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👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance
🛒 The consumer’s turn today: July retail sales land at half past one, the first month of spending measured while payrolls were going negative.
🏛️ Records and the costliest bond sale since 2001: The Treasury paid 5.216% for thirty-year money hours before the S&P closed at a record.
💼 Silver Lake circles Workday: The software company posted its best day in ten years on a reported take-private approach worth about $43 billion.
₿ Crypto’s regulators go quiet: The SEC delayed two crypto rulebooks, the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate, and MSCI moved to delete Strategy.
💰 Ackman buys Netflix, Visa and Mastercard: Pershing Square’s biggest overhaul in years added six names, with Netflix alone at 4.9% of the fund.
🔧 Applied Materials beats and falls: A record $9.1 billion quarter and a 51% growth forecast still left the shares down about 5%.
🪙 Tether finally gets its audit: KPMG signed off clean on the reserves behind the $180 billion stablecoin, finding a $6.8 billion surplus.
🟠 Reddit joins the S&P 500: The site replaces AvalonBay on 18 August, and the shares jumped about 11% after hours.
🛢️ Washington promises Iran economic isolation: Bessent says next week brings measures never seen before, the blockade runs indefinitely, Brent near $88.
📈 I sold my SpaceX position at $135: Chart of the Day covers the $150 line, $171 above it and $135 below.
🧠 One Big Thing
Every inflation number this week came in cooler. Shop prices rose 0.1% in July, wholesale prices did not rise at all, and the odds of the Fed raising rates next month have fallen below 40%. At half past one this afternoon the government publishes what Americans actually spent in July. It is the first full month of spending measured while the jobs market was shrinking, after payrolls came in at minus 23,000. Cooling prices only help if people still have jobs and are still spending. Watch whether that spending number holds up, because it decides whether this week’s good news was real.
⚖️ Fear & Greed
📉 The Number That Matters
5.216%
The Treasury sold $25 billion of thirty-year bonds at 5.216%, the highest yield at that maturity since 2001, a day after its ten-year sale cleared at the highest since 2007.
⚔️ Winners vs Losers
Winners
CAPR 0.00%↑ : +100.68% Capricor Therapeutics surged after telling investors it will submit an amended marketing application for Deramiocel in Duchenne muscular dystrophy, with the FDA signalling willingness to review the amendment and extend the action date beyond August 22. The update came alongside second quarter results and follows last month’s negative advisory committee vote.
DAAQ 0.00%↑ : +43.11% Digital Asset Acquisition Corp jumped after disclosing it had mutually terminated its business combination agreement with Old Glory Holding Company and indefinitely postponed the shareholder meeting that had been set for today, pushing the blank-check shares back toward trust value.
VALN 0.00%↑ : +28.94% Valneva SE climbed after the European Medicines Agency validated the marketing authorization application for the six-valent Lyme disease vaccine candidate it is developing with Pfizer, formally starting the review of a filing built on Phase 3 efficacy above 70%.
ETON 0.00%↑ : +24.75% Eton Pharmaceuticals rallied on record second quarter results, with revenue nearly doubling year over year to 37.6 million, adjusted EBITDA margin widening to 43% from 16%, and management raising full year revenue guidance to above 145 million.
HTFL 0.00%↑ : +23.83% Heartflow rose after second quarter revenue beat expectations and the loss came in far narrower than analysts had modelled, extending adoption of its AI coronary plaque and blood flow analysis products.
NU 0.00%↑ : +9.98% Nu Holdings advanced after posting its first billion dollar quarterly profit, with revenue up 39%, risk-adjusted net interest margin expanding to 12.4% from 9.9% a year earlier, and cost of credit falling sequentially.
SNDK 0.00%↑ : +6.87% Sandisk extended gains from its 2026 investor day, where the company laid out a long term financial model and a high bandwidth flash partnership aimed at AI inference workloads, lifting the wider memory complex with it.
Losers
INV 0.00%↑ : -44.72% Innventure plunged after a heavy second quarter revenue miss and the indefinite suspension of its 2026 revenue and cash flow targets for the Accelsius cooling business, which management blamed on delays in AI infrastructure deployment.
BZAI 0.00%↑ : -32.48% Blaize Holdings collapsed after cutting full year 2026 revenue guidance to a range of 40 to 43 million, far below the roughly 130 million previously reaffirmed, citing engagements that failed to convert into orders and sharply higher memory input costs.
AMPG 0.00%↑ : -27.71% AmpliTech Group dropped after missing second quarter earnings estimates by a wide margin and declining to reaffirm its full year revenue goal.
YSS 0.00%↑ : -16.42% York Space Systems fell after missing on second quarter earnings and slashing full year 2026 revenue guidance to roughly 405 million from a prior range of 545 to 595 million, with management attributing most of the cut to a shift in government acquisition methodologies.
SPRY 0.00%↑ : -14.26% ARS Pharmaceuticals declined after a strategy reset under its new chief executive, with second quarter operating expenses ballooning on the prior consumer advertising push and the interim readout from the chronic spontaneous urticaria trial pushed back to the first quarter of 2027.
AMAT 0.00%↑ : -5.59% Applied Materials slipped despite record third quarter revenue and fourth quarter guidance well ahead of consensus, as investors focused on near-term margin commentary after a near 100% year to date run.
📊 Market Snapshot
Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $62,846 (▼ 0.91%)
Ethereum (ETH): $1,878 (▼ 0.33%)
XRP: $1.00 (▼ 0.62%)
Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,829 (▲ 0.08%)
NASDAQ 100: 30,252 (▲ 0.21%)
FTSE 100: 10,756 (▼ 0.27%)
Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.65% (▼ 0.04%)
Oil (WTI): $82 (▲ 0.36%)
Gold: $4,366 (▲ 0.38%)
Silver: $64.97 (▲ 0.76%)
Data as of: UK: 12:54pm BST / US: 7:54am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 8:54pm JST
✅ 5 Things to Know
🛒 The consumer finally gets asked
July retail sales land at half past one this afternoon, and the consensus among economists is a rise of 0.1% on the month after 0.2% in June, with sales excluding cars and petrol seen up 0.3%. A Reuters poll of 57 forecasters puts the median at the same 0.1%, though the individual guesses run from a fall of 0.5% to a gain of 0.7%, which is an unusually wide spread for a number this routine. Preliminary consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan follows at three, with the survey’s one-year inflation expectations attached (CNBC).
This is the first month of spending collected while the labour market was visibly shrinking, after July payrolls came in at minus 23,000 and revisions removed another 103,000 jobs from May and June. The rest of the week has already gone the market’s way. Consumer prices rose 0.1% in July, wholesale prices were flat against expectations of a 0.2% rise, and the odds of a September rate rise have fallen below 40% from above 50% at the start of the week. A weak spending number alongside inflation still at 3.4% is the one combination that has not been priced (CNBC).
Sensei’s Insight: The wide forecast range is the story. When 57 economists cannot agree within a full percentage point on a monthly spending figure, it means nobody knows what a shrinking jobs market does to the tills. Today we find out.
🏛️ The costliest long bond since 2001, and a record close
The Treasury sold $25 billion of thirty-year bonds yesterday at 5.216%, a level dealers put as the highest any thirty-year auction has cleared since 2001. It came a day after the $42 billion ten-year sale cleared at 4.683%, the highest since 2007. Demand was described as decent rather than weak, which is the point: buyers turned up, but only at a price. Hours later the S&P 500 closed at 7,798.99, up 0.65% and above 7,800 for the first time, after touching 7,816.70 intraday. The Nasdaq Composite added 0.81% to 26,803.03 and the Dow rose 0.13% to 53,839.99 (Bloomberg).
Those two things pulling in opposite directions is worth sitting with. The thirty-year yield is the number mortgage rates, pension liabilities and long-dated company debt all hang off, and it is rising because the US keeps issuing more paper into a market that already owns plenty, not because growth is accelerating. Every previous stretch where long yields climbed while equity multiples expanded ended with one of the two giving way, and it has usually been the multiple. The July budget statement showed a deficit near $295 billion in a single month, so the supply is not about to stop (CNBC).
Sensei’s Insight: A record index and a 25-year high in long-term borrowing costs on the same afternoon is not a contradiction the market has resolved. It has just chosen which one to look at. I am watching the thirty-year, not the headline index.
💼 Silver Lake circles Workday in a $43 billion approach
Workday shares posted their best day in ten years after Reuters reported that Silver Lake has been in talks for several months about taking the business software company private. The stock jumped as much as 26% to $220.50 before being halted for volatility, then closed up about 18% at $206.45, which values the company at roughly $51 billion against the $43 billion it carried going into the news. Silver Lake may bring in co-investors, as it did last year alongside Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Affinity Partners on the roughly $55 billion take-private of Electronic Arts. There is no guarantee a deal happens (Bloomberg).
The move erased Workday’s losses for the year in a single session. The shares had fallen about 15% in 2026 and sat more than 40% below their 2024 peak, caught in the sell-off that hit business software on fears that AI would eat subscription models from underneath. That discount is exactly why private equity is looking. When a profitable, sticky software business trades at a fraction of its old multiple because of a narrative rather than a numbers problem, buyout firms with $50 billion of firepower get interested. A completed deal at this size would rank among the largest software buyouts ever (Yahoo Finance).
Sensei’s Insight: The AI-kills-software trade has been running for eighteen months and it has now created its own counter-trade. Private equity is buying the companies the public market has written off. Expect more approaches in that part of the market, not fewer.
₿ Crypto’s rulebook goes back in the drawer
Three things went against crypto inside 24 hours. The SEC is reportedly set to delay its long-awaited innovation exemption again, the rule meant to let tokenised securities trade on blockchain networks under existing law, after concerns from both the White House and Wall Street about its legal footing. The agency then cancelled today’s planned open meeting on Reg Crypto, its parallel effort to write fundraising rules for token projects, without setting a new date. And progress on the CLARITY Act has stalled in the Senate. Bitcoin trades near $62,850 and XRP is sitting on the $1 line (CoinDesk).
Separately, index provider MSCI opened a consultation that would exclude non-operating companies from its Global Investable Market Indexes, using a two-step screen on operating assets and five financial ratios rather than any crypto-specific test. Applied to holdings as of May, it would have deleted Strategy, Metaplanet and uranium holder Yellow Cake from the ACWI IMI index. Strategy holds 840,447 bitcoin worth about $53 billion. Feedback closes on 30 September, results come on 16 October, and any change lands no earlier than the November review. US spot bitcoin ETFs have shed $333 million this week after taking in $853 million the week before (CoinDesk).
Sensei’s Insight: MSCI dropped the crypto-specific wording and wrote a general test instead. That is the smarter version and it is much harder to lobby against, because now it catches any company that holds an asset rather than running a business.
💰 Ackman rebuilds the portfolio around six new names
Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square disclosed six new holdings in its largest portfolio overhaul in years: Netflix, Visa, Mastercard, S&P Global, Intercontinental Exchange and Alcon. The Netflix position stood at 3.15 million shares as of 30 June, worth 4.9% of the fund, and Ackman said the company has won the streaming wars, having previously exited a Netflix stake at a loss in 2022. Microsoft remains the largest holding at 12.4%, ahead of Uber and Meta. The Alcon and Intercontinental Exchange stakes were built after the quarter ended, so they sit outside the formal filing (Yahoo Finance).
The timing matters more than the names. Pershing Square Holdings in London was down 9.2% for the year through July against a 10% total return for the S&P 500, and the newly listed Pershing Square USA returned 0.6% from its April float to 11 August. A manager that far behind the index does not add six large-cap positions for fun. Visa and Mastercard are also a direct contrast with Berkshire Hathaway, which exited both under Greg Abel earlier this year. Today is the deadline for institutional managers to file their second-quarter holdings, so more of these will land through the session.
Sensei’s Insight: Ackman selling Netflix at a loss in 2022 and buying it back four years later at a much higher price is the most useful thing in this filing. Even concentrated managers change their minds, and they publish it 45 days late.
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🔧 Applied Materials beats every number and falls anyway
Applied Materials reported record third-quarter revenue of $9.12 billion, up 25% on a year earlier and its largest quarter-on-quarter increase ever, with adjusted earnings of $3.50 a share against the $3.45 expected. Adjusted operating margin hit a record 34% and the company guided to fourth-quarter revenue of $10.25 billion, up 51% on the year and well ahead of the roughly $9.5 billion analysts had modelled. The shares still fell about 5% after hours to around $507, from a close of $534.54. China dropped to 28% of revenue from 35% a year earlier, and fourth-quarter gross margin is guided flat despite the revenue jump, on ramp costs and display mix. The stock has roughly doubled this year (Yahoo Finance).
🪙 Tether gets the audit it promised for a decade
Tether said KPMG has completed a full audit of Tether International’s 2025 financial statements, the first proper audit of the reserves behind the $180 billion USDT stablecoin after years of quarterly attestations that stopped short of one. KPMG issued an unqualified opinion, meaning it found no material issues requiring exceptions, and reported reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion. The work went further than the attestations, testing transactions and systems and including a physical inspection of the company’s gold bars. USDT sits underneath most crypto trading pairs, so the credibility of its backing matters well beyond the people who hold it (CoinDesk).
🟠 Reddit gets its seat in the S&P 500
Reddit will join the S&P 500 before the open on 18 August, replacing AvalonBay Communities, which leaves the index after agreeing to be bought by Equity Residential. The shares jumped about 11% in after-hours trading on the announcement, ending months of speculation about whether the company would make the cut. Eligibility turned on profits rather than size: Reddit did not post a full year of positive net income under standard accounting rules until 2025, when it earned roughly $530 million on $2.20 billion of revenue. Every index fund tracking the S&P 500 now has to own it, which is where the after-hours move came from (Bloomberg).
🛢️ Washington readies an unprecedented squeeze on Iran
Brent crude rose 0.96% to $87.91 a barrel and US crude added 1.08% to $82.13 after Washington said its naval blockade of Iranian ports could run indefinitely. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described what lands next week as economic isolation of a kind that has never been seen, paired with the blockade, while Trump has threatened 25% tariffs on any country buying Iranian goods or services, which points most directly at China. ADNOC says three of its vessels were hit while transiting the Strait of Hormuz this week, taking the total since the war began to 15. Crude is still up more than 30% on a year ago, the single largest reason American inflation has stopped falling (CNBC).