Research Corporation sold off with the wider semicap complex after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on the industry to slow frontier AI development over the weekend, a position publicly backed by Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

• : 7.34% Bloom Energy Corporation slid as anticipatory buying ahead of its 21 September S&P 500 addition unwound into the AI selloff, with an ongoing securities class action over scandium sourcing adding pressure.

• : 7.22% Vertiv Holdings, LLC moved sharply lower in pre-market with no specific catalyst identified, tracking the broader data centre infrastructure selloff.

• : 7.14% SK hynix Inc. fell in line with its Seoul listing, which closed down 6.35% as the KOSPI dropped 3.26% on the AI slowdown calls and rising Hormuz tension.

• 6.84% Applied Materials, Inc. declined alongside the wafer fab equipment group on fears that a slower AI frontier translates into reduced capex from memory and logic customers.

• : 6.04% Seagate Technology Holdings fell with the wider storage complex as investors cut exposure to AI-linked demand assumptions, with no company-specific news behind the move.

• : 6.01% Sandisk Corporation dropped on the same memory and storage de-rating, giving back part of a 20.26% gain in the prior session.

• : 5.60% Micron Technology, Inc. slipped as HBM and DRAM demand assumptions came under scrutiny, with the company due to report fiscal fourth quarter results on 30 September.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $77,669 (▲ 1.10%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,507 (▲ 1.21%)
XRP: $1.40 (▲ 4.15%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,615 (▼ 0.58%)
NASDAQ 100: 28,948 (▼ 1.49%)
FTSE 100: 10,711 (▲ 0.45%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.98% (▲ 0.12%)
Oil (WTI): $103 (▲ 3.51%)
Gold: $4,288 (▼ 1.37%)
Silver: $62.84 (▼ 2.52%)

Data as of: UK: 12:55 PM BST / US: 7:55 AM EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 8:55 PM JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🤖 AI’s own builders called for a slowdown

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, published a 3,800-word essay on Saturday titled “We Must Pace the Frontier”. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models,” he wrote. Companies “should also consider pacing based on limiting the ingredients that go into frontier models, such as training compute,” he added, while pacing “does not mean halting model training or technical progress”. Sam Altman of OpenAI agreed on X within hours: “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier.” Elon Musk agreed publicly too. The essay followed last week’s resignation of an Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, who said the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade” (Yahoo Finance).

Asia traded it first, and the damage was concentrated.

South Korea’s Kospi closed down 3.26% at 6,684.37, giving back all of last week’s gain, with SK hynix off 6.35% at 1,697,000 won and Samsung Electronics off 4.05% at 249,000 won. Inside the first 20 minutes of the Seoul session the pair had shed about 123 trillion won between them, roughly $91 billion at 1,344.75 won to the dollar, on TECHi’s calculation from exchange prices. Tokyo fared better. The Nikkei 225 fell more than 2% during the day before closing 0.81% lower at 63,492.99. Nasdaq 100 futures were down about 1.5% before the American open, against 0.6% for the S&P 500 (TECHi).

Why do memory makers take it hardest? Because they sell the high-bandwidth memory stacked beside AI accelerators, and orders for it scale with training compute, which is the exact ingredient Amodei proposed limiting. The reaction was split. Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives expects “some weakness out of the gates on Monday” and then a quick rebound, because in his reading the essay is “not moving the needle on the $5 trillion being spent the next few years on AI”. The investor Jason Calacanis posted that AI stocks would drop more than 10%. President Trump, speaking in Ireland on Sunday, said the United States leads China in AI and that “whoever wins AI wins”.

🛢️ Saudi Arabia shut the road around the war

What do you do when a war makes the strait your oil sails through dangerous? You build a pipeline around it. Saudi Arabia has one, and late on Friday it switched the thing off. The East-West pipeline runs crude across the kingdom to Red Sea ports, carries up to 7 million barrels a day and had become the main route keeping Saudi exports out of the Strait of Hormuz.

Riyadh halted it as a precaution after drone attacks the previous day. No restart date was given. The strikes were found to have been launched from inside Iraq, which has since removed its Maysan commander. Brent rose towards $108 a barrel after gaining almost 9% last week. West Texas Intermediate traded near $103, and European natural gas climbed as much as 3.8% (Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance).

The other end of the voyage closed too. Houthi fighters reached Perim Island on 11 September, the island sitting in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb strait and splitting it into separate shipping lanes, a day after taking the port city of Mokha and after government forces withdrew. They also took Dhubab on the mainland coast facing the island, which completes their control of the strait at the southern mouth of the Red Sea. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said navigation is safe for all companies except Saudi ships, which were already banned. The pipeline carried crude to the Red Sea specifically to avoid Hormuz, and Bab el-Mandeb is the way out of the Red Sea (NBC News).

The diplomatic track closed in the same weekend. Iran, Iraq and Gulf states were due to meet on Monday in Salalah, Oman, to discuss a temporary safe shipping lane through Hormuz. Oman’s foreign minister Badr Albusaidi said the meeting was postponed, after Bahrain announced it would not attend and cited the pipeline strike among its reasons.

Traders can see the pressure in the futures curve. Brent’s prompt spread, the gap between its 2 nearest contracts, widened to $5.53 a barrel from $3.84 a week earlier, which is the market paying a premium for oil now over oil later. Crude has risen 77% this year. June Goh, senior oil market analyst at Sparta Commodities, put the whole thing on the clock: “It all boils down to the duration.” Stocks at Yanbu, the pipeline’s western end, can cover a short outage, and a long one could force production cuts.

🏦 The Fed’s vote is priced. Its forecasts are not

Futures put a quarter-point rise from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday at close to 90%, which would take the target range to 4.00%. That pricing arrived on Friday. August consumer prices rose 0.4% on the month and 3.4% over the year, both in line with forecasts, while core prices rose 0.3% on the month against the 0.2% economists expected. Treasury yields held near multi-year highs: the 10-year reached 4.97% on Friday from 4.84% on Wednesday, and the 30-year sat at 5.36%. The decision publishes at 2:00pm in New York, which is 7:00pm UK, with Chair Kevin Warsh taking questions 30 minutes later (Quartz).

The same afternoon brings the Summary of Economic Projections, the Fed’s first since June, and with it the dot plot showing where each official expects rates to sit in the years ahead. June’s medians read 3.8% for the end of 2026, 3.6% for 2027, 3.4% for 2028 and 3.1% for 2029, a path that walks all the way back to the long-run rate inside 3 years. That path assumes the shock fades. With crude 77% higher on the year and American diesel at a record, the live question on Wednesday is whether those later dots still land at 3.1%.

Warsh has been explicit that he will give no forward guidance, so the dots are the only forward-looking thing the Fed will publish. Venues disagree on the odds by a wide margin, from 77 cents on the Kalshi contract on Sunday evening to about 87% on CME FedWatch and 90% at Friday’s close (Rio Times).

⛽ Trump asked Ukraine to spare Russia’s diesel

Standing on the sidelines of a golf tournament at his own course in Doonbeg, Ireland, on Sunday, President Trump said he had warned Volodymyr Zelenskyy to leave Russian refineries alone. “Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing: He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump said. “Let him go after targets,” he added, “but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel.” Overnight, Ukrainian forces claimed strikes on refineries in southern Russia and in Tatarstan, on top of earlier attacks on the Saratov refinery. The damage has already pushed Moscow into banning diesel exports (Bloomberg via gCaptain).

The average American diesel price passed $6 a gallon on Friday, the first time on record and past the previous high set in June 2022. Petrol has risen 54% from a January low just under $2.80. Both are war prices. One filling station in San Diego is retailing diesel at $9.99. Diesel is what moves long-haul trucks, freight trains and farm equipment, so its price ends up inside the shelf price of almost everything else. That is the line running from the war to Friday’s inflation reading and on to Wednesday’s Fed decision.

American households have already registered it. The University of Michigan’s preliminary consumer sentiment index for September fell to 47.8 from 51.7, a second consecutive monthly drop, below every estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists and the second-lowest reading in a series running back to 1952. Consumers in that survey expect prices generally to rise 4.6% over the coming year. The midterm elections fall on 3 November. Trump said energy costs will drop once the Iran war ends, which he predicted would happen “right after” or “maybe before” those elections (CNBC).

🏛️ The crypto bill needs 9 Democrats on Tuesday

The Senate takes its first floor vote on the CLARITY Act on Tuesday, at 2:15pm Eastern, which is 7:15pm UK. The vote is cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633, the procedural step that ends a filibuster and lets the chamber begin debating a bill. It needs 60 of the 100 seats. Republicans hold 53 and at least 2 of them are expected to vote against, which leaves the majority 9 Democrats or independents short. It settles whether the Senate takes the bill up at all; the text itself, and any amendments to it, come afterwards. The Senate substitute published on 10 September runs to 630 pages and added 114 provisions at Democratic request (24/7 Wall St).

Nothing moved over the weekend, and that is the news. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer gathered his caucus on Sunday evening and published no readout. President Trump met his advisers on 11 September to work through the ethics language, which bars officials and their spouses from issuing digital assets while in office and expires in 2029. No revised text has circulated since. White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt posted on 12 September that the administration had “already accepted an ethics provision”, without saying which one. So the count going into Tuesday is the count that stood on Friday.

Polymarket priced the bill being signed into law during 2026 at about 18% on 13 September, and Galaxy Research cut its odds of passage this year to 30% from 50%. Bitcoin traded near $77,700 and XRP near $1.40 on Monday.

Stories You Might Have Missed

📉 SoftBank fell 11% on a delayed listing

SoftBank Group closed down 10.72% at 5,839 yen in Tokyo on Monday after Sam Altman told Fortune that OpenAI will not list this year. “Right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public,” Altman said, pointing to 2027 instead. SoftBank holds a large stake in OpenAI and repays the remaining $25.9 billion of a $40 billion bridge loan used to fund it on Tuesday, more than a year before the loan was due. It is refinancing with longer-dated debt, including a $10 billion margin loan secured against the OpenAI holding itself. Kioxia fell 6.37% in the same session (TradingKey).

💵 Washington sanctions a large bank on Monday

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that the United States will sanction an unnamed large bank on Monday, the next step in a campaign to cut off Iran’s remaining oil revenue. “We’re going to do it on Monday because we want to honor the memory of our fallen citizens on 9/11,” he said. He named neither the bank nor its country. Washington has already sanctioned the Dubai branches of Egypt’s second-largest bank, which it says handled $1.8 billion of Iranian funds. Sanctions of this kind work by forcing banks outside Iran to choose between Iranian business and access to the dollar system. The US Navy is separately enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports (CNBC).

🇬🇧 Britain’s inflation figure lands on Wednesday

The Office for National Statistics publishes August consumer price inflation on Wednesday at 7:00am UK, which is 2:00am in New York, hours before the Federal Reserve announces. Consensus has core inflation at 2.7% against 2.6% in July, with no published consensus for the headline rate, which ran at 2.9% in the year to July. The Bank of England decides on Thursday at 12:00pm UK, 7:00am in New York, with Bank Rate at 3.75%. Gilts are where the pressure shows. The 10-year yield eased below 5.35% on Friday and stayed close to its highest since 2007, sterling traded at $1.35 early on Monday, and the FTSE 100 outperformed its European peers on Shell and BP (MarketScreener).

🥇 Gold and silver gave ground while oil ran

Gold finished last week near $4,348 an ounce and silver at $64.39, with bullion down 1.8% across the 5 sessions and silver down 2.7%, while crude gained almost 9% over the same stretch. The split is a rates story. Higher expected policy rates lift the return on cash and government bonds, which are the alternative to holding a metal that pays nothing at all. The 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.97% on Friday and the dollar index edged up to 99.12. Both kept going on Monday. Gold was quoted around $4,288 an ounce by early afternoon UK time, down 1.37% on the session, with silver at $62.84 and down 2.52% (Rio Times).

📈 Chart of the Day - XRP (XRPUSD)

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This Week

XRP ends the week at $1.36, down 4.2 percent on last Sunday. The wider market fell 1.8 percent, so XRP gave up more than twice as much ground as the market it trades inside. It ran up to $1.45 on Tuesday. By Friday it was back at $1.31. Total crypto market value sits at $2.74 trillion, with Bitcoin dominance at 56.5 percent. The Fear and Greed Index closed at 61, which still reads as Greed. It read 73 last Sunday. Greed is a curious thing to find in this market. XRP sits 63 percent below its all time high and 26 percent down on the year.

Now Tuesday. The Senate takes the CLARITY Act to the floor for the first time. That vote is the first real test of whether America gets a market structure law in this Congress. Cynthia Lummis put out new text on Thursday and left the one section everybody is fighting over untouched. Republican senators spent the week saying out loud that it is likely to fail. The clock counts as much as the votes here. After Tuesday the calendar runs hard into the midterms on 3 November.

So is the bear market over? That is the question sitting under all of it, and the Chart Watch below carries the read. Away from Washington the ledger had a busy week and a revealing one. New data on August traffic shows who is actually using the XRP Ledger. The spot funds kept taking money while the coins inside them lost value. Ripple wrote the rulebook for its own dollar, then burned some of it.

The Consensus

• ⚖️ The CLARITY Act reaches the Senate floor on Tuesday, with Republican senators publicly warning that it is likely to fail.

• 🤖 767 machines ran the XRP Ledger last month, producing almost all of its transactions between them.

• 📉 The XRP funds hold less than investors put in, a gap of about $250 million at the last count.

• 💵 Ripple published an RLUSD rulebook, days after burning 15 million of the tokens.

The Numbers

The Chart Watch

The Ripple Effect

⚖️ The CLARITY Act Reaches the Senate Floor on Tuesday

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Consensus for Wednesday’s Federal Reserve decision is 4%. The top of the range sits at 3.75% today, so the base case going in is a rise. The Bank of England follows on Thursday lunchtime and the Bank of Japan overnight into Friday, where consensus is 1.25% against 1% now. That is 3 decisions inside 48 hours, and all 3 arguments are about going up. British inflation lands on Wednesday morning, about 29 hours before the Bank of England votes.

Last Week:

US Consumer Price Index (August) Headline inflation held at 3.4% on the year and rose 0.4% on the month, both in line with forecasts. Core rose 0.29% on the month against 0.22% expected, and petrol did more than a third of the monthly increase on its own. Futures pricing for a rise on Wednesday moved to between 85% and 90%, from about 70% before the release.

Bank of England at the Treasury Committee Governor Andrew Bailey told MPs that the market curve for higher rates carries a risk premium for a worse energy outcome rather than a hidden Bank plan, and that any move still depends on the data and on geopolitics. The rates market prices a 25% chance of a rise on Thursday, with a full quarter point priced for November and another for December.

Oracle Q1 (quarter to 31 August) Revenue grew 30% to $19.3 billion against $19.13 billion expected, adjusted earnings came in at $1.92 a share against $1.75, and the contracted backlog reached $664 billion. The shares gave up a 6% intraday gain and closed Friday down 1.74% at $150.28, because capital spending has gone to $28.50 billion from $8.50 billion a year earlier and free cash flow is running at minus $5.4 billion.

The setup: payrolls added 162,000 jobs in August against a 56,000 forecast, producer prices ran at 5.4% on the year, and core inflation then came in a tenth above consensus. A central bank that wanted a reason to wait no longer has one. Wednesday’s projections are the first since June, when the median official had 3.8% for the end of this year, 3.6% for 2027, 3.4% for 2028, 3.1% for 2029 and 3.1% in the long run.

Week at a Glance

🔴 US Federal Reserve Rate Decision: Wednesday, 2:00 PM ET / 7:00 PM BST

🔴 CLARITY Act Senate Cloture Vote: Tuesday, 2:15 PM ET / 7:15 PM BST

🔴 UK Consumer Price Index (August): Wednesday, 2:00 AM ET / 7:00 AM BST

🔴 Bank of England Rate Decision: Thursday, 7:00 AM ET / 12:00 PM BST

🔴 Bank of Japan Rate Decision: Friday, no scheduled announcement time

🟠 US Retail Sales (August): Wednesday, 8:30 AM ET / 1:30 PM BST

🟠 UK Labour Market Overview: Tuesday, 2:00 AM ET / 7:00 AM BST

🟠 Triple Witching and the S&P 500 Rebalance: Friday, All day

🟠 China Activity Data (August): Monday 10:00 PM ET / Tuesday 3:00 AM BST

MONDAY, September 14

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 📉 Yields at the edge of 5%: the US 10-year touched 4.96%, its highest since 2023, before August inflation figures land later today.

• 🛢️ The war takes a second chokepoint: Houthi forces seized Mokha, 75km from a strait carrying roughly 10% of the world’s oil.

• ☁️ Oracle books $30bn of AI work: backlog reached $664 billion and the shares rose more than 5% before the US open.

• 🇬🇧 Britain grew when nobody expected it: July GDP rose 0.4% against forecasts of no growth at all, days before the Bank decides.

• 🇪🇺 Lagarde’s “no brainer” rate rise: the ECB lifted its deposit rate to 2.50% and raised its inflation forecasts for 2027 and 2028.

• 🌏 Tokyo takes the oil hit: the Nikkei fell 1.93% after sinking as much as 3.16%, and Korea’s Kospi dropped 2.52%.

• 🥇 Gold holdings hit a record: investors put $18 billion into gold funds in August, lifting holdings to 4,189 tonnes.

• ₿ Crypto drifts before the Senate clock: bitcoin traded near $77,400 and XRP near $1.35, with a procedural vote due on 15 September.

• 🛒 America’s biggest grocer reports: Kroger publishes quarterly figures before the US open, with fuel costs running through every aisle.

• 📄 The last inflation print before the Fed votes: the Cheat Sheet has the core ladder and what each rung has done to markets.

• 📈 XRP is 20% down from where I sold at $1.69: Chart of the Day covers $1.31, the $1.04 and $1.00 shelf, and $0.93.

🧠 One Big Thing

So. The price of borrowing money went up almost everywhere at once this week. The US 10-year Treasury yield touched 4.96% on Friday, the highest since 2023. Japan’s 10-year reached 3%, a level last seen in 1996. German yields are the highest since 2011, British ones the highest since 2008. That yield sets what governments and large companies pay to borrow for a decade, so it reaches a long way past bond desks. August consumer prices land at 1:30pm UK, 8:30am in New York, and the Federal Reserve votes on 16 September.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

24.1%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : 43.91% ACV Auctions Inc. shares rocketed after Copart agreed to acquire the online vehicle marketplace for $10.50 a share in an all-cash deal worth roughly $1.9 billion, a premium of about 45% to the previous close.

• : 38.66% Alliance Entertainment Holding Corp. surged after reporting fiscal 2026 revenue up 8% to $1.15 billion, with gross margin expanding 80 basis points to 13.3% and EPS up 24% as physical media demand held firm.

• : 30.04% Frequency Electronics, Inc. jumped on record fiscal Q1 2027 results, with revenue up 70% year on year to an all-time high of $23.5 million and adjusted EPS of $0.41 against a $0.29 consensus. Funded backlog hit a record $129 million on a 1.76:1 book-to-bill, and a military communications customer requested a more than 50% increase in monthly output.

• : 26.13% PicoCELA Inc. extended a multi-day run in pre-market with no specific catalyst identified, following a 31% gain in the prior session.

• : 7.41% Oracle Corporation climbed after fiscal Q1 2027 results showed cloud infrastructure revenue more than doubling, up 121% to $7.4 billion, with remaining performance obligations swelling to $664 billion and management guiding to over $90 billion.

Losers

• : 3.69% Adobe Inc. fell despite beating on Q3 with adjusted EPS of $6.13 on revenue of $6.76 billion, as Q4 revenue guidance came in no better than the $6.85 billion consensus.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $76,991 (▲0.58%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,462 (▲1.02%)
XRP: $1.33 (▼0.06%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,639 (▲0.53%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,308 (▲0.59%)
FTSE 100: 10,670 (▲0.68%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.95% (▼0.30%)
Oil (WTI): $99 (▼4.78%)
Gold: $4,338 (▲0.39%)
Silver: $63.82 (▲0.31%)

Data as of: UK: 11:58 am BST / US: 6:58 am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 7:58 pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

📉 Bond markets moved before the inflation number arrived

4.96%. That is where the yield on the 10-year US Treasury note traded on Friday morning, the highest since 2023 and within touching distance of 5%. It did not get there alone. Japan’s 10-year government bond yield reached 3%, the highest since 1996. German long yields are at their highest since 2011, French ones since 2008, and British gilts broke above 5.2% to levels last seen in 2008. Bloomberg described the move as a global selloff driven by heavy government borrowing, an oil shock and the expectation that central banks stay tight for longer (Bloomberg).

5 government bond markets, 5 separate domestic borrowing stories, and every one of them moved the same way this week.

Here is what that does to today. August consumer prices publish at 1:30pm UK, 8:30am in New York, and economists expect 3.4% on the year with 0.4% on the month. Traders have already moved. Wholesale prices on Thursday rose 5.4% over 12 months, up from 4.8% in the year to July, and on that print the odds of a quarter-point rise at the Federal Reserve’s 16 September vote went from the mid-fifties to about 2 in 3, with the 2-year yield up 13 basis points in the session. So the print no longer informs the decision, because the decision has largely been priced. It either confirms what the bond market did this week or forces an unwind of it (Yahoo Finance).

🛢️ The war just acquired a second chokepoint

For 6 months the oil market has watched one stretch of water. Hormuz. On Thursday Houthi forces took the Yemeni port city of Mokha on the Red Sea coast, confirmed to Reuters by 3 Yemeni government sources, after weeks of missile and drone attacks that shut the port to commercial traffic in mid-August. Mokha sits about 75km north of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the passage linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, through which roughly 10% of the world’s oil moves. Residents left for Aden in large numbers, and Yemeni government forces withdrew overnight from Hays district in southern Hodeidah (The New Arab).

The market read it immediately. WTI crude settled at $102.48 on Thursday, up 6.7% on the day and the first time the American benchmark has settled above $100 in this conflict, while Brent settled at $105.37, a 4-month high. The reason a second chokepoint matters more than a bigger number at the first one is a matter of routing: a cargo that avoids Hormuz can still be sailing towards Suez, and Suez is reached through Bab el-Mandeb. American retail diesel passed $6 a gallon, the highest ever recorded. OPEC+ next meets on 4 October (The National).

☁️ Oracle answered the question its bondholders were asking

Oracle signed more than $30 billion of new AI cloud contracts in a single quarter. Its remaining performance obligations line, which is work customers have contracted and paid for but not yet received, rose to $664 billion, up $209 billion from a year ago and comfortably above the $639.89 billion analysts had modelled. Revenue came in at $19.35 billion against $19.14 billion expected, adjusted earnings at $1.92 a share against $1.74, cloud infrastructure revenue up 121% to $7.4 billion and total cloud up 62% to $11.6 billion. The shares rose more than 5% before the US open (Reuters via AOL).

The 24 hours around the result ran in both directions. Oracle closed Thursday’s regular session at $152.94, down 5.38%, as the bond selloff hit anything carrying debt, and then jumped on the numbers hours later. That is the whole AI financing argument in one day: the company borrows to build data centres it has already sold, so a rising cost of debt and a rising order book pull in opposite directions on the same balance sheet. Yesterday’s edition noted that AI-linked borrowers now make up close to 30% of net new American investment-grade issuance, which is how this lands in ordinary bond funds (Investing.com).

🇬🇧 Did anyone expect Britain to grow? Nobody did

July was supposed to be a flat month for the British economy, because the consensus forecast was 0.0% growth. It grew 0.4% instead, its fastest since the spring, with services output up 0.4%, production up 0.2% and construction up 0.1%. Over the year to July the economy was 1.6% larger, against the 1.2% economists had pencilled in. Professional and technical activities rose 2.1%, information and communication 2.5%, administrative and support services 1.3%. Across the 3 months to July, growth was 0.4% compared with the 3 months to April, an eighth consecutive 3-month period of expansion (Office for National Statistics).

The timing is what gives it weight. The Bank of England decides on 17 September with Bank Rate at 3.75%, and the gilt market has spent 2 weeks selling: the 10-year reached 5.29% on Wednesday, above 5.2% for the first time since 2008, and a 30-year sale on Tuesday cleared at 5.82%, the highest since the Debt Management Office was created in 1998. Markets now fully price a quarter-point rise by December and 2 more through 2027. A weak economy was the strongest argument for sitting still, and July removed it. Sterling firmed against both the euro and the dollar on the release (Exchange Rates UK).

🇪🇺 “A no brainer”, said Lagarde, and then changed the forecasts

Christine Lagarde used those 3 words to describe Thursday’s quarter-point rise, which took the European Central Bank’s deposit rate to 2.50% and was agreed unanimously. She added that the decision was “robust” against all 3 scenarios the bank has mapped for the euro area economy. It is the second rise since the US-Iran war began, and it came days after euro area inflation hit 3.3%, the highest since September 2023, on an energy index up 14.3% over 12 months (Bloomberg).

The vote was expected by all 65 economists Reuters surveyed, so the new information was in the projections that published alongside it. The bank held its 2026 inflation forecast at 3.0% and revised 2027 up to 2.5% and 2028 up to 2.1%. Growth was revised up too, to 0.9% this year and 1.4% next. A 2028 forecast still above the 2% target is the ECB’s own model saying the oil shock does not wash out inside its forecast horizon, which is why traders finished the day pricing more tightening rather than an end to it. The main refinancing rate went to 2.65% and the marginal lending rate to 2.90%, all 3 effective from 16 September, and the next decision is on 29 October (European Central Bank).

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🌏 Tokyo and Seoul take the oil hit

Asian equity markets absorbed Thursday’s American session and Thursday’s oil move together, and the result was ugly. Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed down 1.93% at 64,011.34 after sinking as much as 3.16% during the day, leaving it 0.4% lower on the week, while the broader Topix slipped 0.65% to 4,028.30. South Korea’s Kospi fell 2.52%. India’s Sensex dropped 593 points. The combination doing the damage is familiar: crude above $100 lifts import bills across an energy-importing region, and higher US yields lift the cost of the dollar funding that region runs on. The Bank of Japan votes on 18 September, the day after the Bank of England and 2 days after the Federal Reserve (Investing.com).

🥇 Gold funds own more metal than ever

Investors put $18 billion into gold-backed ETFs during August, and holdings rose 121 tonnes to 4,189 tonnes, the highest on record. Assets under management climbed 16% to $615 billion. European-listed funds took $7.9 billion, their biggest month ever, and North American funds $7.7 billion, their third largest. The World Gold Council attributed the flows to economic uncertainty, inflation and government debt levels, which is the same list driving the bond selloff in the lead story. Gold traded around $4,383 an ounce on Thursday, below the record $5,589.38 set on 28 January 2026 (World Gold Council).

₿ Crypto drifts into a Senate date

Bitcoin traded near $77,385 on Friday morning, down 0.90% over 24 hours, with ethereum around $2,435 after a 3% fall and XRP near $1.35, down 2.47%. Bitcoin’s market value sits close to $1.55 trillion. The dated thing ahead is procedural: the Senate is scheduled to vote on 15 September on cloture on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act, the market structure bill that would settle which American regulator supervises spot digital asset trading. That vote needs 60 senators and it opens debate. It enacts nothing, changes no rule, and a failure to reach 60 would leave the bill where it has sat since August (CoinMarketCap).

🛒 The American shopper reports before the bell

Kroger publishes second-quarter figures before the US market opens today, which makes it the first large read on the American grocery basket since crude went through $100. Analysts expect about $1.06 a share on revenue near $34.65 billion, growth of roughly 1.9% and 2.2% over the year, and the company has guided full-year identical sales excluding fuel to 1% to 2% with earnings of $5.10 to $5.30 a share. Identical sales excluding fuel is the retail measure that strips out new store openings and petrol forecourts, so it shows whether shoppers are buying more or simply paying more. Diesel costs run through every distribution centre and lorry the company operates (Alphastreet).

🔍 Deep Dive - CPI Day Cheat Sheet: The Deciding Print

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🛢️ Oil clears $100: Brent settled at $101.21 after the US sank 5 Iranian tankers and Iran hit 10 ships.

• 🏷️ The oil print in disguise: American producer prices land this afternoon, and energy is expected to do most of the work.

• 🇪🇺 65 out of 65: every economist Reuters polled expects the ECB to lift its deposit rate to 2.50% today.

• 🇨🇳 A record 317 basis points: America now pays that much more than China to borrow for 10 years.

• 🤖 Oracle reports tonight: a $638 billion backlog meets $70 billion of planned spending, borrowed in an AI-heavy bond market.

• 📱 The foldable costs $1,999: Apple’s iPhone Duo landed, the shares closed down 0.28%, and memory costs are the worry.

• 🇬🇧 Britain borrows at 1998 prices: £5 billion of gilts sold this morning with long yields at their highest in 28 years.

• 🇯🇵 Yen at a 7-month high: the Bank of Japan is expected to lift rates to a 31-year high on 18 September.

• ₿ Bitcoin holds near $78,000: XRP sits at $1.38, and the Senate’s CLARITY cloture vote arrives on 15 September.

• 🔍 Producer prices are the first read on $100 oil: today's Cheat Sheet covers the core readings and the road to 28 October.

• 📈 Oil is heading for $100 and inflation goes with it: Chart of the Day covers $100.72, $92.04 and what sits above.

🧠 One Big Thing

So. Oil went through $100 a barrel on Wednesday and it is now setting monetary policy. Does a war price count as inflation? Central banks have to treat it as inflation for as long as it lasts, which is why 4 of them vote in the next 9 days. The European Central Bank raises rates this afternoon. The Federal Reserve votes on 16 September, the Bank of England on the 17th, the Bank of Japan on the 18th. American producer prices land today and consumer prices tomorrow, and energy does most of the work in today's number.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

317 basis points

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• No major winners so far today.

Losers

• : 20.26% Shoe Station Group, Inc. collapsed after cutting full year adjusted EPS guidance to $0.75 to $0.90 against $1.48 consensus, with Q2 revenue of $284.3 million missing estimates as comparable sales fell 7.1%. Gross margin contracted to 31.9% from 38.8% on aggressive inventory liquidation into an increasingly promotional footwear market.

• : 16.82% The Cooper Companies, Inc. sank after guiding Q4 EPS to $1.07 versus $1.19 consensus and concluding its strategic review by retaining CooperSurgical, saying the offers received were not in shareholders’ best interest. Management flagged reduced US channel inventory at CooperVision persisting into Q4.

• : 15.33% Navan, Inc. dropped despite beating on Q2 revenue at $232.8 million and EPS at $0.05, as operating expenses jumped 46% against 35% revenue growth and the raised full year guidance landed broadly in line with consensus. The BoomPop acquisition adds a near term profitability drag with accretion not expected until fiscal 2028.

• : 7.11% Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. fell alongside a sharp copper unwind after a Reuters report that the White House has stalled its refined copper tariff decision on affordability concerns ahead of November’s midterms, undercutting the tariff trade that drove copper to record highs.

• : 6.34% Southern Copper Corporation slid in sympathy on the same stalled US copper tariff report, with copper futures down over 4% as traders unwound stockpiling positions built on expectations of a 15% levy from January 2027.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $78,025 (▼ 0.36%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,468 (0.00%)
XRP: $1.38 (▼ 0.94%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,644 (0.00%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,339 (▼ 0.37%)
FTSE 100: 10,635 (▼ 0.09%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.87% (▲ 0.41%)
Oil (WTI): $97 (▲ 0.68%)
Gold: $4,387 (▼ 0.31%)
Silver: $65.78 (▼ 2.21%)

Data as of: UK: 12:33 BST / US: 07:33 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 20:33 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🛢️ Both navies are sinking tankers now

Brent crude settled at $101.21 on Wednesday, its first trip into triple digits since 24 July. It got there on the largest declared wave of attacks on shipping since the war began 6 months ago. The American military sank 5 Iranian oil tankers. Iran said it struck 10 ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz, including 2 US vessels, and fired a barrage of 20 ballistic missiles at an airbase used by American forces in Jordan. Jordan’s armed forces said 18 were intercepted and 2 landed in empty ground. WTI for November delivery rose 2.03% to $94.92. (The Japan Times)

Crude at $100 is a wholesale price. Diesel is where a household meets it. American on-highway diesel jumped 36.8 cents in the week to 7 September, to a national average of $5.97 a gallon. That is past the $5.81 record set in June 2022. Diesel moves almost everything that travels by road, so that figure arrives in food and freight costs with a lag of weeks. For 6 months each side attacked a different kind of target. Both are now sinking tankers, which means the war has found a currency and the exchange rate is the oil price. Brent was still holding above $100 on Thursday morning. (Forbes)

🏷️ Today’s inflation number is mostly an oil number

American producer prices for August publish at 1:30pm UK, which is 8:30am in New York. Forecasters look for a monthly rise of 0.3% to 0.4% after a flat July, and energy is expected to supply most of it. Some estimates put the August energy component up around 2.2% on the month, and the annual rate is expected to jump to about 5.3% from 4.7%. Producer prices measure what companies receive at the factory gate, so they are the earliest clean read on whether crude has entered the supply chain rather than sitting in the futures market. Consumer prices follow at the same time on Friday. Weekly jobless claims land in the same minute as the producer figure. (TradingKey)

Wall Street fell for a third straight session on Wednesday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 405.41 points, 0.77%, to 52,380.66. The S&P 500 lost 0.48% to 7,636.36 and the Nasdaq Composite 0.64% to 26,253.34. The 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.85%, its highest since October 2023, and it got there on a day the Treasury was trying to hold yields down. Scott Bessent’s department said it would buy back up to $6 billion of longer-dated government debt, roughly triple a normal operation. Traders had looked for something nearer $10 billion, so yields climbed anyway. (Yahoo Finance)

Futures markets put the odds of a quarter-point rise at next Wednesday’s Federal Reserve vote at around 60%, with prediction markets running a few points below that. That leaves 2 prints in 2 days to settle it.

🇪🇺 The ECB raises rates today and nobody disagrees

Every one of the 65 economists Reuters polled between 31 August and 3 September expects the European Central Bank to lift its deposit rate by a quarter point to 2.50%. The main refinancing rate goes to 2.65% with it. Money markets have the move fully priced. The decision comes at 1:15pm UK, which is 8:15am in New York, and Christine Lagarde takes questions 30 minutes after that. Euro area headline inflation ran at 3.3% in August with the energy component up 14.3%. The meeting is being held in Berlin, hosted by the Bundesbank. (FXStreet)

Analysts expect Lagarde to raise without guiding, repeating the meeting-by-meeting language rather than committing to a follow-up. New staff projections publish alongside the decision. The euro area imports almost all of its crude, so a Middle East price shock reaches European inflation faster and harder than it reaches American inflation. That is why Frankfurt has a unanimous forecast while Washington has a coin flip. European shares were slightly higher into the decision, with the STOXX 600 up 0.1% at 641.23 after tumbling 1.4% on Wednesday. This is the first of 4 central bank votes inside 9 days and the only one whose outcome is not in doubt. (Investing.com)

🇨🇳 A record gap opens between American and Chinese bonds

317 basis points. That is the gap between what the American government pays to borrow for 10 years and what China pays, and Bloomberg puts it at the widest in data going back to 2002. Basis points are hundredths of a percentage point, so 317 of them is 3.17%. The American 10-year reached 4.85% on Wednesday, its highest since October 2023. The Chinese 10-year sat at 1.68% and has barely moved. The 2 central banks are pointed in opposite directions, because the Federal Reserve is still leaning against inflation while the People’s Bank of China is protecting growth. (CRFB)

A gap that size is a pull on money. Capital drifts toward the higher yield, from foreign holders of Chinese bonds and from Chinese savers looking abroad, and that pressure lands on the currency. The yuan has been sitting near its strongest levels against the dollar in years, held up by exports that grew 25% in August with American tariffs already in place. Those 2 forces now point opposite ways, and the bond gap has never been this wide while the currency has been this strong. Which one gives first is the thing worth following. (Bloomberg)

🤖 The AI buildout has moved into the bond market

How much does it cost to build the AI economy? Oracle answers part of that after the American close today, with the call at 10pm UK, 5pm in New York. Analysts expect revenue of about $19.13 billion, up roughly 28% on the year. Backlog is the line the market actually trades. Remaining performance obligations, meaning work customers have contracted and Oracle has yet to deliver, ended the last quarter at $638 billion. That is up 363% year on year and up $85 billion in 3 months. Against that, the company has guided to a net capital spending outlay of around $70 billion this financial year. The shares closed at $162.52 on Wednesday and are down about 18% in 2026. (Oracle)

Paying for that requires borrowing, and the borrowing has grown large enough to change an index. Goldman Sachs Research counts nearly $500 billion of AI-related debt issued so far in 2026. AI-linked borrowers now make up roughly 30% of net new issuance in the American investment-grade corporate bond market. An ordinary corporate bond fund therefore holds a slice of the AI trade whether it went looking for one or not. The 5 largest cloud companies issued about $35 billion a year between 2020 and 2024, then $93 billion in 2025, and roughly $132 billion so far this year. All of it is priced off a 10-year yield that just touched 4.85%. (Goldman Sachs)

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📱 Apple’s foldable arrives at $1,999

Apple named its first foldable the iPhone Duo and priced it from $1,999, with a 2 terabyte configuration reaching around $3,000. The book-style handset carries an outer screen of 5.3 to 5.5 inches and an inner one of 7.6 to 7.8 inches in a titanium frame. Apple also lifted the iPhone 18 Pro by $100 against last year’s model. The shares opened at $315.49, spent almost the whole 80-minute presentation lower, and closed down 0.28%. Analysts put the flat response down to component costs, with memory prices climbing faster than the price rises cover. (Benzinga)

🇬🇧 Britain sells gilts into the worst yields since 1998

The Debt Management Office auctioned £5 billion of the 2030 gilt between 9am and 10am UK on Thursday, which is 4am to 5am in New York. It goes into a market where long-dated yields touched 5.89% in early September, the highest since 1998, and where the 10-year sits near 5.2%. Chancellor John Healey delivers his first Budget on 28 October with borrowing costs at those levels, which prices every spending line higher before he chooses a single policy. The Bank of England votes on 17 September and is widely expected to hold, with markets fully pricing a rise by December. (Investing.com)

🇯🇵 The yen nears a 7-month high before Japan votes

The yen traded around 153.38 per dollar on Thursday, close to its strongest in 7 months. The Bank of Japan votes on 18 September and is widely expected to lift its policy rate to 1.25%, which would be the highest in roughly 31 years. The Nikkei 225 eased 0.04% to 65,240 on Wednesday, because a stronger yen cuts the home-currency value of overseas earnings for Japanese exporters and makes Japanese shares dearer for foreign buyers. Japan has also been selling Treasuries this year to defend the currency, which is one of the forces pushing American long yields higher. (Trading Economics)

₿ Bitcoin holds near $78,000 as the Senate clock runs down

Bitcoin traded around $78,000 on Thursday morning after a soft session, and XRP sat at $1.38 against a 2.46% fall in the CoinDesk 20 index over 24 hours. The year has been hard across the board. Bitcoin is down 29% since January and is still the strongest of the 4 largest coins, with ether off 37%, solana 40% and XRP 47% from its January peak. The Senate holds a cloture vote on the CLARITY Act on 15 September. Cloture settles only whether debate opens on the bill and it needs 60 votes to carry, so it enacts nothing by itself. (CoinDesk)

🔩 The copper tariff trade unwinds

Copper miners fell hard after Reuters reported that the White House has not decided on tariffs for refined copper, with officials weighing higher costs for manufacturers against the case for more domestic mining. Affordability is the pressure point ahead of November’s midterms. Traders and industrial buyers had spent months shipping metal into the United States ahead of the expected duties, building one of the world’s largest stockpiles and driving copper to record highs. Freeport-McMoRan fell 7.11% and Southern Copper 6.34%. Broader copper tariffs would raise input costs for carmakers, construction and electrical equipment, which is the argument that has stalled them. (Reuters)

📈 Chart of the Day - WTI Crude Oil (USOIL)

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🛢️ The war reaches Saudi soil: Houthi drones and missiles hit Aramco sites, and Brent traded as high as $99.

• 📉 The Dow drops 628 points: oil near $100 and rate-rise fears took 1.18% off it, with the S&P down 0.58%.

• 🇨🇳 China’s factory prices beat: producer prices rose 3.8% in August against 3.6% expected, which answers yesterday’s question about discounting.

• 💊 Amgen falls on a rival’s failure: it dropped 10.15%, its worst day since October 2000, after Novartis’s cholesterol drug missed.

• 📱 Apple goes foldable tonight: the first foldable iPhone is expected at 6pm UK, 1pm ET, with prices estimated near $1,999.

• 🇬🇧 The Chancellor’s spare cash nearly halves: the bond selloff cut his headroom from £26bn to about £13.8bn before the October Budget.

• 🥈 Silver rises while gold falls: silver added 1.31% to $66.61 while gold slipped to $4,367.90, and silver is up 150% in a year.

• ₿ Bitcoin ETFs take the money: they pulled in $986.9m in a week while ether, Solana and XRP funds fell 73% to 96%.

• 🔍 SpaceX frees 319 million shares: today’s Deep Dive covers the unlock, the 12-day gap before the index buyers arrive, and November.

• 📈 Oil above $90 is the danger zone: Chart of the Day covers $94, $100 and what happens if we drop back under $92.

🧠 One Big Thing

Brent traded as high as $99 on Tuesday. That is the number running everything else this week. It took 628 points off the Dow. It is why the market prices a Federal Reserve rise on 16 September, and it is why the Chancellor’s spare cash nearly halved before he has chosen a single policy. Oil is an input into almost everything a company makes and everything you buy, so it lands in inflation data with a lag and in share prices immediately. American consumer prices arrive on Friday at 1:30pm UK, 8:30am ET. Oil is what that print is now measuring.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

£13.8bn

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : 15.47% Optical Cable Corporation rose ahead of its third quarter fiscal 2026 results, which the company confirmed will be released today before an 11:00 a.m. Eastern conference call. No separate catalyst had been published at the time of the screener.

• : 14.07% InnovAge Holding Corp. jumped after reporting fiscal 2026 revenue of $989.7 million, up 15.9%, with adjusted EBITDA nearly tripling to $94.6 million and the net loss narrowing to $0.7 million from $35.3 million. Management guided fiscal 2027 revenue to $1.05 billion to $1.085 billion and adjusted EBITDA to $105 million to $115 million.

Losers

• : 17.26% ServiceTitan, Inc. sank after gross transaction volume growth slowed to 17% and third quarter revenue guidance of $285 million to $287 million came in below the $292.8 million just reported. Management flagged softer lead volumes among HVAC customers and a $2 million to $3 million subscription revenue headwind from prioritising its AI-powered Max product.

• : 11.51% Braze, Inc. fell after guiding third quarter adjusted EPS to $0.13 to $0.14 against consensus of $0.16, overshadowing a second quarter beat of $0.19 adjusted EPS on revenue of $227.2 million, up 26%.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $79,010 (▲0.72%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,495 (▲0.42%)
XRP: $1.42 (▲0.37%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,672 (▼0.11%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,488 (▼0.17%)
FTSE 100: 10,755 (▼0.07%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.81% (▲0.38%)
Oil (WTI): $95 (▲0.83%)
Gold: $4,393 (▲0.88%)
Silver: $66.39 (▲1.00%)

Data as of: UK: 10:50 am BST / US: 5:50 am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 6:50 pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🛢️ The war reaches Saudi soil

Houthi missiles and drones hit targets across Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, in one of the largest assaults on the kingdom since the fighting restarted in July. Saudi Aramco facilities at Abha, Najran and Jazan were struck, along with the King Khalid airbase at Khamis Mushait. Fires broke out at several sites. Some energy facilities were halted, and 73 people were wounded. Jazan holds a refinery that processes 400,000 barrels a day, one of the kingdom’s largest, and it has been hit repeatedly since the Houthis threatened in July to blockade Saudi oil flows. Brent traded as high as roughly $99 during the session and WTI held above $93. (NPR)

What did not happen matters as much. Saudi Arabia’s main crude-producing fields sit in the east of the country and were not targeted, and the damage was reported as limited. So why did the price move like that? Because the front has moved. For 6 months this war has been priced through the Strait of Hormuz, a stretch of water that ships have to cross. It is now being priced through installations on land in the country that produces more oil than any other, and there is no way to sail around a refinery. Brent sits close to 40% above where it was before the fighting began. (World Oil)

📉 Wall Street starts paying for the oil price

628 points. That is what came off the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Tuesday, a fall of 1.18% to 52,786.07. The S&P 500 lost 0.58% to 7,673.52 and the Nasdaq Composite 0.32% to 26,421.41. Energy prices did most of it. Higher crude raises input costs for almost every listed company outside the oil sector, which squeezes margins. It also raises the odds that the Federal Reserve votes for a rise next week rather than a hold. Markets have been pricing roughly 60% odds on that rise. Amgen’s 10.15% fall accounted for a large share of the Dow’s points on its own. (Yahoo Finance)

The argument about the Fed has moved on. For a fortnight the question was whether a rise was coming. The market has started charging for one. That is what a session like Tuesday is, equities marking themselves down against a discount rate they expect to go up, and it happens before any decision is announced. That leaves 2 prints to settle it. Producer prices arrive on Thursday and consumer prices on Friday, both at 1:30pm UK, 8:30am ET, and the committee votes on 16 September. The European Central Bank decides on Thursday as well, about 15 minutes before the American producer number. (CNBC)

🇨🇳 China answers the question its export data raised

Yesterday’s Chinese trade figures raised a question. Was 25% export growth coming from volume, or from manufacturers cutting prices to hold market share through the tariffs? Wednesday’s inflation data answered it. Producer prices rose 3.8% in August from a year earlier, against 3.6% expected and 3.5% in July. Factory-gate prices accelerating is the opposite of discounting. Consumer prices rose 0.8% on the year, matching forecasts and up from 0.5%, and 0.4% on the month, which ended 3 consecutive monthly falls. Core inflation, stripping out food and energy, reached 1% from 0.9%. (CNBC)

Dong Lijuan, a statistician at the National Bureau of Statistics, put the rise down to energy prices and seasonal food increases. Summer holiday travel added to it, along with higher prices for smartphones and computers driven by demand for computing power. Energy and computing power are the same forces moving markets everywhere else. China spent 3 years being described as an exporter of deflation. That description is out of date. The practical consequence for an investor is that the cheapest source of manufactured goods in the world has stopped getting cheaper. (People’s Daily)

💊 Amgen has its worst day since 2000 on someone else’s trial

On 4 September, Novartis and Ionis said their heart drug pelacarsen had failed its Phase 3 trial. Lp(a)HORIZON enrolled 8,323 patients with high levels of lipoprotein(a), a blood fat linked to heart attacks and strokes. The drug cut Lp(a) by an average of 72%, and it still did not beat placebo on the combined measure of cardiovascular death, heart attack, stroke and urgent artery surgery. On Tuesday Amgen closed down 10.15% at $393.17 on nearly 3 times its average monthly volume, its worst single day since October 2000. Novartis fell 14% and Ionis 10%. (Yahoo Finance)

Amgen was not in that trial. It runs its own drug at the same target, olpasiran, and Eli Lilly runs lepodisiran. Both cut Lp(a) by more than 90%, against pelacarsen’s 72%, which is the argument for why they might succeed where it failed. What happened on Tuesday is read-across: when one company’s trial misses, the market marks down everyone chasing the same biology, because a failure raises the odds that the target itself does not work. Whether the deeper reductions are enough to change the outcome is now the whole question, and Amgen’s own trial reports later. (CNBC)

📱 Apple’s foldable arrives tonight and the price is the story

Apple opens its Surprise and Shine event at Apple Park at 6pm UK, 1pm ET. It is John Ternus’s first. He replaced Tim Cook as chief executive on 1 September. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are expected alongside the company’s first foldable, reported to be called the iPhone Ultra. Its inner screen is put at roughly 7.7 to 7.8 inches and the outer one at 5.3 to 5.5 inches. Carrier listings and several analysts point to a starting price near $1,999, down from the $2,399 that circulated last year, while analysts quoted by Reuters expect above $2,500. (TechRepublic)

This launch differs in 2 ways. Supply of the foldable is expected to be severely constrained, which caps how much revenue it can add to the December quarter whatever the demand looks like. And the memory chips inside it are in genuine shortage with contract prices rising, which is a cost Apple either absorbs or passes on. September launches set up the December quarter, the biggest 3 months of Apple’s financial year. Pre-orders are expected from Friday 11 September, with devices arriving around 19 September. (9to5Mac)

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🇬🇧 The bond market has written half the Budget already

The global bond selloff has cut Chancellor John Healey’s fiscal headroom from about £26bn to roughly £13.8bn ahead of his Budget on 28 October. Headroom is the gap between what the government expects to raise and what its own fiscal rules allow it to spend. It shrinks on its own when borrowing costs rise, because the interest bill grows before any policy changes. The 30-year gilt sat at 5.81% on Tuesday. The 10-year sat near 5.2%, with investors increasingly pricing further Bank of England rises on renewed inflation worries. Oil near $100 is doing much of that work, which is how a Middle East story ends up inside a British tax decision. (Options Trading Report)

🥈 Silver keeps going while gold does not

Silver rose 1.31% to $66.61 an ounce on Wednesday while gold slipped to $4,367.90, down 0.84%. The 2 metals usually move together. They have separated over the past year: silver is up more than 150%, a level it has not held in over a decade, while gold has spent September giving ground back. The split comes from what each one is. Gold is priced almost entirely as a store of value, so it suffers when interest rates are expected to rise and holding an asset that pays no income costs more. Silver carries that same monetary demand plus industrial demand from solar panels and electronics, and the industrial leg is still growing. (Trading Economics)

₿ Bitcoin ETFs took the money and left the rest

American spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds pulled in $986.9m in the week to 4 September, while inflows into ether, Solana, XRP and Hyperliquid products fell between 73% and 96% over the same week. Bitcoin traded at $79,129 on Wednesday, up 1.03%. XRP sat at $1.42, up 2% on the day and 5.5% over 7 days. Concentration like that usually points to institutional money rather than retail, because the funds buying through ETFs are the ones with mandates naming bitcoin specifically. Everything else in the market is being bought by somebody else, in smaller size. (Investing News)

🔍 Deep Dive - SpaceX Frees 319 Million More Shares Today. The Buyers Are 12 Days Behind Them.

Read more

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🇨🇦 Canada answers dollar for dollar: counter-tariffs of 15% to 50% on $20bn of American goods took effect this morning, covering 700 products.

• 🏛️ Wall Street reopens pricing a rise: traders put roughly 60% odds on the Fed raising rates when it votes on 16 September.

• 🛢️ Oil’s recovery slips into 2027: Brent settled at $97.31 and ANZ sees no return to pre-war flows until next year.

• 🇯🇵 The yen hits a 7-month high: it reached 153.53 per dollar as markets priced a 97% chance of a Japanese rise.

• 🇨🇳 China’s exports jump 25%: August shipments to America rose 34.4% despite the tariffs, and the monthly surplus hit $119.09bn.

• 🔩 Copper sets an all-time high: it reached $14,533 a tonne in London on tariff fears, beating the record set in January.

• 🛍️ British shop sales slow again: like-for-like retail sales rose 0.5% in August, a 4-month low and well under the 1.2% expected.

• 📱 Apple’s first event under Ternus: the Surprise and Shine launch runs tomorrow at 6pm UK, 1pm ET, and a foldable iPhone is expected.

• 🎮 GameStop reports after the close: it has already told investors sales fell to $780m to $800m while net income nearly doubled.

• 📈 I think Bitcoin tops out here and heads lower: Chart of the Day covers 82,000, 70,000 and the 60,000 level below it.

🧠 One Big Thing

The Federal Reserve votes on 16 September, and the market now thinks a rise is more likely than not. Roughly 60% odds, after Friday’s jobs report came in at close to 3 times what forecasters expected. That reaches you even if you own nothing American, because the dollar borrowing rate sets the price of money almost everywhere else. That leaves 2 prints before the vote: producer prices on Thursday and consumer prices on Friday, both at 1:30pm UK, 8:30am ET. A hot Friday number settles it. A cool one reopens the argument.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

96%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : 39.83% CEA Industries Inc. surged after Four.meme launched BNC4, a tokenised 1:1 version of its shares and the first of its new 4Stock products, drawing speculative flows into the BNB treasury company following Changpeng Zhao’s comments about IPOs moving on chain.

• : 36.16% Arbe Robotics Ltd. jumped after it and Chinese tier-1 HiRain were selected by one of the world’s largest automotive groups to supply imaging radar for a Level 3 automated driving programme spanning multiple brands in China. Series-production deliveries are scheduled to begin in Q4 2027.

• : 20.15% Roivant Sciences Ltd. rose on positive Phase 2 PHocus topline data from subsidiary Pulmovant for inhaled mosliciguat in pulmonary hypertension associated with interstitial lung disease, with the Phase 3 PHrontier study already enrolling.

• : 15.94% Pharvaris N.V. climbed after positive topline data from the CHAPTER-3 pivotal study of deucrictibant XR for prophylaxis of hereditary angioedema attacks.

• : 6.49% Bloom Energy Corporation gained after confirmation it joins the S&P 500 before the open on 21 September, the first energy name added to the index since 2022, with UBS lifting its price target to $325.

• : 5.03% Oracle Corporation advanced into its 10 September earnings report as Morgan Stanley raised its price target to $210 and called the setup attractive, with investors focused on a backlog that hit $638 billion last quarter.

• : 4.37% Intel Corporation rose after Northland upgraded the stock to Outperform with a $120 target on turnaround progress and server CPU shortages, alongside supply-chain reports that Intel will raise PC processor prices by around 10% in early October.

Losers

• : 27.72% Dyne Therapeutics, Inc. slumped after Novartis said rival myotonic dystrophy drug del-desiran failed its Phase 3 trial, raising doubts over Dyne’s own smaller pivotal study in the same indication.

• : 18.79% TurboGen Ltd. moved sharply lower in pre-market with no specific catalyst identified, a week after the Israeli microturbine developer completed its Nasdaq direct listing alongside its Tel Aviv listing.

• : 5.98% Amgen Inc. fell after BMO Capital downgraded it to Market Perform on valuation and loss-of-exclusivity risk, following Novartis data showing pelacarsen lowered Lp(a) without cutting cardiovascular events, a negative read-across to Amgen’s olpasiran.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $78,308 (▼ 1.01%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,471 (▼ 0.77%)
XRP: $1.39 (▼ 0.36%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,698 (▼ 0.31%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,553 (▼ 0.04%)
FTSE 100: 10,835 (▲ 0.19%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.80% (▲ 0.25%)
Oil (WTI): $94 (▲ 2.69%)
Gold: $4,404 (▼ 0.54%)
Silver: $66.20 (▲ 0.01%)

Data as of: UK: 1:00 PM BST / US: 8:00 AM EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 9:00 PM JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🇨🇦 Canada’s counter-tariffs land on 700 products

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs are live. They took effect at 5:01am UK, 12:01am ET, run from 15% to 50%, cover nearly $20bn of American imports and touch more than 700 products, among them steel, household appliances, agricultural equipment and dairy. Prime Minister Mark Carney said in late August that Canada would match Washington “dollar for dollar in order to protect Canadian workers, farmers, families, and businesses”. Ottawa is putting $5.42bn behind a support package for the small and medium-sized businesses and workers caught in it. The American duties these answer, 50% on about $20bn of Canadian goods, went live on 22 August after trade talks collapsed. (Al Jazeera)

So who actually pays a tariff? The buyer’s side, mostly. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy puts the share absorbed by American importers and consumers at 96%. That makes this an inflation story before it is a trade story, and it arrives in the same week as 2 American inflation prints. Canada is the largest buyer of American-built cars, so Detroit is directly exposed. On the eve of the deadline the president wrote on Truth Social, “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES! Their products aren’t good enough!”, although it is the Federal Aviation Administration that certifies aircraft rather than the White House. (Forbes)

🏛️ Wall Street reopens with a rate rise as the base case

60%. That is roughly what traders were pricing on Tuesday for a quarter-point rise when the Federal Reserve votes on 16 September, at the end of a 2-day meeting starting on the 15th. American markets were shut on Monday for Labor Day, so this is the first session since Friday’s jobs report. That report put payrolls at 162,000 against forecasts near 53,000, held unemployment at 4.1% and revised the 2 previous months higher. The 10-year Treasury yield sat at 4.78% on Tuesday, and stock futures edged lower before the open.

That leaves 2 prints before the vote. Producer prices arrive on Thursday and consumer prices on Friday, both at 1:30pm UK, 8:30am ET, and they are the last major data the committee sees before it decides. Reuters reported that a hot inflation reading would all but seal a September rise, while a cooler one strengthens the case for a hold. Why this reaches beyond America is simple: dollar borrowing costs set the price of risk everywhere, so a rise in Washington turns up in British bond yields and in what companies pay to borrow. Oil above $97 is what makes the inflation half of the decision harder. (Trading Economics)

🛢️ The oil war’s recovery date slides into 2027

“A major escalation in the maritime conflict.” That is how the maritime intelligence firm Marisks described the weekend. American forces struck 3 Iranian oil tankers, one of them off Kharg Island, Iran’s main export hub. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard navy said it had targeted 3 tankers using what it called unauthorised routes through the Strait of Hormuz, along with 3 American vessels elsewhere. Commercial tankers are now being used deliberately as instruments of reciprocal economic pressure, Marisks added. Brent settled $1.03 higher at $97.31 on Monday after touching $98.06, its highest since 24 July, and WTI added 1.3% to $92.65. Brent gained 7.8% last week. WTI gained close to 10%. (Reuters)

The timetable moved over the weekend. ANZ told clients that a prolonged standoff punctuated by calibrated military action is now the likeliest path. On its numbers exports stay constrained through the rest of 2026, with a gradual reopening late in the fourth quarter. Pre-war throughput does not return until late in the first quarter or early in the second quarter of 2027. Kpler counted an average of 10 commodity ships a day through the strait over the past 10 days, the lowest since May. OPEC+ met on Sunday and left October output exactly where September’s is. The barrels that would settle this are not being offered. (Reuters)

🇯🇵 The yen’s rally is now everyone’s problem

What happens when the world’s cheapest borrowing currency stops being cheap? Everybody finds out at the same time. The yen reached 153.53 per dollar in Tokyo trading on Tuesday, its strongest since February and past the levels Japan intervened to defend in July. It has firmed close to 4% from around 160 in a week. Japan’s second-quarter GDP was revised up to an annualised 1.4% from 1.1%. July’s average cash earnings rose 4.7% against 3.9% expected, a sixth straight month above 3% and the first run like that in more than 34 years. (Reuters)

Overnight index swaps now put roughly a 97% chance on the Bank of Japan raising its policy rate a quarter point at its meeting on 17 and 18 September, against about 75% a week ago. For years investors have borrowed yen at close to nothing and bought assets elsewhere, which works while the yen stays weak and comes apart quickly when it strengthens. Traders are closing those positions now, and that is why the move has been this fast. Japanese money coming home would add to it. The Bank of Japan votes the day after the Fed does. (Nikkei Asia)

🇨🇳 China’s exports jump 25% with the tariffs still on

China’s exports rose 25% in August from a year earlier, to $401.44bn, on demand for cars and high-tech goods. Imports grew 28.2% to $282.36bn. The monthly goods trade surplus came in at $119.09bn, up from $112.5bn in July and the latest in a run of monthly surpluses above $100bn. Shipments to the United States totalled $42.5bn, a rise of 34.4% on the year, against $13.3bn going the other way, leaving a bilateral surplus of about $29.2bn. The cumulative surplus for the first 8 months of 2026 stands at $805.51bn. (CNBC)

Tariffs were meant to shrink that American number. It grew by a third instead. Some of that is rerouting, some is price, and some is that American buyers still need what China makes, which is the Kiel finding arriving from the other end of the same trade. The line worth more attention is imports growing faster than exports. Import demand is the part of China’s economy that has been missing for years, and it is what rebalancing would look like if it were real. China publishes consumer and producer prices on Wednesday, and those 2 readings say whether the export machine is running on volume or on discounting. (Associated Press)

Stories You Might Have Missed

🔩 Copper sets a record on tariffs and geology at once

Benchmark 3-month copper futures on the London Metal Exchange reached $14,533 a tonne on Monday, the highest price ever paid for the metal and above the previous record set in January. The rally has 2 engines. Traders expect the president to widen American tariffs to imports of refined metal, which has pulled inventories into the United States and left less of it everywhere else. Underneath that sits a supply problem: an export ban in Congo, weaker output from Chile and Peru, and a Chilean second quarter that was the country’s weakest in at least 19 years. Copper has gained 17% over the past year, with data centres, power grids and renewable projects all pulling on the same wire. (Bloomberg)

🛍️ British shops post their slowest month since April

Like-for-like retail sales in Britain rose 0.5% in August from a year earlier, down from 1% in July and short of the 1.2% economists expected, according to the British Retail Consortium. That is the weakest reading in 4 months. Record heat earlier in the summer pulled spending forward into food, drink, health and beauty, and those categories held up into August while most others could not manage another month of growth. The figure landed the same morning Bank of England policymakers appeared before the Treasury Committee to answer for holding Bank Rate at 3.75%, with gilt yields sitting near multi-decade highs. (Reuters)

📱 Apple’s first launch under a new chief executive

Apple holds its Surprise and Shine event on Wednesday at 6pm UK, 1pm ET, the first product launch run by John Ternus, who replaced Tim Cook as chief executive on 1 September. Bloomberg expects the company’s first foldable iPhone alongside updates to the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, an Apple Watch Series 12 and an Apple Watch Ultra 4. The foldable is the headline. Pre-orders are expected from Friday 11 September with devices arriving around 19 September. September is the launch that sets up Apple’s December quarter, which is the biggest 3 months of its year, and this one carries a new chief executive on stage for the first time. (Bloomberg)

🎮 GameStop reports with the surprise already out

GameStop publishes second-quarter results after the American close tonight, having pre-announced its headline numbers on 31 August. It expects net income of $290m to $310m against $168.6m a year earlier, and operating income of $150m to $170m against $66.4m. Sales are expected to fall to between $780m and $800m from $972.2m. A $238m gain on a 43.4 million share stake in eBay is doing most of the work on the profit line. The shops keep shrinking. Options pricing implies a move of about 9% in either direction once the full report lands. (TipRanks)

📈 Chart of the Day - Bitcoin (BTCUSD)

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🔑 Before the news: Lifetime closes on Sunday

American markets are closed today. Before we get into the news, I want to give you a date.

Sensei Desk opens on Tuesday 15 September, the day the Senate votes on whether to take up the CLARITY Act. It is a research desk that sits behind your membership. The newsletter tells you what happened. The Desk is the other half, the part where you stop reading about a company and start looking one up yourself. I am not going to walk through all of it here. You will see it next week.

Lifetime members go in first, on CLARITY Act day itself. That door closes on Sunday 13 September, and the Lifetime price increases on Sunday 20 September at midnight.

To upgrade, go to sensei.news/account and switch to Lifetime, then open a ticket on Discord so I can get you set up. If you are not on Discord, message me on Substack instead.

When you get in

• Tuesday 15 September: Lifetime members, on CLARITY Act day itself.

• Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17 September: Annual members.

• Friday 18 and Monday 21 September: Monthly members.

I am opening it in waves for one reason. I would rather answer every question properly than lose half of you in an inbox on the busiest news day of the month.

The 2 dates to write down

• Sunday 20 September, midnight: the Lifetime price increases.

• Wednesday 30 September, midnight: the annual price increases, and anyone joining from October pays the new rate.

If you are already a member, your price does not change, now or in October. You keep what you are on. The increase is for people joining after the Desk exists, because until now the subscription bought you a newsletter, and from the 15th it buys you a newsletter and a research desk.

→ Upgrade to Lifetime
→ Upgrade to Annual

Become a member with a discount:

Get 25% off for 1 year

👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🔑 Lifetime closes on Sunday: Sensei Desk opens on Tuesday the 15th and Lifetime members go in first, on CLARITY Act day itself.

• 💾 Seoul’s chips melt up: the Kospi closed 4.61% higher at 6,995.39 as memory prices climb, with SK Hynix up 8.1% and Samsung 5.3%.

• 🏛️ Trump’s ultimatum to the Fed: cut rates or he halts trade with every country America runs a deficit with, he said on Friday.

• 🛢️ Iran wants an exclusion zone: Brent added $1.22 to $97.50 after America struck 3 Iranian tankers, and OPEC+ left October output alone.

• 🇬🇧 Healey speaks into a bond selloff: the 10-year gilt hit 5.16% on a sixth straight day of rises before his first big speech.

• ₿ Zcash and HYPE hit records: both broke all-time highs while bitcoin held near $80,000, and short sellers lost about $150m in 24 hours.

• ⛴️ Ship fuel is running short: the price of the main marine fuel is up 76% in Singapore since the Iran war began.

• 🇯🇵 The yen threatens the carry trade: it gained more than 2% last week, and markets put 75% odds on a Japanese rise this month.

• 🇪🇺 The ECB is expected to raise: a rise on Thursday is seen as certain, and futures imply a 75% chance of another by December.

• 🎥 Sunday’s member stream is up: your chart requests, my Lululemon position and more than 20 names, with timestamps so you can skip straight to one.

• 📈 One chart before you go: the Chart of the Day closes today’s edition with Lululemon and the walkthrough from Sunday night’s member stream.

🧠 One Big Thing

American markets are shut today for Labor Day. Asia has just had an enormous session, the Kospi up 4.61% and chip stocks flying, and none of it has been tested by a New York bid yet. Thin holiday trading exaggerates everything, in both directions.

The week that decides anything is back-loaded: the ECB on Thursday, then American inflation on Friday at 1:30pm UK, 8:30am ET. That Friday number is what the Fed votes on when it meets on 16 September.

That is the week Sensei Desk opens, which is deliberate. A week carrying a central bank decision, an inflation print and the CLARITY Act is exactly the week you want to be able to look something up rather than wait for someone to explain it to you.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

More than 50%

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $79,544 (▼1.00%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,499 (▼0.64%)
XRP: $1.41 (▼1.03%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,707 (▼0.19%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,561 (▼0.01%)
FTSE 100: 10,863 (▲0.34%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.78% (▲0.25%)
Oil (WTI): $92 (▲1.09%)
Gold: $4,397 (▼0.71%)
Silver: $65.64 (▼0.84%)

Data as of: UK: 13:51 BST / US: 08:51 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 21:51 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

💾 Seoul jumps 4.61% while Wall Street sleeps

4.61%. South Korea’s Kospi closed 308.18 points higher at 6,995.39 on Monday, within touching distance of 7,000, and memory chips did nearly all of it. SK Hynix added 8.1% and Samsung Electronics 5.3%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 finished 2.1% higher at 66,399.84, with Rohm up 7.8%, Tokyo Electron 5% and Renesas 3.1%. The rest of the region did not follow: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.8% to 25,458.03 and the Shanghai Composite crept up 0.1% to 3,934.36. American markets are closed for Labor Day, so none of this has met a New York price. (Associated Press)

So what set it off? Friday in New York, where the S&P 500, the Dow and the Nasdaq all fell while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3%. Memory is in genuine shortage. Susquehanna expects DRAM contract prices to rise more than 50% this quarter and NAND about 60%, and Dell’s chief operating officer Jeff Clarke summed the problem up on the company’s earnings call as “DRAM, DRAM, DRAM, followed by NAND, NAND, NAND”. Counterpoint Research put second-quarter DRAM revenue growth at 57% on the previous quarter and 385% on the year. Micron traded around $1,006 on Friday. (BigGo Finance)

Those are the same chips that go into laptops, phones and games consoles, which is why a shortage priced in Seoul turns up months later on a shelf in Manchester.

Nvidia, Broadcom and Google Cloud all present at tech conferences this week, and those sessions will say whether the shortage is easing or deepening.

🏛️ Trump threatens the trading system over rates

“LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT.” That was the president on Friday, hours after the August jobs report showed American employers added about 162,000 jobs, close to 3 times what forecasters expected, with unemployment holding at 4.1% and July’s figure revised from a loss of 23,000 to a gain of 21,000. He also wrote that “The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart” and told its members to “BE PATRIOTS for a change”. The list of countries America runs a goods deficit with includes Canada, Mexico, China and most of the European Union. (The New York Times)

Nobody at the Fed can answer him, because the pre-meeting quiet period is already running and no policymaker speaks in public until after the vote. Traders now price roughly a 57% chance of a rise this month, with everything resting on Friday’s inflation data. Governor Christopher Waller, speaking before the blackout began, asked “What’s the cost of waiting one meeting?” and said a single quarter-point rise would not bring inflation to 2% on its own. Governor Michael Barr said that if inflation is not moderating sufficiently, “then I think we should act decisively to raise rates”. Both of them pointed at Friday’s print. (Reuters)

🛢️ Iran wants to draw a line outside the strait

American forces struck 3 Iranian oil tankers on Saturday, after the Revolutionary Guard fired ballistic missiles at an American aircraft carrier and a guided missile destroyer, both of which evaded the attacks with no casualties. The M/T Downy off Kharg Island and the M/T Stark 1 near Jask were permanently disabled. A third vessel, the M/T Kylo, was destroyed near the Gulf of Oman; it was carrying no oil and its crew were told to abandon it first. Admiral Brad Cooper, who runs Central Command, put the doctrine plainly: “If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost”. Brent added $1.22 to $97.50 on Monday and WTI $1.23 to $92.71, after Brent gained 8% last week and WTI close to 10%. (NBC News)

The new part of this is geographic. A senior Iranian official said Tehran plans to declare an “exclusion zone” outside the Strait of Hormuz, aimed at vessels it believes are trying to enter, which would push the danger area beyond the water everyone has been watching for 6 months. The strait itself is already effectively shut. Tehran claimed over the weekend to have hit an uncrewed American vessel inside it and a Central Command spokesperson called that “a total lie”. Meanwhile OPEC+ met on Sunday and left October production exactly where September’s is, with the 7 countries involved next meeting on 4 October. No extra barrels are coming while the map of where a ship can be hit gets bigger. (CNBC)

🇬🇧 The Chancellor speaks into a sixth day of selling

John Healey gives his first major speech as Chancellor today, ahead of his first Budget on 28 October, and the bond market has spent the run-up going the wrong way. The UK 10-year gilt yield rose to 5.16% on Monday, a sixth straight daily increase. Lloyds and the REC published on the same morning and their readings disagree: Lloyds says house prices fell year on year for the first time since November 2023, while the REC recruitment industry survey says British firms increased permanent hiring in August for the first time since 2022. Sterling eased a touch to $1.35. (Reuters)

Every basis point on that yield costs the Treasury money before Healey chooses a single policy, and he has an immediate £5bn shortfall in defence spending to cover alongside Andy Burnham’s commitments on pensions and welfare. The move is not purely British: global yields jumped after Friday’s American jobs report, and oil at $97 makes every inflation-linked bond market nervous at once. Liz Truss’s government ended in 2022 because the gilt market decided it did not believe the numbers, which is the precedent every investor in this market has in mind. (Reuters)

₿ Zcash and HYPE take the records bitcoin could not

Over the weekend the total value of every crypto asset passed $2.7 trillion, back near where it peaked in May. Bitcoin held around the $80,000 mark and traded at $79,841.85 in Asian hours, which leaves it a long way below its own record. The all-time highs were set elsewhere. Zcash, the privacy coin, broke above $1,200 with a market value over $21bn. Hyperliquid’s HYPE token approached $90 with about $22bn. Those 2 now sit 9th and 10th by market value. (TradingKey)

The derivatives data shows who paid for it. More than 70,000 traders were liquidated over 24 hours, $231m in total, and close to $150m of that was short positions. A liquidation is a forced exit: the exchange closes a borrowed position when the collateral stops covering the loss, and closing a short means buying, which pushes the price up again. The single biggest liquidation was Zcash at nearly $50m, ahead of ether and ahead of bitcoin. Volatility has moved down the market cap table. (Reuters)

Stories You Might Have Missed

⛴️ The fuel that moves cargo is running short

Refiners are choosing to make diesel, petrol and jet fuel instead of the heavy fuel oil that powers ships, because the margins are better, and the shipping industry is now short. Energy Aspects forecasts a deficit of 218,000 barrels a day in the third quarter, the first shortfall it has estimated since the third quarter of 2025, when it was 6,000. The price of very low sulphur fuel oil in Singapore, the world’s largest bunkering hub, is up 76% since the Iran war began, to just under $825 a tonne, against a 40% rise in Brent over the same period. Stocks in Singapore, Rotterdam and Fujairah sit about 30% below their 3-year seasonal averages. Higher bunker costs feed into freight rates, and freight rates feed into everything shipped. (Reuters)

🇯🇵 The yen is now a carry trade problem

The yen rose 0.1% to 156.01 per dollar on Monday, after gaining more than 2% last week. Markets price a 75% chance the Bank of Japan raises its policy rate a quarter point on 18 September, and a 60% chance of another move by December. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s economic adviser publicly projected a rise this month, which is unusual and adds to the pressure. Eric Robertsen, chief strategist at Standard Chartered, called the recent burst of yen strength “a potential threat to carry outperformance”, and said persistent strength may signal that higher yen and dollar rates are starting to change how big investors allocate money. Borrowing cheap yen to buy assets elsewhere has been one of the best trades of the year. (Reuters)

🇪🇺 The ECB is expected to raise again on Thursday

Euro area policymakers meet on Thursday and a rise is treated as certain, with oil prices doing most of the persuading. Futures imply a 75% chance of a further increase by December, and Deutsche Bank expects the tightening to run through the end of the year. Euro area inflation ran at 3.3% in August against a core rate of 2.4%, so energy is doing the damage while the underlying picture stays contained. The decision and American producer price data land 15 minutes apart, so Thursday morning carries 2 releases almost on top of each other. The euro was little changed at $1.16 on Monday, and the dollar index sat flat at 99.16, close to its recent low of 98.56. (Reuters)

🔍 Deep Dive - Sunday’s Private Member Stream: Your Chart Requests, My Lululemon Position and More Than 20 Names

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This Week

XRP ends the week at $1.41, almost exactly where it ended last Sunday. The flat number hides the week. It traded down to $1.31 on Wednesday and up to $1.48 on Thursday, a 13 percent swing that finished nowhere. The wider market did go somewhere. Total crypto market value rose 3 percent to $2.79 trillion and Bitcoin dominance sat at 57.6 percent. The Fear and Greed Index closed at 73, which reads as Greed. It read 69 last Sunday.

The week’s shape came from Washington, and from a calendar rather than a vote. House Republican leaders cancelled 8 voting days this month. That matters because the Senate takes its first vote on the CLARITY Act a week on Tuesday, 15 September. The House now leaves town 2 days after it. A bill needs both chambers. The section below sets out what it decides and what it does not.

Everywhere else, XRP had the kind of week that reads better in a headline than on a chart. The Bank for International Settlements built a working system on the XRP Ledger. Ripple agreed to paint the token’s logo onto a college football field. A fund disclosed a large XRP holding, then showed it had hedged nearly all of it. That is 3 big names in one week, and very little of it looks like demand. A ledger fix activates on Friday.

The Consensus

• ⚖️ The CLARITY Act gets its Senate vote on 15 September, and the House leaves Washington 2 days later.

• 🏛️ The BIS built on the XRP Ledger, anchoring official statistics on it in a working paper published on Wednesday.

• 🏈 Ripple bought the field at Florida, putting the XRP logo on the turf for a reported $5 million a year.

• 📉 Bitwise hedged 97 percent of its XRP, holding the tokens while shorting an almost identical amount of futures.

• 🔧 A ledger fix activates on Friday, clearing 11 bugs that validators voted through last month.

The Numbers

The Chart Watch

All live entries are posted in real time for premium Substack members.

The Ripple Effect

🏛️ The BIS Just Ran Official Statistics Through the XRP Ledger

It costs 0.01 XRP to prove that 1 million official datasets have not been tampered with. That is the arithmetic inside a Bank for International Settlements working paper published on Wednesday 2 September. Paper 1374 describes a prototype that lets anyone check whether published economic data came from the institution it claims to, and whether anyone altered it after release. The prototype runs on the XRP Ledger (BIS).

The system reduces a statistical file to a single summary value and writes that value into the memo field of a ledger transaction. The figures themselves never go on chain. Anyone receiving the file rebuilds the summary and compares it against the public record, and a mismatch means the file changed. Median publication came in at 3 to 5 seconds. Verification took 1 to 2 seconds.

Speed was never the doubt. What a holder gets out of it sits somewhere else. Every transaction on the XRP Ledger destroys its own fee, which starts at 10 drops, or 0.00001 XRP. The prototype deliberately bundles many datasets into a single anchoring transaction. Batch 1 million of them 1,000 at a time and the ledger only sees 1,000 transactions. Those burn 0.01 XRP between them.

The paper sets out 2 limits on itself. The tests ran on XRPL DevNet. That is a test network where the XRP carries no value, so the exercise produced timings rather than demand. The authors also built the blockchain layer to be swappable, which means another ledger could perform the same role. Ripple has no disclosed relationship with any of it (CryptoSlate).

That last part cuts in the ledger’s favour. It is the strongest independent signal the XRP Ledger has had this year, and Ripple was not in the room.

🏈 Ripple Is Paying to Paint Its Logo on Grass

Gator fans will be looking at the XRP logo on the turf at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium this season, on each 25 yard line. Florida Athletics announced the deal with Ripple on Friday 4 September, starting with the 2026 football season. The term is multiple years. It also puts XRP on the university’s website, on its social accounts and on signage at events (Florida Gators).

The reported price is roughly $5 million a year, which would place it among the largest field logo deals in college football. Neither Ripple nor the university has confirmed that number. It comes from a person familiar with the negotiations, quoted in the coverage of the announcement (WCJB).

Ripple has done this before. It signed a comparable arrangement with the University of Kansas, so Florida is the second campus rather than an experiment. The Florida deal also funds financial and technology education for student athletes and the wider campus, covering traditional finance alongside digital assets rather than XRP on its own.

None of it touches the token. Ripple’s own announcement said nothing about the price of XRP or what it is for. A sponsorship moves money from Ripple to a university athletics department. No part of the arrangement requires anybody to own XRP, and no part of it puts XRP into anyone’s hands.

The deal buys attention in front of a stadium and it buys no demand for the token.

📉 Bitwise Owns 10.8 Million XRP and Has Hedged Away Almost All of It

One fund holds 10,781,438 XRP and is exposed to the price of almost none of it. The Bitwise Crypto Carry Fund published a holdings table struck at the New York close on Tuesday 1 September. Against that custody position it carried a short of 10,510,000 XRP in September Coinbase futures (CryptoSlate).

That leaves 97.48 percent of the position hedged and 271,438 XRP carrying real price risk. The trade is called cash and carry. A fund buys the asset, sells a future that is trading above it, and collects the gap when the 2 prices meet at settlement. Whichever way XRP moves in between mostly cancels out across the 2 legs. The gap on that date was 0.91 percent. The fund’s own table annualised that to an implied yield of 14.57 percent, before fees, financing and the cost of rolling.

Somebody has to take the other side of a short. CFTC data at 25 August showed 20,518 contracts of open interest in standard Coinbase XRP futures. Leveraged funds held 13,822 outright shorts and no outright longs at all, which puts that category on the same side as the disclosed hedge. Dealers and intermediaries held 17,853 longs (CFTC).

The same firm shows the opposite pattern in its other product. Bitwise’s spot XRP ETF held 361,995,068 XRP at 2 September, worth about $531.3 million, and its filings define the trust’s only job as holding XRP. One name sits on both products and they use the token for opposite purposes.

One disclosure covers one fund on one date, and it does not settle how the rest of the money sits.

🔧 A Ledger Fix Activates on Friday and Some Servers Will Stop Working

The XRP Ledger changes on Friday 11 September. An amendment called fixCleanup3_3_0 crossed the network’s approval threshold on 28 August. It needs 80 percent of trusted validators. It has 82.86 percent, which is 29 of the 35 on the list (U.Today).

An amendment is how the XRP Ledger changes its own rules. Nobody pushes a change through alone. That includes Ripple, because the servers which validate transactions are the ones that vote, and the vote is what decides. Support has to hold above the 80 percent line for a fixed 2 week window. That window is what the Friday date is counting down.

The amendment carries 11 fixes rather than a new feature. They cover the lending protocol, automated market makers and Single Asset Vaults, with more in the permissioned exchange and the Checks system. None of it changes what the ledger can do, and all of it changes how reliably the existing parts do it.

An operator who ignores it stops being useful to anyone. A server that does not understand an activated amendment becomes amendment blocked, which means it can no longer judge whether a ledger is valid, process transactions or join consensus. That applies regardless of how its operator voted (XRPL).

Another 5 substantive amendments in the same release are still short of the line. They include Batch and Permission Delegation, both of them rewrites of features that validators blocked earlier this year after researchers found authorisation flaws in the originals. Batch has reached 23 of the 35 validators. No funds were ever at risk in either case.

⚖️ The CLARITY Act: What the 15 September Vote Actually Decides

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The Fed stopped talking on Saturday. Its quiet period runs through 17 September, so no official can react in public to anything that prints before the vote. In July, 3 of them already voted for…

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 📉 The jobs number lands today: forecasts run from 53,000 to 65,000 August jobs, after July lost 23,000.

• 🏦 The Fed is a coin flip again: Waller cut the odds of a September rate rise to about 50% from about 63%.

• 🤖 Nvidia buys Hugging Face: $12.9bn for the platform where 18 million developers publish and download AI models.

• 🛢️ Oil’s biggest week since July: Brent flirted with $96 and 6 vessels crossed Hormuz on Wednesday against an average near 13.

• 🇬🇧 The Bank of England splits in public: the chief economist wants 4% and the Governor sees little sign of it spreading.

• 💻 Broadcom split Wall Street: one broker took its target to $600, another cut to $460, on the same numbers.

• ₿ Bitcoin back above $81,000: US spot bitcoin funds took $101m on Tuesday after $237m left the day before.

• 📊 Beat the numbers, sold anyway: Guidewire fell 15% after hours and Ciena lost 10% after raising its forecasts.

• 🇯🇵 The yen is the week’s winner: it gained more than 2% on Thursday as the Bank of Japan talked up September.

• 🔍 My biggest single stock buy yet: the deep dive has the balance sheet, the numbers and the reason I bought it.

• 📈 One chart before you go: the Chart of the Day carries the levels I am watching on that position and why.

🧠 One Big Thing

Markets spent a fortnight pricing a US rate rise, and on Thursday one Fed governor talked them out of half of it. Christopher Waller said he could support holding rates where they are if inflation keeps improving, and the odds of a rise on 16 September fell from about 63% to about 50%. Shares had their best day in a month on that sentence. No number changed. At 1:30pm UK, which is 8:30am in New York, the August jobs report lands, and it is the first hard test of a rally built on a speech.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

50%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : 13.29% Samsara Inc. surged after posting Q2 revenue of $508.4m against $483.3m expected and adjusted EPS of 20 cents versus 16 cents, crossing $2.1bn in annual recurring revenue with net new ARR up 28%.

Losers

• : 20.88% lululemon athletica inc. collapsed after cutting full-year revenue guidance to a decline of 5% to 7% from flat to down 1% and slashing EPS guidance to $9.48 to $9.73 from $10.95 to $11.15. Q2 revenue of $2.4bn missed and comparable sales fell 9%, with the headline EPS beat flattered by an $0.86 one-time tariff refund benefit.

• : 17.06% Oxford Industries, Inc. sank after guiding Q3 revenue to $280m to $300m, around 7.5% below consensus, and cutting full-year EPS to $1.60 to $2.00 against $2.47 expected. CEO Tom Chubb blamed ongoing weakness at Lilly Pulitzer alongside softer consumer sentiment and elevated travel costs.

• : 15.46% Guidewire Software, Inc. dropped after guiding next-quarter revenue to $375m versus $387.6m expected, overshadowing a quarter that beat with revenue of $411.1m, up 15.3% year on year, and adjusted EPS of $0.99.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $81,164 (▼0.09%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,522 (▲0.61%)
XRP: $1.45 (▼0.14%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,762 (▲0.09%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,679 (▲0.52%)
FTSE 100: 10,824 (▼0.09%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.77% (▼0.08%)
Oil (WTI): $91 (▼1.00%)
Gold: $4,465 (▼0.16%)
Silver: $66.90 (▼0.06%)

Data as of: UK: 1:00 pm BST / US: 8:00 am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 9:00 pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

📉 The jobs number lands within the hour

The August employment report is published at 1:30pm UK, 8:30am ET. Economists surveyed by FactSet expect 65,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rising to 4.2%, after July’s first estimate showed 23,000 jobs lost. Those polled by Dow Jones expect 53,000 and 4.1%, so the bar you are measuring against depends on which desk you read. The full range of forecasts runs from a fall of 25,000 to a gain of 121,000, and Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Nationwide, RBC and Vanguard all sit at 40,000 or below. The Chicago Fed’s real-time estimate has unemployment holding at 4.1%. (Barron’s)

The evidence going in is soft. ADP counted 38,000 private jobs in August against 47,000 expected, Challenger counted 52,881 announced job cuts against 33,429 the month before, and the employment index inside Thursday’s ISM services survey was 47.8 and contracted for a second month. Jobless claims were 206,000 in the week to 29 August, up from 204,000. Underneath the monthly noise, 2 forces are shrinking what counts as a normal number: baby boomers retiring and tighter immigration. The end of temporary protected status for about 200,000 Haitian nationals may drag on this month specifically. 22V Research puts the odds of any given payrolls report printing negative from here at about 40%. (Barron’s)

🏦 One speech turned the Fed back into a coin flip

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said on Thursday that he is willing to support holding the policy rate where it is if there is continued progress toward 2% inflation. Traders repriced within the hour. The probability of a rise at the 16 September meeting fell to 50% on CME FedWatch by Thursday, from 63% on Wednesday. American shares had their best day in about a month: the S&P 500 closed up 1.06% at 7,747.71, the Dow up 1.18% at 53,686.11 and the Nasdaq Composite up 1.40% at 26,584.06. The dollar touched its weakest since May and gold rose about 2%. (PBS News)

Thursday’s data pulled in 2 directions underneath all that. Jobless claims came in at 206,000 against 205,000 expected, and the ISM services index jumped to 55.4 from 54.1, well above the 54.3 forecast, while the employment component inside it contracted. So the activity side of the American economy is firm and the hiring side is not, and the man who moved the market pointed past both of them at next week’s inflation print. The committee has held its target range at 3.50% to 3.75% since 29 July, on a 9-3 vote. (FXStreet)

🤖 Nvidia pays $12.9bn for the place AI developers actually work

Nvidia confirmed on Thursday that it will buy Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, made up of $11.9 billion to shareholders and $1 billion of equity to retain employees joining Nvidia, with the deal expected to close in the first half of 2027. Hugging Face hosts 3 million models, 1 million applications and half a million datasets, used by more than 18 million developers, and Nvidia says the platform will stay open and keep supporting open-source and open-weight models. Nvidia closed up 1.80% at $228.45, valuing the company at $5.52 trillion. (TechCrunch)

Nvidia already sells the chips almost everybody trains on. What it did not own until Thursday was the default place open models get published, found and downloaded, which is where a developer’s habits form long before any hardware is bought. Hugging Face’s chief executive approached Jensen Huang weeks before the deal, according to CNBC. A purchase closing in 2027 gives competition regulators on both sides of the Atlantic plenty of time to look at what it means for a company that already supplies most of the industry’s compute. (NVIDIA)

🛢️ Oil heads for its biggest week since July and the tanker owners see no end this year

Brent crude flirted with $96 a barrel before easing back on Friday, and it is on course for its biggest weekly rise since July, up 19.71% in a month and 45.21% over a year. WTI is at $91, down 1.00% on the session. Reuters shipping data counted 6 commodity vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, down from 11 on Tuesday and against a 10-day average of nearly 13. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, the world’s largest tanker operator, said this week it expects the disruption to continue with no normalisation before the end of the year. (Trading Economics)

The squeeze is showing up hardest away from crude. US diesel prices are at their highest since mid-2022 and European inventories sit well below seasonal norms, with damaged refineries in both the Middle East and Russia and little spare capacity elsewhere. Food is moving too: the UN’s index of global food prices rose 1.9% in August to its highest since late 2022, led by grains, sugar and dairy, and the Bloomberg Agricultural Spot Index rose more than 13% in the month, the most since 2012. Diesel moves freight and freight moves food, and both of them land inside the inflation prints that central banks have said decide September. (Bloomberg)

🇬🇧 The Bank of England is arguing with itself in public

Chief Economist Huw Pill made the case on Thursday for taking Bank Rate to 4% from 3.75%, saying higher rates would send a clear message about the inflation risk coming out of the Middle East, while adding that such a move “need not be the start of a prolonged and aggressive series of increases”. Governor Andrew Bailey has said he sees little sign of those pressures spreading into wages and prices. The July committee held on a 6-3 vote with 3 members already preferring 4%, so the argument does not need to convert many people. (Bank of England)

Friday’s Decision Maker Panel gave both sides something. Firms put inflation over the next year at 3.1%, up from 3.0%, while the price rises they expect to push through themselves fell again to 3.6% from a peak of 4.4% in April, and just under a fifth expect wages to rise against 17% who expect them to fall. Markets now price around 30 basis points of increases by the end of the year, with a quarter-point by November at about 64%, and short-dated gilt yields are heading for their biggest weekly jump since May. Bailey used a separate speech at the LSE to defend central bank independence, calling it “insulation from short-term political pressures” rather than “detachment from democracy”. The decision is on 17 September, with the Budget in October behind it. (Bloomberg)

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💻 The same Broadcom numbers produced a $140 gap in price targets

Broadcom fell as low as $342.33 on Thursday, about 6.3% down, then clawed back half of it to close at $357.16, a fall of 2.74%. Revenue was $29.59 billion against $29.36 billion expected, up 86% on the year, and AI semiconductor revenue was $16.7 billion, up 221%, while guidance of about $34.8 billion for the current quarter against a $35.03 billion consensus did the damage. Then the analysts filed and could not agree. Cantor Fitzgerald raised its target to $600 from $525 and BMO to $575 from $455, while Bank of America cut to $460 from $530 and TD Cowen to $475 from $500. Macquarie upgraded the stock outright with a $490 target, arguing the risk of Google building its own chips is priced in. (Benzinga)

₿ Bitcoin reclaims $80,000 as fund flows turn again

Bitcoin is at $81,164 this afternoon, having pushed back above $80,000 on Thursday for the first time since it lost the level in August, with ether at $2,522 and XRP at $1.45. US spot bitcoin ETFs took net inflows of $101.15 million on Tuesday, a day after $236.5 million left them, with BlackRock’s IBIT taking $115.45 million and Grayscale’s GBTC losing $56.21 million. Ether funds went the other way with $48.08 million of outflows, ending a 12-session run of inflows, and XRP funds lost $7.2 million after 11 straight sessions of buying. In the UK, Hargreaves Lansdown began offering bitcoin and ether exchange traded notes to retail clients this week. (The Crypto Times)

📊 Guidewire and Ciena beat the numbers and got sold anyway

Guidewire reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 99 cents a share against 94 cents expected, on revenue of $411.1 million against $402.81 million, then fell 15.16% after hours to $172.10 as first-quarter revenue guidance of $372 million to $378 million came in below the $387 million analysts wanted. Ciena did something similar in daylight: third-quarter earnings of $2.11 a share on revenue of $1.67 billion, sales up 37% on the year, a raised full-year outlook, and a 10.36% fall to $317.46 by the close. Software and networking names are now being marked against expectations rather than results. (TipRanks)

🇯🇵 The yen is the week’s strongest major currency

The yen gained more than 2% against the dollar on Thursday to touch 155.28, a one-month high, before easing back above 156 on Friday, leaving it up around 2.4% on the week. Governor Kazuo Ueda said after the G20 meeting that with underlying inflation approaching 2% the Bank of Japan must pay greater attention than before to upside risks, and board member Hajime Takata described 2026 as a regime change in which rate rises are nimble and data-dependent. Markets now fully price a quarter-point rise to 1.25% on 18 September. Traders have stopped short of calling Thursday’s move an intervention by Japanese authorities. (CNBC)

🔍 Deep Dive - My biggest single stock buy in the Challenge, and the numbers behind it

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🛢️ Saudi oil tankers hit in Hormuz: Both struck by projectiles near Khasab late Monday, each carrying 2 million barrels. Brent cleared $92.

• 🔥 Energy drags euro inflation to 3.3%: Eurozone prices rose 3.3% in August as energy jumped 14.3%, and the ECB decides in 9 days.

• 🇯🇵 Japan’s 10-year clears 3%: Its first reading above 3% since 1996, and the US 30-year is on its worst run since 2006.

• 💸 Nvidia writes MediaTek a $3.5bn cheque: Convertible bonds, roughly 90% of MediaTek’s offering, and the shares hit Taipei’s 10% daily limit.

• ⚡ California knocks 23% off Edison: A wildfire bill left out the liability cap and PG&E fell 18% alongside it, in a single session.

• 🍏 Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence: A former engineer allegedly took a circuit schematic, on John Ternus’s first day as chief executive.

• 🛍️ Shein breaks its own IPO price: The shares fell as low as HK$43.72 against an offer price of HK$48.56 on debut in Hong Kong.

• 📦 Amazon sued over $20bn of ad revenue: The FTC and 22 states allege secret surcharges hit more than 1.2 million advertisers.

• ₿ Strategy buys bitcoin again: 4,603 coins for $369.7m at an average of $80,318, its first purchase in about 2 months. Holdings 845,050.

• 💼 I took some risk off the table: A Portfolio Challenge update on the 4 positions I trimmed and the roughly £1,097 it raised.

🧠 One Big Thing

The oil war stopped being about Iran’s oil last night and started being about everyone else’s. Projectiles struck 2 supertankers carrying Saudi crude, 4 million barrels between them, minutes apart as they left the Strait of Hormuz. Brent cleared $92. That price is already inside the official numbers: euro area inflation came in at 3.3% this morning with energy up 14.3%, and it arrives 9 days before the European Central Bank votes. The Fed follows on 16 September and the Bank of Japan on 18 September. That is 3 rate decisions in a fortnight, and a shipping lane is helping write all of them.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

3.00%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• :.89% GoPro Inc. shares extended their surge after YouTuber Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach disclosed an 8.5% stake of 13.5 million shares in a Schedule 13G filing, making him the company’s largest individual shareholder. The move follows a 46% jump in Monday’s session and comes despite a Q2 revenue decline of 31% and a warning about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.

• L 11.77% Fervo Energy Company shares climbed after signing an agreement to supply Google with nearly 400 megawatts of geothermal power from its Cape Station project in southwestern Utah starting in 2028, with an option for Google to expand by roughly 600 megawatts by June 2030.

• : 5.10% Medtronic plc shares rose after fiscal Q1 2027 adjusted EPS of $1.45 beat the $1.39 consensus on revenue of $9.8 billion, up 13.7%, and the company raised full-year organic growth guidance to 7.25% to 7.75% and adjusted EPS guidance to $5.94 to $6.00.

Losers

• No major losers today

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $77,971 (▼0.77%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,455 (▼0.51%)
XRP: $1.38 (▼0.35%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,656 (▼0.56%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,210 (▼1.03%)
FTSE 100: 10,726 (▼0.78%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.78% (▲0.63%)
Oil (WTI): $88 (▲1.90%)
Gold: $4,378 (▼1.58%)
Silver: $64.71 (▼2.70%)

Data as of: UK: 12:07pm BST / US: 7:07am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 8:07pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🛢️ Saudi oil tankers hit leaving the Strait of Hormuz

Unknown projectiles struck 2 supertankers within minutes of each other late on Monday, both of them outbound through the Strait of Hormuz. The Saudi-flagged Sidr was hit about 16.6 nautical miles northeast of Khasab in Oman at 1952 GMT. The Liberian-flagged Senegal Prosperity took 3 projectiles about 17 nautical miles east of the same town, and the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency logged 3 projectiles hitting a tanker in that position. Each ship had loaded 2 million barrels of Saudi crude at the Juaymah terminal last week, so 4 million barrels were on the water between them. All crew are reported safe (Reuters).

The cargo is the part that has changed. For 6 months this war has been about Iranian exports and the American blockade of Iranian ports, and Saudi Aramco only resumed loading and selling from inside the strait in August. These were 2 ships carrying another country’s oil out of the Gulf. Marisks, the shipping intelligence firm that reported both incidents, called them “a further escalation in the threat environment within the Omani corridor”. The strait moved about a fifth of the world’s oil before the strikes began. Brent cleared $92, up more than 4%, and US crude is near $88. Donald Trump told a reporter, “We’re going to hit them hard. There will be a response” (CBS News).

🔥 Europe’s energy bill lands on the ECB’s desk

Euro area inflation came in at 3.3% in August, up from 2.9% in July, on the flash estimate Eurostat published this morning. Energy prices rose 14.3% over the year, from 10.3% the month before. Underneath that, the picture was calmer. Services eased to 3.0% from 3.3%, food, alcohol and tobacco held at 1.2%, goods other than energy edged up to 1.2% from 0.9%, and the core measure that strips out energy, food, alcohol and tobacco slipped to 2.4% from 2.5%. Prices rose 0.4% on the month. Spain printed 4.5%, Belgium 4.2%, Italy 3.2%, Germany 2.9% and France 2.7% (Eurostat).

The ECB’s Governing Council meets on Thursday 10 September, at 2:15pm in Frankfurt, which is 1:15pm UK and 8:15am Eastern. Its deposit rate has sat at 2.25% since 17 June, and economists were already expecting a rise to 2.5% before this print landed. Energy carries a weight of 9% in the eurozone basket and it produced almost the whole of the increase, because crude has spent 6 months priced off a war and cleared $92 again overnight. The line runs from a shipping lane in the Gulf, through a pump in Madrid, to a rate decision in Frankfurt (RTE).

🇯🇵 Japan’s borrowing cost hits a 30-year high

What does it cost Japan to borrow for 10 years? As of Tuesday, 3.00%, and it has not been that expensive since 1996. The yield rose 6 basis points to get there and has more than tripled since 2024. The 30-year sits at 4.14% and the 40-year at 4.20%. The same move is running everywhere else: the US 10-year closed at 4.778% on Monday, its highest since January 2025, and is higher again this morning at 4.78%, the US 30-year is at 5.27%, and gilts led the selling (Investing.com).

For 3 decades, borrowing yen cost close to nothing, so investors borrowed in yen and bought assets in other countries with the proceeds. That trade works while Japanese rates stay on the floor. The Bank of Japan meets on 17 and 18 September with markets pricing 80% to 90% odds of a rise to 1.25%. The ECB votes 8 days before that, and the Fed sits between them on 16 September. Bloomberg’s line this morning was that the US 30-year has entered September on its worst stretch since 2006. The Nikkei 225 closed down 0.4% on Monday and slipped again on Tuesday (Bloomberg).

Gold fell 1.58% and silver 2.70% on the same morning, which is what rising yields do to assets that pay no income.

💸 Nvidia writes a $3.5 billion cheque to MediaTek

Nvidia is putting $3.5 billion into MediaTek, the Taiwanese chip designer, through bonds convertible into MediaTek shares. The 2 companies announced it in a joint statement on Monday. Nvidia took roughly 90% of a $3.9 billion overseas convertible offering, the largest of its kind in Taiwan’s history, and Alphabet took part as well without disclosing its size. It is Nvidia’s first direct investment in a Taiwanese chip designer. MediaTek shares hit their 10% daily limit in Taipei on Tuesday morning at NT$4,315, adding to a rally of almost 200% this year (Taipei Times).

What the money buys is placement. MediaTek will build with NVLink Fusion and a new Nvidia memory technology called NVHBM, which means the custom chips it designs for data centre owners plug into Nvidia’s own wiring rather than someone else’s. MediaTek is chasing the business Broadcom and Marvell currently own, and it expects around $2 billion of AI chip revenue this year against a target of up to 15% of an $80 billion segment next year. Investors have asked before whether Nvidia funding its own customers creates real demand. Jensen Huang answered it directly on Bloomberg television: “This is not circular because obviously they do their own business and we do our own business.” Broadcom reports on Wednesday after the US close, 10:00pm UK and 5:00pm Eastern (CNBC).

⚡ A California bill took 23% off Edison in a session

The California legislature’s 2026 session ended on Monday. Over the weekend the State Assembly amended Senate Bill 492 and stripped out the provisions the utilities had been counting on: a $6 billion cap on what any single incident can draw from the state wildfire fund, a bar on insurers suing utilities, and a mechanism for refilling the fund. Edison International closed down 23% at $53.98. PG&E closed down 18% at $13.57. Sempra fell 3%. The main US utilities ETF fell 1.18%, so the selling was specific to California statute rather than to the sector (24/7 Wall St).

PG&E went into bankruptcy in January 2019 over wildfire claims, and the state fund was built afterwards to stop that happening again.

Taking the cap out puts the exposure back on the balance sheet, and the analysts moved within hours. BMO cut PG&E to Market Perform and its target to $21 from $28, raising the wildfire drag it applies to $10 a share from $6 and assuming uncapped liabilities beyond 2030. Wells Fargo cut to Equal Weight with a $24 target, and Mizuho moved both names to Neutral. S&P has PG&E one notch below investment grade. Nothing further can pass in Sacramento until the 2027 session opens (Seeking Alpha).

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🍏 Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence

Apple filed a brief on Monday supporting a motion for expedited fact-finding in its trade secrets case against OpenAI. It alleges that Chang Liu, an iPhone engineer who left for OpenAI in January, downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic and used it in his new job, and that on learning of Apple’s internal investigation he sent instructions for destroying evidence to an OpenAI colleague who confirmed she would comply. Liu is one of more than 400 former Apple employees now working at OpenAI. OpenAI has asked the court to throw the case out, calling the accusations meritless and the lawsuit “careless, aggressive and oddly personal”, and saying it does not “have, nor want, any of their trade secrets”. Judge Edward J. Davila hears arguments on 1 October. It lands on the day John Ternus takes over as chief executive, with Tim Cook moving to executive chair after 15 years (AppleInsider).

🛍️ Shein fell below its own IPO price on day one

Shein began trading in Hong Kong on Tuesday under the code 625, having priced at HK$48.56 and sold around 280 million shares to raise HK$13.6 billion, about $1.74 billion. The shares fell as low as HK$43.72 in the morning and closed the session down 7%, valuing the company at just over $26 billion. Private investors paid a valuation of $98.2 billion in 2022. The reception was put down to tariffs on low-value parcels entering the US, regulatory pressure in Europe, and slowing growth. Shein reported a first-quarter loss of $99 million against a $395 million profit a year earlier (CNBC).

📦 The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon over its ad auctions

The Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general filed suit against Amazon on Monday in the Western District of Washington. The complaint alleges Amazon applied secret surcharges and inflated auction rates across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, that it began overriding the results of its own auction with higher rates in 2018, and that the practice affected more than 1.2 million advertisers and generated over $20 billion of revenue. Amazon’s advertising business earned $68.6 billion in 2025. Amazon called the suit misguided and said the inflation-adjusted average cost per click on Sponsored Products search ads was flat between 2019 and 2024. Shares closed down 2.5% (CBS News).

₿ Strategy started buying bitcoin again

Strategy bought 4,603 bitcoin for $369.7 million between 24 and 30 August, at an average price of $80,318. It is the company’s first purchase in around 2 months, and it was funded by $602.80 million of common stock sales. Total holdings now stand at 845,050 bitcoin. The shares closed up 4.42% at $132.94 on Monday. Bitcoin itself finished August up about 24%, its strongest month since November 2024, and was just under $78,000 by the middle of Tuesday, roughly flat on the week (The Block).

💼 The £5,000 Portfolio Challenge

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🛢️ America strikes Iran’s minelayers: US forces hit 2 launchers on Larak Island. Iran fired back at Jordan. Oil jumped 3%.

• 🎙️ Warsh said inflation is speeding up: His own gauge runs at 3.7% over 12 months and 4.1% over 6. That repriced September.

• 📉 The survey that fell off a cliff: Chicago business activity dropped 10.5 points to 47.1 on Friday, the worst reading of 2026.

• ₿ Bitcoin ended August up 23%: It beat gold at 9% and the Nasdaq at 4%, and rose while US futures fell.

• 🍎 Tim Cook stops running Apple: John Ternus takes over as chief executive tomorrow, a handover Apple put in the diary back in April.

• 👗 Shein priced at a quarter of 2022: The Hong Kong float values it near $26.5 billion. Private investors paid $98.2 billion in 2022.

• 🇨🇳 China’s factories shrank again: The official index read 49.8 in August, a second month below 50, though better than forecast.

• 🔓 A chain switched itself off: Cronos halted its entire blockchain on Sunday after an attacker drained about $75 million from its biggest lender.

• 🏛️ Nvidia starts writing political cheques: The chipmaker registered an employee-funded political committee on Thursday, reversing a long-standing policy of no political giving.

• 🚀 The rocket that has never flown: Today’s Deep Dive on Rocket Lab’s 94th Electron, a $2.36 billion backlog, and Neutron’s 4 delays.

• 📈 Oil above $80 keeps inflation sticky: Chart of the Day on WTI at $86.63, the $78.96 shelf and $92.04 above.

🧠 One Big Thing

Oil is the one price that reaches everything you own, and it rose overnight because America and Iran started shooting at each other again. US forces hit 2 Iranian rocket launchers in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. Iran fired ballistic missiles at American bases in Jordan a few hours later. Crude is up more than 3%. That price feeds petrol, transport, food and the inflation figure the Fed is arguing over, 16 days before it votes on rates. The chairman said on Friday that rising commodity prices bear watching. This is what he meant.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

4.1%

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : 47.95% One and One Green Technologies Inc. moved sharply in pre-market.

• : 8.37% Science Applications International Corp. jumped after posting Q2 FY2027 revenue of $1.88 billion, up around 6%, and lifting full-year guidance to $7.2 billion to $7.3 billion of revenue and $10.65 to $10.75 adjusted EPS. Net bookings came in near $1.2 billion, with backlog at roughly $22.1 billion and a $740 million Department of Homeland Security recompete win landing after quarter end.

Losers

• No major losers today

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $78,582 (▲ 1.14%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,455 (▲ 1.57%)
XRP: $1.38 (▲ 1.66%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,710 (▼ 0.16%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,455 (▼ 0.13%)
FTSE 100: 10,811 (▲ 0.09%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.72% (▼ 0.17%)
Oil (WTI): $86 (▲ 3.52%)
Gold: $4,456 (▲ 0.06%)
Silver: $67.30 (▲ 1.46%)

Data as of: UK: 12:20 pm BST / US: 7:20 am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 8:20 pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🛢️ Oil jumps 3% as America and Iran trade fire

US Central Command struck 2 Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island on Sunday, the first confirmed American strike on Iran since 29 July. CENTCOM spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins said Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces “were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines” into the Strait of Hormuz. He described the operation as “limited, precise action against IRGC minelaying forces posing an imminent threat”. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards answered before dawn on Monday with ballistic missiles aimed at the King Hussein and Al Azraq air bases in Jordan. Jordan’s armed forces said they intercepted 8 missiles that crossed into their airspace (Time).

The mines are the part that matters more than the missiles. American forces finished clearing sea mines from the strait’s international shipping lanes last week, which is the same clean-up Iran and Oman had written into the draft navigation corridor we covered on Wednesday. Sunday’s strike was aimed at the crews reloading them, so the corridor talks and the shooting are now running against each other. A missile hits one ship. Mines close a lane for weeks, because clearing them is slow work and no insurer writes a policy across a minefield. Brent went back above $90 and US crude is up 3.43% at $86.31 (CNBC).

London is shut for the summer bank holiday, so the first British reaction to any of this arrives on Tuesday.

🎙️ What Warsh actually said, and why it repriced September

Kevin Warsh titled his Jackson Hole speech “In Our Time” and gave it on his 100th day as Federal Reserve chairman. He opened by telling the room what it would not contain. “You can call it an outline . . . you can call it a trail map . . . just don’t call it forward guidance.” He then argued that the practice of telling markets what the Fed will do next “has overstayed its welcome”, because a market reading the Fed while the Fed reads the market creates a hall-of-mirrors problem in which both are blinded to anything new. September is never mentioned in the speech. Neither is any date (Federal Reserve).

He then described an economy in better shape than most commentary assumes. Business investment in equipment and intangibles is growing at around 9%, its fastest since 2021, and he attributed more than half of this year’s growth to the AI buildout. Profits at S&P 500 firms have grown more than 20% over the past year, with margins high against history and equity volatility low. Credit spreads on corporate bonds and leveraged loans sit near the low end of their historical ranges, and banks told the Fed’s own July survey that lending standards are on the easier end of theirs. Housing and agriculture are strained. Everything else is not.

That section ends on the sentence that did the damage. “On balance, I would be hard pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive.” In plain terms he is saying money is not tight, so rates are not doing the work people assume they are doing.

On jobs he was just as settled. The jobless rate at 4.1% “remains low by historical standards”, and weekly claims on a 4-week average are “near their lowest level in decades”. He then explained away the weak monthly payroll numbers rather than worrying about them. “When labor supply is barely growing, monthly job gains are naturally going to run low.” His verdict was that “the labor markets are consistent with full employment”. Half the mandate, in his reading, is already met.

That leaves prices, and here are the 2 numbers that moved the market. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the PCE index, is running at 3.7% over 12 months. Over 6 months it is running at 4.1%. The shorter window is the hotter one, which means inflation has been speeding up rather than fading. He then took the index apart: of its 199 components, 54% rose by more than 3% over the past year, against 32% in the 2 decades before the pandemic. Over 6 months, 49% did. On the summer readings that had cheered everybody, he said they “do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved”.

So he set a test instead of a date. “We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do.” He took the blame for the past as well, saying responsibility for 65 months of elevated inflation “sits squarely with the central bank”. Then he closed on this: “I stand here today committed to a discipline, not to a decision.” Futures moved from roughly 40% odds of a September rise a week earlier to 58%, because he removed the reasons to wait. Jobs are fine, money is loose, and inflation is not improving. Nothing is left to argue about (CoinDesk).

📉 The data that landed the same morning and said the opposite

Friday brought 2 American data releases and both were ugly. The Chicago Business Barometer, a monthly survey of purchasing managers across the industrial Midwest, fell 10.5 points to 47.1, and anything below 50 means activity is shrinking. Economists had forecast 57.9. New orders dropped 15.4 points and production fell 8.8 points into its first contraction since December. Prices paid went the other way, rising 3.8 points to the highest level since February 2022, with firms pointing at metal costs (Trading Economics).

So why does a regional survey matter? Because it is the first read on August, and it describes the opposite of what the chairman described the same morning. He said the economy appears to have strengthened. Chicago says activity is contracting while input costs accelerate, which is what stagflation looks like inside a single release. The University of Michigan’s final August sentiment reading landed the same morning at 51.7, down from 55.2 in July. That puts it below the 1st percentile of the survey’s own history, with year-ahead inflation expectations still at 4.0% (Advisor Perspectives).

₿ Bitcoin ended August ahead of gold and stocks

Bitcoin gained 23% in August. Gold rose 9% and the Nasdaq about 4%. That ranking held through Monday morning, when news of the American strike on Larak Island lifted oil and pushed US index futures lower. Bitcoin went the other way, up 1.15% at $78,590, with ether up 1.52% and XRP up 1.61%, while S&P 500 futures slipped 0.16% and Nasdaq 100 futures 0.10%. The month itself was rough in the middle: bitcoin ran from roughly $63,000 to above $80,000, then dropped 3% to under $77,000 on Friday once Warsh had spoken (CoinDesk).

What is driving it is money going into the spot funds, plus a bet that the Fed ends up supporting the bond market after the Treasury’s buyback programme. That is the same trade that has been lifting gold all year. Vikram Subbaraj of the Giottus exchange named $77,000 as the immediate support level and $79,400 to $80,800 as the zone above it, and cautioned against heavy leverage while the macro picture is this unsettled. A war headline that lifts oil 3% and leaves equity futures red while bitcoin climbs is a change in behaviour worth noticing.

🍎 Apple gets a new chief executive tomorrow

Tomorrow morning Apple has a different chief executive. John Ternus takes the job on Tuesday 1 September. Tim Cook moves to executive chairman, Arthur Levinson steps back to lead independent director, and Ternus joins the board, all on the same day. Apple announced the handover on 20 April, so this date has been in the diary for more than 4 months and carries no surprise. Ternus has run Apple’s hardware engineering and is an internal promotion, which is how the company has always filled the job (Apple).

Why does a scheduled succession matter to an ordinary investor? Because Apple sits inside almost every index fund sold in Britain and America, so this is a governance event in your portfolio whether or not the share price moves on the day. Cook took the job in August 2011 and spent his first years answering whether Apple could invent anything without Steve Jobs. Ternus inherits a different question, which is whether Apple can close the gap in artificial intelligence, an area where it has leaned on partnerships while its largest rivals built in house. The first hard read on him is the next product cycle and the first earnings call under his name.

Stories You Might Have Missed

👗 Shein listed at a quarter of what it once fetched

Shein completed the pricing of its Hong Kong listing, valuing the fast-fashion group at about $26.5 billion and raising roughly $1.7 billion. The offer was set near the midpoint of a HK$47.60 to HK$49.50 range across about 280 million class B shares, with trading due to start on Tuesday 1 September under stock code 00625. Private investors paid $98.2 billion for the same business in 2022, and the company is handing up to $3.5 billion to selected pre-listing backers as compensation for the lower price. Shein reached Hong Kong only after its London float stalled, which leaves the London market having lost the largest consumer listing of the year (Bloomberg).

🇨🇳 China’s factories shrank for a second month

China’s official manufacturing index read 49.8 in August, up from 49.2 in July and above the 49.6 that economists had expected. Anything under 50 still means contraction, so this is a second consecutive month of shrinking factory activity in the world’s second largest economy, improving at the margin rather than turning. The reading keeps pressure on Beijing to add support as growth loses momentum, and it lands in a week when the rest of the world is reading its own manufacturing surveys. Chinese factory demand feeds directly into commodity prices, European industrial exporters and the shipping rates that carry all of it (CNBC).

🔓 A blockchain switched itself off after a $75 million theft

Cronos, the network associated with Crypto.com, halted its entire blockchain on Sunday after an attacker drained an estimated $75 million from Tectonic, the network’s largest lending protocol. The method was price manipulation rather than a broken lock: the attacker pushed the thinly traded TONIC governance token up roughly 100 times in about 20 minutes, then borrowed real assets against the inflated collateral. Tectonic’s total value locked fell from about $121.7 million on 26 August to roughly $3 million by Monday. Validators pausing the chain stranded most of the proceeds, and only about $6 million reached Ethereum before the network stopped (The Block).

🏛️ Nvidia has started funding politics

Nvidia filed a statement of organisation with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday 27 August for an employee-funded political action committee, allowing staff to contribute up to $5,000 each per year. The filing reverses a long-standing company policy of making no political contributions at all. It arrives while export controls on advanced chips sold to China remain the largest regulatory question hanging over the business. Companies this size normally build a Washington operation years before they need one, so Nvidia is doing it late, and doing it while the rules that govern its biggest growth market are still being written (The Hill).

🔍 Deep Dive - The 94th Electron, and the Rocket That Has Never Flown

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This Week

XRP ends the week at $1.42, inside a range of $1.35 to $1.55. It gave back 6.5 percent over 7 days, and it did that while the rest of the market went up. Total crypto market value rose 3.6 percent to $2.71 trillion, Bitcoin dominance sat at 58.0 percent, and the Fear and Greed Index closed at 69, which reads as Greed. It read 66 last Sunday.

The week turned on Friday afternoon in Wyoming. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh called the 2 percent inflation goal a “firm, fixed target” and said that unless inflation moves there “clearly and at sufficient speed”, “we have work to do”. The odds of a September rate rise went from roughly a third to a coin flip inside a few hours, and every risk asset on the board sold off with them.

The bigger news for XRP holders came on Thursday, when a company built to hold XRP cleared its last hurdle at the SEC. A date is now set for the vote that puts it on Nasdaq. Ripple also opened a trading desk for American shares, and the spot funds spent the whole week buying.

The Consensus

• 🏛️ Evernorth cleared the SEC, leaving one shareholder vote on 30 September before a Nasdaq listing.

• 🏦 Ripple Prime launched Delta One, an equity swaps desk for institutions that requires nobody to own XRP.

• 💰 The spot funds took $110.49 million, their biggest week of the year by a wide margin.

• 🧹 Ripple asked validators to drop XChainBridge, which would remove more than 10,000 lines of ledger code.

The Numbers

The Chart Watch

All live entries are posted in real time for premium Substack members.

The Ripple Effect

🏛️ A Company With 473 Million XRP Is One Vote From Nasdaq

On 30 September, shareholders in a shell company will vote on whether XRP gets a company of its own on Nasdaq. The SEC cleared the paperwork on Thursday 27 August. Waiting on the other side is Evernorth, which expects to launch holding at least 473,276,430 XRP, worth roughly $672 million.

The road so far

Armada Acquisition Corp. II listed on Nasdaq in May 2025 as a shell with no business. It signed the Evernorth deal on 20 October 2025, targeting over $1 billion of gross proceeds, and renamed its ticker XRPN 10 days later. The close was first pencilled in for early 2026 and is now expected late this year (PR Newswire).

How a SPAC works, and why not an IPO

A shell company lists with no business, parks the cash in a trust, then merges with a private company that wants a listing. Why that route? An IPO prices shares by asking investors what they will pay, and Evernorth has no revenue or trading record to price. Its business is owning a token. A merger settles the value privately, with the money already raised, and finishes in months rather than a year. Every Armada share that is not cashed in becomes an Evernorth share one for one.

Who is behind it

Evernorth is run by Asheesh Birla. He joined Ripple in 2013 on the founding team and ran RippleNet as the company grew past 1,000 staff.

Most of what went in was not money. Rippleworks is a charitable foundation. It contributed 211,319,096 XRP through the sponsor, the biggest single contribution. Ripple put in 126,791,458 XRP of its own. A trust belonging to Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen added 50,000,000.

Cash came to $224.5 million. The rest of that billion arrived as tokens. SBI, Ripple’s long-standing Japanese partner, said it was providing $200 million of it. Garlinghouse, Alderoty and Schwartz are expected to advise, and Evernorth says its governance is independent of Ripple.

What it means for the XRP price

Will the vote actually pass

The sponsor is the Arrington XRP Capital Fund, and Michael Arrington sits on the board. It owns 26.2 percent and has agreed to vote in favour. The main proposal needs a simple majority of the votes cast, and the merger step needs two-thirds. Votes cast is what matters. Shares that stay at home do not count against it. Anyone who dislikes the deal takes the cash instead, since redeeming and voting are separate.

That makes redemptions the number to watch. Every share cashed in is money that never reaches the XRP, and no minimum cash condition stops it.

Armada has 18 months from its listing to complete a deal or wind up and hand the trust back. The listing closed on 22 May 2025, so the outside date is 22 November 2026.

What happens to the share price

6 Questions on Evernorth

Can I buy it today?

The shares already trade on Nasdaq as XRPN and closed Friday at $10.55. Until the merger completes they are backed by the cash in the trust rather than by XRP, which is why they have not tracked the token.

Would this be the first way to hold XRP as a share in the UK?

XRPN is an ordinary US share rather than a fund, and US funds are largely closed to UK retail for want of the key information document UK rules require. It is not XRP exposure yet. The share tracks the cash in the trust until the merger closes, and only then does its value start moving with the tokens.

How is it different from an ETF?

An ETF holds XRP and tracks it, so each share is a fixed slice of the pile. Evernorth can issue shares, lend its tokens and chase yield to raise the XRP behind each share, which is also why it can trade above or below what its XRP is worth. It trades above when investors expect those strategies to add XRP per share, and below when they doubt it or fear dilution from new shares.

If I own the shares, do I own any XRP?

No. A shareholder owns part of a company that owns XRP, with no claim on any particular token and no way to swap shares back into coins.

How likely is it to pass, and when does the share start tracking XRP?

Very likely, on the arithmetic. The sponsor holds 26.2 percent and has agreed to vote in favour. The thresholds run on votes cast rather than shares outstanding, and both boards approved unanimously. The vote is 30 September and closing is expected shortly after. That is the point where the share stops tracking trust cash and starts tracking XRP.

What happens if the vote does not pass?

Armada would carry on hunting for a deal until its 18 month deadline, then wind up and return the trust money. Evernorth would keep its XRP and need another route to a listing.

🏦 Ripple Opened a Desk That Trades Apple Shares

Ripple can now put a hedge fund into Apple shares without the fund ever owning one. Ripple Prime launched a Delta One business on Thursday 27 August, live for hedge funds, asset managers and other financial institutions. It trades total return swaps on US listed equities, stock indexes and digital assets (Businesswire).

A total return swap hands a fund the economic performance of something without the ownership. The fund collects the gain if Apple rises and pays the loss if it falls, and Ripple Prime sits on the other side.

Ripple Prime is the old Hidden Road, bought for $1.25 billion in a deal that closed in October 2025. Ripple puts the scale of the business at more than $1 billion in regulatory net capital. It says the brokerage clears more than $3 trillion a year for over 300 institutional clients (crypto.news).

The swaps cover digital assets too, and none of it requires anybody to own XRP. That is the part worth sitting with. Ripple’s fastest growing line of business now earns its fees from derivatives on other people’s assets, and a swap on the S&P 500 has nothing to do with a token. The argument on the other side is that a settlement asset needs exactly this: a balance sheet, a clearing licence and 300 institutional relationships already in place.

Ripple made one more move in the same direction the next day. It hired Joseph Thompson, the London Metal Exchange’s head of treasury, to work on tokenisation (crypto.news). He leaves the exchange on 31 August after nearly 10 years there.

💰 The Funds Had Their Best Week of the Year and the Price Still Fell

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For most of this year, a strong jobs number was good news. Kevin Warsh changed that on Friday. He stood up at a symposium built around payments, never said the word, spent his time on inflation…

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 🎙️ Warsh finally picks a subject: 98 days as Fed chair, all of it answering questions. This afternoon he chooses what to talk about.

• 💸 PayPal’s $53 billion buyer walks: Stripe and Advent dropped their bid overnight and the shares fell about 12% before the US open.

• 🥇 Gold’s best month since 1999: Bullion is up nearly 14% in August as Treasury buybacks and a softer dollar revive the debasement trade.

• 🔌 Marvell beat and fell anyway: Record revenue and a raised full-year guide, and the shares still dropped about 8% on a thinner margin outlook.

• 🇯🇵 Tokyo hits the Bank’s number: The gauge the Bank of Japan watches most reached 2.0%, and September hike pricing sits just under 80%.

• 🇨🇦 Washington floats banning Canadian goods: The US trade representative raised outright bans, 11 days before Canada’s own counter-tariffs take effect.

• ₿ Bitcoin funds buy for 9 days: Spot bitcoin funds took $242 million on Thursday, a ninth straight day and more than $3 billion in August.

• 🛒 Shoppers still borrowing to buy: Affirm processed $14.1 billion of purchases last quarter, up 36%, and called it its most profitable ever.

• 🔍 The speech nobody has heard before: Today’s Deep Dive on the 1-point inflation gap, his own words, and what past Augusts in Wyoming did.

🧠 One Big Thing

The Fed sets the price of money, and this afternoon the man who runs it speaks on his own terms for the first time. Kevin Warsh has been chairman for 98 days. He has held 2 press conferences and sat in front of Congress, and all of that answered somebody else’s question about a decision he had already taken. He talks at 10:00am Eastern, which is 3:00pm here, 19 days before the Fed decides rates on 16 September. Roughly a third of the market expects a rise. That decision reaches you through your mortgage, your savings rate and the value of every bond fund you own.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

65 months

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : 18.19% Elastic N.V. surged after reporting quarterly revenue of $478.1 million and adjusted EPS of $0.70, both ahead of consensus, and lifting full year revenue guidance to $2.00 billion with adjusted EPS guidance raised to $3.33.

• : 16.67% Gap, Inc. jumped after second quarter adjusted EPS of $0.52 beat the $0.49 consensus on gross margin strength, prompting the retailer to raise full year adjusted EPS guidance to $2.35 to $2.45 and its operating margin outlook to 7.4% to 7.6%.

• : 13.61% Solstice Advanced Materials rallied after mutually terminating its $14.5 billion cash and stock acquisition of Element Solutions with no break fee payable by either side, pairing the news with a new $500 million share repurchase programme and reaffirmed full year guidance.

• : 13.43% Affirm Holdings climbed after quarterly revenue of $1.17 billion beat the $1.11 billion consensus on 33% year on year growth, with next quarter revenue guidance of roughly $1.21 billion also landing above expectations.

Losers

• : -41.57% Vistance Networks dropped because the stock began trading ex-dividend on a $5.00 per share special cash distribution funded by the sale of its Ruckus Networks business to Belden, a mechanical price adjustment rather than a fundamental move.

• : -17.03% PayPal Holdings tumbled after the Stripe and Advent International consortium abandoned its $53 billion takeover approach, which had valued the payments group at $60.50 per share before the board rejected the bid as too low.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $79,711 (▼ 0.67%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,507 (▼ 0.15%)
XRP: $1.43 (▼ 1.85%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,742 (0.00%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,632 (▼ 0.21%)
FTSE 100: 10,806 (▲ 0.05%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.69% (▲ 0.26%)
Oil (WTI): $83 (▼ 0.50%)
Gold: $4,598 (▼ 0.08%)
Silver: $70.20 (▲ 1.38%)

Data as of: UK: 12:34 pm BST / US: 7:34 am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 8:34 pm JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

🎙️ Warsh speaks, and nobody knows how he sounds

The speech starts at 10:00am Eastern, which is 3:00pm here in the UK.

Kevin Warsh has run the Federal Reserve for 98 days. He has taken questions at 2 rate decisions and in front of Congress, and he has never once chosen the subject himself. He does that this afternoon, 19 days before a vote that roughly a third of the market thinks ends in a rate rise. Core inflation is 3.3% against a 2% target, and 3 of his own committee voted last month to raise. Options desks have priced the whole thing as a non-event.

Inside today’s Deep Dive:

• The full point between what inflation is and what the bond market says it averages out at.

• His 16-year argument about the Fed, in his own words.

• What the last 8 of these speeches did to the S&P 500 and to the 2-year note.

• The 4 things landing in the same minute he starts talking.

The Deep Dive runs in full at the foot of today’s edition.

💸 PayPal’s $53 billion buyer walked away

The number on the table was $60.50 a share. That was the offer Stripe and the private equity firm Advent made for PayPal in July, valuing the company at more than $53 billion and backed by roughly $50 billion of committed bank financing. PayPal’s board judged it too low, and the 2 sides spent 6 weeks negotiating. Bloomberg reported on Thursday night that the consortium has dropped the pursuit altogether. Advent, Stripe and PayPal all declined to comment. The shares fell about 12% in overnight trading, having closed Thursday at $61.47. Bloomberg

A takeover premium is the extra money a share carries because somebody has offered to buy the whole company.

When the buyer leaves, that money leaves with them.

PayPal shareholders are watching that happen in real time this morning. Bloomberg says the situation remains fluid and the pair could return with a revised offer, so the premium has not gone to zero. The combined business would have handled roughly $3.7 trillion of payments a year, which is the scale that made PayPal worth chasing in the first place. PayPal now has to make its own case again, without a bidder standing behind the price.

🥇 Gold is having its best month since 1999

What does it look like when investors stop trusting a currency? It looks like this. Gold is on track to gain nearly 14% in August, its strongest month since 1999, and it was trading around $4,607 an ounce on Friday morning. The run followed the Treasury’s decision to at least double its buybacks of long-dated government debt, which pushed yields and the dollar down together. Exchange-traded funds backed by bullion added more than 28 tonnes last week, the most since January, and another 20 tonnes so far this week. Central banks have stepped up their buying too. Bloomberg

Traders call this the debasement trade, which means money moving into things that cannot be printed. It runs hardest when a government looks willing to live with its debt rather than fight it, and American government debt passed $40 trillion for the first time this month. Silver rose alongside it, up 1.8% to $70.50 an ounce. The risk on the other side is plain, because gold pays no income, so every rise in interest rates makes holding it more expensive. That is why the metal is sitting on this afternoon’s speech as heavily as any share price is.

🔌 Marvell beat, raised, and fell 8% anyway

The street wanted about $2.71 billion. Marvell delivered $2.739 billion, a company record, up 37% on the year. Adjusted earnings came in at 94 cents a share, data centre revenue rose 46% to $2.17 billion, and management lifted the full-year target to $12 billion. That is a beat and a raise on every headline line. The shares fell close to 8% in extended trading anyway, after closing the regular session at $241.45, and they were lower again before Friday’s open. Invezz

The margin guide explains it. Marvell told investors to expect third-quarter adjusted gross margin of 57.5% to 58.5%, down from 58.9% in the quarter just reported. The company designs custom chips for a small group of cloud giants, chiefly Google and Amazon, and that work earns less per dollar than its off-the-shelf optical hardware. Faster growth in the custom business therefore drags the average down. Nvidia set this week’s bar by guiding a full year ahead, so a solid quarter from a supplier priced for acceleration was never going to clear it.

🇯🇵 Tokyo inflation reaches the Bank’s own target

Japan published its first inflation reading for August overnight, and the number the Bank of Japan cares about most finally got there. Tokyo core-core inflation, which strips out both fresh food and fuel, rose to 2.0% from 1.8% in July. Core inflation came in at 1.8% against a 1.7% forecast. The yen strengthened to around 159.30 against the dollar on the print. Market pricing for a Japanese rate rise in September now sits just under 80%, up from roughly 65% on 7 August. FXStreet

Japanese interest rates matter well beyond Japan. For 3 decades investors have borrowed cheaply in yen and bought higher-yielding assets everywhere else, which is why a rising Japanese policy rate pulls that money home and lifts long-dated yields around the world. Japan’s own 10-year government bond yield reached a 3-decade high near 3% earlier this month. Middle East energy costs are still working through Japanese prices with a lag, and wholesale inflation there ran at 7.2% in July. The Bank next meets in September, days after the Fed decides.

Stories You Might Have Missed

🇨🇦 Washington floats bans on Canadian goods

The US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday that Washington ought to consider banning some Canadian goods outright. He pointed to Canadian caps on the type of American cars that can be imported and to provincial procurement rules that shut out US suppliers. American duties of 50% already apply to about $20 billion of Canadian imports, roughly 5% of the total, and Prime Minister Mark Carney has said a similar value of American goods will face Canadian duties of 15% to 50% from 8 September. A tariff makes a good expensive. A ban makes it unavailable. Bloomberg

₿ Bitcoin funds bought for a ninth straight day

Spot bitcoin funds took in $242 million on Thursday, a ninth consecutive day of net inflows and the longest run since April. August inflows now sit above $3 billion, the strongest month of 2026 and roughly double what April managed. Bitcoin traded back above $80,000 on Thursday before easing to around $79,300 on Friday morning, down 1.2% on the day. Strategy, the company that holds bitcoin on its balance sheet as a treasury asset, closed about 12% higher at $137.40 on Thursday’s move. The steady buyer through this rally has been the funds rather than the traders. CoinDesk

🛒 Affirm processed $14.1 billion of purchases

Affirm, the buy now, pay later lender, reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $1.17 billion against $1.11 billion expected, on volume through its platform of $14.1 billion, up 36% on the year. Active customers grew 21% to 27.8 million and the average customer made 7.0 transactions, up 20%. Management called it the most profitable quarter in the company’s history. Guidance for the current quarter came in above consensus at $1.19 billion to $1.22 billion. The American shopper who looked finished in the July retail sales data is still spending, and is increasingly borrowing to do it. Stocktwits

🔍 Deep Dive - The Speech Nobody Has Heard Before

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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance

• 💾 Nvidia told the market what 2027 looks like: 70% growth against the 44% analysts had modelled.

• 👶 Meta buys its way out of a trial: $16.7 billion to 29 states, plus daily limits on teenage accounts.

• 🇰🇷 Memory chips forced a rate rise: Korea went to 3% and lifted its 2026 growth forecast to 3.3%.

• 📉 Core PCE came in bang on 0.2%: nothing changed, so Warsh gets the last word at Jackson Hole on Friday.

• 🛢️ Hormuz gets a price list: Iran and Oman agreed who gets paid for the strait, and crude has given up 4 sessions.

• 🤗 Nvidia is buying Hugging Face: $12.9 billion for the library where developers download open-source AI models.

• ☁️ The software selloff got a counterexample: Salesforce lifted its full-year guide and the shares rose 12%.

• ₿ Bitcoin held $79,027 through the print: 2 lenders launched credit lines and a mortgage secured on coins.

• 🔍 Nvidia earned $59.7bn and collected $24.1bn: today’s Deep Dive follows the $35.6 billion gap and who owes it.

• 📈 We bought Nvidia at $190 and it is over $223: Chart of the Day covers the Deep Trend at $193.23 and the Momentum Band.

🧠 One Big Thing

Nvidia did something on Wednesday night it has never done before. It told the market what it expects to sell a full year out: about 70% revenue growth in the year to January 2028, against the 44% analysts had in their models. That works out at roughly $690 billion of revenue for a company that closed Wednesday worth $5.08 trillion, which makes it the largest company on earth and the biggest single position in most index funds. The shares were up about 6% before the US open. Jensen Huang then added the line that carries the weight. Demand is running higher than 70%, and supply is what caps it at 70%.

⚖️ Fear & Greed

📉 The Number That Matters

$279 billion

⚔️ Winners vs Losers

Winners

• : 17.66% Okta, Inc. surged after its fiscal second quarter results beat estimates and management lifted full year revenue guidance, crediting a surge in identity security demand tied to the AI buildout.

• : 12.55% Dollar General Corporation rallied after beating on both earnings and revenue in its second quarter and raising its full year outlook, as shoppers continued to trade down in search of value.

• : 10.23% Salesforce, Inc. jumped after delivering record second quarter fiscal 2027 results, raising guidance, and expanding its partnership with Anthropic’s Claude.

• : 8.89% CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. climbed after its fiscal second quarter revenue and annual recurring revenue topped estimates, with management pointing to record ARR growth driven by AI security adoption.

• : 5.91% NVIDIA Corporation recovered from an initial after hours dip and moved higher after reporting revenue of $96.2 billion, up 106% year over year with data center revenue up 117%, and guiding to roughly $108 billion for the current quarter.

Losers

• : 15.15% Wendy’s Company slumped after Reuters reported that Nelson Peltz’s Trian has no plans to make a take private bid for the burger chain right now, citing its performance and valuation, which unwound the buyout premium built into the stock.

• : 12.46% Lucky Strike Entertainment Corporation fell after reporting fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2026 results before the open.

• : 10.48% HP Inc. dropped despite beating on its fiscal third quarter and lifting its full year earnings and free cash flow forecasts, as investors focused on margin pressure in the print.

📊 Market Snapshot

Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $79,551 (▲ 0.67%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,505 (▼ 0.05%)
XRP: $1.43 (▲ 0.25%)

Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,725 (▲ 0.46%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,588 (▲ 1.02%)
FTSE 100: 10,831 (▼ 0.14%)

Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.66% (▲ 0.32%)
Oil (WTI): $82 (▲ 0.42%)
Gold: $4,598 (▲ 0.01%)
Silver: $68.47 (▲ 0.53%)

Data as of: UK: 12:34 BST / US: 07:34 EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 20:34 JST

✅ 5 Things to Know

💾 Nvidia guided a whole year ahead for the first time

$96.2 billion. That is what Nvidia sold in the 3 months to 26 July, up 106% on the same quarter last year and past the $92.2 billion analysts had modelled. Data centre revenue was $89 billion, up 117%, and it now accounts for 92% of the company. Adjusted earnings came in at $2.22 a share against the $2.06 to $2.09 expected. Chief financial officer Colette Kress guided the current quarter to $108 billion, plus or minus 2%, and said that number assumes no data centre sales in China at all.

Then she did something the company has never done.

She guided a year in advance. Kress told investors revenue would grow about 70% in fiscal 2028, which runs to January of that year, against the 44% analysts had penned in. In money, that is roughly $690 billion to $700 billion of revenue against a consensus near $570 billion. Huang was asked on the call whether Nvidia could really deliver it, and his answer pushed the number the other way. “Even though our demand is much greater than 70%, our supply allows us to confidently deliver 70%,” he said. He also said the whole supply chain is running flat out. The shares rose about 6% before the bell. (Reuters)

There is a bill attached to all of this. Kress said supply and capacity commitments have gone from $119 billion to $279 billion in 3 months, driven by memory prices that have climbed all year, and gross margin is guided down from 75% in the quarter just reported to 74% now, bottoming at 71% to 72% in the fourth quarter before settling around 72% to 73% next year. She also put a figure on the guarantees critics have been asking about: maximum gross exposure of $108.5 billion, most of it credit support for the Ohio campus that will host compute leased to OpenAI. “We recognize the scale of this support, and we know some will call this circular financing,” she said. “We see it differently.” (Fortune)

There is more on this below. Today’s Deep Dive sits at the foot of the edition and takes the other half of the quarter: Nvidia booked $59.7 billion of profit and collected $24.1 billion of cash, days sales outstanding went from 45 to 60 in 3 months, and 70% of what the company is owed now sits with 5 customers its own filing does not name.

👶 Meta pays $16.7 billion and changes the apps

What is a landmark trial worth if it stops before the verdict? About $16.7 billion. Meta agreed on Wednesday to settle claims brought by 29 state attorneys general over the mental health harm its platforms do to children, ending a trial that had been running in California. The total rises as high as $18 billion if TikTok and YouTube settle their own cases with the states, so part of the headline figure depends on companies Meta does not control. The shares rose 4% in premarket trading on Wednesday morning. (CNBC)

The money is the smaller half of it. Meta also agreed to daily usage limits and nighttime blocks on teenage accounts, stronger age checks designed to keep children off the apps altogether, and new tools for parents, and those changes apply to Facebook and Instagram permanently. The read across is worth more than the number. The same states are still litigating against TikTok and YouTube, and the terms Meta has just signed set the shape of what those companies will be asked for, which puts Alphabet on the hook for whatever YouTube ends up agreeing. (CNN)

🇰🇷 Korea raised rates again, and chips are why

Korea raised. Again. The Bank of Korea lifted its 7-day repo rate by a quarter point to 3% on Thursday, the second rise in 2 meetings and the first back-to-back increase since January 2023. The vote was 6 to 1, with Hwang Kun-il voting to hold at 2.75%. July consumer prices ran at 2.8% and core inflation at 2.6%, the sharpest core reading since December 2023 and comfortably above the 2% target. Governor Shin Hyun-song called the move preemptive, and the board’s statement named higher oil prices and Middle East uncertainty among the pressures behind it. (The Korea Herald)

The forecast that came with the decision moved further than the rate did. The Bank lifted its 2026 growth call to 3.3% from 2.6%, which would be Korea’s first year of 3% or better since 2021, after the economy already grew 3.8% in the first half. What is doing that? Memory chips. Samsung and SK hynix are selling every high-bandwidth memory chip they can make into the AI build-out, and SK hynix shares rose about 3% in Seoul on Thursday on Nvidia’s results. The same boom that arrives in Seoul as an export windfall arrives in Santa Clara as an input cost, and both landed inside 12 hours. (Invezz)

📉 The inflation number landed and settled nothing

Consensus was 0.2% on the month for core PCE. Core PCE came in at 0.2%, and 3.3% over the year, unchanged from June. That is precisely what was forecast, and it moves the September argument nowhere. The headline index was the awkward one, holding at 3.7% annually where forecasters had 3.6%, while personal spending stalled. The second estimate of second-quarter growth arrived the same minute and held at 1.5% annualised, with an upward revision to consumer spending offset by an upward revision to imports. Yesterday’s edition put the annual core rate at about 3.2%, and 3.3% is where it printed. (CNBC)

The Jackson Hole symposium opened on Thursday in Wyoming, with roughly 120 central bankers, academics and policymakers from more than 70 countries under the title Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy. Kevin Warsh gives his first keynote as Fed chair on Friday at 10:00am Eastern, which is 3:00pm UK, 19 days before the 16 September decision. Interest rates are not in the title of the symposium. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its annual payroll benchmark revision at the same minute, and last year’s exercise took 911,000 jobs out of the 2025 count, so the labour-market half of the argument gets rewritten while the chair is speaking. In July, 3 members dissented in favour of a rise. (Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City)

🛢️ Hormuz gets a price list and oil falls again

Brent crude has given up ground for 4 sessions, trading below $87 a barrel on Thursday morning before steadying, after Iran and Oman reached an agreement covering each country’s share of the Strait of Hormuz’s waters and the revenues attached to them. Tehran cautioned that reopening the strait takes more than a deal with Oman, and has previously tied it to Washington lifting the naval blockade, dropping oil sanctions and unfreezing assets. Donald Trump said 10 million barrels of oil passed through the waterway on Tuesday and repeated that the mines there have been cleared. (Trading Economics)

The strait normally carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas exports and there is no practical alternative route for most of it, which is why an argument over a narrow stretch of water moves the price of petrol everywhere. Prices have also softened because the American sanctions announced on Monday spared Iran’s trading partners, so the supply disruption traders had spent a fortnight pricing in never arrived. Pulling the other way, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Vladimir Putin is preparing to escalate attacks on Ukraine after concluding peace talks have hit a dead end, which opens a second energy risk in Europe as the first one narrows. (Meduza)

Sensei’s Insight: Agreeing who gets paid for the strait lasts longer than agreeing to reopen it. A toll that has been negotiated tends to stay negotiated, so the cost of moving a barrel through Hormuz does not go back to where it sat before the war.

Stories You Might Have Missed

🤗 Nvidia agreed to buy the internet’s model library

The Information reported on Wednesday night that Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. Hugging Face is where developers download and share open-source AI models, in the way a public code library works, and it was last valued at $4.5 billion in a 2023 round that Nvidia itself put money into. Revenue runs at about $150 million a year. The logic is defensive: OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Anthropic are all designing their own chips, and a healthy open-source ecosystem keeps the rest of the market on Nvidia hardware. Neither company has commented, and Business Insider reported that nothing has been signed. (TechCrunch)

☁️ Salesforce raised the year and the shares jumped

Salesforce reported second-quarter revenue of $11.35 billion on Wednesday evening, up 10.8% on the year and roughly in line with expectations, and lifted full-year revenue guidance to about $46.25 billion at the midpoint from $46.05 billion. Full-year adjusted earnings guidance went up to $16.69 a share at the midpoint. Billings were $9.77 billion, up 8.6%, and free cash flow reached $1.1 billion, up 81%. The shares rose about 12% afterwards. Salesforce is the largest company in the category that has spent this year being sold as the one AI eats first. Intuit fell 12% the day before on its own guide. (FinancialContent)

₿ Crypto bought the inflation dip back

Bitcoin dipped through the 8:30am Eastern inflation release on Wednesday, which is 1:30pm UK, then closed at $79,027, up 0.59% on the day. Ethereum settled at $2,506, up 2.58%, and Solana was the strongest major at $102.17, up 5.76%. XRP was the only one lower, easing 0.76% to $1.4224. Lenders launched 2 products this week that let holders borrow against coins instead of selling them. Galaxy opened retail credit lines secured on bitcoin, ether and staked solana at 8.99% a year, and Better and Coinbase launched a mortgage that lets American buyers pledge crypto as collateral toward a house purchase. (The Rio Times)

🔍 Deep Dive - Nvidia Earned $59.7 Billion. It Collected $24.1 Billion.

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