Weekly Newsletter August 31 – 06 September

Analyst Highlights

• Risk assets held up despite tighter-rate expectations, suggesting investors remain willing to absorb macro pressure when earnings and AI-related growth remain supportive.
• The August jobs report shifted the rate narrative, keeping a September Fed hike in play and reinforcing upward pressure across global sovereign yields.
• Investor positioning turned more defensive, with strong money-market inflows and equity-fund outflows signaling a preference for liquidity amid rising macro uncertainty.
• Private-credit liquidity deserves attention, as elevated Blackstone redemption requests highlight growing scrutiny around liquidity in alternative investment vehicles.
• AI remains a dominant capital-allocation theme, with Broadcom, Nvidia and Anthropic pointing to continued multibillion-dollar spending across chips, compute and infrastructure.
• Geopolitics is increasingly feeding directly into markets, particularly through energy security, trade relations, sovereign yields and broader risk sentiment.

IPO’s in the week

• TurboGen (TRBG, Nasdaq) — Completed its direct listing on Nasdaq on Sep 3, 2026, with shares beginning trading at a reference/opening price of $10.79; the listing did not raise new capital through an IPO offering.
• Three Lions Acquisition (TLACU, Nasdaq) — A blank-check company pursuing a future business combination, priced its IPO at $10.00 per share on Sep 1, 2026, offering 10,000,000 shares to raise approximately $100.0M for a future business combination.

Markets Weekly

1. 1. S&P 500 closed at 7,718.60, rising 32.46 points, or 0.42%, for the week.
   2. Russell 1000 closed at 4,204.38, rising 17.15 points, or 0.41%, for the week.
   3. Russell 2000 closed at 2,975.65, rising 19.20 points, or 0.65%, for the week.
   4. Russell 3000 closed at 4,386.91, rising 18.31 points, or 0.42%, for the week.
   5. CBOE (VIX) closed at 14.53, falling 0.39 points, or 2.61%, for the week.
   6. Dow Jones (DJI) closed at 53,414.25, rising 228.35 points, or 0.43%, for the week.
   7. Nasdaq Composite closed at 26,506.99, rising 136.10 points, or 0.52%, for the week.
   8. Bitcoin closed at $80,022.85, rising $1,474.22, or 1.88%, for the week.
   9. Ethereum closed at $2,509.93, rising $43.11, or 1.75%, for the week.
   10. Solana closed at $105.85, rising $2.85, or 2.77%, for the week.
   11. XRP closed at $1.4190, rising $0.0400, or 2.90%, for the week.
   12. Gold closed at $4,429.80, falling $1.30, or 0.03%, for the week.
   13. Silver closed at $66.047, falling $0.174, or 0.26%, for the week.
   14. WTI Crude closed at $91.48, rising $5.72, or 6.67%, for the week.
   15. Brent Crude closed at $96.28, rising $5.79, or 6.40%, for the week.

• August payrolls surged 162,000 versus 56,000 expected; unemployment held at 4.1%, keeping a September Fed rate hike firmly in play.
• Global borrowing costs hit multi-decade highs as inflation and debt concerns drove Japan’s 10-year yield to 3% and Treasuries higher.
• Global money-market funds drew $46.1 billion, the largest inflow in nearly a month, while U.S. equity funds lost $11.12 billion.
• Blackstone’s flagship private-credit fund received redemption requests near 10% of shares, while its quarterly repurchase cap remained 5%.
• The U.S. trade deficit widened 24.4% to $88.6 billion as record capital-goods imports reflected strong AI-related investment demand.
• Broadcom’s quarterly AI-chip sales more than tripled to $16.7 billion, with 2027 revenue forecast at roughly $115 billion.
• China announced $54 billion of capital injections into state banks and insurers to strengthen financial stability and support credit expansion.

Politics Weekly

• The U.S. launched new strikes on Iran, prompting missile and drone retaliation as conflict around the Strait of Hormuz intensified.
• The U.S., Britain, France and Germany sought an IAEA resolution reporting Iran to the U.N. Security Council over nuclear-inspection failures.
• U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin and Zelenskiy, seeking renewed negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
• G20 finance chiefs, excluding China, backed action against non-market policies and export dependence, sharpening pressure on Beijing over trade imbalances.
• Germany blamed Russia for the Leipzig/Halle drone attack and closed Russian diplomatic facilities, escalating tensions between Berlin and Moscow.
• China’s Xi Jinping urged a new Middle East security framework during his Egypt visit, signaling Beijing’s push for greater regional influence.
• Germany’s AfD won Saxony-Anhalt with 44%, securing a historic state victory and intensifying pressure on Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
• U.S. and Chinese officials prepared mid-September AI-safety talks focused on cyber risks ahead of Trump and Xi’s planned summit.

Technology Advancements in the week

• OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra, its first model rated Critical for cybersecurity, capable of identifying and exploiting previously unknown software vulnerabilities.
• Anthropic signed a $35 billion Lambda cloud deal for Texas computing capacity, accelerating its infrastructure expansion ahead of a planned IPO.
• Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face for roughly $13 billion, strengthening its position across open-source AI models and developer infrastructure.
• Nvidia invested $3.5 billion in MediaTek, expanding NVLink Fusion into custom AI chips and strengthening its broader semiconductor ecosystem.
• World Labs unveiled Atlas, an omni world model natively generating, reconstructing and simulating 3D environments from multimodal inputs.
• IBM released its 120-qubit Nighthawk r2 processor, surpassing 100,000 circuits per second while delivering up to 25-times Heron’s throughput.
• Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum reached orbit from Norway carrying five satellites, marking continental Europe’s first commercial orbital launch.

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