Weekend Recap | Saturday, August 29, 2026
Research Desk · August 29, 2026
Nvidia gave the AI trade its proof on Thursday and took half of it back on Friday.
The Fed chair put a rate hike back on the table.
Volatility is still priced as if none of it happened.
Says Trump's installation of a new Federal Reserve chair is triggering the most significant shift in U.S. markets in nearly 20 years.
How The Week Closed
S&P 500 at 7,711.76, up 0.49 percent on the week. Nasdaq at 26,402.42, up 0.85 percent. Dow at 53,559.99, up 0.53 percent.
The headline numbers hide the shape of it. The Russell 2000 fell 1.37 percent Friday, and gold lost 3.7 percent on the week.
Kevin Warsh used his first Jackson Hole keynote to say inflation is still running too high. Odds of a September rate hike jumped to roughly 57 percent. The two-year Treasury closed at 4.35 percent.
The Week Ahead
ISM manufacturing Tuesday. The August jobs report Friday, September 4. The Fed decides September 16.
A hot payroll print now cuts the opposite way it used to. Good news for the economy is bad news for the discount rate.
Stock Highlight: NVIDIA (NVDA)
Thursday was a clean quarter. Earnings of $2.22 a share against $2.09 expected, revenue of $96.22 billion, and a forecast of 70 percent revenue growth for fiscal 2028. The stock rose 8.7 percent.
Friday it fell 4.57 percent to $217.55.
The trigger was not the Fed. Nvidia paused parts of a program that helped smaller cloud providers finance Nvidia-powered infrastructure, after disagreements over who would be allowed to use the systems.
Picture a car dealer who lends buyers the money to buy his cars. Sales look strong either way. The question is who carries the loss if a buyer stops paying.
The bull reading is that demand is far enough ahead of supply that Nvidia can be choosy about which customers it helps fund.
The bear reading is simpler. Some of that demand needed help getting financed in the first place.
Tickers To Watch
MRVL: Down 10.2 percent Friday, the worst of the large chip names.
ARM: Down 5.4 percent.
INTC: Down 3.0 percent Friday after rising 4.4 percent Thursday.
AVGO: Down 1.4 percent Friday after rising 4.5 percent Thursday.
IREN: Down 12.9 percent. The cloud providers that lease Nvidia capacity took it hardest.
CRM: Still up 22.6 percent on the week after a large earnings beat.
Bottom Line
The VIX closed at 14.35, down on the day. That is the number worth sitting with.
A rate hike is back in the conversation, the strongest name in the market reversed hard, small caps are falling, and volatility is still priced for calm. Those four facts do not belong in the same week.
The risk is not a crash. It is complacency, and complacency is expensive when you are close to drawing income.
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