Youth Finance First
3rd-14th August
Tell me about the past two weeks.
Research By : Aarav Singh
Records, Reddit, and a Restless Bond Market
Two weeks that started shaky ended at a fresh high — the S&P 500 climbed from 7,489 on July 31 to a record close of 7,798.99 last Thursday, its 27th all-time high of the year.Bonds stayed a background worry the whole stretch. The 10-year spiked to a 19-month high near 4.75% mid-week on hawkish signals from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, then eased back toward 4.65% by Friday. The 30-year kept grinding toward 19-year highs around 5.25%, a reminder that long-run inflation and debt-supply concerns haven't gone anywhere.Oil was the more interesting swing. Tensions around the Strait of Hormuz stayed elevated the whole time, but prices didn't just march higher — Brent actually dropped about $6 in a single day in early August, and a mid-stretch combination of OPEC and IEA both cutting their 2026 demand forecasts, plus a surprise 17-million-barrel build in U.S. inventories, pulled crude back under $89 even with the standoff unresolved. It settled the two weeks around $87.
Tariffs were less about new numbers and more about their side effects. With duties locked in and Beijing tightening its own rules on companies shifting supply chains away, the exit from China kept accelerating: Microsoft has quietly closed more than a dozen branch offices there and is moving hardware production out; Ford said it'll stop building the Lincoln Nautilus in China for U.S. buyers by 2030; GM is walking away from one of its longtime China-market brands; and Apple is on track to build most U.S.-bound iPhones in India by year-end. None of this moves a stock in a day, but it's a structural shift worth watching for anyone leaning into reshoring or India/Vietnam manufacturing plays.
Disclaimer: Educational and Informational Purposes Only
The AI-investment money kept flowing from every direction. Microsoft is reportedly preparing to unveil its next-gen Maia 300 AI chip as soon as September, with talks underway for TSMC capacity north of 300,000 units — its clearest push yet to cut reliance on Nvidia. AMD raised $4.75 billion in its largest-ever bond sale to fund AI expansion tied to fresh deals with Microsoft and Anthropic. And Databricks closed a $5 billion round at a $190 billion valuation — its second raise this year — to build out its AI agent products, alongside crossing a $7 billion revenue run rate. Reddit added its own headline: it'll join the S&P 500 on August 18, replacing AvalonBay Communities, and the stock jumped more than 12% in a session as index funds prepared to buy in.
Chips had a wild stretch of their own. AMD's August 4 earnings first spooked the market — shares fell 7% despite a beat — but data-center revenue had doubled year-over-year to $6.7 billion, and by Friday the stock had clawed back to a fresh high near $514, up 130% year-to-date. Nvidia stayed quieter, drifting higher ahead of its own earnings later this month. Energy tracked the Hormuz headlines more than fundamentals, while materials stayed the quiet laggard of the group on tariff-related input costs.
The rough one: Cisco. It beat on revenue and earnings, and even guided the current quarter above estimates — yet the stock still fell more than 8% on margin concerns, a reminder that "good enough" doesn't cut it when a stock's already run up 60% this year.
The standout: Reddit. An index-inclusion pop most companies only dream about, backed by a real narrative — people tired of AI-generated summaries gravitating back toward actual human conversation.
Next week: watch the retail earnings lineup — Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, TJX — for a read on the consumer, plus the FOMC minutes. With yields still this sensitive to Fed language, a hawkish surprise could put a dent in a rally that just hit record highs.
3rd-14th August
Tell me about the past two weeks.