This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research. Not financial advice (NFA).
👀 Today’s Stories at a Glance
🏛️ Treasury buys its own bonds: Washington doubled its long bond buybacks, yields fell, and three days of selling reversed in one session.
🏦 Fed minutes were the hawkish part: Many officials said higher rates would be needed if inflation refused to come down.
🛢️ Trump promises economic warfare: He is preparing sanctions on anyone helping Iran, while a secret US oil corridor runs nightly.
🪙 Bitcoin clears $71,000: Ether is back above $2,000 and almost $2 billion of leveraged crypto positions were wiped out.
🛒 Walmart beat and fell 6%: It raised full-year guidance, then guided the current quarter light, and the shares dropped anyway.
💉 Moderna’s best day ever: Shares closed 177% higher and short sellers took a paper loss of about $5 billion.
🇯🇵 Japan’s exports jump 23%: Chip shipments rose 49% in July, a fifth straight month of growth for Japanese exporters.
🇨🇦 Canada tariffs paused again: Trump shelved 50% duties on some Canadian goods hours before they were due to start.
💻 Nebius raises $4.5 billion: The AI cloud company sold convertible notes and its shares fell almost 13% on the news.
🔍 Wednesday in three parts: The bond move, the short squeeze that followed it, and what the Fed minutes actually said.
📈 The counter-trend rally arrived: Chart of the Day covers XRP at $1.00 support, resistance at $1.22, and $1.31 above it.
🧠 One Big Thing
Your portfolio moved yesterday because of a press release from the US Treasury. Governments have been borrowing so much that the price of long-term borrowing hit levels last seen in 2007, and everything you own is priced against that number. On Wednesday the Treasury said it would double the amount of its own long bonds it buys back each week. Yields fell and shares rose. Gold went through $4,500, Bitcoin reached $69,000, and Korea took back everything it lost the day before. No company reported anything. The cost of money changed.
⚖️ Fear & Greed
📉 The Number That Matters
$40 trillion
American federal debt passed $40 trillion on 18 August, doubling in under a decade. It reached $39 trillion in March. The next day, the Treasury announced it was buying some of it back.
⚔️ Winners vs Losers
Winners
BULL 0.00%↑ : +13.41% Webull Corporation posted record second quarter revenue of $198.8 million, up 51 percent year over year, with adjusted earnings of five cents beating estimates as the June elimination of the Pattern Day Trader Rule drove record trading volumes.
MSTR 0.00%↑ : +11.00% Strategy Inc extended Wednesday’s surge as bitcoin pushed toward $72,000 following the president’s meeting with crypto executives and regulators and a fresh SEC digital asset rulemaking proposal.
ASST 0.00%↑ : +10.52% Strive, Inc. rallied alongside the broader bitcoin move as its SATA perpetual preferred approached par value for the first time in two months and a board director disclosed an open market purchase of 15,900 Class A shares.
HOOD 0.00%↑ : +5.81% Robinhood Markets, Inc. climbed for a second session as the crypto rally lifted expectations for its digital asset trading revenue.
Losers
AAP 0.00%↑ : -14.06% Advance Auto Parts Inc. reported second quarter sales of $2.0 billion, flat year over year and short of estimates, and set full year revenue guidance with a midpoint below consensus, overshadowing an adjusted EPS beat that leaned on roughly 31 cents of tariff refunds.
COTY 0.00%↑ : -13.86% Coty Inc. posted an adjusted quarterly loss of two cents against expectations for a one cent loss and guided first quarter earnings to 11 to 13 cents versus the 14 cents analysts expected, framing the coming year as a transition period.
WMT 0.00%↑ : -6.18% Walmart Inc. beat on second quarter earnings at 81 cents and raised full year guidance, but third quarter adjusted EPS guidance of 62 to 64 cents landed below consensus and sent shares lower.
BABA 0.00%↑ : -3.45% Alibaba Group Holding reported a 76 percent drop in quarterly net income to 10.54 billion yuan as heavy AI infrastructure spending outweighed 9 percent revenue growth and 45 percent external cloud revenue growth.
📊 Market Snapshot
Cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin (BTC): $71,860 (▲ 3.72%)
Ethereum (ETH): $2,287 (▲ 1.57%)
XRP: $1.16 (▲ 4.74%)
Equity Indices (Futures):
S&P 500: 7,727 (▼ 0.02%)
NASDAQ 100: 29,504 (▼ 0.03%)
FTSE 100: 10,711 (▼ 0.29%)
Commodities & Bonds:
10-Year US Treasury Yield: 4.68% (▲ 0.84%)
Oil (WTI): $87 (▲ 2.91%)
Gold: $4,486 (▼ 0.80%)
Silver: $66.77 (▼ 0.21%)
Data as of: UK: 12:13pm BST / US: 7:13am EDT / Asia (Tokyo): 8:13pm JST
✅ 5 Things to Know
🏛️ Washington starts buying back its own bonds
The Treasury said on Wednesday it will at least double the size of its liquidity support buyback operations in the 10 to 20 year and the 20 to 30 year parts of the market. The maximum per operation goes from $2 billion to at least $4 billion. The change takes effect on 9 September and runs through 4 November. Long yields fell within minutes. The 30-year gave up around 9 basis points to close at 5.19%, having touched 5.33% on Tuesday, its highest since 2007. The 10-year fell about 6 basis points to 4.647%. (CNBC)
A buyback is the government going into the open market and purchasing bonds it has already issued. That is a different thing from money printing, because the Treasury funds it out of regular borrowing and creates no new reserves. The department described the increase as liquidity support in a part of the curve where buyers had gone quiet since late June. The timing tells you why it was needed. Federal debt passed $40.05 trillion on 18 August, five months after crossing $39 trillion in March, and it has more than doubled since 2017. (The Washington Post)
The reaction ran through every market at once. The S&P 500 added 16 points to 7,708 and the Dow gained 120 points to 53,463, both snapping a three-day losing run, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 41 points to 26,331. Gold climbed more than 3% through $4,500, its highest since 4 June, and the dollar fell to a three-month low. Overnight the trade reached Asia. Korea’s KOSPI closed 5.89% higher at 6,852.58, taking back all of Wednesday’s 5.80% collapse, with SK Hynix up more than 12% and Samsung Electronics more than 9%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.36% to 66,216.79. By Thursday lunchtime the 10-year had backed up to 4.68%, giving part of the move straight back.
Sensei’s Insight: Two days ago I said the bond market prices everything else. Wednesday proved it in reverse. One Treasury press release did more for global equity prices than any earnings report this month. I am watching the 30-year, because that is what this was aimed at.
🏦 The Fed minutes were more hawkish than the vote
The July record landed at 7:00pm UK, 2:00pm ET on Wednesday, and it describes a committee closer to raising rates than the 9-3 vote suggested. Many participants judged that higher rates would likely be necessary if inflation did not decline. Some said financial conditions might not be restrictive enough to return inflation to the 2% target. A few of those who wanted a rise at the meeting argued that moving then would forestall the need for more tightening later. Several noted that price increases over the past year had been broad based across goods and services. (Federal Reserve)
Fed language is graded, so the words carry counts. “Several” sits above “a few” and below “many”, which means the hawkish camp inside that room was wider than the three names on the dissent. Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan were the ones who voted for a quarter point. The document also carries something nobody was looking for. Kevin Warsh told the committee that six scheduled meetings a year, roughly one every two months, would let more information accumulate between decisions. No vote was taken and the 2026 calendar is unchanged. The Fed has met eight times a year since 1981. (investingLive)
Every word of it was written before July payrolls came in at minus 23,000 and before retail sales fell 0.6%, so the hawkishness describes an economy that has since softened. Markets treated it as history and bought bonds anyway.
Sensei’s Insight: The buried line is the calendar one. Six meetings instead of eight means fewer scheduled moments for the Fed to respond, and it means each one carries more weight. That is a structural change to how rates get set, and it arrived in a footnote.
🛢️ Trump promises economic warfare, and a secret oil corridor surfaces
“I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY.” That was Trump on Truth Social on Wednesday, promising economic warfare and isolation against Iran on an unprecedented scale, with penalties threatened against any country helping Tehran evade sanctions. The plan is due to be set out next week. On the same day the United Arab Emirates suspended all trade and financial transactions with Iran, after two ballistic missiles launched from Iran fell into its territorial waters causing no damage. (CNBC)
Underneath the rhetoric, something quieter has been running for weeks. Axios reported that the US military has established its own shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, moving 15 to 20 tankers each night along a southern channel off the coast of Oman. Roughly 10 million barrels a day are getting out that way, about half the pre-war volume. Brent pushed toward $93 on Thursday morning, up more than 4% on the week, with West Texas Intermediate near $87. US crude inventories rose 4.4 million barrels last week while refinery runs hit their highest since September 2019. (Trading Economics)
Half the oil is still moving, which makes the shortage smaller than the headlines imply. The sanctions plan is what could change that, because squeezing the buyers of Iranian crude takes barrels off the market.
Sensei’s Insight: Trump saying oil still flows and Trump promising to crush Iran’s economy are both true. They point opposite ways for the price. My read is that the corridor caps the upside and the sanctions plan sets the floor, so I am watching next week’s detail.
🪙 Bitcoin clears $71,000 as Washington opens the door
Bitcoin touched $69,000 on Wednesday for the first time in two months, and it has kept going since, trading near $71,860 by Thursday lunchtime. Ether jumped 10% back above $2,000, its first visit since May, and reached $2,287. XRP added another 4.7% on Thursday to $1.16. Three things landed inside 24 hours. The Treasury doubled its bond buybacks, the SEC published its proposed “Regulation Crypto Assets” framework on Tuesday afternoon, and Trump hosted the industry at the White House on Wednesday. Leveraged traders positioned the wrong way lost $1.93 billion in liquidations over the day, and $1.75 billion of that was short positions. (The Block)
Under the SEC proposal, an issuer could raise up to $5 million over four years, or up to $75 million a year with audited accounts and regular reporting, without registering the offering as a securities sale. Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, Brad Garlinghouse of Ripple, Vlad Tenev of Robinhood, Arjun Sethi of Kraken and Jeff Sprecher of Intercontinental Exchange all sat with Trump, SEC chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC chairman Michael Selig. Armstrong called the 15 September CLARITY Act vote the most important next step. Crypto-linked equities rose with the coins, Strategy and Bitmine each around 10%. (The Washington Post)
Sensei’s Insight: Note which of the three actually did the work. Bitcoin moved on the Treasury announcement, the same one that lifted gold and Korean chipmakers. Washington’s news is why the move held into the close. I am watching whether it holds without another liquidity headline.
🛒 Walmart beat, raised the year, and fell 6%
Did American shoppers stop buying, or start buying cheaper? Walmart answered at midday and the shares fell 6.18% on it. Adjusted earnings came in at 81 cents against the 73 cents analysts had modelled, and the company raised its full-year guidance. Then it guided third-quarter adjusted earnings to 62 to 64 cents, below consensus, and that is the line the market traded. John Furner delivered his first August print as chief executive alongside finance chief John David Rainey. Around 90% of American households shop there in a given year. (Walmart)
Wednesday set an uncomfortable table. Target beat earnings expectations and raised its annual sales forecast, with comparable sales up 3.8% and store traffic up 3.6%, and the shares fell close to 3%. A $994 million tariff refund supplied about 40% of the quarter’s earnings per share. Lowe’s beat on earnings, matched on revenue, then trimmed its comparable sales guidance citing pressure in do-it-yourself spending, and fell about 3.5%. TJX beat and raised its full-year profit forecast, guided the current quarter light, and dropped more than 3%. Analog Devices beat, guided above consensus, improved gross margin and fell 3.5%. Estée Lauder was the exception, up 18.4% on a beat and a strong outlook. (TheStreet)
Five companies beat this week and five share prices fell.
The market is pricing the guidance rather than the quarter, and Walmart has now failed the same test its rivals failed a day earlier.
Sensei’s Insight: Walmart beat, raised the year, and lost 6%. Nobody is paying for the quarter that just happened. They are paying for the guide, and the guide came in soft. That is the same message Target, Lowe’s and TJX sent yesterday.
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💉 Moderna posts the best day in its history
Moderna closed at $174.38 on Wednesday, up 177% from Tuesday’s $62.96, the largest single-day gain the company has ever recorded. The move followed interim Phase 3 results showing its personalised mRNA cancer vaccine, given with Merck’s Keytruda, cut the recurrence of surgically removed melanoma and slowed its spread to new sites. Merck rose about 12% and BioNTech gained more than 19%. Short sellers held 13.5% of the free float going in, and took a paper loss of roughly $5 billion on the day, taking their mark-to-market losses for the year past $7 billion. Moderna is up 355% in 2026. (The Motley Fool)
🇯🇵 Japanese exports jump 23% on chip demand
Japan’s exports rose 23.2% in July from a year earlier, a fifth consecutive month of growth, with semiconductor shipments up 49%. The AI build-out is the direct cause, because Japanese suppliers make the memory, the wafers and the manufacturing equipment that data centre construction consumes. The figure arrived on the same morning Japanese and Korean chip shares rebounded hard, with Kioxia and SoftBank both up more than 5% in Tokyo. It also complicates the Bank of Japan’s position, since a strong export run and a yen near 158 to the dollar both argue for tighter policy. (investingLive)
🇨🇦 Trump pauses 50% Canadian tariffs for three days
Trump postponed a 50% tariff on a range of Canadian goods late on Tuesday, hours before it was due to take effect, covering roughly $20 billion of imports including dairy, wine, lumber and hockey equipment. He wrote on Truth Social that the pause runs three days and that Canada and the United States have a deal subject to the finalisation of documents, which puts the deadline back on Friday. Talks with Prime Minister Mark Carney still have market access, automotive trade, alcohol sales and digital trade rules unresolved. (CNN)
💻 Nebius raises $4.5 billion and falls 13%
Nebius Group fell 12.7% on Wednesday after disclosing a private offering of $4.5 billion in convertible senior notes, split between $2.75 billion maturing in 2030 and $1.75 billion maturing in 2034. A convertible note is debt the lender can swap for shares later, which is cheap money for the borrower and dilution for existing holders if the price rises. The AI cloud sector is funding its data centre build with borrowed money at a point when long-term borrowing costs sit at 19-year highs. Dell fell 7.2% and CrowdStrike 7.1% in the same session. (TheStreet)