August 31st Pre-Market Brief

Good Morning

Last day of August and even if it’s red td we close the month green. Not the read I would have taken from the weekend. U.S. and Iran traded strikes, oil went back above ninety a barrel, and Asia opened down three percent before closing flat. Traders over there decided this was another war headline and not a problem.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. Navy Escorts Are Setting The Price Of Oil

August was Brent's smallest monthly move in either direction since December, in the sixth month of a war. Roughly seven million barrels a day now cross the strait in Navy-escorted convoys, and that is what has held the price in range. The launchers struck on Larak were preparing to mine that exact lane. Rystad expects escorted flows lower this week, and that number sets crude more than the headlines do.

2. Warsh Got The Headlines, Japan And Europe Got The Move

Japan's two-year yield reached a thirty-one year high Monday. German and French two-year yields hit their highest since 2024, with short-term borrowing costs also rising in the U.K., Spain, Portugal, Poland and Switzerland. The European Central Bank meets September ninth and is widely expected to hike, and New Zealand goes Wednesday. The same oil price is landing on every one of those decisions.

3. August's Best Stock Was A Cancer Vaccine

Moderna is up one hundred fifty-two percent this month, the top performer in the S&P 500, after its melanoma vaccine trial with Merck worked. Software names led the rest of the tape on earnings, while the AI stocks most people actually own trailed. That biotech squeeze is part of what unwound the momentum trade, now tracking its worst quarterly underperformance in twenty-five years. Speculators walked into today net short Nasdaq futures near the highest level in two decades.

Market Overview

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Stock Spotlight (pre-market)

PG&E $PCG ( ▼ 7.52% )  
is sharply lower after California lawmakers released weekend wildfire legislation that left out the liability protection utilities wanted. Mizuho cut the stock and told clients to own utilities with less wildfire exposure, with other firms downgrading alongside it.

Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 4.58% )  
is buying three and a half billion dollars of convertible bonds issued by Taiwan's MediaTek. The two will work together on local AI computing and platforms for AI-powered vehicles.

SLB $SLB ( ▲ 3.38% )  
is higher after agreeing to buy cooling-systems maker Kelvion for four point one billion dollars from funds run by Apollo and Triton. Data centers are Kelvion's fastest-growing market and more than half its sales. Acquirers usually trade down on a deal this size.

Valero Energy $VLO ( ▲ 1.67% )  
is higher with Brent back above ninety. Goldman says strikes on refineries in the Middle East and Russia have squeezed already stretched refining capacity and pushed product margins to new highs.

Aon $AON ( ▲ 1.67% )  
is lower in thin premarket trade after confirming a seventeen billion dollar purchase of USI Insurance Services from KKR, debt included. KKR books three point three billion dollars after tax, about three and a half times what it put into the business since 2017.

Strategy $MSTR ( ▼ 7.34% )  
bought about three hundred seventy million dollars of bitcoin last week, its first purchase since June, at an average price of eighty thousand three hundred eighteen. Bitcoin is trading near seventy-eight thousand this morning.

What to Watch

Want to Know about this years upcoming IPO’s?
MarketBeat did an excellent job on this free IPO guide on IPO’s happening this year

Three Reads On Data Center Spending
Dell and Palo Alto Networks report Tuesday, Broadcom Wednesday. Nvidia's three and a half billion into MediaTek this morning is money committed before those numbers land. Broadcom is the one that carries the group.

Bessent Names Another Bank
Treasury says it will sanction one Iran-linked bank a week, starting with Egypt's Banque Misr losing its Emirati branches' access to the dollar system. Those are small targets, picked to avoid hitting China and India, which still buy Iranian oil. Bessent says all options are on the table for Beijing, and that is the step that moves crude.

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