Newsletter archive · Issue 3 · Sent 2026-08-22

Wednesday: July PCE at breakfast, Nvidia at dinner. Friday: Warsh.

One inflation print, one earnings report, one speech. Bond yields have set the tone for two weeks. This week tests whether that holds.

Derived from the week-ahead article, where every figure is sourced.

The week, day by day

Monday, Aug 24

  • No US data. Treasury Secretary Bessent holds a press conference on Iran sanctions, with WTI at $87.06 and Brent near $94.
  • Before the open: PDD (call 7:30am ET), XPeng (8:00am ET).

Tuesday, Aug 25

  • 10:00am ET: Conference Board consumer confidence (August) and July new home sales.
  • Before the open: Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal. After the close: Intuit (implied move 9.1%), Zoom (9.5%).
  • FDA target action date for Zymeworks' zanidatamab; Advasa direct listing on Nasdaq.

Wednesday, Aug 26

  • 8:30am ET: July PCE and the second estimate of Q2 GDP, together.
  • Before the open: Kohl's (implied 14.3%), Abercrombie (12.8%).
  • After the close: Nvidia (results near 4:20pm, call 5:00pm ET, implied 6.1%), Salesforce (8.0%), CrowdStrike, Okta (12.9%), HP (10.2%), Nutanix (13.7%). Hour by hour.

Thursday, Aug 27

Friday, Aug 28

  • Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote, morning ET, exact time not yet published.
  • 10:00am ET: final University of Michigan sentiment for August.

Implied moves are the options market's priced reaction as of Friday's close, from the earnings calendar. Every date above is confirmed by the company or two independent sources.

Wednesday is the week

Wednesday holds two events. Inflation data at 8:30am. Nvidia's results after the close.

Last week showed which one the market cares about more. The S&P 500 fell 1.4%. Almost no big earnings landed. What did move was bond yields: the 30-year closed Friday near 5.27% and the 10-year near 4.7%. Both had fallen two weeks ago when Treasury announced bigger buybacks. That drop has now reversed. The Nasdaq lost 2.1% on the week and the Russell 2000 sits 1.6% below its record. Friday's small bounce to 7,674.37 did not change the picture.

My read: while yields keep rising, good earnings news gets sold anyway. Nvidia could beat on every line and still finish red if the 30-year is at 5.3% that afternoon.

Nvidia has to beat a forecast nobody believes

Nvidia told investors to expect $91 billion, give or take 2%. That figure assumes no data-centre sales to China at all.

Analysts now expect $91.8 billion to $93.5 billion. So the market is already predicting a beat before the results exist. That is the setup where good numbers still send a stock down.

Nvidia closed Friday at $214.72, down 4.6% on the week. Options traders are pricing a 6% move after the results. That is the smallest expected move of any major report this week, on the report that matters most.

Where I land: the quarter itself is not the question. The October forecast is. Specifically, does Nvidia put any China sales back into it? A $91bn quarter with another China-free forecast counts as a miss at this point. The full scenarios, and the trade I would pass on, are in the preview.

Marvell reports Thursday. Analysts expect $0.93 per share and options price a 10.8% move. It is the second AI chip report in two days, and it will trade on whatever Nvidia says about custom chips the night before. Preview here.

PCE, then Warsh

The Fed held rates at 3.50-3.75% in July. Three officials voted to raise instead. That is the most votes in one direction in about ten years. Wednesday's inflation number decides what Warsh can credibly say two days later.

Markets put the odds of a September rise at about one in three. The risk is lopsided. Warsh has already removed forward guidance from the Fed statement, so he is under no obligation to correct that one-in-three number. If he says little, September gets decided by the jobs report and CPI two weeks later. If he uses the word "hike" at all, rate expectations move within the hour.

The exact speech time is still unpublished. The Kansas City Fed normally posts the agenda the night before, so do not plan around a time nobody has confirmed.

Monday's Iran sanctions briefing matters for the same reason. Oil at $87 can lift inflation inside a single month, and the briefing lands two days before the inflation number. Why oil is where it is.

The consumer, again

Last week's big retailers reported the same pattern: cheap purchases are holding up and expensive ones are falling. This week the discount chains report and say whether that is true at their end. Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Best Buy and Ulta all report Thursday morning. Kohl's and Abercrombie go Wednesday.

Tuesday brings a consumer confidence survey first. The other big confidence survey, from the University of Michigan, dropped to 51.0 in early August from 55.2, and people in it expect higher prices. If Tuesday's survey comes in strong, then one of the two is wrong. Thursday's discount chains are the tie-breaker, because they see what people actually spend.

Scorecard

The week of August 10 came out at 35 calls, 51% right. Every call is public, losers included, with the entry price, the expected move and what actually happened, in the track record. The August 17 week is logged and gets graded once Thursday's results settle.

Read this week

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The author holds no position in any security mentioned, and does not trade the securities covered on this site.

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