“Tonight’s main course will be… Smoked Bear with a Shortseller Salad and a side of margin calls.”

Heading into this morning’s CPI report, I was bracing for an experience like the last (and final) time I ate gas station sushi… looks fine under the fluorescent lights, but one bite and you know “this is NOT what I was hoping for.” I had the whole scene pictured: inflation comes in hot, the market drops a few points, and Jerome Powell gives us a patronizing pat on the head and says, “No rate cuts for you, champ.”

Instead, Powell came in like a one-man saloon brawl, kicking open the doors in an apron that read, “Kiss the Chef (and the Rate Cut),” and roasted the bears so thoroughly you could plate them up at Texas Roadhouse (extra rolls on the side, of course).

And speaking of delicious numbers, here’s what got served: July CPI landed at 2.7% versus 2.8% expected, with Core CPI at 3.1% against a 3.0% forecast. Would Powell like those numbers lower? Absolutely. But with Trump threatening to spill the Fed’s $3 billion HQ renovation receipts, J-Pow decided it was time to start oiling the BRRR machine. (If you listen closely, you can already hear the faint hum of true America… “devaluing our country’s currency”... doesn’t it just warm your patriotic little heart?)

That’s right… and if you really want me to make your day, get this: the CME FedWatch tool now has September cuts at 91.8%, October at 66.3%, and December at 56.7%. You have my permission to cry tears of joy, because that’s three potential cuts before we get GTA 6 (just add it to the list of all the other stuff we somehow got first). And if you’re wondering how the market reacted to Jerome cooking up a storm? Oh, it feasted. The Dow ripped 463 points (+1.1%), the S&P 500 added 1.1%, and the Nasdaq climbed 1.3%... both hitting fresh intraday highs. But the Russell 2000? It lost its damn mind, nearly tripling the S&P’s gain (small caps treat low rates like free samples at Costco… grab everything in sight and ask no questions).

Over in single-stock land, Tesla basically took the day off (+0.8%)... which, for Elon, is like sitting quietly for more than three seconds. Not bad, considering Guggenheim lobbed a 48% downside target at it earlier, like serving divorce papers in public. Even next month’s much-hyped Austin Robotaxi launch (the supposed marquee Tesla event of the year) couldn’t get Wall Street’s pulse up. At this point, the stock’s been pricing in “next big thing” promises for so long, even Elon’s PR tours feel like reruns.

AST SpaceMobile, on the other hand, lit up 10% after announcing plans to fling 45-60 satellites into orbit by 2026, including direct-to-device coverage for the U.S. government. While it’s clearly a “look at our rocket” flex… it’s also a land grab in the trillion-dollar “everywhere internet” race against Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper. Government contracts = predictable cash flow… and Wall Street loves predictable cash flow almost as much as it loves insider trading (allegedly).

Intel climbed 4% after Trump pulled a NASCAR U-turn on CEO Lip-Bu Tan… one day saying “fire him,” the next saying “give this man a trophy.” Nvidia barely twitched even after Trump floated letting them sell a 30–50% weaker Blackwell chip to China… basically the Poppi of AI hardware (smells like AI if you stand close enough).

For all you crypto junkies… Circle Internet Group popped 7% after revenue surged 53% year-over-year to $658.1M, thanks to USDC demand. So yes, stablecoins are still alive (even if 90% of people who hold them couldn’t explain what they actually do without Googling it first).

But yeah, the main story of the day is we’re finally getting what some of us have been asking for over four years… Inflation’s cooling, Powell’s got the BRRR machine on warm-up mode, and meme stocks are next to roar (expect Sydney Sweeney’s face to be plastered on a GameStop ad any day now).

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 this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Tesla, Intel, and Gamestop as mentioned in the article.