August 25th Market Overview

Happy Tuesday

Green screen, thin support. Only 180 of the 500 names in the index were higher by late morning, with chips doing the heavy lifting into Nvidia's report tomorrow.

Retail took the other side of that and got hit hard. When the index is up and most of it isn't, the money is being made and lost in individual names.

Let’s dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. Consumers Feel Better About Now And Worse About Later

Every month the Conference Board asks Americans how the economy feels right now and how they think it will feel in six months. The right-now answer improved for the first time in three months, mostly because the job market looks steadier than it did in the spring. The six-month answer went the other way, down to 68.2, which pulled the headline reading to 89.4. New home sales were light too, at an annual pace of 607,000 in July against the 620,000 expected.

2. Dick's Cuts Its Outlook And Sneakers Take The Hit

Dick's Sporting Goods $DKS lowered full-year profit guidance to $10.94 to $11.94 a share from $13.27 to $14.27, on sales of $5.59 billion against the $5.65 billion expected. The weak spot is Foot Locker, which Dick's bought last fall, where older sneaker models are sitting unsold and rivals are cutting prices to clear them. Nike, Lululemon and Under Armour fell alongside it.

3. Bitcoin Tops $80,000 And Gold Sets Up Its Best Month Since 1999

Bitcoin traded above $80k for the first time since May. Gold reached a three-month high near $4,677 and is on pace for its strongest month in twenty-seven years. Both moves come back to the same decision, the Treasury doubling its buybacks of long-dated bonds to hold yields down. Stanley Druckenmiller, who Scott Bessent once worked for, wrote in the Journal that the plan is a mistake, because cheaper borrowing lets Washington keep putting off a debt that just passed $40 trillion.

Market Overview

Index Performance

Stock spotlight

Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 2.35% )  
broke a seven-day losing streak, its longest since 2022, one day before it reports.

Boeing $BA ( ▲ 0.4% )  
won an Air Force contract worth up to $131 billion covering F-15 upgrades, retrofits and maintenance through August 2037. The work runs through St. Louis and includes fleets in Japan, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Shift4 Payments $FOUR ( ▲ 0.08% )  
was upgraded to overweight at Wells Fargo, target to $59 from $55, on better free cash flow and the international build-out.

Palo Alto Networks $PANW ( ▼ 3.09% )  
has more in the pipeline than its guidance shows, JPMorgan says, which sets up upside when it reports September 1.

Big name updates

United Airlines $UAL ( ▲ 1.37% )  
laid out the biggest international expansion in its history for 2027, ten new destinations including Ljubljana, Marseille, Ibiza and Okinawa. Eight of them no other US airline flies.

Bank of Nova Scotia $BNS ( ▲ 7.34% )  
beat with quarterly revenue of C$10.54 billion, and Bank of Montreal $BMO beat too at C$9.9 billion. Both spent their calls talking down tariff risk.

XPeng $XPEV ( ▲ 3.9% )  
posted a wider loss of 1.34 billion yuan and guided next quarter's deliveries below expectations. Its robotics arm was just valued above $6.3 billion, so the cars are no longer the whole story.

Intuit $INTU ( ▼ 3.15% )  
and Zoom $ZM both report after today's close.

Other notable company news

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CoreWeave $CRWV ( ▲ 1.99% )  
should see operating margins widen every quarter into year-end, according to Paul Meeks at Freedom Capital Markets, who thinks investors are still underrating its earnings power.

Kura Oncology $KURA ( ▲ 10.32% )  
rose after chief executive Troy Wilson disclosed buying 100,000 shares.

Navitas Semiconductor $NVTS ( ▲ 3.23% )  
will supply power management to Claros in a cash and stock deal worth $232.8 million.

US listings have raised $137 billion so far this year, and Anthropic could raise up to $100 billion as soon as next month, which would push 2026 past the 2021 record.

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Sector Watch

Bond market

Yields fell for a second straight session. The 10-year traded near 4.65 and the 30-year near 5.18, helped along by another slide in oil.

Two quiet days do not settle the fight over the buyback plan. Tomorrow's inflation print will do more to the long end than anything the Treasury announces this week.

Policy watch

Fed

Kevin Warsh walks into Jackson Hole with two people pulling on his sleeve. Trump wants rates down before November's midterms. Druckenmiller, who was Warsh's boss for more than a decade, just publicly called the Treasury's yield-suppression plan a mistake. How Warsh handles that split is the real story of the week.

Fiscal and trade

Canada answered Washington dollar for dollar.

• Tariffs on roughly $20 billion of American goods, more than 700 products, starting September 8.

• Rates run from 15 to 50 percent and cover steel, aluminum, dairy, seafood, appliances and farm equipment.

• It follows the 50 percent duties Trump put on Canadian cars and parts starting in January.

International

The Treasury's new Iran sanctions went after the companies and countries keeping Tehran's economy running and left China alone. China buys most of Iran's oil, so leaving it out says Washington values the trade truce with Beijing more than a faster squeeze on Iran. Oil traders read it the same way and sold.

• War risk insurance in the Persian Gulf now costs 3 to 6 percent of a ship's value, against about a quarter percent in peacetime.

• European gas storage is just under 63 percent full versus a normal 80 percent, and Dutch benchmark gas settled Monday at its highest since January 2023.

What to Watch

The AI Infrastructure's Backbone
See the 10 Stocks Powering the AI Buildout now

Nvidia Earnings

Wednesday after the close, the last big report of the quarter. Data center revenue is the headline, but the guide on next-generation systems is what actually moves the tape.

Wednesday's Data

July inflation, durable goods orders and the revised second quarter growth number all land in the morning. A warm inflation print makes every argument for lower rates harder.

Warsh At Jackson Hole

Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern, his first major speech as Fed chairman. Traders want his read on inflation and growth, and how much room he thinks he has.

Thanks for reading - you are now the more informed 🙂

- John

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