“What the F*k, Richard Nvidia?”... 

Well today was a drag. The S&P 500 slipped -0.59% to 6,411 while the Nasdaq shat the bed (down -1.46%), as Nvidia pulled the whole sector down with it. In short, Obi-Huang’s saber dropped -3.5%, AMD fell -5.4%, and Broadcom slid - 3.6%. Palantir got smoked the worst… down -9%... cementing its place as Wall Street’s emotional support piñata of the day. 

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Meanwhile, the Dow briefly touched a record high before staggering home flat, powered by none other than Home Depot. Shares popped 3% despite an earnings miss, because apparently just not completely imploding counts as good news in retail now. Lowe’s (+2.2%), Walmart (-1.01%), and Target (+0.41%)step up to the plate this week, and those reports will show whether the U.S. consumer is still flush… or about to max out their last Capital One card on their wives “honey do” list. 

On the macro front, investors are all but chain-smoking in anticipation of Powell’s Jackson Hole speech, looking for any sign of cuts, pauses, or divine intervention. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent casually mentioned he’ll start interviewing Fed chair candidates after Labor Day. Savage. 

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Elsewhere, Amazon  (-1.5%) got a fresh price target bump to $300 from Loop Capital, who thinks AWS will keep printing cash like a counterfeit operation blessed by Lord himself. Investors on the other hand, weren’t impressed. As for crypto-linked names… well, they cratered as Bitcoin dropped -2%. Robinhood and MicroStrategy each fell -7%, while miners like Mara and Riot tumbled -5% and -3%, respectively. What do the kids say these days? Oh yeah… “no crying in the casino”. 

But, but, but… make way for Viking Therapeutics who won the award for the worst clusterf*k of the day. Shares plummeted -42% after its obesity pill trial disappointed. Market cap evaporated from $4B to $2.7B overnight, leaving Eli Lilly (+0.8%) and Novo Nordisk (+1.95%) sitting pretty as the only dealers at the pharma buffet. 

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In the end, the Nasdaq got waterboarded by the very AI hype stocks that have carried it all year. Meaning, this is just another testament that tells us all: When Nvidia sneezes, the whole sector gets a cold. So yeah… that’s today’s action in a nutshell. For now though, make sure you have your chips in order… especially as we get the FOMC meeting minutes tomorrow, and the jobless claims on Thursday. Until next time, friends… 

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Robinhood and Amazon as mentioned in the article.