Interesting TACs of the Week (August 24 – August 30, 2026)

 

Summary – A top-down review of interesting calls and comments made last week in Treasuries, monetary policy, economics, stocks, bonds & commodities. TAC is our acronym for Tweets, Articles, & Clips – our basic inputs for this article.

• Editor’s Note: In this series of articles, we include important or interesting Tweets, Articles, Video Clips with our comments. This is an article that expresses our personal opinions about comments made on Television, Tweeter, and in Print. It is NOT intended to provide any investment advice of any type whatsoever. No one should base any investing decisions or conclusions based on anything written in or inferred from this article. Macro Viewpoints & its affiliates expressly disclaim all liability in respect to actions taken based on any or all of the information in this article. Investing is a serious matter and all investment decisions should only be taken after a detailed discussion with your investment advisor and should be subject to your objectives, suitability requirements and risk tolerance.

 

1. Perennial Wisdom 

• Peter Mallouk@PeterMallouk – Aug 22 – The real luxuries in life...

 

2. Markets Last Week

2.1 US Indices:

• VIX down 4.9% to 14.41; Dow up 53 bps; SPX up 50 bps; RSP down 44 bps; NDX up 42 bps; RUT down 1.5%; MDY down 1.3%; XLU down 9 bps; SMH down 1.3%;  SOXL down 7.7%;

Despite the big indices closing a bit higher, the week was essentially ho-hum, if not actually weaker. That, once again, showed Warren Pies was right about going to neutral a week ago. Now going un-bullish is not a desired trait among CNBC guests. So Warren Pies was moved away from Closing Bell Overtime & Mike Santoli to the last couple of minutes of the earlier Closing Bell. And that appearance was also NOT included in the segments of Closing Bell exhibited on CNBC.com. 

Fortunately for us, a smart viewer named Joe Fritsky had videotaped the screen appearance of Warren Pies & later posted it on X.  

Before that, we had heard the Warren Pies clip under short & sharp questioning by CNBC’s Contessa Brewer at https://x.com/FritzOptions/status/2093430303700439314/video/1. With sincere thanks to Mr. Fritsky, below is our summary of it:

• (Contessa Brewer – CB) – Warren, you get bragging rights today; because a couple of weeks ago, you downgraded equities thinking that risk of a September hike was under-priced; where do you think it stands now?
• Pies – Thx, I appreciate that; I will take bragging rights whenever I can get them. I think with the move today Fed hike odds have moved up from 30% to now 60%;
• CB – Are you constructive on stocks now because of what happened in Jackson Hole?
• Pies – No! I am less constructive; I think that the equity market is still digesting this; initial move of these Fed meetings is always a little tricky; you saw the market trying to rally in the beginning of the day; then it obviously faded; I am looking for more weakness from the equity market between here & at least till the next data card gets flipped over – CPI, PPI, Labor Report could save us. But if those things stay the same & oil remains where it is at, we are going to get a hike in September and the market is NOT priced for it;
• CB – If equities is not the place to be, then what are you looking at? where is your holding pattern?
• Pies – We have been Over-weight Cash; … we just wanted to reduce our excess risk. So I don’t think I am overly bearish; we took that money & put it in cash; once the Fed starts hiking, we are going from an environment from a Fed that had your back to potentially one where the Fed is trying to break your back; … I think Cash is King until you get a little more clarity here. And then looking beyond the Fed to the mid-term elections, I don’t think the market has really priced in risk;
• CB – how many hikes would you say are coming between now & end of year?
• Pies – my guess is two – 1 in September  & 2 in December. I think that is a mistake ; I wouldn’t be hiking but I play the field as it lies & not as I want it to be, esp. the hike in September.

Below is a generally bullish clip with Mark Newton, the well-known Technician from Fundstrat. Note however that his comments about NVDA’s rally after earnings reflect Friday morning’s early rally in NVDIA. As we all know now, NVDA began selling off shortly after Fed Chair Warsh began speaking and fell from $229 ish to $217.89 at Friday’s close. Newton doesn’t seem to know that while he was speaking and neither did CNBC host Sullivan.

Below is a summary of Newton’s comments from the clip’s transcript.

• Mark Newton – MN – Look, we had a big breakout from late July. We pulled back about six, seven days. The move from Nvidia and their announcement was certainly a gamechanger I think for the AI trade and for tech as well as what Scott Besson announced earlier terms of adding global liquidity doubling the buyback. We that helped crypto that helped gold silver uh certainly has been a relief to risk assets in general.
• MN – I like technology here but I also like healthcare materials energy. I don’t think that you know the geopolitical situation unfortunately is not getting better as quickly as we want. So we’ve seen big breakouts on commodities across the board. Grains broke out yesterday. It looked very very good to me. But yeah, technology has been under pressure for now 3 months. It’s been a very choppy trade and I think Nvidia’s announcement about their 2028 uh you know revenue was certainly a game changer. It was almost double what the street had expected.
• Brian Sullivan – BS – There are 11 S&P 500 sectors and until a couple of moments ago there was only one that was higher. That’s how we led the show. technology. Energy is now slightly higher as well. Energy is up 38% as a sector year to date. Sounds like you think it’s going to go even higher.
• MN – I think you know unfortunately it likely will between now and year end. It won’t be a straight shot.
• BS – Can this market and again I know it’s one day so you know again I don’t want to make too much over one or couple of days that most of the market is down but technology is so big it’s so mighty. It’s so powerful. It’s pulling everything up. As a technician, do you care why the market goes up if it’s just one sector or maybe two out of 11?
• MN – Yeah, honestly, I don’t see it as being one sector. I know with regards to the earnings strength, that has been the case. But when you look at what’s happened with financials in recent months, in healthcare, which has come back from the dead after almost three years of underperformance, um, you know, these are really important groups for the market. I mean, combined, they’re about 25%. So those are the fact that technology had a big correction and these groups helped to sort of buoy the market the market didn’t decline it just went sideways from May until July. And you know if we had all of technology going down at once that would have been a bigger deal but we saw it you know in piece you know step by step software initially then we saw hyperscalers mag 7 it went to semis and then finally to the memory space and so fortunately you know some of these stocks were down 20 30 40% but yet the market largely went sideways.
• MN – Why is that? Well, thanks to financials, thanks to healthcare, thanks parts of the market that were rallying to support things. So, the first thing is that normally, look, you expect a correction in the fall, the breadth is much better than it is normally most years. The second is that sentiment is still largely off sides. People have concerns about inflation, about the endgame for the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. 
• MN – Well, that’s (VIX going down) to be expected if in a good way. … As a former option trader at the CBOE, I can say that you need something unexpected normally for the VIX to have a big dramatic spike that’ll start to trend and we haven’t seen that. Things have been pretty orderly. Despite all the bad news, so to speak, there’s a lot of good news that investors should be paying attention to with regards to earning strength. profit growth is the best in about 30 years. The economy is clicking. So yes, there are obviously things we all want to worry about. When you have defensive sectors that are deteriorating, that’s not normally a time you want to be really concerned.
• MN – But be that as it may, I think you’re probably still in for a choppy period between, you know, mid-September into November. A lot of that has to do with long-term interest rates. Can Bessant help the long end of the curve not dramatically start to increase? We’ve seen that all across the world. US has been the best house in a bad neighborhood. Now all of a sudden the 30-year broke out, the 10 year to Rick’s point earlier hasn’t really moved to the same extent. But my thinking is we need to see their firepower. That likely comes on September the 9th. If Warsh says nothing, if he doesn’t address the economy, then uh you know, we have that risk premium, term premium that’s going to be added, long rates creep up. That could be an eventual risk for the stock market along with oil going to 100. Outside of that, I don’t see a lot of worry technically right now with what’s going on. And I like the market between now and next spring. kind of a choppy choppy period.
• BS – You know, new highs ahead. So says Mark Newton. And we’re all circling September 9th.That is that next big treasury operation. Mark Newton, Fund Strat, global head of technical strategy. 

 

2.2 MAG 7:

• AAPL up 3.4%; AMZN up 3%; GOOGL up 51 bps; META up 5.1%; MSFT up 6.3%; NFLX up 2.7%; SMH down 1.3%;  SOXL down 7.7%;  NVDA up 1.3%; MU down 3.5%; SNDK down 7%;  IBM down 4 bps; IGV up 5.9%; CRM up 22.39%; PANW up 3.8%; NOW up 12.6%; PLTR up 3.5%; 

As Mark Newton said above, “the 30-yr broke out” and followed up with “risk premium, term premium that’s going to be added”. What did veteran Tech investor Dan Niles (DN) say on Friday? 

• “DN – I have a simple rule – Don’t Fight the Fed. So, in the near term, if you look at the way have responded, you can argue it is bullish – Mag 7, as of right now, are up 1.5%; SPX up 0.4% but Russell is down 1/2%; I think that speaks to the fact that people don’t want to fight the Fed; hikes probably coming; odds have moved from 35% to over 50% now. But the 10-yr is still up, last time I looked, like 1 bp. There is potentially more than 1 rate hike coming & so people are trying to hide in bigger cap names. Don’t forget Mag 7 aren’t up much this year; they are up 5.5%. So on a relative basis, there is good earnings growth there; not a bad place to hide if you are concerned and you don’t want to fight the Fed.”
• “DN – there are very few things Democrats & Republicans can agree on – data centers are BAD …. I look at this & I say – that is going to be a head-wind; … correction in the market between now & early November“
• “Contessa Brewer – CB – How are you positioning for big cloud infrastructure guys  in your portfolio?“
• “DN – I have more shorts than longs & I am hiding out in the bigger cap names; the good news is last month was very good for the cloud infrastructure names; if you look at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, their revenue growth for the March quarter was 35% in cloud business; that accelerated to 43% in the June quarter and operating margins for those three, they expanded by 2%; that’s kind of where I am focused right now – where I am seeing some return of invested capital  which I like; On the short side, obviously, as you step down the cap curve and you move up in terms of higher valuation stocks; you got to be a lot more concerned; … this pushback against data centers is not good either; something I am watching every day“

 

Then Dan Niles said something that has been wiped out of the above clip – He specifically talked about when Cisco had huge numbers which fell apart the following year because customers had double-booked orders expecting continuous very high demand growth. When that didn’t happen, Niles said Cisco stock fell hard. Then we heard him say that he is concerned about that with NVDIA and added he is sure there is a lot of double-ordering there.  Let us be 100% clear. This is directly as we remember; it happened so fast that we didn’t even have the time to scribble notes. So there is a possibility that we heard wrong or misinterpreted what we thought Niles said. 

We added that here because we think it is incumbent on CNBC to release the full quotes from Dan Niles. Because if there is even a 1% possibility that we heard Niles correctly, then CNBC owes it to ALL Viewers to post the exact quotes of Mr. Niles. From our own personal view, nothing would please us MORE than be assured that Niles didn’t say anything of the sort we believe we heard about Cisco & NVDIA similarity. 

So CNBC, help us all and release the full transcript of what Niles said on CNBC on Friday. 

How pervasive is AI? Just see what we saw this past week!

• J.C. Parets @JC_ParetsX – Sat 8-29 – And this was all just this week.

So how painful can its unwind be? Below is a view from one who handled the previous housing disaster  well – Steve Eisman. 

Since you see the ‘Immediate Recession’ broadcast right on the front page of the clip below, let us quote the couple of lines at the clip’s beginning:

• “Tomorrow if OpenAI failed, the U.S. Economy, I think, would go into an immediate recession and the market will have a massive correction; I think it is nerve-wracking that the entire US economy is dependent on two companies that lose billions and the entire tax-base sells off“

Now to some of the details behind the above from the clip below at minute 4:01:

• “If you look at the US GDP growth this year, it is going to be around 2%; half of it is from AI-CapEx – that’s public information. And NVDIA just reported as you mentioned – revenue was up more than 100%; however 70% of its Account Receivable was from 5 companies – we don’t know who they are but we can pretty much guess a bunch of them… the way I sort of see the entire AI story is that NVDIA sells clips to Hyperscalars; 70% of Hyperscalar AI revenue is from Anthropix and OpenAI and that equates to about 25%-30% of their cloud revenue; if you look at just Oracle, 50% of its $600 billion backlog is just from OpenAI;”
• “so in a sense the way I think about this is, the entire AI-ecosystem hinges upon the health & future success of Anthropix and OpenAI. I think it is a little nerve-wracking that the entire US economy is dependent on two companies that lose billions and I would say between the two, OpenAI is the weak sister“
• “I am pretty sure that Anthropic’s revenue story would be good thru June … I actually think the 3rd & 4th quarters are going to be much more interesting for Anthropic & Open AI than the first half of the year and I am hoping to get some clarity on Anthropic when they put out their S-1“

At this point, the host asks a pointed question – “If we see evidence that B2B sales are slowing down, what does that mean first for Semiconductors & then the rest of the tech space?“

• Eisman – “I think, the whole tech space sells off“
• Host – “Was that the July Sell-off?“
• Eisman – “No. that was like the preview“

Then the host made a sensible request that Eisman describe a couple of real & visible variables that might warn investors of a potential sell-off. Eisman gave 2 :

1. revenue growth for the 2nd half of this year,
2. w.r.t. Open AI – Q2 Anthropic revenue was $11.5 billion and was up 100% over the March quarter; OpenAI had $6.5 billion in revenue and it was up only 18% over the March quarter; worse its costs went to $12.5 billion, up $3billion in 3 months; revenue up $1 billion sequentially & costs up $3 billion sequentially; that’s not the right direction

 

 

Since lower long duration rates are positive for better technology revenue & multiples & higher long duration revenues are almost poison, we have to wonder whether this is why $NVDA sold off by $12 during the day on Friday, August 28?

Remember what Mark Newton said to CNBC’s Sullivan on the same day – Friday, August 28?

• “It’s been a very choppy trade and I think Nvidia’s announcement about their 2028 uh you know revenue was certainly a game changer. It was almost double what the street had expected.“

It is our fervent wish that Mr. Newton proves to be correct. If not, might CNBC’s Brian Sullivan call him & ask him if Fed Chair Warsh’s verbal action against 30-yr USTs makes Mr. Newton change his optimism?

 

2.3 Key Financials:

• BAC up 1%; C up 95 bps; GS down 51 bps; JPM up 1.7%; KRE down 75 bps; EUFN up 24 bps; SCHW down 1.9%; APO up 1.8%; BX down 69 bps; KKR up 18 bps; XHB down 1.8%; ITB down 1.1%; NAIL down 3.6%;

 

2.4 – Dollar & Metals

• UUP up 1%; DXY up 84 bps; Gold down 3.7%; GDX down 3.1%; Silver down 4.4%; Copper up 68 bps; CLF up 3.1%;  FCX down 27 bps; MOS down 3.3%; Oil down 3.9%; Brent down 4.9%; OIH up 72 bps; XLE down 1.5%; PBR down 3.2%;

What a period of unbridled joy in the Commodity space, especially the Agricultural Commodities space!

• Otavia (Tavi) Costa @TavoCosta – Agricultural commodities have just broken decisively above nearly 20 years of resistance. And this is happening while ▪️Diesel prices approach all-time highs ▪️Mortgage rates hover near 7%, with housing already deeply unaffordable ▪️Wealth inequality stands near historic extremes. This is precisely the kind of combination that can trigger widespread social unrest, dramatic policy shifts, and intense political pressure. None of us own enough hard assets. https://tavicosta.substack.com/p/seeds-of-an-affordability-crisis?r=2m39jp&utm_medium=ios

We have all read what Marie Antoinette said in her days. But how deliriously happy CNBC’s Steve Liesman must be with 30-yr rates shooting up, mortgage rates shooting up, diesel prices making people choose between driving & eating. Reminiscent of the days of Lenin, right Mr. Liesman!

Of course, because Steve Liesman barely heard anything else Friday morning, because the new Fed Chair  actually called him by his name. And what does an ecstatic Steve Liesman do? He immediately proceeds to butcher an important Indian Name just to broadcast that he can do so in this new Fed regime!

More broadly, the only really happy people we saw were the members of the Fed who were radiantly beaming at the prospect of blowing up 30-yr Treasury rates in their insane drive to kill potential inflation by first nearly bankrupting the American non-millionaire class.  And historians dare criticize Marie Antoinette, their Goddess!   

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖 @MikeZaccardi – Aug 28 – Ag commodities $DBA … absolutely ripping

Look at the candle on the right!

 

2.5 – International Stocks:

• EEM up 3 bps; EMXC up 36 bps; FXI down 98 bps; KWEB down 1.3%;  BABA down 37 bps; EWZ up 1.4%; EWY up 1.4%; EWJ up 72 bps; EWG up 88 bps; INDA down 16 bps; INDY up 18 bps; EPI down 5 bps; SMIN up 12 bps; IBN down 10 bps; HDB down 2.2%;

 

2.6 Treasuries & Interest Rates 

• 30-year Treasury yield down 6.2 bps on the week; 20-yr yield down 5.1 bps; 10-yr down 0.8 bps; 7-yr up 3.2 bps; 5-yr up 6.3 bps; 3-yr up 10 bps; 2-yr up 12.4 bps; 1-yr up 12.1 bps;
• TLT up 1.01%; EDV up 1.9%; ZROZ up 2.3%; HYG up 16 bps; JNK up 10 bps; EMB up 18 bps:

Isn’t the right edge below just the reverse of the candle we saw in the $DBA chart in Section 2.4 above?

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖 @MikeZaccardi – Aug 28 – $TLT – big ole shadow on the daily candle... bears snagged control from the bulls

Going back a couple of days:

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖 @MikeZaccardi – 8-25 – Citi US Economic Surprise Index: Down sharply from the June high @yardeni

How do you address a sharply down economic index? Make it go down harder & faster to prove your resolve?

Finally how did David Rosenberg view the economy before Friday’s speech?

• Tue 8-25 – Challenging the “Resilience” Narrative: The U.S. economy is now trending below potential growth at around +1.5% annualized, and half that growth is coming from the AI boom, and the other half from the equity wealth effect on spending, which has caused there to be a 2-percentage-point gap between flat real incomes and consumer spending (as in, the savings rate depleted to a four-year low). The U.S. economy is losing momentum. The FIBER leading economic index has wound back to where it was in mid-December of last year. The Economic Surprise Index is negative and back to where it was in early January. The inflation surprise index is below the zero-line too and back at the same level as mid-February. …

And what did he post on Friday, August 28?

The most interesting message we saw on Friday was attributed to Torsten Slok of Apollo:

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖 @MikeZaccardi Sat 8-29 – The risk is rising that long rates six months from now could be much lower than they are today. $TLT $TYX Torste at Apollo

Awesome! Fed’s job is done. Retire those folks at the FOMC? Or the long rates will be so high in 6 months that they can only fall. 

An interesting view below:

• Warren Pies@WarrenPies – A few post JH macro opinions that feel out of consensus ATM:
  • 1) The core of the FOMC – Waller, Williams, Powell – are in control. Warsh is calculating how to handle this.
    2) There is little signal in the 30y yield (10y is key).
    3) Hiking will be a policy mistake.

Was the earlier calculation of Chair Warsh to oppose them? That only created public grief for him. So is his current calculation to try & join them?

 

Send your feedback to editor.macroviewpoints@gmail.com Or @MacroViewpoints on X.