Good morning.
Markets are jittery ahead of Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech tomorrow, where he’ll likely set the ideological tone for the next year of monetary policy.
And Meta is freezing its AI hiring after months on end of constant AI researcher headhunting and Zuckerberg’s social media posts about “superintelligence.” Markets are rattled—we aren’t too worried though.
And late last night, Kanye West released a meme coin from his Twitter page. $YZY proceeded to skyrocket to a market cap of $3 billion—in just 40 minutes.
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📰 Market Headlines
Stocks stumbled on Wednesday as tech dragged the S&P 500 down 0.24%.
The Nasdaq dropped 0.67%, while the Dow inched up 0.04%.
Kanye West announced the launch of his new meme coin $YZY from his Twitter page late last night. Interestingly, Kanye said in February that he’d been approached about promoting a fake cryptocurrency from his X account for $2 million dollars in a tweet. Several instances of insider trading have already been reported, similar to other instances of celebrity meme coin launches.
Walmart missed on earnings for the first time since May 2022, and $WMT is down 4.69% so far today at the time of writing. The company did raise its full-year earnings and sales outlook, but that didn’t save it from joining Target in the growing list of retail titans getting hit hard by earnings season. Ross is the next retailer up to bat—it will be reporting earnings later today after markets close.
BiliBili beat earnings expectations, but investors were unimpressed—$BILI fell 3.5% in pre-market trading today even though the Chinese video-sharing company posted a 20% revenue increase YoY.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell is going to address the nation (and the world) at Jackson Hole tomorrow. Powell is facing immense pressure on his next interest rate decision: Trump has been badgering him constantly for lower rates, both in person and over social media; meanwhile, job growth is slowing down and inflation just saw a significant uptick.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is freezing AI hiring after a months-long campaign of headhunting the industry’s best and brightest while talking about visions of superintelligence. $META is down 5.42% over the past 5 days. So, is the AI market a bubble, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just said it is? But some argue that markets are overreacting to the Meta AI hiring freeze—especially when Zuckerberg already explained that he simply now thinks the best framework for AI development is a small team model, not a huge one.
😱 Fear and Greed Index
🪙 Crypto
UK crypto firms, including Coinbase and Kraken, urged the government to establish a national stablecoin strategy, warning Britain risks falling behind the US.
Blockchain.com welcomed former KPMG CEO Timothy Flynn to its board as the company, valued at $7B in 2023.
Solana flexed a 107,000 TPS milestone, sparking discussions about real-world applications for such high transaction throughput.
🤖 AI/Future/Tech News
Google’s Pixel 10 launch event, hosted by Jimmy Fallon, drew jeers as a cringefest.
Robotics startup FieldAI landed $405 million from backers like Bezos Expeditions and Intel Capital to build universal robot brains.
Apple rushed out emergency updates to patch CVE-2025-43300, a zero-day flaw used in a highly targeted attack.
🥇 New Top Stock Pick from AltIndex
AltIndex’s AI model is flashing a buy signal on Allegiant, the low-cost airline company.
The signals to pay attention to:
Allegiant $ALGT looks really strong in the technicals and also in the alternative data. The fundamentals don’t look great at the moment, with decreases in net income and EBITDA, but the bullish signals elsewhere were more than enough for our AI model to highlight the stock as a buy:
Positive short-term stock trend (up 5.68% this month)
Good long-term trend (up 32.90% the past year)
SMA10 is up (58.22, slightly higher than the previous SMA10 of 57.68)
RSI is neutral at 50.2
Net income down 575.70% YoY
EBITDA is down 90.58% YoY
Web traffic up 54%
App downloads up 104%
Current price: $54.60
Target price: $69.2
A cautious yet optimistic approach is probably warranted here. $ALGT’s strong AI score of 81 further enhances the positive sentiment, making it a potentially attractive prospect for long-term investment—provided that the company can address its financial challenges.
🚨 Trending on Reddit
Opendoor mentions are spiking on r/WallStreetBets, as the community debates whether $OPEN deserves its new meme stock crown. The stock is up over 100% YTD, but down 10% this week. Some users are leaning into the underdog narrative, others are just here for the chaos.
Reddit mentions are climbing, too, as users react to the platform’s own stock dropping 5% this week. Some are calling it poetic. Others are calling it a buy-the-dip moment. Either way, Reddit talking about Reddit never gets old.
🤫 Insider Trading
Stock | Who bought/sold? | Trade details | Total amount |
|---|---|---|---|
CFO | Bought 17,500 shares @ $8.36 on Aug 18 | $146,300 total | |
Nano Labs Ltd $NA | Global CIO | Bought 27,690 shares @ $10.02 on Aug 18 | $277,453 total |
📊 IPOs and Earnings
Baidu posted a 4% revenue decline as ad sales slumped 15%, while AI Cloud revenue jumped 34% and shares slipped 2.6%.
TJX beat earnings and revenue forecasts, raised its full-year outlook, and shrugged off tariff pressure, while shares hit an all-time high, up about 3%.
Estee Lauder projected annual profit below estimates due to tariff headwinds and weakness in the US and China; shares fell 3.7%.
🎙 What Do You Think?
What will Powell have to say in his Jackson Hole Speech?
🎤️ What you said last time
🎪 Crowdfunding Showcase
Image: Citizen’s Coffee
Citizens Coffee brews more than lattes. With $37 million in lifetime revenue and per-store sales outpacing Starbucks, this Aussie-style breakfast brand is scaling fast across NYC and Texas. Backed by Randi Zuckerberg and already pulling in $4.9 million for 2024, they aim for 40 stores and $100 million in revenue by 2029. Get in early →
🧠 The Missing (Market) Links
A guide to building a six-figure net worth on a five-figure salary.
Tech valuations hit 30x forward earnings, and some funds rotated out ahead of Powell’s Jackson Hole speech.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for the abolishment of property taxes.
Target’s next CEO started as a finance intern in 2003. Michael Fiddelke will take over in February, inheriting flat sales and a company that, according to insiders, has “lost its identity.”
Three-quarters of Americans said they had financial regrets last year—not saving enough topped the list, especially for retirement and emergencies.
📜 Quote of the Day
“In the short run, the market is a voting machine. In the long run, it is a weighing machine”
📢 We want to hear from you
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Cheers,
Brandon & Blake
Thumbnail image: JD Lasica, Flickr
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