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U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily
Wednesday, August 26, 2026 — Pre-Open Briefing | Data as of ~7:20 AM ET | News window: Tue 25 Aug 4:00 PM ET → Wed 26 Aug 7:20 AM ET
Prepared for Institutional Investors. Not Personalized Investment Advice; Verify Independently before Acting. | Source Links and Data Notes & Conflicts provided in the companion text file (US_CrossAsset_Opening_2026-08-26_DataNotes.txt). |
1 · Pre-Open Dashboard |
| The overnight in one paragraph. This is the flattest pre-open tape of the month, and the flatness is the information. With two hours and ten minutes to the PCE deflator and nine hours to Nvidia, S&P futures are 7,690, two points below Tuesday's settle, and CNBC's 7:00 AM fair-value board puts the implied S&P open at 7,665.00, −12.28 points (−0.16%) against Tuesday's 7,677.28 close. The Dow is the only index indicated higher — implied +4.6 points — and the Russell 2000 is indicated −10.22 points (−0.34%), the worst of the four. That ordering is the first tell: YM (+0.01%) > NDX (−0.05%) > SPX (−0.16%) > RTY (−0.34%) is not a risk-on ladder and it is not a duration ladder either; it is a do-nothing ladder with the highest-beta index paying for the wait. The second tell is in rates, where Tuesday's move is being handed back from the front: the 2-year is 4.201% live against a 4.17% official par close, +3.1 bp, while the 10-year at 4.641% and the 30-year at 5.173% are within a basis point of unchanged — a bear flattener that takes back roughly 45% of Tuesday's 7 bp two-year rally and leaves the long end exactly where Bessent's buyback left it. Bloomberg's wrap named it plainly: “Treasuries fell across the curve, shrugging off a third straight decline in oil.” And oil did fall a third day — Brent −1.86% to $86.93 and WTI −1.93% to $80.77, Brent now down 5.1% on the week — after Iran confirmed it has restarted talks with Oman on managing transit through the Strait of Hormuz. J.P. Morgan supplied the caveat that makes this a fade risk rather than a trend: “While there was no real progress or details of the Iran–Oman deal, as Iran reiterated that Hormuz will remain shut until conditions are met, price action suggested that markets are quickly pricing in optimism around an interim announcement.” A bond market that will not rally on a third consecutive crude decline is a bond market that has stopped trading energy and started trading the 8:30 print. Overseas, Asia closed higher on a chip bid — Kospi +0.97% to 6,808.21, CSI 300 +0.85%, Nikkei +0.62%, Hang Seng +0.56% — with Australia the single red major, ASX 200 −0.40%, after July CPI printed 3.5% year-on-year against a 3.3% consensus and trimmed mean stuck at 3.6%, sending the 10-year ACGB up 3.8 bp, the largest sovereign move on the global board. Europe is doing almost nothing in aggregate — Stoxx 600 +0.06% at 656.89, within 1% of its record and on track for a fifth straight winning month — but underneath it, banks +1.5% against oil and gas −1.2% is the same rotation the U.S. curve is expressing. The single-stock story is Intuit, which beat on both lines and then guided fiscal 2027 revenue growth to 9–10%: it fell 7.3% in the first hour after the bell, 9.22% by the close of after-hours, and is −10.8% to −11.8% pre-market at $315–319. That is a drift that is still widening eleven hours later, and Bloomberg has it “leading software makers lower” — ServiceNow −2.63%, GoDaddy −3.45%, Roper −3.00%, Adobe −2.16% — the first genuine multiple-compression event in software since the June guide-down cycle. What this hands the 9:30 open: a market that has pre-positioned for nothing, a volatility surface that refuses to bid (VIX 15.64, +1.23%, less than a point off the year's low) into the single most concentrated 24 hours on the calendar, a bear-flattening front end that will move 6–8 bp on a two-tenth core PCE surprise, and an 8:30 print that lands sixty minutes before the bell — so the gap you trade at 9:30 will have been decided at 8:31, not by anything in this paragraph. |
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| Equity futures — CNBC fair-value board, last updated 7:00 AM ET |
| Contract | Future | Chg (pts) | %Chg | Fair value | Implied open | Note | | S&P 500 (ES, Sep) | 7,690.00 | −2.00 | −0.03% | +25.00 | 7,665.00 (−12.28) | Prior settle 7,692.00; cash close 7,677.28 | | Nasdaq-100 (NQ, Sep) | 29,261.75 | −15.00 | −0.05% | +67.00 | 29,194.75 (−14.48) | Prior settle 29,276.75; cash close 29,209.23 | | Dow (YM, Sep) | 53,655 | +10.00 | +0.02% | +73.00 | 53,582.00 (+4.60) | Prior settle 53,645; cash close 53,577.40 | | Russell 2000 (RTY, Sep) | 3,012.80 | −1.60 | −0.05% | +13.00 | 2,999.80 (−10.22) | Prior settle 3,014.40; cash close 3,010.02. Indicated back below 3,000 |
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| The arithmetic, shown. Futures percentage change is the point change over the prior settle, and the prior settle is the board's future minus its change: ES −2.00 ÷ 7,692.00 = −0.026%; NQ −15.00 ÷ 29,276.75 = −0.051%; YM +10.00 ÷ 53,645 = +0.019%; RTY −1.60 ÷ 3,014.40 = −0.053%. The implied open is the future minus the fair-value-adjusted prior close: ES 7,690.00 − (7,677.28 + 25.00) = −12.28; NQ 29,261.75 − (29,209.23 + 67.00) = −14.48; YM 53,655 − (53,577.40 + 73.00) = +4.60; RTY 3,012.80 − (3,010.02 + 13.00) = −10.22. |
| Futures ranking versus implied-open ranking — they disagree, and the second one is the one that matters. On raw futures points the ladder is YM > ES ≈ NQ ≈ RTY, all inside six basis points of flat. Net of fair value, the implied-open ladder is YM +0.01% > NDX −0.05% > SPX −0.16% > RUT −0.34%. The gap between the two is entirely a carry-and-dividend artefact: the Dow's 73-point fair value is the largest on the board relative to index level, and the Russell's 13 points on a 3,010 index is the second largest. Read the second ladder. Small caps are indicated to give back Tuesday's 0.50% gain and lose the 3,000 handle again, which is what a market does when it is short the front end into an inflation print, and the Dow's marginal green is a defensive-composition artefact, not strength — Tuesday's sector board had staples −0.87% and energy −1.70% against technology +0.98%, and the Dow is the index least exposed to what reports tonight. |
| Prior cash closes — Tuesday 25 August, 4:00 PM ET (the anchor for every delta here) |
| Index | Close | Chg | %Chg | Note | | S&P 500 | 7,677.28 | +24.42 | +0.32% | 203 advancers vs 289 decliners — a green index over a 1.42-to-1 down market. 1.56% below the 13 Aug record close of 7,798.99 | | Nasdaq Composite | 26,151.30 | +171.11 | +0.66% | Best of the three headline indices | | Dow Jones Industrials | 53,577.40 | +160.24 | +0.30% | Third consecutive gain | | Nasdaq 100 | 29,209.23 | +186.05 | +0.64% | Outperformed the S&P by 32 bp | | Russell 2000 | 3,010.02 | +14.94 | +0.50% | Back above 3,000 for one session | | PHLX Semiconductor (SOX) | 11,588.0 | +164.9 | +1.44% | Recovered 52% of Monday's 2.70% decline | | VIX | 15.45 | −0.40 | −2.52% | Range 15.13–16.30 |
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| Volatility — pre-open indications, ~7:00 AM ET |
| Measure | Level | Chg | %Chg | Note | | VIX | 15.64 | +0.19 | +1.23% | Real-time CNBC quote. Implies a ~0.98% daily S&P move; less than 0.6 pt above the 2026 low | | VXN (Nasdaq-100 vol) | 21.79 | −0.90 | −3.97% | CNBC delayed feed — read as Tuesday's close, not a live pre-open mark | | OVX (crude oil vol) | 46.16 | −0.58 | −1.24% | Delayed. Still a 46 handle on a Hormuz tape |
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| The divergence to note: the S&P vol measure is bid 1.23% into the print while the Nasdaq measure fell 3.97% on Tuesday's board. Bloomberg's Mark Cranfield, this morning: “As we go into Nvidia earnings, the VIX index is showing little sign of fear, sitting just above this year's low. This juxtaposition signals broader stocks are vulnerable to potential swings. Nvidia remains the world's most important stock when it comes to moving the needle for investor portfolios.” |
| Rates — live pre-open ~7:00–7:19 AM ET vs Tuesday's official 3:30 PM ET par close |
| Tenor | Live | Official par (25 Aug) | Δ bp | Note | | UST 2Y | 4.201% | 4.17% | +3.1 bp | The largest move on the strip — takes back 44% of Tuesday's −7 bp | | UST 5Y | 4.355% | 4.35% | +0.5 bp | Belly barely moved | | UST 10Y | 4.641% | 4.64% | +0.1 bp | TradingEconomics marks 4.651%, +1.7 bp; Bloomberg “advanced one basis point to 4.64%” | | UST 30Y | 5.173% | 5.17% | +0.3 bp | The Bessent-buyback anchor is holding | | UST 3M | 3.79% | 3.86% | −7 bp | Basis mismatch, not a move — CNBC quotes a bill yield, Treasury a coupon-equivalent par rate |
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| FX — CNBC board ~7:00 AM ET; ICE dollar index live 7:19 AM ET (full board in §9) |
| Pair | Level | %Chg | Note | | DXY (ICE) | 99.022 | +0.11% | Prior close 98.915 on the same feed; Investing.com marked 98.84 Tuesday | | EUR/USD | 1.167 | −0.08% | Bloomberg: “little changed at $1.1665” | | USD/JPY | 159.10 | −0.04% | Bloomberg: yen +0.1% to 159.01 — the only major to gain on the dollar | | USD/CHF | 0.804 | +0.31% | The largest dollar gain on the board — the haven cross is the one being sold | | USD/CNH | 6.7203 | ~unch | Off a 3½-year yuan peak; PBoC set the fix 633 pips below market |
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| Commodities — TradingEconomics board, 26 Aug ~7:00 AM ET (full board in §10) |
| Contract | Price | %Chg | Note | | WTI | $80.77 | −1.93% | Third straight decline; week −4.29%. CNBC front-month $80.15, −2.68% | | Brent | $86.93 | −1.86% | Week −5.11%. Bloomberg marked $85.69, −3.3%; the week ~−9% on its framing | | Natural gas | $2.7996 | +1.07% | The only energy contract higher. YTD −24.05% | | Gold (spot) | $4,643.17 | −0.32% | Three-month high; week +2.78%. Comex Dec $4,676.50, −0.38%; Bloomberg spot $4,619.46, −0.8% | | Silver (spot) | $69.155 | +0.82% | Sign conflict: CNBC Sep futures −0.23% | | Copper | $6.7567 | +0.70% | Record intraday $6.71; week +4.15%; 675,185 t in U.S. tariff storage | | S&P GSCI | 688.75 | −1.18% | The energy weight is doing the work |
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| Crypto and global equities overnight |
| Instrument | Level | %Chg | Note | | Bitcoin | $78,438.01 | +0.3% | Benzinga marked $78,697, +0.22% at 7:15 AM. A flat risk-appetite tell | | Ether | $2,449.77 | +0.5% | | | Nikkei 225 | 66,262.16 | +0.62% | +405.73 pts. Chip names slipped into the close | | Topix | 4,111.02 | +0.42% | Lagged the Nikkei by 20 bp — the move was cap-weighted | | Kospi | 6,808.21 | +0.97% | Best major in Asia. Kosdaq 826.87, little changed | | Hang Seng | 25,652.97 | +0.56% | +141.87 pts | | Shanghai Composite | 3,912.52 | +0.59% | CSI 300 4,590.79, +0.85% | | ASX 200 | 9,127.80 | −0.40% | The only red major — hot CPI | | Nifty 50 | 24,207.75 | −0.52% | Sensex 77,472.94, −0.24% | | Stoxx Europe 600 | 656.89 | +0.06% | 11:01 GMT. Within 1% of the record | | Euro Stoxx 50 | 5,495.43 | −0.02% | | | DAX | 26,306.67 | +0.15% | | | CAC 40 | 8,471.79 | +0.39% | Best of the European majors | | FTSE 100 | 10,864.82 | −0.20% | | | AEX | 1,105.99 | −0.21% | |
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| Cross-check: MSCI Asia Pacific +0.7%, MSCI Emerging Markets +0.8% (Bloomberg) — both firmer than any single U.S. futures contract, which is the cleanest statement that the overnight risk bid did not reach the United States. |
2 · Overnight Hot Spots — ranked by tradability at today's open |
| 1. [Rates / Equities / FX] The 8:30 print is the whole session, and the front end has already taken a position on it. Three releases land in the same minute, sixty minutes before the bell: the July PCE deflator, the second estimate of Q2 GDP, and advance July durable goods. Consensus as published: core PCE +0.2% m/m and 3.3% y/y (Investing.com; prior +0.1% and 3.3%); headline PCE +0.1% m/m and 3.6% y/y on the Dow Jones poll CNBC carries (prior −0.1% and +3.7%); durable goods +0.4% m/m against +0.5% on the WSJ screen — a genuine two-vendor split on the one number with a verified consensus. Bloomberg frames a 3.6% headline as “the smallest annual increase in four months.” The positioning tell is in the 2-year, 3.1 bp cheaper at 4.201% while the 10-year and 30-year have not moved — the market is selling the tenor a hot core print hurts most and leaving the tenor Bessent's buyback protects. The forward hook: a core print at or below 0.2% retakes the 2-year through 4.17%, steepens 2s10s off 44 bp and hands the Russell its 3,000 handle back; 0.3% or higher puts the September hike back above 40%, drives 2s10s toward 40 bp and turns the −0.34% Russell indication into a −1% open. Berenberg's Ulrich Urbahn set the bar: “PCE can ease the immediate macro stress, but it cannot alone solve the Treasury-market problem… the more durable bullish outcome would be soft core inflation plus calmer oil, evidence of stable demand, and a subsequent decline in long-end yields that does not rely solely on Treasury liquidity measures.” | | 2. [Equities] Nvidia reports tonight into a volatility surface that is not pricing it, and the stock has fallen the day after each of its last four reports. Consensus is $2.09 EPS on $92.28bn (FactSet via CNBC) or $2.08 on $91.9bn (Investing.com) — revenue nearly doubling year on year — for a company with a market capitalisation above $5 trillion ($5.16tn on Investing.com's board). Options are pricing a ±5.4% move, roughly $280 billion of market value. The stock rose 2.19% to $213.05 Tuesday, snapping a seven-session losing streak, its longest since 2022, and is +0.36% at $213.82 pre-market. The under-covered angle is the mix: Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre reports networking revenue of nearly $15bn last quarter against roughly $3bn two years ago, with the Street looking for ~$17bn and ~134% growth against ~100% for compute — the fastest-growing line in the company is no longer the GPU. Ninety One's Stephanie Niven framed the test: “What's really going to matter here is the guide. And it's not the growth that's the question, but the rates at which that growth is either accelerating or decelerating.” Lombard Odier's Florian Ielpo added the caution for dip-buyers: the seven-session slide “does not materially lower the bar for the outlook.” The forward hook: with VIX at 15.64 implying a 0.98% index move and NVDA carrying roughly 8% of the S&P, the index-level implied move is cheap relative to the single-name implied move — a long-gamma setup, not a directional one. Levels: $213.05 Tuesday's close, $216.29 the +1.5% level that has capped every bounce this month. | | 3. [Equities] Intuit is a software multiple event, not an Intuit event, and the drift is still widening eleven hours after the print. Fiscal Q4 EPS $4.03 against $3.54 and revenue $4.40bn against $4.28bn — a clean double beat — followed by fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $23.3–23.5bn, a 9–10% growth rate against fiscal 2026's 14%, and non-GAAP EPS guidance of $22.88–23.12 against the $24.27 just delivered. The dividend went up 15% to $1.38 a quarter and it did not matter. The tape: −7.3% in the first hour after the bell, −9.22% to $324.50 by the end of after-hours, and −10.78% to −11.84% at $315–319 pre-market on two separate boards at 6:52 AM. A move that keeps extending across three liquidity regimes is a repricing, not a reaction. Bloomberg has it “leading software makers lower in early trading” and the read-across is visible: ServiceNow −2.63% at $123.66, GoDaddy −3.45% at $96.35, Roper −3.00% at $400.97, Adobe −2.16% at $268.00. The forward hook: Salesforce reports tonight at a $3.27 consensus on $11.33bn; if Intuit's deceleration is a category signal rather than a tax-season one, CRM is the confirmation and today's software weakness is a pre-positioning trade. Invalidation: INTU reclaiming $330 intraday. | | 4. [Commodities / Rates / Equities] Oil fell a third straight day on a Hormuz headline the bond market declined to believe. Iran has restarted talks with Oman on managing transit through the Strait, which handled a fifth of the world's traded oil before the war. Brent −1.86% to $86.93 (TradingEconomics) or −3.3% to $85.69 (Bloomberg, 11:15 London), down 5.11% on the week; WTI −1.93% to $80.77. J.P. Morgan's note is the whole trade: “While there was no real progress or details of the Iran–Oman deal… price action suggested that markets are quickly pricing in optimism around an interim announcement.” The second-order tell is the one to trade: Treasuries did not follow. Tuesday, a 3.12% crude decline moved the whole coupon curve 5–7 bp. Wednesday, a third consecutive decline moved the 10-year +0.1 to +1.7 bp the wrong way. Bloomberg: “Treasuries fell across the curve, shrugging off a third straight decline in oil.” Energy has stopped being the marginal rates input; the 8:30 print is. The forward hook: European oil and gas −1.2% is the read-through already priced; U.S. energy closed −1.70% Tuesday and is the sector most exposed to a fourth down day. OVX at 46.16 says the options market has not de-risked. Invalidation: any Hormuz tanker or enforcement headline — the sanctions programme has now hit dozens of China and Hong Kong entities. | | 5. [Rates / FX] Australia printed the hottest inflation number in the developed world overnight, and it was the only equity market that fell. July CPI +3.5% y/y against a 3.3% consensus, down from 3.8% but still above the RBA's 2–3% band; +1.0% m/m original and +0.6% seasonally adjusted, the first monthly increase and the fastest in four months, against a +0.8% expectation; trimmed mean unchanged at 3.6%. Housing +5.0%, food +3.2%, recreation +2.6%. The response was mechanical and complete: the 10-year ACGB rose 3.8 bp to 5.014%, the largest move on the entire global sovereign board, and the ASX 200 fell 0.40% to 9,127.80, alone among Asian majors. The forward hook: this is the clean template for what a 0.3% U.S. core PCE does to a market priced for disinflation — rates up, the highest-beta equity index down, and nothing else moves. The direct U.S. read is narrow (Australian revenue exposure, BHP/RIO ADRs, the AUD carry cohort), but the analogue value is high and it is available for free two hours before the U.S. number. | | 6. [Rates / Credit] Two Treasury auctions land inside the session, and the buyback trade is being scaled back by the people who put it on. Treasury sells a 2-year floating-rate note and a 5-year note today, both announced 20 August, settling 28 and 31 August. The 5-year sits directly on the tenor the market has left alone — 4.355% live, half a basis point from Tuesday's official par close — which makes it the cleanest read on real belly demand since the buyback programme began. Two positioning headlines arrived overnight: Morgan Stanley's Khanduja is scaling back U.S. curve bets on the Bessent plan, and Stanley Druckenmiller — Bessent's own mentor — called the bond buying a mistake. Against that, Bloomberg's tape reads “Bessent Bounce Starts to Emerge in Long Bond Market Metrics.” Tuesday's Closing Daily documented the mechanics: the 30-year Treasury–swap spread at its narrowest since February, the 10-year gap 3 bp tighter at ~38 bp, and the JPMorgan client survey showing neutrals collapsing to 54% from 67%, the fewest since 26 May. The forward hook: a soft 5-year auction after a hot PCE is the single combination that puts the long end back on the defensive, and the 1:00 PM stop is a mid-session equity risk event whichever way 8:30 goes. | | 7. [Equities] Photronics is the only clean semiconductor datapoint anyone gets before Nvidia, and it beat its own guidance. Fiscal Q3 EPS $0.51 against a $0.38 consensus and above the company's own $0.39–0.45 range. CEO George Macricostas attributed it to recovery of temporarily delayed semiconductor design releases that slipped out of fiscal Q2, and to continued high fab utilisation across the industry driving node migration. The stock is +15.62% at $33.90 (StockAnalysis) to +18.06% at $34.62 (Benzinga) pre-market. Non-S&P 500 — a $1.73bn photomask maker. The forward hook: the read-through is not to Nvidia's quarter, which is already reported in substance; it is to utilisation and design-release cadence at the foundries, which is a 2027 wafer-demand signal. Names that trade off it: KLA, Applied Materials, Lam Research, Amkor, and the SOX at 11,588.0, which needs 11,740 to erase Monday. Caveat: 70,227 pre-market shares — a thin print on a small cap. | | 8. [Equities / Credit] SoftBank is testing the bond market's appetite for financing the AI build, and the size is $10–20 billion. SoftBank Group is talking to investment banks about a potential $10bn to $20bn bond offering to refinance the loan behind its OpenAI investment, per people familiar cited by Bloomberg. Set against Melius Research's James West, who told clients Monday that “the binding constraint on growth has shifted. It is no longer turbines, capital, or customer intent: rolling into midterms, it is permission” — a regulatory-bottleneck thesis with the midterms two months out. The forward hook: a funding-cost read-through to every AI-capex-levered balance sheet, landing on the same day Nvidia is asked about “a wave of financing deals.” Watch CoreWeave, Nebius (+5.24% Tuesday), Oracle and the hyperscaler credit curves; if SoftBank prints wide, the vendor-financing question becomes a credit question rather than an equity one. |
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3 · Global Markets Overnight — Asia & Europe |
| Asia — closes, 26 August |
| Index | Close | Chg | %Chg | The specific catalyst | | Nikkei 225 | 66,262.16 | +405.73 | +0.62% | Broad chip bid early; Japanese chip names slipped into the close ahead of Nvidia | | Topix | 4,111.02 | — | +0.42% | Lagged the Nikkei by 20 bp — the move was cap-weighted and technology-led, not broad | | Kospi | 6,808.21 | +65.47 | +0.97% | Best major in Asia. Korea opened block trading after the broad rebound; industrials led the open before semis took over. Kosdaq 826.87, little changed — the strength did not reach small caps | | Hang Seng | 25,652.97 | +141.87 | +0.56% | Tech leadership plus Haidilao +7% after first-half delivery revenue more than doubled (revenue +7.9%; core operating profit +4.4%) | | Shanghai Composite | 3,912.52 | +23.08 | +0.59% | CSI 300 +0.85% — the mainland outperformed Hong Kong, the domestic-liquidity signature rather than the foreign-flow one | | ASX 200 | 9,127.80 | −36.80 | −0.40% | The only red major. July CPI 3.5% y/y vs 3.3% expected; hike risk repriced and the index gave back an earlier gain | | Nifty 50 | 24,207.75 | −126.80 | −0.52% | Sensex 77,472.94, −183.15, −0.24%; late-hour buying trimmed a worse session. IT was the drag | | Straits Times | 5,721.59 | −14.09 | −0.25% | | | Taiwan TAIEX | 45,169.46 (25 Aug close) | — | — | The 26 August close was not independently verified before this report's cut-off. The 25 August close (+0.91%) is carried as the anchor |
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| Aggregate: MSCI Asia Pacific +0.7%, MSCI Emerging Markets +0.8% (Bloomberg). Both are stronger than any U.S. futures contract this morning. |
| Europe — live, ~11:00–11:15 London (6:00–6:15 AM ET) |
| Index | Level | Chg | %Chg | | Stoxx Europe 600 | 656.89 | +0.41 | +0.06% | | Euro Stoxx 50 | 5,495.43 | −1.16 | −0.02% | | DAX | 26,306.67 | +40.53 | +0.15% | | CAC 40 | 8,471.79 | +32.59 | +0.39% | | FTSE 100 | 10,864.82 | −21.34 | −0.20% | | AEX | 1,105.99 | −2.35 | −0.21% |
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| Sector leadership and the movers. Banks +1.5% and travel and mining lead; oil and gas −1.2% as crude fell more than 2% on the Hormuz talks. Citi published overweight European banks Wednesday morning while warning the sector looks “closer to the end of the current bull run” as EPS upgrades broaden — a rotation flag inside a bull case. The single-name event is Ambu, −17.6% in Copenhagen, after the Danish healthcare group cut full-year growth guidance to around 10% from 10–12% — a two-point trim taking a fifth of the equity, the same guidance-shape punishment Intuit and Zoom took overnight, in a third market. Bloomberg: the Stoxx 600 is “within 1% of its all-time high” and on track for a fifth consecutive winning month, with “the region's bonds outperforming their U.S. peers on softer energy prices.” |
| Global rates — 10-year benchmarks, 26 August |
| Bond | Yield | Δ bp | Note | | 10Y Bund | 3.1982% | +0.5 | Bloomberg: “little changed at 3.20%” | | 10Y Gilt | 4.9880% | +2.1 | Cheapened more than the Bund | | 10Y JGB | 2.8930% | +0.1 | The quietest major | | 10Y BTP | 4.0180% | +0.6 | | | 10Y OAT (France) | 4.0520% | +1.2 | Worst of the core | | 10Y Bono (Spain) | 3.6500% | +0.1 | | | 10Y GGB (Greece) | 3.8530% | +2.6 | Worst in the periphery | | 10Y ACGB (Australia) | 5.0140% | +3.8 | The largest move on the board — the CPI print | | 10Y KTB (Korea) | 4.2850% | +3.9 | Tied with Australia; a growth-and-chip-cycle move, not an inflation one | | 10Y UST | 4.6510% | +1.7 | TradingEconomics basis; CNBC's live quote is 4.641%, +0.1 bp |
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| Spreads: BTP–Bund 82.0 bp (+0.1) — essentially unchanged, so periphery risk appetite is intact. OAT–Bund 85.4 bp (+0.7) — France wider than Italy, the standing structural anomaly. GGB–Bund 65.5 bp (+2.1). |
| The periphery read. With BTP–Bund flat at 82 bp and Greece the worst performer in the bloc, this is a duration move, not a credit move — European sovereign risk appetite did not change overnight, and the periphery is not the thing to watch today. The one that is: OAT–Bund at 85.4 bp, with France persistently trading wider than Italy. |
| Overnight policy and data already released |
| Event | Actual | Consensus | Reaction | | Australia CPI, July | +3.5% y/y; +1.0% m/m orig., +0.6% s.a.; trimmed mean 3.6% | 3.3% y/y; +0.8% m/m | ACGB 10Y +3.8 bp; ASX 200 −0.40%, the only red major in Asia. RBA hike risk repriced higher | | PBoC daily fix | Set 633 pips below market | — | Offshore yuan retreated from a 3½-year peak; USD/CNH 6.7203 | | Haidilao H1 (HK) | Revenue +7.9%; core operating profit +4.4%; delivery revenue more than doubled | — | +7% in Hong Kong; supported the HSI's +0.56% | | Ambu FY guidance cut | Full-year growth ~10%, from 10–12% | — | −17.6% in morning European trade |
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| What this hands the U.S. open. Three things, in order of size. (1) The rates message is imported and it is hawkish at the front. Australia's beat drove the single largest sovereign move on the board and Korea matched it; Europe cheapened one to two basis points; the U.S. 2-year cheapened 3.1 bp while its own long end sat still. Every developed front end in the world moved the same way overnight, and none of it was U.S. data — which means the U.S. 2-year is carrying an imported hawkish position into a domestic inflation print, and that is an asymmetric setup: a soft core PCE unwinds a global move, not just a local one. (2) The equity message is a chip bid that stopped at the water's edge. Korea +0.97%, Taiwan leading, mainland China +0.85% — and then Nasdaq-100 futures indicated −0.05% with Japanese chip names slipping into their own close ahead of Nvidia. Asia bought the semiconductor complex and the two markets closest to the actual event did not. (3) The sector message is bank-over-energy, and it is the same trade on both continents. European banks +1.5% against oil and gas −1.2%; U.S. financials closed +0.18% Tuesday against energy −1.70%. A steeper-front-end, lower-crude configuration is long financials and short energy in both time zones, and today's 8:30 print decides whether it survives to the close. |
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4 · Pre-Market Movers & Single-Name Catalysts |
| Liquidity caveat, stated once and applying to every percentage in this section. These are pre-market indications struck between 6:52 and 7:19 AM ET on volumes ranging from 70,000 shares to under 200,000. Investing.com's pre-market gainer and loser boards in particular are built on very thin size and no catalyst was verifiable for most of the names on them; they are printed because they are the market's only available pre-open signal, not because each one is a tradeable fact. |
DOWN — with verified catalysts | Intuit (INTU) −10.78% to −11.84%, $315.15–$318.93. Fiscal Q4 EPS $4.03 vs $3.54; revenue $4.40bn vs $4.28bn; FY27 revenue guidance $23.3–23.5bn, +9–10% against FY26's +14%; FY27 non-GAAP EPS $22.88–23.12 against FY26's $24.27 delivered; dividend +15% to $1.38/qtr. After-hours −7.3% → close-of-AH −9.22% at $324.50 → pre-market −10.8%/−11.8%. The drift has widened at every stage. S&P 500 member. ~$97.8bn market cap; roughly $6.9bn of market value erased on the initial move. | | ServiceNow (NOW) −2.63%, $123.66; GoDaddy (GDDY) −3.45%, $96.35; Roper (ROP) −3.00%, $400.97; Adobe (ADBE) −2.16%, $268.00. No company-specific news. This is the Intuit read-across, corroborated by Bloomberg: Intuit “leading software makers lower in early trading.” All four are S&P 500 members. | | Li Auto (LI) −0.81%, 52-week low. Swung to a loss; margins collapsed; weak Q3 revenue guidance despite a sales beat. Foreign issuer, not an S&P 500 constituent. | | Spyre Therapeutics (SYRE) −11.70%, $94.80. 17,112 pre-market shares — an extremely thin print. Non-S&P 500 ($9.47bn). No catalyst verified. |
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DOWN — no catalyst verified (thin Investing.com board, 6:52 AM ET) | DTE Energy (DTE) −6.61%, $127.14 · Westinghouse Air Brake (WAB) −3.76%, $285.78 · Boston Scientific (BSX) −2.98% to −3.43%, $48.15–48.37 · Centene (CNC) −2.86%, $63.14 · Ulta Beauty (ULTA) −2.16%, $525.63. All five are S&P 500 members. A 6.61% pre-market move in a regulated utility with no news is the least credible number on this page and should be treated as an indication, not a price. |
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UP — with verified catalysts | Photronics (PLAB) +15.62% to +18.06%, $33.90–$34.62. Fiscal Q3 EPS $0.51 vs $0.38 consensus, above its own $0.39–0.45 guidance. CEO George Macricostas cited recovery of delayed semiconductor design releases from fiscal Q2 and high industry fab utilisation driving node migration. Non-S&P 500 ($1.73bn). 70,227 pre-market shares — thin. | | Meta Platforms (META) +1.46%, $578.39. The largest verified pre-market gain in the mega-cap complex, on 158,630 shares. The overnight headline: Meta and state attorneys general have discussed settling the teen social media case. S&P 500 member. |
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UP — no catalyst verified (thin Investing.com board, 6:52 AM ET) | Hubbell (HUBB) +4.97% · Textron (TXT) +4.68% · Hershey (HSY) +4.65% · Federal Realty (FRT) +4.38% · Equinix (EQIX) +4.15% · Zebra (ZBRA) +3.72% · Northrop Grumman (NOC) +3.48% · Marsh McLennan (MMC) +2.74% · Allstate (ALL) +2.67% · Mosaic (MOS) +2.60%. All ten are S&P 500 members. A cluster of 2.5–5% pre-market gains across a REIT, a confectioner, a defence prime and an insurer, with no common catalyst and no news, is the signature of a thin indicative board, not a rotation. Treat as noise until the opening auction confirms. |
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| The mega-cap complex — Investing.com most-active pre-market board, 6:52 AM ET |
| Ticker | Pre-market | Chg | %Chg | Pre-mkt vol | Note | | NVDA | $213.82 | +0.77 | +0.36% | 816,180 | The only name with real pre-market size. Reports tonight | | META | $578.39 | +8.34 | +1.46% | 158,630 | Best mega-cap. Teen-social-media settlement talks | | INTC | $87.88 | +0.40 | +0.46% | 583,670 | | | AVGO | $358.40 | +1.66 | +0.47% | 73,800 | | | AMD | $480.35 | +1.17 | +0.24% | 72,200 | Closed +4.91% at $479.18 Tuesday on the Raymond James upgrade | | AMZN | $261.25 | +0.19 | +0.07% | 101,360 | | | TSLA | $349.93 | −0.32 | −0.09% | 112,680 | | | MU | $928.87 | −4.10 | −0.44% | 196,990 | Gave back part of Tuesday's +2.48% — the memory bounce is not extending | | PLTR | $170.95 | −1.78 | −1.03% | 156,010 | Worst mega-cap; the highest-multiple name in the complex | | INTU | $315.15 | −42.31 | −11.84% | 143,680 | |
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| The after-hours → pre-market drift, which is the section's real signal. Three names tell three different stories. Intuit widened (−7.3% → −9.22% → −11.8%): institutional selling is still arriving. Nvidia held (+2.19% Tuesday, +0.36% now): nobody is pre-positioning either way into a ±5.4% implied move, which is itself a statement about conviction. Micron faded (+2.48% Tuesday, −0.44% now): the memory bounce is not carrying, and Tuesday's Closing Daily already flagged that SanDisk did not participate at all. A bounce that loses its weakest member on day one and its strongest member on day two is a bounce inside a downtrend. |
ANALYST RATING ACTIONS IN FORCE AT THE OPEN (Tuesday's calls — Wednesday's sheet was not retrievable) | Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) — upgraded to Strong Buy from Outperform at Raymond James, target raised to $641 from $565. Against Tuesday's $479.18 close that is 33.8% implied upside. The stock closed +4.91% on it and is +0.24% pre-market — the move is done. S&P 500 member. | | Dynatrace (DT) — upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley, target $65 from $58. S&P 500 member. Note the collision: an enterprise-software upgrade published the day before Intuit's guide down. | | Shift4 Payments (FOUR) — upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Wells Fargo, target $59 from $55. Tuesday's tell: the stock traded up 6.4% to $51.07 intraday and closed exactly unchanged at $48.00. A fully faded upgrade. | | Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) — cut to Equal Weight from Overweight at Wells Fargo, target $46. S&P 500 member. Wells Fargo upgraded one payments name and downgraded another on the same day — a pair, not a sector call. | | Bread Financial (BFH) upgraded to Outperform at Wolfe Research, target $130 (non-member). RLI cut to Underperform at Jefferies, target $53 (non-member). Initiations: Sherwin-Williams (SHW) Buy at DA Davidson, target $400 (S&P 500 member); Fortune Brands (FBIN) Buy at DA Davidson, target $64; Jersey Mike's Subs (JMKE) Neutral at Goldman Sachs, target $26. |
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CORPORATE ACTIONS AND REGULATORY | SoftBank Group — in talks with investment banks over a $10–20bn bond offering to refinance the loan behind its OpenAI investment (Bloomberg, people familiar). | | Alibaba (BABA) — $10.2bn AI-linked share sale, 3.6% dilution; Jack Ma's buying did little to ease the fallout; the stock rebounded 0.8%. | | Meta (META) — Meta and state attorneys general have discussed settling the teen social media case. | | Canada / U.S. trade — Washington is weighing further trade measures against Canada after Ottawa's retaliation. Canada's tariffs on roughly $20bn of U.S. goods, 700+ line items at 15–50%, take effect 8 September. | | Iran sanctions — dozens of China and Hong Kong entities have been hit under the Treasury's Iran programme. | | Mortgage rates — CNBC's breaking banner at 7:00 AM: mortgage rates at their highest level in three weeks, weakening demand further. Read into homebuilders (DHI, LEN, PHM, NVR) and mortgage-sensitive financials at the open. |
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5 · Overnight Earnings Scorecard |
| Every company that reported between Tuesday's 4:00 PM ET close and this morning's cut-off. Bold = S&P 500 member. |
| Company | EPS vs cons. | Revenue vs cons. | Guidance | Reaction | Read-through | | Intuit (INTU) — AMC | $4.03 vs $3.54 | $4.40bn vs $4.28bn | FY27 revenue $23.3–23.5bn (+9–10%) vs FY26 +14%; FY27 EPS $22.88–23.12 vs $24.27 delivered; dividend +15% | AH −7.3% → −9.22% → pre-mkt −10.8%/−11.8% | The category read. A double beat punished for the shape of the guide. Reads to CRM (tonight), NOW −2.63%, ADBE −2.16%, GDDY −3.45%, ROP −3.00% | | Zoom (ZM) — AMC | Beat | $1.28bn, +4.9% y/y; enterprise +7.8% | FY raised to $6.08–6.12 / $5.085–5.095bn; Q3 EPS ~$1.47 vs $1.50 | AH −3.7% | Non-S&P 500. Second name overnight to beat and raise the year and still fall on the quarter's guide. Two data points make a regime | | Semtech (SMTC) — AMC 4:05 PM | $0.71 vs ~$0.61 guide | $341.9m vs ~$328m guide | — | Initially +2% | Non-S&P 500. An analog/IoT beat that did not extend — the semis bid is selective | | Box (BOX) — AMC | — | — | — | +7.0% | Non-S&P 500. The one software name overnight the tape paid for | | Photronics (PLAB) — BMO | $0.51 vs $0.38; own guide $0.39–0.45 | — | — | Pre-mkt +15.6% to +18.1% | Non-S&P 500. Fab utilisation and node migration are the signal — reads to KLAC, AMAT, LRCX, AMKR and the SOX | | Li Auto (LI) — BMO | Miss; swung to a loss | Beat | Weak Q3 revenue guidance | −0.81%, 52-week low | Foreign issuer. China EV margin compression; narrow read to TSLA on China volumes and to lithium (ALB −5.89% Tuesday) |
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| The aggregate scorecard. Six reporters across the window, and the pattern is unusually clean: three of the four U.S. software and semiconductor names beat consensus, and two of them fell. Intuit and Zoom both beat the quarter and raised or exceeded on the year, and both were sold — Intuit by more than a tenth of its equity — for guiding a decelerating growth rate rather than a lower absolute number. Semtech beat its own guidance and gained 2%. Photronics beat by 34% and gained 16%. The tape is paying for beats in hardware and punishing them in software, and it is doing so on the multiple, not the earnings. No blended-growth or beat-rate statistic from FactSet or LSEG was retrievable for this window, so the count above is this report's own across six names, not a vendor statistic. The forward test is tonight: Salesforce at $3.27 on $11.33bn is the largest enterprise-software print of the quarter and it reports into a market that has just repriced the category twice in twelve hours. |
6 · U.S. Treasury Par Curve & Rates |
| Official par curve — Tuesday 25 August, 3:30 PM ET close |
| Tenor | 25 Aug | 24 Aug | Δ 1-Day | 18 Aug | Δ 1-Week | | 1 Mo | 3.79% | 3.79% | 0 bp | 3.78% | +1 bp | | 3 Mo | 3.86% | 3.87% | −1 bp | 3.86% | 0 bp | | 1 Yr | 4.01% | 4.04% | −3 bp | 3.99% | +2 bp | | 2 Yr | 4.17% | 4.24% | −7 bp | 4.19% | −2 bp | | 3 Yr | 4.25% | 4.31% | −6 bp | 4.26% | −1 bp | | 5 Yr | 4.35% | 4.41% | −6 bp | 4.37% | −2 bp | | 7 Yr | 4.48% | 4.55% | −7 bp | 4.53% | −5 bp | | 10 Yr | 4.64% | 4.70% | −6 bp | 4.71% | −7 bp | | 20 Yr | 5.16% | 5.21% | −5 bp | 5.28% | −12 bp | | 30 Yr | 5.17% | 5.23% | −6 bp | 5.28% | −11 bp |
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| Live pre-open block — ~7:00–7:19 AM ET vs that official close |
| Tenor | Live | Official (25 Aug) | Δ bp overnight | | 2 Yr | 4.201% | 4.17% | +3.1 | | 5 Yr | 4.355% | 4.35% | +0.5 | | 10 Yr | 4.641% | 4.64% | +0.1 | | 30 Yr | 5.173% | 5.17% | +0.3 |
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| Curve spreads |
| Spread | Official 25 Aug | Δ 1-Day | Δ 1-Week | Live now | Δ vs official | | 2s10s | 47 bp | +1 bp | −5 bp | 44.0 bp | −3.0 bp | | 3M10Y | 78 bp | −5 bp | −7 bp | 85.1 bp (mixed basis) | see note | | 2s30s | 100 bp | +1 bp | −9 bp | 97.2 bp | −2.8 bp | | 5s30s | 82 bp | 0 bp | −9 bp | 81.8 bp | −0.2 bp |
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| The read: an overnight bear flattener driven entirely from the two-year, and it is a positioning move, not a data move. Every basis point of the overnight change sits in one tenor. The 2-year is 3.1 bp cheaper; the 5-year is half a basis point cheaper; the 10-year and 30-year are, within the noise of a live quote against a 3:30 PM bid-side construct, unchanged. That gives 2s10s 3.0 bp flatter at 44.0 and 2s30s 2.8 bp flatter at 97.2, while 5s30s is flat at 81.8 — a front-end event with no long-end participation at all. Diagnostically that rules out three of the four candidate drivers. It is not imported: Bunds are 0.5 bp cheaper, JGBs 0.1 bp, and Bloomberg observed that “the region's bonds outperformed their U.S. peers on softer energy prices” — Europe moved less than the U.S. front end, not more. It is not supply-driven: today's auctions are a 2-year FRN and a 5-year note, and the 5-year is the tenor that did not move. It is not oil: crude fell for a third straight session and Bloomberg's own wrap notes Treasuries fell “shrugging off a third straight decline in oil” — precisely the opposite of Tuesday, when a 3.12% WTI decline pulled the whole coupon curve 5 to 7 bp lower. What is left is a Fed-path repricing ahead of the print, and the single supporting number is that the market entered this session with the September hike at 35.0% on Investing.com and 39.6% on CME (Tuesday's close), having repriced from 41.4% on the crude move alone — the front end is unwinding a probability shift that was never validated by data, twenty-four hours before the data arrives. |
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| The weekly context has not changed and it still points the other way. On the official five-session view the curve remains the buyback curve: 20-year −12 bp, 30-year −11 bp, 10-year −7 bp against a 1-year 2 bp cheaper and a 1-month bill a basis point cheaper. 2s30s has flattened 9 bp on the week to 100 bp and 5s30s 9 bp to 82. So the week is a long-end-led bull flattener and this morning is a front-end-led bear flattener sitting inside it — two flatteners with opposite engines, which is why the level matters more than the shape: the 30-year at 5.17% ties 5 August for the lowest official par close of the month and it has not given a basis point of that back overnight, on a morning when the two-year has given back 44% of its rally. |
| The 3M10Y caveat, because the number in the table looks like a 7 bp steepening and is not. CNBC's live “US 3-MO” quotes 3.79%, a bill yield on a discount-derived basis; Treasury's official 3-month par rate is 3.86%, a coupon-equivalent construct struck at 3:30 PM. The 7 bp gap is entirely basis and timing, not a market move — the bill strip has been the most inert part of the curve all week (1-month unchanged, 3-month −1 bp on the day and 0 bp on the week while every coupon moved 5 to 7 bp). Use the official 78 bp for the level and read the live number as directional only. |
| Today's supply and Fed operations |
| Time ET | Event | Detail | | ~11:30 AM | 2-Year Floating Rate Note auction | Announced 20 August; settles 28 August. A non-event for the curve unless the discount margin gaps | | ~1:00 PM | 5-Year Note auction | Announced 20 August; settles 31 August. This is the mid-session equity risk event. The 5-year is the one tenor that did not move overnight (4.355%, +0.5 bp), which makes the stop the cleanest available read on real belly demand since the buyback programme began | | 10:00 AM | Corporate Bond Market Distress Index, August | New York Fed. Low sensitivity | | — | Fed speakers | No Federal Reserve speaker is listed on today's public schedule. Jackson Hole opens tomorrow, 27 August, and Chair Warsh's first keynote is Friday 28 August at approximately 10:00 AM ET |
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| Why the 1:00 PM auction is a two-sided equity event today. Ordinarily a 5-year stop is a rates-desk item. Today it lands four and a half hours after a core PCE print and three hours before Nvidia, into a curve where the belly is the untraded tenor. A soft 5-year stop after a hot core print re-cheapens the front end into the close and drags the multiple-sensitive complex — software has already been repriced twice overnight — down with it. A strong stop after a soft print validates Tuesday's rally, steepens 2s10s off 44 bp and hands the Russell back its 3,000 handle in the last two hours. Real-time versus official par, noted: CNBC's 10-year of 4.641% and TradingEconomics's 4.651% differ by a basis point on the same morning; every Δ in the live block carries roughly that much construction noise, which is why only the 2-year's +3.1 bp is treated here as a move. |
7 · U.S. Macroeconomic Calendar |
| New York Fed Economic Indicators Calendar and Investing.com's U.S. calendar. Consensus is carried only where verified, with the publishing vendor named. All times Eastern. |
| ★ TODAY — Wednesday, August 26 |
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| Time | Release (period) | Consensus / prior | Sens. | What a beat/miss does | | 08:30 | Core PCE Price Index, m/m (Jul) | +0.2% (Investing.com) / prior +0.1% | VERY HIGH | The number of the month. ≤+0.2% → 2-year back through 4.17%, 2s10s steepens off 44 bp, Russell reclaims 3,000, software bid returns. +0.3% → September hike back above 40%, 2s10s toward 40 bp, high-multiple growth and small caps lead lower | | 08:30 | Core PCE Price Index, y/y (Jul) | 3.3% (Investing.com) / prior 3.3% | VERY HIGH | A 3.4% handle is the hawkish tail; 3.2% the dovish one. Unchanged at 3.3% throws the whole reaction onto the monthly | | 08:30 | PCE Price Index, m/m and y/y (Jul) | +0.1% and +3.6% (Dow Jones poll) / prior −0.1% and +3.7% | HIGH | Headline carries the crude passthrough; a soft headline with a firm core is the worst combination for the front end. Bloomberg: “the smallest annual increase in four months” if 3.6% lands | | 08:30 | Durable Goods Orders, m/m (Jul adv) | +0.4% (Investing.com) / +0.5% (WSJ); prior +0.3%/+0.5% | HIGH | The cleanest read on whether the tariff schedule is suppressing capital orders. Industrials, machinery, transports trade off it. Note the two-vendor split | | 08:30 | Core Durable Goods ex-transport, m/m (Jul) | +0.60% (Investing.com) / prior +0.60% | MEDIUM | | | 08:30 | GDP, 2nd estimate and Core PCE Prices, q/q (Q2) | GDP advance was +1.5%; Q2 core PCE prices 3.40% vs 4.40% prior | HIGH | Revisions are backward-looking; the market will read the Q2 core PCE price index instead. A full point of quarterly disinflation is already in the consensus — the bar is not low | | 08:30 | Personal Income / Spending (Jul); Corporate Profits (Q2) | — / prior +0.2%, +0.3%, +0.5% | MEDIUM | The consumer cross-check on Tuesday's 89.4 Consumer Confidence miss | | 10:00 | Corporate Bond Market Distress Index (Aug) | — | LOW | | | ~11:30 | 2-Year FRN auction | — | LOW | Settles 28 August | | ~1:00 PM | 5-Year Note auction | — | HIGH | Settles 31 August. Mid-session equity risk event (§6) | | 4:00 PM+ | Nvidia and 14 other reporters | — | VERY HIGH | §13 |
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| The 8:30 problem, stated plainly. Three releases land in the same minute, sixty minutes before the cash open. That is the single largest gap risk of the morning and it means today's opening auction is not a continuation of this pre-market tape. The pre-market prices in this report are struck between 6:52 and 7:19 AM and every one of them is a pre-8:30 number. Tuesday's Closing Daily made the same point about the same clock: three releases inside one minute makes the 8:31 reaction noisy and the 9:00 reaction the real one. Trade the 9:00 level, not the 8:31 print. |
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| Overnight global data already released |
| Time ET | Region | Release | Actual | Consensus | Reaction | | 21:30 (25th) | Australia | CPI, July | +3.5% y/y; +1.0% m/m orig., +0.6% s.a.; trimmed mean 3.6% | 3.3% y/y; +0.8% m/m | ACGB 10Y +3.8 bp to 5.014% — the largest sovereign move on the board. ASX 200 −0.40%, the only red major in Asia | | ~21:15 (25th) | China | PBoC daily fix | Set 633 pips below market | — | Offshore yuan retreated from a 3½-year peak; USD/CNH 6.7203 |
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| Rest of this week — Aug 27–28 |
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| Date | Time ET | Release (period) | Consensus | Sensitivity | | Thu 8/27 | 08:30 | Initial Jobless Claims (wk ended 8/22) | No verified consensus in the reviewed sources | HIGH | | Thu 8/27 | 10:00 | Multivariate Core Trend Inflation (Jul) | — | Medium | | Thu 8/27 | 11:30 | Weekly Economic Index (wk ended 8/22) | — | Low | | Thu 8/27 | 14:00 | R-Star, Laubach-Williams estimates (Q2) | — | Low | | Thu 8/27 – Sat 8/29 | — | Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium | Theme: Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy | VERY HIGH | | Fri 8/28 | ~10:00 | Chair Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote | — | VERY HIGH | | Fri 8/28 | 10:00 | Michigan Consumer Survey (Final, Aug) | No verified consensus | Medium | | Fri 8/28 | 12:45 | New York Fed Staff Nowcast | — | Low |
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| Next week — Aug 31 – Sep 4 |
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| Date | Time ET | Release (period) | Sensitivity | | Mon 8/31 | 10:30 | Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey (Aug) | Low | | Tue 9/1 | 10:00 | ISM Manufacturing (Aug) · JOLTS (Jul) · Construction Spending (Jul) | HIGH | | Wed 9/2 | 08:15 | ADP National Employment (Aug) | HIGH | | Wed 9/2 | 09:00 | Labor Market Tightness Index (Aug) · 10:00 Manufacturing, Shipments and Orders (Jul) | Medium | | Thu 9/3 | 08:30 | Initial Jobless Claims (wk ended 8/29) · Advance Trade in Goods (Jul) · Productivity and Costs (Q2 rev.) | HIGH | | Thu 9/3 | 10:00 | ISM Non-Manufacturing (Aug) | HIGH | | Fri 9/4 | 08:30 | Employment Situation (Aug) | VERY HIGH | | Fri 9/4 | 10:00 | Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (Aug) · 12:45 NY Fed Staff Nowcast | Low |
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| The look-ahead: everything in front of the Fed is now compressed into seventy-two hours, and the sequence matters more than any single print. (1) Core PCE, today 8:30. The last inflation reading before Jackson Hole and the only release capable of confirming or destroying the disinflation read the oil tape imposed on the strip on Tuesday. The September hike moved 41.4% → 35.0% on a crude headline, not on data; today the data arrives. (2) The 5-year auction, today 1:00 PM. Belly demand, mid-session, four and a half hours after the print. (3) Nvidia, tonight after the close — the largest company in the index reporting into a ±5.4% implied move with VIX at 15.64. (4) Claims, Thursday 8:30, still the only weekly labour input, into a Jackson Hole that opens the same day. (5) Chair Warsh's first keynote, Friday ~10:00, nineteen days before the 16 September FOMC. Piper Sandler's head of central bank policy Kurt Lewis set expectations low: “Given his approach to the June and July press conferences, we think it is unlikely that he would move straight to a deep dive into the current economic outlook and its implications for policy over the balance of 2026. Instead, we expect him to spend the bulk of his remarks on big-picture themes with an emphasis on the supply side and on how these topics will be addressed by the Task Forces.” If Lewis is right, Friday is not the risk event the market is pricing it as, and today is — which is the argument for owning gamma dated into today's close rather than into Friday's. (6) Next week's labour block — JOLTS and ISM Manufacturing Tuesday, ADP Wednesday, ISM Services and claims Thursday, and the August Employment Situation on Friday 4 September, the last payroll before the FOMC. |
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9 · FX Market |
| Quote basis: spot, CNBC's currency board pulled ~7:00 AM ET, with the ICE dollar index quoted live at 7:19 AM. Changes are against the prior 4:00 PM ET New York level. Bloomberg's 6:19 AM marks are carried alongside as the cross-check. |
| Pair | Level | Chg | %Chg | Bloomberg cross-check | Driver | | DXY (ICE) | 99.022 | +0.107 | +0.11% | “Dollar Spot Index little changed” | Mild pre-print dollar bid. Prior close 98.915 on the same feed | | EUR/USD | 1.167 | −0.001 | −0.08% | 1.1665, little changed | Euro-area bonds outperformed Treasuries; the rate differential moved against the euro and it barely reacted | | USD/JPY | 159.10 | −0.06 | −0.04% | 159.01, yen +0.1% | The only major to gain on the dollar. JGB 10Y +0.1 bp — the quietest sovereign on the board | | GBP/USD | 1.362 | −0.003 | −0.18% | 1.3623, −0.2% | Weakest G10 major, despite the Gilt cheapening 2.1 bp — a growth-not-rates move | | USD/CHF | 0.804 | +0.003 | +0.31% | — | The largest dollar gain on the board | | USD/CAD | 1.387 | +0.003 | +0.24% | — | Loonie giving back Tuesday's strength; crude −1.9% and Washington weighing further measures after Ottawa's retaliation | | USD/CNH | 6.7203 | — | ~unch | little changed at 6.7203 | PBoC fix 633 pips below market; the yuan retreated from a 3½-year peak | | AUD | — | — | — | — | The overnight standout by rates: ACGB 10Y +3.8 bp on a 3.5% CPI print (§3) |
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| The take — the haven cross is the tell, and it says nobody is hedging. On a morning when three inflation-sensitive U.S. releases land in two hours and the largest company in the world reports in nine, the two classic havens are moving in opposite directions: USD/CHF +0.31% — the franc sold — while USD/JPY −0.04% — the yen bought, marginally. A genuine risk-hedging bid buys both. Selling the franc while buying the yen is not a haven trade at all; it is a rate-differential trade, and it lines up exactly with the sovereign board: Swiss 10-year +0.4 bp against a JGB +0.1 bp, with the U.S. 2-year +3.1 bp dominating both. The FX market has priced a hawkish U.S. front end and has not priced event risk. That is the same message VIX at 15.64 is sending from the other side of the building, and it is the cleanest evidence in this report that the 8:30 print is under-hedged. |
| The contrarian cross to watch: USD/CNH. The dollar index is up 0.11% and the offshore yuan is unchanged at 6.7203 — but only because the PBoC deliberately set the fix 633 pips below the market, the largest such gap in weeks, after CNH printed within nine pips of a 52-week low on Tuesday. A currency that requires an explicit official brake to stay flat on a day the dollar is bid is a currency with an appreciation problem, not a depreciation one. Beijing does not want more strength into month-end, and the collision to watch is with Washington's Iran sanctions, which have now hit dozens of China and Hong Kong entities. Translating FX into equity terms: a +0.11% dollar moves nothing by itself, but the composition matters — the modest headwind to the S&P foreign-revenue cohort is concentrated in Swiss- and Canada-exposed names, not the euro or yen cohorts; a firmer dollar plus copper at a record squeezes industrial input costs at Caterpillar, Deere, Eaton, Emerson; MSCI EM +0.8% against a firmer dollar is a divergence that resolves on the 8:30 print; and the China ADR complex (BABA, PDD, JD, BIDU) is the direct expression of the fix-gap story, on a morning Alibaba is already digesting $10.2bn of dilution. |
10 · Commodities |
| Basis: TradingEconomics front-month/spot board, 26 August, pulled ~7:00 AM ET, with CNBC's front-month futures board as the cross-check. Contract months are stated where they differ. Changes are versus the prior settle. |
| Contract | Price | %Chg | Week | YTD | Driver | | WTI crude (front) | $80.769 | −1.93% | −4.29% | +40.66% | Third consecutive decline (−$1.591). Iran–Oman Hormuz talks restarted. CNBC marks $80.15, −2.68% | | Brent crude (front) | $86.934 | −1.86% | −5.11% | +42.87% | −$1.646. Bloomberg marked $85.69, −3.3% at 11:15 London and the week at ~−9%. Brent–WTI $6.17 | | Natural gas | $2.7996 | +1.07% | −0.51% | −24.05% | +$0.0296. The only energy contract higher. CNBC marks $2.828, +2.09% | | Gasoline (RBOB) | $3.2183 | −1.06% | −1.13% | +88.11% | −$0.0346. Fell less than crude — the gasoline crack widened again | | Heating oil | $4.1376 | −2.50% | −7.07% | +95.03% | −$0.1062. Fell more than crude — distillate is still bleeding its sanctioned-flow premium | | Gold (spot) | $4,643.17 | −0.32% | +2.78% | +7.49% | −$14.94. Three-month high on a reported $1.2bn GLD inflow. Comex Dec $4,676.50, −0.38%; Bloomberg spot $4,619.46, −0.8% | | Silver (spot) | $69.155 | +0.82% | +3.33% | −2.95% | +$0.559. Vendor sign conflict — CNBC's Sep contract prints $68.525, −0.23% | | Copper | $6.7567 | +0.70% | +4.15% | +18.91% | +$0.0472. Record intraday $6.71 on the Comex contract. 675,185 tonnes stranded in U.S. tariff storage | | Platinum | $1,877.00 | +0.83% | +3.67% | −9.32% | +$15.50 | | Aluminium (LME) | $3,243.50 | +0.78% | +0.82% | +8.26% | +$25.25. 25 August mark | | Wheat (CBOT) | 693.56c/bu | +1.18% | +1.96% | +36.80% | +8.06c | | Corn (CBOT) | 504.37c/bu | +0.77% | +6.63% | +14.57% | +3.87c | | Uranium | $89.55/lb | 0.00% | +1.59% | +9.68% | Unchanged for a second session | | S&P GSCI | 688.75 | −1.18% | −2.13% | +25.57% | −8.23. The energy weight is the whole move |
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| The take — three separate things are happening and only one of them is about oil. First, the energy complex is unwinding a war premium in the products, not in the barrel. Crude is down 1.9% and heating oil is down 2.5% while gasoline is down only 1.06% and natural gas is up 1.07%. That is the third consecutive session in which distillate has underperformed the barrel and gasoline has outperformed it — Tuesday's Closing Daily measured the same split (distillate crack −$1.87 to $92.36 against gasoline +32c to $52.68). Distillate carries the sanctioned-flow premium and is bleeding it; gasoline does not carry it and is not. On a week when Brent is down 5.11% and the front month has fallen three days running, the barrel with no geopolitical premium to lose is the barrel that outperforms on the way down. The seasonal is the risk: this is late August, and the September calendar works against the gasoline crack. Second, the metals are the only asset class on the board that has already fully priced a soft PCE. Gold at a three-month high with $1.2bn of GLD inflow, copper at a record, platinum +0.83%, silver +0.82% on the spot basis — the whole complex is long the disinflation-plus-debasement trade going into an 8:30 print that can invalidate it in one line. Copper's specifics matter: the record is being set with 675,185 tonnes locked in U.S. warehouses by the tariff trade, a stranded-inventory squeeze at the front of the curve, not a demand signal. Bloomberg: copper “held near a record high, with short-term supplies continuing to look tight despite an easing of a severe market squeeze.” An easing squeeze setting a record price is a curve-structure event, and it is the single most crowded position on this board. Third, the silver print is not tradeable as quoted: TradingEconomics has spot +0.82% at $69.155; CNBC has the September Comex contract −0.23% at $68.525. A spot-versus-futures basis explains a level gap, not a sign flip, so one feed is stale. The September contract is the tradeable instrument and the conservative read is that silver is roughly unchanged — which is how it behaved Tuesday (+0.05% on a +1.61% copper day). |
| The equity read-through, by group. Energy (XLE closed −1.70% Tuesday) is the most exposed sector into a fourth down day in crude, and OVX at 46.16 says the options market has not de-risked. Refiners are the other side: a widening gasoline crack against a collapsing distillate crack favours the gasoline-weighted system. Miners — Freeport, Southern Copper, Teck on copper; Newmont, Barrick, Agnico on gold — are levered to the real rate at 8:30 in both directions. Airlines get a third day of jet-fuel relief, but read it through the distillate crack, which is falling faster than crude. Chemicals (LYB, DOW, both ~−4% Tuesday on the Canada tariff) get a naphtha tailwind at $743.74, −0.63%. Packaged food gets a wheat +1.18% and corn +0.77% headwind on top of a staples sector that fell 0.87% Tuesday. |
12 · Trading Views (desk-style) |
| Desk-style expressions, not personalized investment advice. Every idea carries an explicit expression, a catalyst with the time it lands, an invalidation level and a sizing note. Verify independently before acting. |
| 1. New — own the 8:30 gap through options rather than through direction. The core idea of the day. Expression: long a same-day S&P 500 straddle or strangle established in the first two minutes after 8:30, or, for a cash book, hold the risk flat into the print and express the view only after 9:00. Thesis: VIX at 15.64 implies a 0.98% daily move on a session containing three macro releases in one minute, a 5-year auction and a ±5.4% implied move in an 8%-index-weight name after the close. The FX market corroborates the under-hedge — USD/CHF +0.31% while USD/JPY is −0.04%, a rate trade, not a haven trade (§9). Catalyst: 08:30 core PCE, GDP second estimate and durable goods; 1:00 PM 5-year auction; Nvidia after the close. Invalidation: VIX through 18 before the print — at that point the convexity is no longer cheap and the trade becomes a directional bet. Sizing: the premium you are willing to lose. This is a convexity expression on an event calendar, not a view on the outcome. | | 2. New — short the Russell 2000 against long the Dow into the opening auction. Expression: short RTY futures against long YM futures, beta-adjusted, intraday only, covered by 11:00 AM. Thesis: the one pair the fair-value board is handing you for free. The implied-open ladder is YM +0.01% > NDX −0.05% > SPX −0.16% > RTY −0.34% (§1) — a 35-basis-point spread between the top and bottom before a single share trades, on a morning when the 2-year is the only tenor that moved and it moved 3.1 bp cheaper. Small caps are the most front-end-sensitive index in the complex and they are indicated to lose the 3,000 handle they reclaimed for exactly one session. Catalyst: 08:30, then the opening auction itself. Invalidation: core PCE at or below +0.2% m/m, which reverses the front-end move and is the small-cap bid — cover on the print, not on the open. Hard level: RTY through 3,025. Sizing: small, intraday only. The pair has no thesis past lunchtime. | | 3. New — long the software de-rating: short an enterprise-software basket against long the S&P 500. Expression: short an equal-weighted basket of CRM, NOW, ADBE, WDAY against long SPY, dollar-neutral, small. Thesis: the overnight tape has repriced enterprise software twice in twelve hours on the shape of a guide rather than its level. Intuit beat both lines, raised the dividend 15%, guided FY27 revenue growth to 9–10% against 14%, and lost more than a tenth of its equity across three liquidity regimes — and the drift is still widening at 7:00 AM. Zoom beat and raised the year and fell 3.7% on a three-cent quarterly guide. Bloomberg has Intuit “leading software makers lower in early trading”, and the pre-market corroborates: NOW −2.63%, GDDY −3.45%, ROP −3.00%, ADBE −2.16%. Catalyst: Salesforce tonight at a $3.27 / $11.33bn consensus; Workday and Autodesk Thursday after the close. Invalidation: Intuit reclaiming $330 intraday, which would mark the pre-market as a liquidity artefact; or a CRM print that re-accelerates subscription growth. Sizing: small, and note the crowding risk — this is a consensus short after two consensus confirmations. | | 4. New — long Photronics's message, not Photronics: long semi-cap equipment against the SOX. Expression: long an equal-weighted KLAC / AMAT / LRCX basket against short SOX exposure, beta-adjusted, small. Thesis: Photronics beat by 34% ($0.51 vs $0.38) and above its own $0.39–0.45 guidance, with the CEO attributing it to recovered design releases and high industry fab utilisation driving node migration. That is a 2027 wafer-demand statement, and it is the only clean semiconductor datapoint anyone gets before Nvidia. The SOX leg is the hedge: at 11,588.0 the index has recovered barely half of Monday's damage, Micron is already fading its Tuesday bounce (−0.44% pre-market against +2.48% Tuesday), and Japanese chip names slipped into their own close overnight. Catalyst: Nvidia tonight; September foundry utilisation commentary. Invalidation: SOX through 11,740, the Friday close — at that level the index leg is winning and the pair has no edge. Sizing: small. The PLAB print came on 70,227 pre-market shares and is not a size-able signal on its own. | | 5. New — sell the metals complex's certainty: reduce gross into the print. Expression: halve long exposure across the precious and industrial metals complex into 8:30, and re-establish after 9:00. Thesis: the metals are the only asset class on the board that has already fully priced a soft core PCE — gold at a three-month high on $1.2bn of GLD inflow, copper at a record $6.71 intraday with 675,185 tonnes stranded in U.S. tariff storage, platinum +0.83%. Bloomberg's framing of copper is the warning: prices “held near a record high… despite an easing of a severe market squeeze” — an easing squeeze setting a record price is a curve-structure event, not a demand event. Catalyst: 08:30 core PCE, straight through the real rate into both legs. Invalidation: core PCE at or below +0.2%, on which the trade is simply wrong and the complex extends. Sizing: a gross-reduction instruction, not a short. Do not reverse a trend that has run all month on a two-hour view. |
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| Carried forward — long the gasoline crack against the distillate crack (small, barrel-for-barrel against front-month WTI). Mark: the thesis extended for a third consecutive session. Crude −1.93%, heating oil −2.50%, gasoline −1.06%; on the week heating oil −7.07% against gasoline −1.13% and WTI −4.29%. Distillate carries the sanctioned-flow premium and is bleeding it; gasoline does not and is not. Catalyst: Iran sanctions enforcement, the Iran–Oman Hormuz talks, weekly EIA product inventories. Invalidation: a re-escalation headline adding more than $3 to the distillate crack in a session, or the gasoline crack below $50. Sizing: small, with the late-August seasonal against the gasoline leg. |
| The vol note — levels, the implied move, and what is not priced. VIX is 15.64, +1.23%, having closed at 15.45, −2.52% Tuesday inside a 15.13–16.30 range. That level asks for roughly a 0.98% S&P move today, which on a 7,677.28 close is ±75 points. VXN at 21.79 and OVX at 46.16 are delayed marks and should be read as Tuesday's closes; no live VIX term structure or S&P straddle price was retrievable this session, so the 0.98% figure is derived from the spot VIX level, not read from an options screen. The levels that matter at the open: Tuesday's close 7,677.28; the implied open 7,665.00; Tuesday's range 7,650.92–7,686.11; the round numbers 7,650 and 7,700; the 13 August record close 7,798.99, 1.56% above the market. For the Russell, 3,000 is the whole conversation — reclaimed Tuesday for one session, indicated 2,999.80. For the SOX, 11,588.0 now against 11,740 to erase Monday. What VIX at 15.64 is not pricing. Bloomberg's Mark Cranfield: “the VIX index is showing little sign of fear, sitting just above this year's low. This juxtaposition signals broader stocks are vulnerable to potential swings.” Three specific things sit outside a 0.98% distribution. (1) A 0.3% core PCE, which on Tuesday's evidence moves the September hike probability six points and the front end six to eight basis points. (2) A Nvidia guide that decelerates — the options market wants ±5.4% in a name that is roughly 8% of the index, which is ±0.43% of index-level move from one stock alone, before any correlation effect. (3) A Hormuz re-escalation, on no calendar at all, which OVX at 46 says the oil options market still respects even as the flat price falls a third day. Against that, the single largest scheduled event of the week — Chair Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote on Friday — may be the smallest, if Piper Sandler's Kurt Lewis is right that he will spend the bulk of his remarks on supply-side themes and the Task Forces rather than the 2026 policy path. Own gamma dated into today's close; do not pay up for Friday. |
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13 · S&P 500 Earnings Calendar — TODAY highlighted |
| Roster carried from the Nasdaq earnings calendar API captures screened name-by-name against an S&P 500 constituent list, cross-checked this morning against Investing.com's earnings calendar and Yahoo Finance's Wednesday reporter list. Nasdaq publishes a before-open / after-close bucket rather than a clock time, so no clock times are asserted; confirm against company investor relations before trading a date. Consensus is Investing.com's unless stated. |
| ★ TODAY — Wednesday, August 26 |
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| BMO — reporting in the next ~90 minutes (no results at this report's 7:20 AM cut-off) |
| Company | Consensus EPS | Consensus revenue | Note | | J.M. Smucker (SJM) | $2.21 | $2.12bn | $13.41bn market cap. Staples closed −0.87% Tuesday; coffee −1.80% and wheat +1.18% on the input side | | Williams-Sonoma (WSM) | No verified consensus retrieved | — | Confirmed BMO by a fifth consecutive capture. Reports into a discretionary complex repriced by Dick's −30.68% Tuesday |
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| AMC — tonight |
| Company | Consensus EPS | Consensus revenue | Note | | Nvidia (NVDA) | $2.09 (FactSet) / $2.08 (Inv.com) | $92.28bn / $91.9bn | The event. Implied move ±5.4% (~$280bn). Market cap $5.16tn. Revenue nearly doubling y/y. Has fallen the day after each of its last four reports. Networking ~$15bn last quarter, Street looking for ~$17bn | | Salesforce (CRM) | $3.27 | $11.33bn | The software category test after Intuit and Zoom (§5, §12 idea 3). Implied move not retrieved | | CrowdStrike (CRWD) | $0.2919 | $1.44bn | Implied move ~$15bn. Closed −2.8% Tuesday into the print. $188.76bn market cap | | Synopsys (SNPS) | $3.67 | $2.44bn | Rose 3.65% Tuesday into it. EDA is the cleanest design-activity read alongside Photronics | | Agilent Technologies (A) | $1.49 | $1.84bn | Rose 0.87% Tuesday after falling 3.50% Monday | | Veeva Systems (VEEV) | No verified consensus retrieved | — | Life-sciences software — a third read on the software multiple | | HP Inc. (HPQ) | $0.6578 | $14.34bn | Rose 3.48% Tuesday. The PC/memory cost pass-through name |
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| Non-S&P 500 names reporting today, listed so nobody mistakes their absence for an omission: Okta (OKTA), Nutanix (NTNX), Five Below (FIVE), Urban Outfitters (URBN), Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), Bath & Body Works (BBWI), Kohl's (KSS), Dycom (DY), Donaldson (DCI), Trip.com (TCOM), Li Auto (LI) and Photronics (PLAB) — the last two of which have already reported (§5). |
| Current week — remaining after today |
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| Thu 8/27 — BMO: Dollar General (DG), Dollar Tree (DLTR), Best Buy (BBY), Hormel Foods (HRL). |
| Thu 8/27 — AMC: Marvell Technology (MRVL), Autodesk (ADSK), Workday (WDAY), Ulta Beauty (ULTA). |
| Fri 8/28: No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket. |
| Next week — Aug 31 – Sep 4 |
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| Mon 8/31: No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket. |
| Tue 9/1 — BMO: Medtronic (MDT). AMC: Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Dell Technologies (DELL). |
| Wed 9/2 — BMO: Brown-Forman (BF.B). AMC: Broadcom (AVGO), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), NetApp (NTAP). |
| Thu 9/3 — BMO: Campbell's (CPB), Toro (TTC). AMC: Lululemon Athletica (LULU). Bucket not published: Copart (CPRT) — third consecutive capture with no designation; confirm with company IR. |
| Fri 9/4: No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket. |
| Changes versus the prior calendar (25 August Closing Daily). No additions and no removals across 8/26–8/28 or 8/31–9/4. Every S&P 500 name reappears in the same bucket on this morning's cross-check. Williams-Sonoma before the open on 26 August is confirmed by a fifth consecutive capture. Copart's missing timing bucket on 3 September persists for a third capture. Dual listings deduped: Brown-Forman carried once as BF.B, the index line. |
| What the forward calendar hands the desk. Nine S&P 500 names report today, seven of them after the close, and the two before the bell land inside the same hour as the PCE deflator. Then the calendar rolls straight into a second technology week: Palo Alto Networks and Dell on Tuesday 1 September, Broadcom, HPE and NetApp on Wednesday 2 September — so a desk that trades tonight's Nvidia guide gets a second, independent read on the same AI-capex question inside seven days. The consumer block is stacked the other way: Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Best Buy tomorrow before the bell, then Lululemon and Campbell's on 3 September, into a discretionary complex that Dick's Sporting Goods repriced by 30.68% on Tuesday. Thursday's after-close bucket is the one to note in advance — Marvell, Autodesk, Workday and Ulta on the same evening puts the semiconductor question and the enterprise-software question in front of the tape simultaneously, twenty-four hours after Nvidia and Salesforce and twelve hours before Chair Warsh speaks. |
14 · Risk Map — Today's Session |
| ★ TODAY — Event clock — Wednesday, August 26 |
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| Time ET | Event | Why it matters | | 08:30 | Core PCE, headline PCE, GDP 2nd estimate, advance durable goods, personal income and spending, corporate profits | Six releases, one minute, sixty minutes before the bell. The single largest gap risk of the morning (§7) | | 09:00 | The real reaction | Three simultaneous releases make the 8:31 print noisy. Trade the 9:00 level | | 09:30 | Cash open | Implied: S&P 7,665.00 (−12.28), Dow +4.60, NDX −14.48, Russell −10.22 and back below 3,000 | | 10:00 | Corporate Bond Market Distress Index, August | Low sensitivity | | ~11:30 | 2-Year FRN auction | Settles 28 August | | ~1:00 PM | 5-Year Note auction | Mid-session equity risk event. The belly is the one tenor that has not moved (§6) | | 4:00 PM | Cash close | | | 4:00 PM+ | Nvidia, Salesforce, CrowdStrike, Synopsys, Agilent, Veeva, HP Inc. | ±5.4% implied on an 8% index weight = ±0.43% of index move from one stock, before correlation | | Tomorrow 08:30 | Initial jobless claims | Into the Jackson Hole opening | | Friday ~10:00 | Chair Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote | Nineteen days before the 16 September FOMC |
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CROWDED CONSENSUSES TO STRESS-TEST, WITH THE NUMBER THAT BREAKS EACH ONE | 1. “Disinflation is intact and the September hike is off.” The September hike probability moved 41.4% → 35.0% on a crude headline, not on data — and on a one-week view it is 35.0% against 35.3%, unchanged. What breaks it: a core PCE at +0.3% m/m. On Tuesday's own elasticity that is worth roughly six probability points and six to eight basis points at the front, and it turns the −0.34% Russell indication into a −1% open. | | 2. “The long end is protected.” The 30-year at 5.17% ties the lowest official par close of August and has given back zero of it overnight while the 2-year gave back 44% of its rally. But Morgan Stanley's Khanduja is scaling back U.S. curve bets on the Bessent plan and Druckenmiller has called the bond buying a mistake. What breaks it: a tailing 5-year auction at 1:00 PM after a hot 8:30 print. Hedge-fund swap-spread positions were last measured at a record $305bn against under $50bn in 2022; the unwind is not small. | | 3. “Volatility is correctly priced.” VIX 15.64 implies ±75 S&P points on a day with six macro releases, an auction and a ±5.4% print in the index's largest member. What breaks it: any of the three. The FX board confirms the under-hedge — the franc is being sold on an event morning (§9). | | 4. “The semiconductor bounce is a bottom.” SOX recovered 52% of Monday's decline and stopped. Micron is already fading (−0.44% pre-market against +2.48% Tuesday), SanDisk never participated at all, and Japanese chip names slipped into their own close overnight. What breaks it: SOX failing to hold 11,494.8, Tuesday's low, on a Nvidia guide that decelerates. | | 5. “Software is a quality trade.” Intuit beat both lines, raised the dividend 15%, and lost more than a tenth of its equity for guiding 9–10% growth instead of 14%. Zoom beat and raised the year and fell 3.7% on a three-cent quarterly guide. What breaks the remaining bulls: a Salesforce guide tonight that decelerates on the same axis. | | 6. “Copper's record is a demand signal.” It is being set with 675,185 tonnes stranded in U.S. tariff storage and, per Bloomberg, “despite an easing of a severe market squeeze.” What breaks it: the squeeze finishing easing while the stranded inventory stays stranded. |
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| The two-sided geopolitical tape — what can move it either way in the next 6.5 hours. To the upside: a concrete Iran–Oman interim announcement on Hormuz transit, extending a crude decline already at −5.11% on the week for Brent and handing the front end the disinflation input the strip repriced for on Tuesday. To the downside: any tanker strike or enforcement action in the Strait — Washington's sanctions programme has now hit dozens of China and Hong Kong entities, and J.P. Morgan is explicit that “Iran reiterated that Hormuz will remain shut until conditions are met.” OVX at 46.16 is the market's own statement that it has not de-risked. Second axis: Washington is weighing further trade measures against Canada after Ottawa's retaliation, with Canada's tariffs on ~$20bn of U.S. goods effective 8 September — the materials and chemicals complex (LYB, DOW, both ~−4% Tuesday) is the direct expression, and it trades on a headline, not a calendar. |
STRUCTURAL WATCH ITEMS CARRIED FORWARD | Month-end is Monday 31 August. A bills-for-bonds twist would be least welcome into it; Tuesday's Closing Daily recorded overnight reverse repo take-up rising to $405m from $380m and $200m on 21 August, with reserve balances down to $2.935tn. Rates stabilised; the buffer did not. | | The 9 September buyback operation, the next scheduled test of the Bessent put; the 8 September Canadian tariff implementation and USMCA renewal timing; the 16 September FOMC, with the August payroll on 4 September the last labour input before it. | | The AI financing chain: SoftBank's prospective $10–20bn bond to refinance the OpenAI loan is a funding-cost read-through to every AI-capex-levered balance sheet, and it lands the same day Nvidia is asked about “a wave of financing deals.” |
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| What VIX and today's implied move are — and are not — pricing. A 15.64 handle prices a 0.98% day, roughly ±75 S&P points, on a session that contains six macro releases in one minute, a 5-year auction in the middle of the afternoon, and the largest company in the index reporting after the bell with a ±5.4% implied move. The arithmetic alone says that is thin: Nvidia's own implied move, at an 8% index weight, is ±0.43% of index-level movement from one stock before any correlation effect — which means the market is pricing roughly half of today's expected index move to come from everything else combined, including a core inflation print that moved the Fed strip six points on a crude headline twenty-four hours ago. What the surface is pricing is that the 8:30 print lands at consensus, the auction goes fine, and Nvidia's guide is close enough that the index absorbs it. What it is not pricing is any of the three going the other way, and it is emphatically not pricing them going the same way together. The tell that this is under-hedging rather than confidence is in FX: the franc is being sold and the yen bought on the same morning, which is a rate trade, not a haven trade — nobody is paying for protection anywhere on the board. The honest summary: the market has priced a quiet Wednesday into the busiest twenty-four hours of the quarter. The expression is to own convexity dated into today's close and to leave Friday alone — if Piper Sandler is right about the shape of Chair Warsh's keynote, the week's most-anticipated event is also its least consequential, and today is the one that pays. |
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| Sources. Futures with fair value and the published implied open, prior cash closes, the Asia and Europe boards, the commodities and currency boards, the live Treasury strip, the volatility complex and the S&P sector closes: CNBC (pre-markets board pulled live at ~7:00 AM ET, the CNBC quote service for the ICE dollar index at 7:19 AM, and the Wednesday markets live blog). The Markets Wrap framing, the sovereign yield marks, the Nvidia options and networking detail, the SoftBank bond story, the Zoom result, the Alibaba and copper commentary, and the Cranfield and Urbahn quotes: Bloomberg (/markets and the 26 August Markets Wrap). The Wednesday pre-market narrative, the full 8:30 release list, the Reuters Asia wrap and the Nvidia networking analysis: Yahoo Finance (26 August live blog). Pre-market movers, the most-active board, the economic calendar and the earnings calendar with consensus: Investing.com and StockAnalysis.com; pre-market news flow and the Li Auto item: Benzinga. Global 10-year sovereign yields and the full commodities board: TradingEconomics (26 August stamps verified row by row). Overnight Asia colour, the copper record, the gold inflow and the Australian CPI reaction: TechStock² (timestamped live boards). The Australian CPI detail: the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The official 25 August par curve, prior closes, prior calendars and the S&P 500 earnings roster: the 25 August Closing Daily, which carries them from Treasury.gov, the New York Fed Economic Indicators Calendar and the Nasdaq earnings calendar API. Earnings detail and analyst actions: Seeking Alpha, GuruFocus, 24/7 Wall St., StockTitan and SEC EDGAR. Bloomberg was reachable this session and was used as a primary cross-check, not a fallback. The Wall Street Journal's six sections were not read this session — the sweep was completed inside CNBC, Bloomberg, Yahoo and the data vendors, and the WSJ front-page cross-check is recorded as skipped in the companion file. Bloomberg's minus-sign-stripping trap was assumed present: no sign in this report is taken from a Bloomberg numeric table, and every direction is derived from CNBC's signed board, from TradingEconomics's signed percentage column, or from the level against a known prior close. |
| Full Source Links and Data Notes & Conflicts — including the session-vintage controls, every multi-vendor reconciliation, the quote-basis statements, the pre-market liquidity volumes and everything that could not be sourced — are in the companion text file US_CrossAsset_Opening_2026-08-26_DataNotes.txt. |
| U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily — Wednesday, August 26, 2026. Prepared for institutional investors. Not personalized investment advice; verify independently before acting. Data as of ~7:20 AM ET; news window Tue 25 Aug 4:00 PM ET to Wed 26 Aug 7:20 AM ET. Futures, fair value and the implied open are CNBC's pre-market board at 7:00 AM ET; cash index levels are Tuesday's 4:00 PM ET closes. |
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