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A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. Nvidia $NVDA reported Q2’27 revenue of $96.2B, beating estimates of $92.2B and up 106% YoY. Adjusted EPS came in at $2.22 versus $2.10 expected, up 120% YoY. Data Center revenue reached $89.0B, above the $85.8B estimate and up 117% YoY, while adjusted gross margin was 75.0%, in line with expectations and up 250 bps YoY. Nvidia guided Q3 revenue to $108.0B +/- 2%, ahead of the $104.2B estimate, with adjusted gross margin expected at 74.0% +/- 50 bps. The company generated $64.0B of adjusted operating income, $54.0B of adjusted net income, and $21.3B of free cash flow, while returning roughly $26.0B to shareholders in Q2 with about $99.0B remaining on its authorization. Nvidia said its outlook assumes no Data Center compute revenue from China, while Vera Rubin is ramping into full production with racks running at partners. 2. US GDP came in at 1.5% QoQ, matching estimates. PCE rose 0.2% MoM versus 0.1% expected and 3.7% YoY versus 3.6% expected, while Core PCE was in line at 0.2% MoM and 3.3% YoY. Consumer spending increased 0.2% MoM, above the 0.1% estimate, and personal income rose 0.4% MoM, ahead of the 0.2% estimate. Real personal consumption was flat at 0.0% MoM, matching expectations. 3. Meta $META agreed to an $18B youth safety commitment as part of its settlement with U.S. states, including $17B tied to broader settlement terms and $2.2B payable to California. Under the deal, Meta will spend the money over 10 years on youth online safety initiatives and implement new protections for users under 18, including limiting social media use to 2 hours per day and blocking access from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. Compliance will be monitored by an independent auditor for 5 years. Meta will accrue about $10B in legal expenses in Q3 2026, but says its July financial guidance remains unchanged. The company also said $5.3B of the settlement is tied to YouTube and TikTok implementing similar daily limits, night mode, and age assurance measures. 4. The Bank of Korea raised rates by 25 bps to 3.00%, marking its second straight hike and the first back-to-back rate increases since the COVID era. The central bank also raised its 2026 GDP growth forecast to 3.3% from 2.6%, signaling stronger confidence in the economy even as it tightens policy. 5. Nvidia $NVDA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9B, according to The Information. Strategically, this would give Nvidia a much deeper foothold in the open-source AI ecosystem, where Hugging Face has become one of the main distribution layers for models, datasets, and developer workflows. The likely goal is not just owning another AI asset, but controlling more of the software layer around AI adoption: GPUs, networking, CUDA, inference infrastructure, and now a major platform where developers actually build, share, and deploy models. For Nvidia, this makes the ecosystem stickier and strengthens its position as AI shifts from training frontier models to deploying millions of inference workloads across enterprises. 6. U.S. new home sales fell 10.5% MoM in July to 607,000 units, the lowest level in 6 months and far worse than the 1.4% decline expected. Excluding January 2026, this was the weakest reading since November 2022. New home sales have now declined in 3 of the last 4 months and are down 6.3% YoY. The Midwest saw the sharpest drop, with sales plunging 42.7% MoM to 43,000, the lowest level since 2012. Sales in the South, the largest homebuying region at more than 60% of total sales, fell 13.0% to 383,000, the second-lowest level since January. The weakness comes as the 30-year mortgage rate hit 6.81%, its highest since August 2025, continuing to pressure homebuyer demand. 7. An IRGC spokesperson said the Strait of Hormuz will not reopen unless the U.S. accepts Iran’s conditions. Those conditions reportedly include foreign warships staying at least 400 km away and no vessel transiting the Strait without Iran’s permission. The IRGC also said Iran and Oman have agreed to share revenue from shipping through the Strait, adding another layer of geopolitical and energy-market risk around one of the world’s most important chokepoints. 8. CrowdStrike $CRWD reported Q2’27 revenue of $1.47B, beating estimates of $1.44B and up 26% YoY. Adjusted EPS came in at $0.31 versus $0.29 expected, up 35% YoY, while free cash flow reached $377.4M, above the $353M estimate and up 33% YoY. Net new ARR hit a record $333M, up 51% YoY, bringing total ARR to $5.84B, up 25% YoY. CrowdStrike raised FY27 guidance to $5.99B–$6.01B in revenue, $1.25–$1.26 in adjusted EPS, and $6.60B–$6.61B in ARR. Management called Q2 the best quarter in company history, citing record Falcon Flex results, record net new ARR, stronger retention, and a Mythos-driven tailwind as AI adoption increasingly needs security at scale. $CRWD was up 10% after hours. 9. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $TSLA with 2.7M contracts, $NVDA with 2.5M contracts, $META with 1.7M contracts, $AAPL with 1.4M contracts, $INTC with 742K contracts, $AMZN with 695K contracts, $SPCX with 603K contracts, $MU with 595K contracts, $MSFT with 579K contracts, and $AMD with 404K contracts. 10. $NVDA Nvidia's CFO today said revenue is expected to grow approximately 70% in FY28, even with a supply-constrained outlook. The company said Vera CPU is now in full production, shipments are already underway to lead partners, and CPU revenue is expected to more than double in FY28 against roughly $20B of total server CPU demand. Nvidia also said it began production shipments of Vera Rubin earlier this month, while neocloud partners are expected to exit the year with 8 GW of installed capacity, up from roughly 3 GW at the end of 2025. The CFO said cloud industry backlog now exceeds $2T, with capex from the top five hyperscalers expected to reach nearly $800B in 2026 and $1.3T in 2027. Nvidia also addressed “circular financing,” saying it has invested nearly $50B in frontier AI labs and expects AI lab demand supported by its balance sheet to contribute roughly 25% of the business next year. 11. Google $GOOGL has reportedly hired Barret Zoph, co-founder and former CTO of Thinking Machines Lab, as VP of Research, according to WSJ. Zoph will work on Gemini, bringing expertise in reinforcement learning and post-training. Separately, SoftBank is reportedly in talks to acquire a majority stake in OpenAI-backed humanoid robot maker 1X at roughly a $6B valuation. 1X previously tried to raise $1B at a $10B valuation but raised less than half that target, while OpenAI also discussed acquiring the company last year before talks fell apart. 1X says it received more than 10,000 pre-orders for its $20,000 NEO humanoid in the first week, with deliveries planned for 2026, though none have been delivered yet. 12. AWS $AMZN and Nvidia $NVDA announced a major expansion of their strategic AI infrastructure partnership, building on 16 years of joint innovation. As part of the expanded collaboration, AWS will deploy 2 million additional Nvidia GPUs across its global infrastructure in 2027–2028. The companies said they are deepening their work across AI factories, CPUs, networking, open models, data processing, and robotics, giving customers more ways to build and deploy AI at scale. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

$NVDA I did not see a red flag in that Nvidia print. Genuinely, I’m curious what red flags people are seeing. I’d be the first to nit-pick and try to figure out what the street is upset about, but this was genuinely one of the best calls Jensen has ever had. It’s not even about the stock. Price is still below where it was just last week. I am trying to figure out if there is a reasonable argument outside of “AI is a bubble” to actually be meaningfully bearish here. Jensen answered every question in a way that just proved demand was stronger than supply and Nvidia’s growth was not going to slow down. - Beat the whisper numbers by a crazy amount including the guide. - Bought back $20B of stock and guided to buy back a ton more. - Kept margins basically the same. - Answered circular financing fears by explaining how their model creates more proliferation of AI, even if bears don’t like their answer. - Explained how open source and frontier models will work together. - Said that their growth is only constrained because of the supply chain and nothing else. - 40% of revenues are hyperscalers and even with increased competition, companies like Amazon pledged to buy ANOTHER 2M GPUs and even more CPUs. - Street thought they’d do 40% rev growth next year and Jensen said the floor is basically 70% now. Outside of the common bear cases, what was wrong with the print? Again, I don’t care much about the stock not moving because that is up to algos/the street/macro but for the company itself, I just do not see what to be meaningfully concerned about.

$NVDA !!!!! NVIDIA Q2 2026 EARNINGS: - Revenue $96.2B +106% YoY - Data Center Revenue $89.0B +117% YoY - GAAP EPS $2.46 +128% YoY - GAAP Operating Income $63.7B +124% YoY - GAAP Gross Margin 75.0% - Returned $26B to Shareholders in Q2 - Q3 Revenue Guidance of $108B NVIDIA just doubled revenue at a nearly $100B quarterly run rate. It is the largest company in history to put up these numbers at this size. CEO Jensen Huang: “AI has reached its inflection point. It’s doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now, compute is revenue. And demand is accelerating. This time last year, one lab alone was driving the buildout; today, we have a golden age of new AI labs and startups, multiple frontier labs scaling in parallel, a thriving open-model ecosystem and physical AI coming online — with strong momentum across the U.S. and around the world. The AI infrastructure buildout is at full steam. Vera Rubin, now in full production, was built to power exactly this moment.” LETS. GO.

how about no x.com/amitisinvesting/status/2…

A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. The U.S. reportedly offered Iran a deal to halt the siege and lift sanctions in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ending proxy attacks, according to Al Arabiya. Axios also reports that Rubio told several foreign counterparts the U.S. does not plan new strikes on Iran for now, with pressure shifting toward the naval blockade and new sanctions campaign instead. Crude Oil fell 4% and the 10-year treasury bond fell from 4.72% to 4.62%. 2. Global physical gold-backed ETFs $GLD attracted $6.4B of inflows last week, their largest weekly intake since January and the 3rd-largest weekly inflow on record. North America led with $4.4B, followed by Europe at $1.7B and Asia at $300M. This marked the 7th straight week of inflows, with global gold ETFs pulling in $16.4B over that stretch. Total AUM in global gold ETFs rose by $33B last week to $615B, the highest level since the second week of May. 3. Intuit $INTU reported Q4’26 revenue of $4.4B, beating estimates of $4.27B and up 14% YoY. Adjusted EPS came in at $4.03 versus $3.58 expected. Global Business Solutions revenue rose 14% YoY to $3.4B, the Online Ecosystem grew 17% YoY to $2.6B, Consumer revenue increased 14% YoY to $930M, and Credit Karma revenue rose 16% YoY to $743M. For FY27, Intuit guided revenue to $23.3B–$23.5B versus $23.72B expected, while adjusted EPS guidance of $22.88–$23.12 came in well below the $27.32 estimate. The company also raised its dividend 15% YoY to $1.38/share, bought back $5.5B of stock, and has $7.9B remaining on its authorization. Management said its strategy is to win as an AI-driven expert platform while staying disciplined on investments and scaling its big bets. 4. President Trump said the U.S. Navy has removed and/or detonated all mines from international waters in the Strait of Hormuz. He said Iran has been notified that any ship or boat placing new mines will be “immediately and systematically destroyed.” Trump added that Space Force is monitoring every square inch of the Strait, along with Pickaxe Mountain and the three previously destroyed nuclear sites, and said a “Zero Tolerance” policy on mine placement is now in full effect. 5. Canada is responding to U.S. tariffs with new tariffs of its own. The country is raising steel tariffs to 50% from 25%, while roughly 700 products will face new tariff rates of 15%, 25%, and 50%. The measures are set to take effect on September 8, marking another escalation in the U.S.–Canada trade dispute. 6. Anthropic is expected to tell IPO investors its total addressable market exceeds $30T, topping SpaceX’s $28.5T estimate, according to WSJ. The figure represents the potential value of work Anthropic believes AI models could eventually perform, not a direct revenue forecast. Anthropic generated $11.6B in Q2 revenue and could seek to raise as much as $100B at roughly a $2T valuation. IPO documents are expected within weeks, potentially setting up a September or early October listing. 7. OpenAI’s data-center head Chris Malone left the company last week, according to WSJ. Malone joined in March 2025 shortly after Stargate was announced and played a key role overseeing OpenAI’s massive data-center buildout. He previously led data-center strategy at Meta and earlier worked on data-center technology at Google. The departure comes just weeks after OpenAI also replaced its chief revenue officer, adding another senior leadership change as the company races to scale infrastructure, revenue, and compute capacity. 8. ClickHouse has surpassed $350M in annual recurring revenue, up 40% since May, as AI agents drive demand for database and observability infrastructure. OpenAI’s usage has reportedly grown roughly 10x over the past year to more than 30 petabytes of data per day, or around 30T events daily. OpenAI has also shifted parts of its log-management workload from Datadog to ClickHouse over the past year. ClickHouse was valued at $15B in January and says gross margins currently range from 50%–70%. Earlier this year, the company acquired Langfuse to expand deeper into monitoring AI applications and agents. Nebius $NBIS owned a 28% stake in ClickHouse as of May 2025, though that stake has likely been diluted by subsequent fundraising. 9. JPMorgan reiterated its Overweight rating on SpaceX $SPCX with a $240 price target, saying the company’s AI ambitions are coming into sharper focus and that it is increasingly positive on Grok. The firm highlighted SpaceX’s completed acquisition of Cursor on 8/14 as an important step in building enterprise AI capabilities. Cursor brings roughly $4B of ARR as of June 2026, with about 75% coming from businesses, which JPMorgan says should help streamline go-to-market and provide valuable model-training data. The firm also said Cursor data is already showing up in Grok’s supplemental training, with tangible improvements in recent model performance. 10. OpenAI says its new Broadcom-built Jalapeno AI chip outperformed Nvidia $NVDA GB300 in both throughput per watt and response latency during internal testing, according to Bloomberg. The chip is built specifically for inference, not training, and runs at roughly 700 watts. OpenAI plans to begin deploying Jalapeno for its models later this year, saying the performance gap widened on larger workloads, including Moonshot’s Kimi model, and that the chip has also performed well on unreleased OpenAI models. The key caveat is that Jalapeno was tested against GB300, not Nvidia’s newer Vera Rubin generation. OpenAI says a second-generation chip is already nearing tape-out, while work on a third generation has begun. 11. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 1.8M contracts, $TSLA with 1.8M contracts, $AAPL with 636K contracts, $SPCX with 548K contracts, $INTC with 540K contracts, $AMZN with 498K contracts, $MU with 483K contracts, $AMD with 403K contracts, $PLTR with 361K contracts, and $SOFI with 359K contracts. 12. Raymond James raised its Nvidia $NVDA price target to $352 from $330 and reiterated a Strong Buy rating. The firm says Nvidia’s CPU opportunity is becoming more important, especially for agentic AI workloads, even though CPUs are only about 3% of sales today. Raymond James expects CPU revenue to reach roughly 5% of total revenue by CY28 and believes Nvidia could potentially become the world leader in CPU revenue within several years. The firm also argued the stock remains inexpensive, trading at less than 15x CY27 GAAP earnings, below the S&P 500 at 18.6x, despite sales and net income growth still expected to exceed 20% in CY28. Its new $352 target is based on a 22x multiple on CY28 estimates, which Raymond James views as conservative given Nvidia’s leadership, CUDA moat, GPU performance, free cash flow, and history of trading at much higher multiples. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

so who’s ready for $NVDA tomorrow

WALL STREET JOURNAL: OPENAI'S HEAD OF DATA CENTERS CHRIS MALONE HAS LEFT THE COMPANY this is like the 5th person who left in the past month chief revenue officer left 2 weeks ago you usually don’t leave one of the hottest startups a few months before IPO just weird

I think $VST looks compelling here. At $138, Vistra feels like one of the cleaner ways to play the AI/data center power trade without paying a large multiple. The numbers: - Q2 adjusted EBITDA: $1.77B, +31% YoY - 2026 EBITDA guide: $6.8B-$7.6B - 2026 FCF before growth: $3.9B-$4.7B - 2027 core EBITDA opportunity: $7.4B-$7.8B - Shares outstanding down ~30% since 2021 The obvious bottleneck continues to be energy and it seems like $VST is attacking that head on: - AWS signed a 20-year deal for up to 1.2 GW from Comanche Peak. - Meta signed 20-year agreements covering 2.6+ GW across Vistra’s nuclear fleet. Roughly 3.8 GW tied to AWS + Meta alone. Then there is also Helix, the AI infrastructure platform with KKR, NVIDIA and KIA. Vistra is the preferred power provider for this. VST is also acquiring Cogentrix, adding ~5.5 GW of gas generation, with the deal expected to be accretive to FCF/share starting in 2027. The valuation is compelling: At $138: ~13-15x forward EPS ~9-10x 2026 EV/EBITDA ~8x 2027 EV/EBITDA ~10-11x 2026 FCF before growth Meanwhile $CEG trades closer to ~22x forward earnings and ~14-15x EV/EBITDA. I don’t think VST deserves CEG’s full multiple, but the gap looks wide given how much exposure VST has to the same nuclear/power scarcity theme. At the same time, CEG has almost the same amount of debt as VST at $19B. CEG has much more hyperscaler exposure so it deserves a higher premium, but it seems likely for VST to be rerated on solid execution. The risks: - Merchant power prices can weaken - Debt/leverage is meaningful - Nuclear outages/regulatory issues can hurt earnings - AI power demand is already a crowded theme - Heavy hedging limits near-term upside from higher spot power prices - Cogentrix/Helix still need to execute - More generation or slower AI capex could reduce the scarcity premium The risks are important here but they are mainly tied to regulation/execution, the underlying thesis is that energy continues to be a huge bottleneck. What I also like is that you don’t need some crazy AI multiple for this to work and deliver returns from here as the stock is already down 15% YTD: - Bear: $110 7x EBITDA / ~$7B EBITDA - Base: $185 9x EBITDA / ~$8B+ EBITDA - Bull: $240 10-11x EBITDA / ~$9B EBITDA $VST has $1.22B remaining on its buyback authorization and 336M shares outstanding, after repurchasing $778M of stock in 2026 and $6.5B since November 2021, helping reduce its share count by roughly 30% since 2021. That’s actually interesting now because the stock is around $138 so if management keeps allocating FCF to repurchases at these lower prices, every $1B of buybacks would retire roughly 7.2M shares, or a little over 2% of the current share count. Finally, Peter Thiel bought $59M of it in Q2 and David Tepper added to his position by 10% making it now worth 4% of his portfolio with a $350M position size. I took a small starter position today to keep track of it as I'm still doing DD but it does feel more compelling than not.

taking a flyer on $AAL back to $75 on crude will likely get us back to $16 on AAL and if we can get under $70 then the $18s are in play realistically, most of the airlines/cruiselines should benefit when oil goes down simple logic for oil going down? well, it’s down 3% today on the hint of cooperation from the Iranians with the Pakistani intermediaries if we actually get some meaningful updates on a deal (bond market is screaming to make some progress here) then most oil sensitive names should react all depends on when this war comes to an end or seems like it is ready to come to an end

WSJ: ANTHROPIC EXPECTED TO TELL INVESTORS THEY HAVE A $30T TAM IN THEIR S-1 BEFORE IPO okay, they are absolutely getting ready to juice this thing is it crazy to say not buying the IPO and waiting makes sense here? - VCs ready to dump on retail - LLM commodity argument has not been proven false yet - Street will put Anthropic into a bucket of semis making it incredibly volatile - $2T valuation when companies like META are barely above $1.5T feels aggressive feels like waiting is the play vs jumping into the IPO?

CANADA RESPONDS TO US TARIFFS WITH THEIR OWN: - 50% TARIFFS ON STEEL, UP FROM 25% - 700 PRODUCTS WILL SEE 15%, 25%, AND 50% TARIFFS - EFFECTIVE SEPTEMBER 8TH looks like we have started a new tariff war with Canada x.com/amitisinvesting/status/2…

🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶 x.com/amitisinvesting/status/2…

A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. will pursue a “zero leakage” strategy on Iran sanctions, targeting digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. He warned that any entity helping Iran launder money could be cut off from the U.S. dollar system, including entities tied to other countries. Bessent also said “no one is above the reach” of U.S. sanctions, including China-linked entities, as President Trump pushes world leaders to further isolate Iran economically. 2. Nancy Pelosi reportedly bought Bloom Energy $BE and Intel $INTC between July 24 and July 28. The purchases included 15,000 shares of $BE plus 100 call options with a $100 strike expiring 6/17/27, as well as 10,000 shares of $INTC plus 50 call options with a $50 strike expiring 6/17/27. 3. Apple $AAPL is reportedly testing DRAM from China’s CXMT and NAND storage from YMTC as Washington weighs whether to allow the suppliers to be used in Apple products sold in China. A Weibo account, Mobile Chip Expert, said the administration may communicate a decision after a reported Trump–Xi meeting in September. Under the potential setup, CXMT would supply DRAM memory while YMTC would supply NAND flash storage modules. The report weighed on memory names, with SanDisk $SNDK down 6% and Micron $MU down 5%. 4. SpaceXAI $SPCX plans to put Nvidia-powered AI compute in orbit, with its first-generation Starmind AI satellite based on an optimized Nvidia $NVDA Vera Rubin NVL72 system. The idea is to extend the same architecture used in terrestrial AI factories into space. On Earth, SpaceXAI will deploy Nvidia Vera CPUs for agentic workloads and scale Grok infrastructure on Vera Rubin as it moves toward gigawatts of compute capacity. The chip includes 88 Nvidia-designed Olympus cores, up to 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth, and Nvidia says it can deliver up to 1.8x faster task completion than x86 CPUs across certain agentic AI and data-processing workloads. Nvidia and SpaceXAI are also working to adapt Vera Rubin for the power, thermal, bandwidth, and reliability demands of orbital computing. 5. The SEC has reportedly sent subpoenas to Wall Street banks working with Situational Awareness after the AI-focused hedge fund’s near-collapse last month, according to Reuters. Regulators are seeking information on the timing of trades that triggered margin calls and communications with major lenders including Goldman Sachs $GS, JPMorgan $JPM, Citigroup $C, and Bank of America $BAC around the fund’s use of leverage. Situational Awareness was forced to sell most of its public equities portfolio to Citadel after a sharp selloff in chip and AI names hit its leveraged bets, with the fund telling investors its portfolio fell 67% in July. The firm said it will “cooperate to the fullest extent” with any regulatory request, while noting that information requests do not necessarily imply enforcement action. 6. Treasury officials say Scott Bessent could tap the roughly $950B Treasury General Account to help fund expanded buybacks of long-dated government bonds, according to CNBC. Using the cash pile could give Treasury significantly more firepower to influence long-term yields after markets questioned whether the recently doubled buyback program was large enough to matter. Treasury has already raised minimum long-end buybacks from $2B to $4B per operation, with the first expanded operation scheduled for September 9. 7. SoftBank plans to issue roughly $6.3B of 7-year retail bonds, which would be the largest retail bond offering ever by a Japanese company, according to WSJ. The bonds are expected to carry a 4.3%–4.9% coupon, with proceeds used for AI investments and refinancing existing debt. SoftBank’s cumulative investments and commitments to OpenAI are expected to exceed $60B as the company keeps raising capital for its broader AI infrastructure strategy. The group has also sold its entire Nvidia $NVDA stake and increased financing backed by its Arm holdings to help fund the push. 8. Amazon $AMZN is developing “fully automated” delivery stations through Project Tetromino, an early-stage AI and robotics effort aimed at automating the final warehouse stop before packages reach drivers. Internal documents reviewed by Business Insider described a 2028 pilot and estimated the new design could process packages at roughly 2.5x the rate of existing stations. The documents also projected more than $530M of investment by 2029, though Amazon said those figures and the proposed rollout timeline are inaccurate and do not reflect current plans. The system could use Boxbot technology to automate package storage, sequencing, and vehicle loading, some of the hardest pieces of last-mile logistics to automate. 9. Strategy $MSTR increased its USD Reserve to $5.10B, established an additional $1.59B of USD Cash, and repurchased $136M of $STRC. As of 8/23/26, Strategy holds roughly 4% of total $BTC Bitcoin supply and has approximately 0% net leverage. Michael Saylor said the USD Cash strengthens Strategy’s Digital Credit Capital Framework and is separately designated for general Bitcoin Treasury Company purposes, including acquiring BTC, paying preferred dividends and interest, repurchasing MSTR or preferred stock, repaying converts, and increasing the USD Reserve. 10. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 3.9M contracts, $TSLA with 2.9M contracts, $AAPL with 1.1M contracts, $MU with 1.1M contracts, $AMZN with 834K contracts, $INTC with 816K contracts, $SPCX with 627K contracts, $META with 609K contracts, $GOOGL with 465K contracts, and $MSTR with 457K contracts. 11. Hedge funds posted their largest weekly sale of U.S. equities since the week of “Liberation Day” in April 2025, reversing after 3 straight weeks of buying. Single stocks made up roughly 53% of total sales, one of the highest readings over the past year. Hedge funds sold 9 of 11 sectors, led by Information Technology, Industrials, Utilities, Health Care, and Materials, while only Energy and a smaller amount of Consumer Discretionary saw buying. Macro products, including index futures and ETFs, accounted for the remaining 47% of sales, with U.S.-listed ETF shorts increasing modestly and breaking a 6-week streak of short covering. 12. Stanley Druckenmiller wrote a WSJ op-ed criticizing Treasury’s decision to double long-dated bond buybacks from $2B to at least $4B per operation, arguing it looks less like liquidity management and more like an attempt to push down long-term yields after the 30-year hit a 19-year high. His view is that auctions were functioning, volatility was contained, and the bond market was simply pricing fiscal risk into yields as inflation remains above target, deficits sit near 6% of GDP, and U.S. debt exceeds $40T. Druckenmiller warned that suppressing long-term yields weakens one of the few remaining forms of fiscal discipline on Washington. He also argued that buying long-duration Treasuries while funding it with short-term bills effectively removes duration risk from the market, making it look like a small version of QE run by Treasury instead of the Fed. His bottom line: let the bond market set the price of government borrowing and fix the real issue directly through lower deficits, gradual entitlement reform, and more responsible debt management. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

LEGENDARY INVESTOR STANLEY DRUCKENMILLER JUST WROTE AN OP-ED FOR THE WSJ ABOUT BOND YIELDS. He is not happy with what the Treasury is doing, thinks that it’s effectively a gimmick, and wants the Bond Market to freely determine where yields should go. His op-ed summarized below: - The Treasury’s decision to double long-dated bond buybacks from $2B to at least $4B per operation looks less like liquidity management and more like an effort to push down long-term yields after the 30-year yield reached a 19-year high. - There was no clear market dysfunction forcing intervention. Auctions were functioning, volatility was contained, and trading remained orderly. With inflation still above target, unemployment near full employment, deficits around 6% of GDP, and debt above $40T, higher yields can be viewed as the market pricing fiscal risk appropriately. - Suppressing those yields risks weakening one of the few remaining forms of fiscal discipline on Washington. Lower borrowing costs reduce the pressure to deal with deficits, entitlement spending, and the broader debt trajectory. - Buying long-duration Treasuries while funding the purchases with short-term bills effectively removes duration risk from the market, making it resemble a small form of quantitative easing conducted by Treasury rather than the Fed. The concern is that once markets believe officials are defending a certain yield level, they may keep testing that commitment. - The better solution is to let the bond market set the price of government borrowing and address the underlying fiscal problem directly: reduce the primary deficit, reform entitlements gradually, and manage debt more responsibly. Liquidity tools can delay a fiscal problem, but they can’t solve it. These yields are becoming an issue. When someone like Drucks has to write an op-ed, you know he’s getting annoyed. Either we cut back on spending and get fiscal policy in order (no party will do that) or we end the Iran war to get yields down. If we don’t do either, this problem isn’t going away.

at the end of the day, earnings growth is the fastest we have seen in a long time and that is the story justifying this bull market everything else is just noise but that noise continues to get louder… - bond market screaming AFTER Bessent tried to calm it down, 10-yr still at 4.7% - still no meaningful update on the Iran War ending - anthropic IPO getting ready to dump on retail - fed members seriously trying to hike - tariff war starting again with Canada pretty much all those noise really is useless other than the bond yields which are exaggerating everything else we do have midterms coming up which creates a decent chunk of volatility but the end to this war would drop oil which would drop inflation expectations which would lower yields and bring the focus back to earnings until then, the credit market will continue being noisy as the market tries to figure out where the cost of capital is going and how expensive that cost will be relative to earnings growth

BESSENT DURING HIS IRAN PRESS CONFERENCE: - The U.S. will pursue a “zero leakage” strategy on Iran sanctions, targeting areas including digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. - Any entity helping Iran launder money could be cut off from the U.S. dollar system including other countries. - Bessent warned that “no one is above the reach” of U.S. sanctions, including China-linked entities, as Trump presses world leaders to further isolate Iran economically. Unless the economic sanctions meaningfully get Iran to the table, it looks like this war is not ending anytime soon. The good thing is that it seems like military escalation is off the table, but sanctions now will be the new basis on how both sides deal with having this come to an end.

PELOSI BUYS $BE BLOOM ENERGY & INTEL $INTC INTEL. - 15K shares of $BE and 100 calls with $100 strikes expiring 6/17/27 - 10K shares of $INTC and 50 calls with $50 strikes expiring 6/17/27 She made these buys from July 24th - July 28th. x.com/amitisinvesting/status/2…

TRUMP: - STARTING JAN 2027, CANADA WILL PAY 50% TARIFFS ON AUTOS AND STEEL - WE DON’T NEED THEM, THEY NEED US oh boy x.com/amitisinvesting/status/2…

TRUMP MEDIA CEO FINALLY DID AN INTERVIEW ABOUT THE $100K/MONTH TRUTH SOCIAL API: “Well, President Trump’s information goes fast everywhere anyway. X, Instagram, and TikTok. He’s really big on TikTok.” “This was in high demand. It came to us from the market. We want to fulfill that demand.” “The President is just a minority shareholder. I have hundreds of thousands of other shareholders.” “We don’t just want to sell this to high frequency trading firms, we want to sell this to retail as well. We want to bring Wall Street to Main Street.” It’s the wild, wild west out there folks. Zero. Shame.

SENIOR TREASURY OFFICIALS: BESSENT COULD USE $1T OF RESERVES TO BUY BACK BONDS - Treasury officials said the government could tap the Treasury General Account (TGA) to help finance purchases of U.S. government bonds, as per CNBC. - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has built the TGA balance to roughly $950 billion. - Treasury surprised markets last week by doubling the size of its bond buybacks, though the effect on yields faded quickly as investors questioned how much firepower Bessent actually has. if Bessent is ready to pump $1T into bonds… well it means we’ve got desperation in the credit markets but I wonder if $GLD & $BTC take off even further because of that…

$PLTR Lead Palantir Architect Chad Walhquist @chadwahl stopped by Basis Points to explain why Palantir is winning, where true value will come from in the age of AI, and why institutional sovereignty matters more than anything.

you know the crazy thing about life is you can just have an idea and work really, really hard and somehow that idea might end up becoming reality

KEN GRIFFIN: WE HAVE SHED MORE THAN 80% OF THE AGGREGATE RISK WE TOOK ON FROM OUR SITUATIONAL AWARENESS PORTFOLIO. So, Citadel creates fear in the market by saying there will be a rate hike to cause a liquidation of these high beta semiconductor names. Then, they buy up all of Leopold's leveraged exposure for 40-50 cents on the dollar. Two weeks later on August 11th, they issue a note to clients saying that they think the market is ready to "systematically start buying" the names that got sold off. Then today, Ken Griffin tells investors that they sold most of their exposure which means he unwound those names in the past 2 weeks after their massive reversals from July. Wall Street is ruthless.

A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. Crypto markets saw their seventh-largest liquidation event on record, with $3.5B in leveraged positions wiped out over 24 hours. Despite the forced liquidations, the total crypto market cap added roughly $280B in the same period as $BTC Bitcoin crossed $72K and $ETH Ethereum moved above $2,300. The rally came alongside renewed optimism around the CLARITY Act and broader tokenization legislation. 2. Treasury Secretary Bessent said the U.S. Treasury will assess bond market conditions and take further action if needed, while focusing on fundamentals and keeping the market in equilibrium. He said U.S. yields do not reflect underlying fundamentals and that liquidity in the 30-year is “particularly poor,” while also arguing that rates had “nothing to do” with the buyback decision. Bessent reiterated that the U.S. continues to have a strong dollar policy, said 2026 tariff income should be similar to 2025, and added there is a “very good chance” the U.S. has already seen peak deficit. On Iran, he said the U.S. is pursuing “maximum pressure,” with coordinated economic isolation and action against countries doing business with Tehran, while adding that China and others want the Strait of Hormuz reopened. 3. Anthropic is reportedly adding Citigroup to its IPO bank lineup, joining Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan among the lead banks working on the listing. The company is considering filing as soon as the end of August, with more banks expected to join the deal. Anthropic is expected to debut ahead of OpenAI and is also expanding a pre-IPO credit facility beyond its roughly $10B target. If Anthropic tries to raise more than SpaceX, it could become the largest IPO ever, underscoring how intense investor demand has become for frontier AI companies. 4. Deutsche Bank reiterated its Buy rating and $200 price target on Palantir $PLTR, saying the company continues to stand out in turning AI demand into measurable customer value while combining strong growth with profitability. The firm said Palantir’s Bootcamp reinforced its view that Ontology, AIP, and sovereign AI capabilities create durable differentiation as enterprises move AI into production. Deutsche Bank highlighted AIP Evolve as a key product for optimizing AI workflows across quality, cost, latency, and control, with the ability to test frontier, open-weight, and proprietary models, reroute workloads, rewrite prompts, or replace unnecessary model calls with deterministic code. The firm said this creates “model liquidity,” while AutoTune helps customers fine-tune models using governed workflow feedback, keeping proprietary knowledge inside their own environment and addressing major barriers to scaled enterprise AI. 5. Amazon $AMZN plans to invest more than $2B across Latin America from 2027–2030 through Prime Video, focused on original content and live sports. The company expects to more than double its Originals across 5 major markets, while also expanding NBA coverage and third-party streaming access. The push shows Amazon continuing to use Prime Video as both a content platform and a broader ecosystem driver across international markets. 6. Supermicro $SMCI said an independent investigation found no evidence that current senior management knew about the alleged export-diversion scheme involving two former employees and a contractor. The review also found no direct sales of restricted products to known restricted parties and no related issues with previously issued financial statements. Supermicro said it has terminated employees for policy violations, added new export-compliance measures, and continues to cooperate with government investigations. 7. Walmart $WMT fell 8% and posted its worst day since May 2022 after reporting its slowest U.S. comparable-sales growth in more than 6 years. Q2’27 revenue came in at $187.9B versus $186.7B expected, up 5.9% YoY, while adjusted EPS was $0.81 versus $0.74 expected. Net income reached $6.5B, above estimates of $5.91B, and global eCommerce sales grew 23%. But U.S. comps rose just 2.6%, missing the 3.7% estimate, while Q3 adjusted EPS guidance of $0.62–$0.64 came in below the $0.68 expected. Management said consumers remained stretched, especially by higher gas prices, while lower pharmacy pricing also weighed on sales. 8. SpaceX $SPCX and AST SpaceMobile $ASTS are reportedly interested in acquiring 800 MHz spectrum licenses valued around $6B. The licenses cover nearly the entire U.S. population and could support direct-to-device satellite voice services. Preliminary bids are due in early September, with the FCC aiming to complete the process by November 5. 9. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 2.1M contracts, $TSLA with 1.7M contracts, $SPCX with 1.1M contracts, $AAPL with 1.0M contracts, $MSTR with 746K contracts, $INTC with 739K contracts, $MU with 679K contracts, $MRNA with 629K contracts, $WMT with 627K contracts, and $AMZN with 614K contracts. 10. The median value of U.S. consumers’ stock market investments has climbed to a record $350K, including holdings in individual stocks, mutual funds, 401(k)s, and IRAs, as per Schwab. That figure has more than doubled over the last two years and is up $150K, or 75%, since January alone. Before 2024, the median value had never meaningfully surpassed $150K. 11. Micron $MU is committing $10B over the next decade to build Micron Research Labs, a new long-term U.S. research hub based in Boise focused on advanced memory, compute architectures, chip packaging, and next-generation semiconductor manufacturing. The company expects to break ground in 2027, with the flagship facility designed to house hundreds of researchers. The investment is separate from the more than $250B Micron has already planned for U.S. manufacturing and R&D. 12. Broadcom $AVGO is reportedly seeking more than $60B in financing tied to its latest AI deal, with the full package potentially reaching nearly $100B. The structure could include $60B–$70B of senior secured debt plus roughly $30B of junior debt, while Broadcom is also discussing guaranteeing part of the senior-secured tranche. Apollo and Blackstone are in talks to participate, with the debt potentially issued through a special-purpose vehicle. The financing would help Anthropic and other AI companies secure Broadcom chips and infrastructure, and could be rolled out in stages rather than all at once. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

The Big Tech Bond Paradox, Explained: 1. The United States just hit $40T in debt. The only way for us to deal with this is growth because no political party is ready to cut spending. 2. How are we getting that growth? AI CapEx. That CapEx is coming from Big Tech companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle. 3. How have those Big Tech companies been funding the capex? Well, initially it was their free cash flow, but that dried up so now, it's by issuing bonds. Google issued a 100 year bond with a 6% yield. Meta and Oracle have 6-8% yields as well. 4. The US 10-year treasury is yielding 4.7% and the 30-year is yielding 5.2%. The US sells these treasuries in order to fund the government. People buy them with an expectation that it is the safest return they can get because the US will never default on their debt. The yields that are currently being offered are the highest in decades. 5. What's the problem? Well, the Big Tech companies are giving bond yields at 200-300 basis points ABOVE what the US Treasury is offering...which is an issue because if you are a credit investor and don't think that Meta or Google are going out of business...why would you not buy their debt over the US debt? As a result, people are SELLING US treasuries, causing yields to go higher, and buying Big Tech corporate debt. The paradox in all of this is that Big Tech NEEDS to issue this debt in order to continue to spend on capex and that same capex growth is what is supposed to solve our debt issues! If Big Tech stopped spending on capex, we wouldn't have any growth, but in order for them to grow, they have to issue bonds with high coupons and take away money from the long end of the curve for US treasuries, causing the highest yields we've seen in 20 years. The simple way to resolve all of this is to end the Iran War because oil prices will go down, inflation expectations will go down, and credit markets will buy up US treasuries yielding 4.5-4.7% since they will be getting a great yield on lower inflation expectations. The problem is, the war hasn't stopped for months and the market doesn't think it's stopping anytime soon...which means until it does, we have to deal with higher oil prices, higher yields on bonds, and more uncertainty for stocks if the credit market continues to scream that they need yields to come down.