A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. Fed Governor Kevin Warsh would be open to a September rate hike if upcoming inflation data comes in hot and markets begin pricing in higher borrowing costs, according to people familiar with his thinking. The report adds to the renewed focus on whether the Fed may have to turn more hawkish if inflation pressure reaccelerates. 2. Michael Burry reportedly opened large short positions in Nebius $NBIS at $211.77 and Oracle $ORCL at $144.63, marking the first time he has taken a position in $NBIS. Burry framed the trade around AI infrastructure leverage and off-balance-sheet obligations, saying: “The fish have gorged themselves on off-balance sheet liabilities. Backstops. Uncommenced leases. Purchase commitments. The fish have gotten very fat, very large, easy to shoot. Also, so large that it shan’t be long before every last one keels over for lack of oxygen.” 3. Applied Optoelectronics $AAOI reported Q2’26 revenue of $191.9M, slightly ahead of estimates of $190M and up 86% YoY. Adjusted EPS came in at $0.06 versus $0.01 expected, while non-GAAP net income reached $5.5M, above estimates of $1.7M. For Q3, the company guided revenue to $255M–$290M versus $278M expected, with EPS of $0.11–$0.26 and non-GAAP gross margin of 29%–30.5%. Management said AAOI delivered record revenue for the 5th consecutive quarter and returned to non-GAAP profitability, while noting that demand is expected to outpace production capacity through mid-2027. 4. The June JOLTS report showed job openings easing by 178,000 to 7.359M, missing estimates of 7.454M, though openings remain above the January 2020 level of 7.124M. The openings-to-unemployed ratio edged up to 1.04, the highest since January 2025. Hiring improved, with hires rising 96,000 to 5.348M and the hiring rate increasing to 3.4%, led by health care and construction. Quits, a key measure of labor market confidence, rose 79,000 to 3.232M, the highest in nearly a year, while layoffs were essentially flat at 1.766M with the layoff rate unchanged at 1.1%. 5. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 2.9M contracts, $SPCX with 1.7M contracts, $AAPL with 1.3M contracts, $TSLA with 1.2M contracts, $MU with 820K contracts, $MSFT with 690K contracts, $INTC with 586K contracts, $HTZ with 584K contracts, $PLTR with 477K contracts, and $ET with 473K contracts. 6. Private business investment in AI-related categories jumped $300B YoY in Q2 2026, up 25% to a record $1.5T annualized rate. The increase was led by spending on computers and peripheral equipment, followed by communication equipment, software, and data centers. Over the last two years, AI-related business investment has surged $500B, or 50%, with investment in computers and peripherals more than doubling. Direct AI investment is now estimated to account for 25%–33% of recent U.S. GDP growth. 7. Google $GOOGL is reportedly planning to raise money through a U.S. investment-grade bond offering. The company has started marketing notes in as many as 10 parts, with maturities ranging from 2 years to 40 years, according to Bloomberg. Initial price talk for the longest-dated tranche is around 1.55 percentage points above Treasuries. 8. Tether purchased 14 tonnes of gold in Q2 2026, bringing total holdings to a record 146 tonnes, now worth roughly $18.8B. The company previously bought 53 tonnes between Q3 2025 and Q1 2026, with its gold holdings more than doubling since Q1 2025 and their value nearly tripling over the same period. Tether is now the largest known private holder of gold outside of central banks and governments. In the first half of 2026, only 4 central banks bought more gold than Tether: Poland, Uzbekistan, China, and Kazakhstan. 9. Amazon $AMZN founder Jeff Bezos filed for the sale of 1,209,649 Amazon shares at $286.41 per share. The transaction brought in roughly $346.5M before taxes. 10. U.S. data center construction spending jumped 46% YoY in June to a record $68B annualized rate, the largest annual increase in 12 months. Since January 2024, spending has surged 158% and is now more than 3x higher than 2022 levels. At the same time, office construction spending has fallen by more than $25B since 2022 to roughly $43B, the lowest since 2016. Data center construction now exceeds office construction by $25B, the widest gap on record, a massive reversal from 2022 when office construction was $57B higher than data centers. 11. Trading activity in the Memory ETF $DRAM has surged to extreme levels, with daily volume reaching as high as roughly $8B, surpassing the $5B peak that ARKK hit during its 2020–2021 mania. Cumulative flows into $DRAM have climbed to around $27B, already above ARKK’s peak of roughly $18B, despite DRAM only launching in April 2026. The comparison is not perfect since DRAM tracks profitable memory chip companies rather than the mostly unprofitable growth names that dominated ARKK, and today’s rate environment is very different from 2020. Still, ARKK’s flows eventually peaked and reversed for years, while $DRAM is already down nearly 40% from its June high. 12. Alibaba $BABA reportedly plans to seek revenue sharing for the next version of its open-source Qwen AI model, while Moonshot is asking partners for up to a 30% revenue share for its Kimi K3 model, according to Reuters. The move suggests China’s leading AI labs are starting to push harder on monetization as open-source model adoption scales. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
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