Quick Hits

• Nvidia (NVDA) jumped 7% after a blockbuster quarter and what CNBC called an "eye-popping" sales forecast, with revenue guidance reassuring investors that AI demand stays strong. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup both raised their price targets, per MarketWatch.
• The pricing-power kicker: Nvidia has told its biggest customers prices are going up more than 15%, Motley Fool reports — just as Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) lifts its capex forecast to $195–205 billion from $180–190 billion.
• Software strikes back: Salesforce (CRM) climbed on strong results and a new Anthropic partnership, defying what CNBC dubbed the "SaaSpocalypse," while Okta (OKTA) popped 20% as AI-era threats spike demand for identity security.
• Hawkish surprise abroad: The Bank of Korea hiked 25 basis points to 3% — its second straight increase — while raising growth forecasts, crediting an Nvidia-led AI boom in Asia's No. 3 economy.
• A recession flag flickers: The Conference Board's August consumer confidence print came in at 89.4, with the Expectations Index collapsing to 68.2 — below the 80 level that, as flagged in r/investing, has reliably preceded recessions.

Markets Overview

The tone was set before the open: Nvidia's after-hours blowout powered AI-linked names higher, with the chip giant's guidance doing the heavy lifting for market sentiment. One closely followed strategist cited by MarketWatch says the S&P 500 faces three hurdles this week — Nvidia earnings, inflation, and GDP data, all landing on Wednesday — and if cleared, the index should rally toward 7,900–8,000. Nvidia has now cleared the first.

Away from tech, Citadel Securities strategist Frank Flight warns that Wall Street's one-sided bet against long-term bonds is "a recipe for a painful bearish unwind," per MarketWatch — a crowded trade worth watching as Treasury's trillion-dollar intervention approaches (more below). In equities, Japan's recent tech-selloff drubbing is a dip-buying opportunity on cyclical, fundamental, and technical grounds, one research firm told MarketWatch. Consumer staples quietly remain a 2026 bright spot: Coca-Cola (KO) is up 22% and Mondelez (MDLZ) 32% YTD, ahead of the S&P 500's 12%.

Earnings Reports

• Nvidia (NVDA): Revenue guidance reassured investors that AI demand remains strong; shares rose 7% Thursday after Goldman and Citigroup lifted targets.
• Salesforce (CRM): Numbers and guidance were strong, and a new Anthropic partnership offers another reason for optimism, per CNBC. Citigroup and Jefferies both raised price targets.
• Okta (OKTA): Up 20% after topping estimates; new products accounted for 30% of total bookings and the company closed "dozens" of AI deals during the quarter.
• Qantas: Shares jumped 4% on full-year earnings plus new business-class seats amid strong premium-travel demand.
• Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS): Tumbled on a double miss and deep guidance cuts tied to Foot Locker losses — even though the core business grew 4.9%.
• Small-cap beats: Malibu Boats posted non-GAAP EPS of $0.92 (beat by $0.15) on $295.5M revenue; Ship Finance-like SFL earned $0.25 (beat by $0.18) on $200.77M and declared a $0.22 dividend; Covalon earned $0.10 on $10M revenue, beating on both lines.

A reminder that beats don't guarantee rallies: Walmart (WMT) fell 10% after its earnings even while reporting strong growth — a divergence from Target (TGT) that Motley Fool attributes to a changing retail model.

Fed & Economic Data

All eyes shift to Jackson Hole, where new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh — who has "yet to earn the trust" of colleagues or markets, per MarketWatch — gets his chance to win over both. The bond market is already sending the FOMC an "unmistakable message" to act, Motley Fool argues.

The consumer is the soft spot: the Conference Board's August reading of 89.4 masked an Expectations Index at 68.2, a level that has historically preceded recessions. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Bessent's trillion-dollar long-bond intervention launches in days, with r/investing debating the market impact of that-scale injection.

Hot Sectors

The AI trade's plumbing just changed. The 30-day correlation between cloud giants (AMZN, MSFT, GOOGL, META) and semiconductor stocks (NVDA, AVGO, TSM, MU) collapsed from +0.78 to near zero — the lowest reading in roughly 4.5 years, according to analysis circulating on r/stocks. Whether that's a buying opportunity or a structural break is the debate.

The physical buildout continues: Alphabet spends about 60 cents of every technical-infrastructure dollar on servers, and Motley Fool notes Nvidia's 15%+ price increases land on its biggest customers. Longer term, AI is projected to need 121 GW of U.S. data-center IT power by 2030 — with power, chips, and raw materials as candidate bottlenecks. In geopolitics, the U.S. named South Korea's 800-trillion-won Honam chip cluster for the first time, pressing Korean firms to build memory plants in America. Navitas Semiconductor (NVTS) rose on its acquisition of energy-management firm Claros.

Stock News

• Novo Nordisk (NVO): Deutsche Bank downgraded the Ozempic maker to sell after a 70% dive from its peak — a notable break from Wall Street's reluctance to bail.
• Meta (META): Reached a $16.68 billion settlement over social-media harms to children; shares are down about 15% YTD.
• SAP: Slumped to the worst performance among large-cap European stocks after a UBS downgrade citing its "slow" move into AI.
• SpaceX (SPCX): Plans a $100 billion Starship campus on 125,000 acres in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana.
• ExxonMobil (XOM): A 44th consecutive dividend hike is expected with Q3 results.
• Tepper's UNH exit: David Tepper sold every UnitedHealth share in Q2 — a move Motley Fool argues was a costly mistake.
• Crypto bulls: Bernstein sees bitcoin hitting a new high of $300,000 by 2029, with other analysts calling for a doubling by next year and $500,000 by decade's end; Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick sees Solana at $2,000 by 2030.

Market Analysis

The week's clearing events are landing roughly as bulls hoped: Nvidia delivered, and the S&P's theoretical path to 8,000 survives. The unresolved questions: whether Warsh uses Jackson Hole to earn the credibility markets say he lacks, how Bessent's trillion-dollar bond intervention interacts with the crowded short-long-duration trade Citadel warns about, and — most intriguing for tacticians — whether the capex-semi correlation break signals healthy rotation or something more worrying underneath the AI trade.

Sources: CNBC, MarketWatch, Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha, Reddit (r/investing, r/stocks)