Transcript

Too Much To Handle. · ANGLES.

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Too much to handle, my weekly market review, August 23rd, 2026.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: Following a weak volume,
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SPEAKER_00: low volatility trading week in the stock market
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SPEAKER_00: that nevertheless solidified August gains and a generally quiet weekend on
0:19
SPEAKER_00: the newswires,
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SPEAKER_00: Monday marked the expiry of the 60-day Memorandum of Understanding,
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SPEAKER_00: intended to be a pause during which a resolution to
0:28
SPEAKER_00: the U.S.-Iran war could be crafted, but which has clearly been a total failure.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Trump, faced with record low approval ratings,
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SPEAKER_00: went back to bashing and threatening international allies,
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SPEAKER_00: picking particularly on South Korea and Oman.
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SPEAKER_00: We'll bomb the shit out of them.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: And refloated the idea of an illegal US ownership claim over the Strait of Hormuz.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: While energy prices continue to head north on the back
0:59
SPEAKER_00: of this cack-handed diplomacy,
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SPEAKER_00: stock markets still seem desensitized and uninterested,
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SPEAKER_00: eventually drifting aimlessly into the red in another low-volume trading session,
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SPEAKER_00: but with some juicy retail earnings to look forward to later in the week.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Longer term U.S.
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SPEAKER_00: bonds sank further as 20
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SPEAKER_00: and 30 year interest rates continued their relentless march higher
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SPEAKER_00: into multi-decade high territory.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: And the same story is unfolding in Japan and Europe as bond vigilantes around
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SPEAKER_00: the world flexed their muscles.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Home Depot posted solid results on Tuesday morning,
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SPEAKER_00: but it wasn't enough to offset deepening oil price inflation
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SPEAKER_00: and interest rate concerns,
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SPEAKER_00: and the indexes stumbled out of the gate and fell badly,
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SPEAKER_00: dragged down by another bloodbath in chip stocks.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: A busy pre-market on Wednesday saw Target,
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SPEAKER_00: stock price up 57% so far this year,
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SPEAKER_00: put out an encouraging earnings report but Lowe's and TJ Maxx, not so much.
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SPEAKER_00: Oil prices moved back above $90 as rhetoric from both sides ramped up again.
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SPEAKER_00: Treasury Secretary Besant blinked in the face of the strong bond market pushback
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SPEAKER_00: and scrambled to announce government intervention to try and artificially stop
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SPEAKER_00: the recent surge in long-term interest rates.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: These soaring long-term rates are an embarrassment for the Trump administration
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SPEAKER_00: and this was a transparent attempt by Besant to try and make
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SPEAKER_00: the picture look prettier even though this means potentially undermining
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SPEAKER_00: the Federal Reserve.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: The immediate reaction from the bond market was
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SPEAKER_00: to push long-term interest rates much lower but without much conviction
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SPEAKER_00: that this would last very long.
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SPEAKER_00: Non-tech stocks rebounded to close higher,
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SPEAKER_00: boosted by Moderna,
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SPEAKER_00: which more than doubled in value in a matter of minutes after
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SPEAKER_00: the company reported positive results from a late-stage trial
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SPEAKER_00: of its melanoma vaccine, but is still 70% down from its COVID high.
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SPEAKER_00: Chipmakers and AI names, however, remain mostly in the doldrums.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Walmart's earnings disappointed on Thursday morning, and the stock got whacked.
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SPEAKER_00: The euphoria surrounding Moderna swiftly evaporated and the stock gave back a chunk
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SPEAKER_00: of Wednesday's gains.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Oil prices continued to grind higher for a fifth straight day.
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SPEAKER_00: As widely anticipated,
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SPEAKER_00: the brief bond rally brought about by Besant's Band-Aid attempt from the day
3:40
SPEAKER_00: before Completely unraveled in less than 24 hours,
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SPEAKER_00: and long-term interest rates resumed their advance with confirmation of
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SPEAKER_00: an accelerating $40 trillion plus national debt,
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SPEAKER_00: once projected by the Congressional Budget Office in 2001 to be zero by 2009,
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SPEAKER_00: generating interest payments alone from U.S. taxpayers of $3 billion per day.
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SPEAKER_00: This was all too much bad news for stocks to handle,
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SPEAKER_00: and an ugly trading session saw all the indexes drop precipitously.
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SPEAKER_00: BJ's Wholesale rounded off Retail Earnings Week with some decent numbers.
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SPEAKER_00: Dip buyers finally emerged from under their rock on Friday,
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SPEAKER_00: and the indexes rebounded,
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SPEAKER_00: finishing higher on the day but still in the red for the week.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Despite Besant's best efforts at market manipulation,
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SPEAKER_00: the 30-year Treasury interest rate ended the week higher than it began.
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SPEAKER_00: Bond market one, Scott Besant zero.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: Potential fireworks this week include NVIDIA's earnings report on Wednesday and
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SPEAKER_00: the Federal Reserve's annual boondoggle in Jackson Hole,
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SPEAKER_00: where every word out of Chairman Walsh's mouth will be micro-analyzed by Wall Street
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SPEAKER_00: for clues about Fed interest rate policy.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: Some other things I'm thinking about.
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SPEAKER_00: Americans would rather live near a nuclear power plant than an AI data center.
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SPEAKER_00: This is becoming a live electoral issue with midterms coming up and
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SPEAKER_00: the 2028 general election a little over two years away.
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SPEAKER_00: Yet close to a trillion dollars has been pledged to data center build outs
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SPEAKER_00: by Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Google, Meta, and Oracle alone.
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SPEAKER_00: Some states are welcoming them with open arms, Texas,
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SPEAKER_00: Georgia,
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SPEAKER_00: Virginia,
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SPEAKER_00: while others are imposing severe restrictions, New York, Pennsylvania, Maine.
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SPEAKER_00: There's definitely a world where this AI backlash starts to become
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SPEAKER_00: a real combustible planning problem for these firms and begins
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SPEAKER_00: to impact stock prices.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: VEDA partners Henrietta Trays probably put it best on Bloomberg TV.
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SPEAKER_00: If you're polling worse than nuclear waste, then I can't help you.
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SPEAKER_00: Bitcoin had its best week in three years and gold is on track for its best month this century.
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SPEAKER_00: With waning confidence in the global dominance of the United States impacting
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SPEAKER_00: the value of the US dollar, the supposed alternatives are having a moment.