> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://whales-investing.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 🐋 Nvidia and Core PCE Land Within Hours of Each Other — Aug 26 - URL: https://whales-investing.ghost.io/nvidia-and-core-pce-land-within-hours/ - Published: 2026-08-20T11:24:38.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-27T10:01:37.000Z - Description: Six Days Out. Then Warsh's First Jackson Hole on the 27th. - Author: Whales Investing - Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1787824651448, #Import 2026-08-27 10:01 ###### Desmond Hawk | August 20, 2026 --- **The Setup** ## Three retailers, three different second halves Yesterday delivered the cleanest illustration yet of how uneven this economy has become. Target beat on revenue, earnings and comparable sales, then raised its full-year guidance. Lowe’s also beat on profit — and cut its full-year revenue and comparable-sales outlook. Same day, same consumer, opposite conclusions about what happens next. Add Tuesday’s Home Depot report, where sales rose 5.7 percent while customer transactions fell one percent, and the pattern resolves. Households are still spending, but they are choosing where. Off-price and everyday retail is holding; anything tied to housing and large discretionary projects is not. Target’s shares fell about one percent despite the raise, which tells you the good news was already in the price after a strong run. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/59/7559d400-2a6f-46d2-ac27-e1ef5889487c/content/images/2026/08/cdd9153c-d602-4ec6-90af-53ac2cd9f50c_3200x1938.png) There is a second reading of all this worth holding onto. Every one of those companies is measuring the household as a source of revenue. But the fastest-growing demand of this cycle isn’t for what households buy — it’s for what they generate. Model training runs on human behaviour: language, images, preferences, interaction. It’s the one input capital cannot manufacture, and until recently the people producing it were paid nothing for it. The first item on my desk today works from that shift. --- **SPONSORED** [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/59/7559d400-2a6f-46d2-ac27-e1ef5889487c/content/images/2026/08/c671c0f0-1b7a-4b78-8cd7-aa527ef110b7_1536x1024-jpeg.jpg)](https://blog.whalesinvesting.net/69e229d6a486d82f18ba647a?email=not%5Ftracked&domain=38WIS&type=BLOG&product=MMUH646%5FIM&ref=whales-investing.ghost.io) Washington is fast-tracking a massive new project across the country. Every new AI facility needs one specific asset to operate: human data. Money can't print it, but you produce it every time you tap your screen. One company is quietly paying people for this exact asset. Before you use your phone again today, you need to see this. [Click Here to See what They are Buying](https://blog.whalesinvesting.net/69e229d6a486d82f18ba647a?ref=whales-investing.ghost.io) ###### *Please read the* [*offering circular*](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1748441/000149315226012098/form253g2.htm?ref=whales-investing.ghost.io) *and related risks at* [*invest.modemobile.com.*](https://blog.whalesinvesting.net/69e229d6a486d82f18ba647a?email=not%5Ftracked&domain=38WIS&type=BLOG&product=MMUH646&ref=whales-investing.ghost.io) *This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile's Regulation A+ Offering.* *Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.* *The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.* *Pro forma revenue and EBITDA, includes full year numbers of the businesses acquired throughout 2025* --- **By the Numbers** ## The hike bet died while nobody announced it The Fed published its July minutes yesterday afternoon, from the meeting that held rates at 3.50 to 3.75 percent on a 9–3 vote. What matters is less what the minutes said than what has happened to expectations since. On August 6 the market put the odds of a September increase at 55 percent. After payrolls fell by 23,000 it dropped to 42\. After the soft inflation prints, 40\. Today it sits at roughly 27 percent, with traders pricing a hike no earlier than the start of next year. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/59/7559d400-2a6f-46d2-ac27-e1ef5889487c/content/images/2026/08/7a11fd53-0fad-4407-9458-25b8003e16ae_3200x2048.png) And yet the 30-year Treasury yield reached its highest level in nearly two decades this week. Those two facts do not sit together comfortably. Short-term policy expectations have eased while the cost of long money has risen — which is the bond market saying the inflation problem outlasts this rate cycle, whatever the Fed does in September. When the discount rate on everything long-dated is moving like that, capital hunts for growth that doesn’t depend on the cycle at all — which is where the whole AI complex sits, and why the ways of reaching it before a listing keep multiplying. The second item on my desk today concerns one of those routes. --- **SPONSORED** [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/59/7559d400-2a6f-46d2-ac27-e1ef5889487c/content/images/2026/08/03d683e6-3e30-4e27-b96c-3de735946ef7_2512x1408.png)](https://blog.whalesinvesting.net/6a7ef3ade90630f817ad684b?email=not%5Ftracked&domain=38WIS&type=BLOG&product=WSFK10%5FIM&ref=whales-investing.ghost.io) Anthropic is heading for a huge AI IPO. A little-known public company already owns nearly 1% of it. Because the shares are already trading, there's no six-month lockup. You could position yourself now and decide later whether to hold or sell on day one. [Get the Details Here](https://blog.whalesinvesting.net/6a7ef3ade90630f817ad684b?ref=whales-investing.ghost.io) --- **The Other Angle** ## The part of AI you can photograph Six days from now the market gets its two biggest events within hours of each other: Nvidia’s results and core PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, both on August 26\. Jackson Hole follows on the 27th, with Kevin Warsh delivering his first keynote as chair. Before that, Walmart this morning and flash purchasing-manager surveys tomorrow. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/59/7559d400-2a6f-46d2-ac27-e1ef5889487c/content/images/2026/08/dfb0d7cf-e9ce-4041-a601-67f3b2175ce4_3200x2248.png) Memory and storage names sold off this week even as the wider AI trade held, a reminder that this build-out is now a physical supply chain with physical bottlenecks. That’s the part people underrate: the AI story is usually told in software terms, but its footprint is concrete, steel, substations and cooling — campuses you can see from the air, drawing power measured against small cities. The last item on my desk today looks at exactly that. --- **SPONSORED** I'm Jeff Brown — Last week, my team obtained footage from a site connected to one of the hottest AI companies in America. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/59/7559d400-2a6f-46d2-ac27-e1ef5889487c/content/images/2026/08/3f00bc72-f01e-4a15-b0e4-43a55bbb7c1e_1672x941-jpeg.jpg)](https://blog.whalesinvesting.net/6a3a60fb43bb533813bf748f?email=not%5Ftracked&domain=38WIS&type=BLOG&product=PBRLD635%5FIM&ref=whales-investing.ghost.io) At first... Nothing seemed unusual. Just another heavily secured technology campus. But when we zoomed in... Everything changed. What we discovered may explain why Amazon, Google, and some of Silicon Valley's biggest players have poured billions into Anthropic. Frankly... I wasn't prepared for what I saw. Now I want you to see it for yourself. [👉 WATCH THE FOOTAGE](https://blog.whalesinvesting.net/6a3a60fb43bb533813bf748f?ref=whales-investing.ghost.io) --- > *One retailer raised its outlook and one cut it, on the same morning, describing the same customer. That is not a contradiction — it is what a divided economy looks like from the inside.* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/59/7559d400-2a6f-46d2-ac27-e1ef5889487c/content/images/2026/08/a18d3836-1969-41eb-9bc1-3000409623fa_1024x572-jpeg.jpg) --- **The Bottom Line** ## Read the guidance, not the beat Nearly every retailer this week beat expectations, because expectations had already been cut. The information is in what management said about the next six months, and there the three split cleanly: reaffirmed, raised, lowered. Walmart this morning is the tiebreaker, and it sees more American households than any other company on earth. On rates, the market has moved from arguing about September to assuming nothing happens until next year — while the long end of the bond market quietly disagrees. That gap between a 27 percent hike probability and a two-decade high in thirty-year yields is the most interesting disagreement on the board right now, and core PCE on the 26th is the first thing capable of settling it. Protect first. Position for the regime you’re actually in, and when a company beats, go straight to the outlook — because the quarter that just ended is history and the guidance is the only forward-looking number in the release. Because the capital you keep is the only capital that compounds. — Hawk [Subscribe](#/portal/signup)