US Market Breakdown: Nvidia Soars, Hike Bets Jump, Week of 24 August 2026

Kevin Warsh used his first Jackson Hole keynote as Federal Reserve chair to tell markets something they had stopped expecting to hear: the next move in US interest rates might be up. Speaking on Friday 28 August, Warsh said inflation was running too high, recommitted to the 2% target and warned the central bank still had "work to do". Traders reacted immediately. Odds of a quarter-point hike at the 15-16 September meeting jumped to roughly 57% by Friday's close, according to CME FedWatch pricing cited by CNBC, from about 40% a week earlier.

And yet the week was a positive one. The S&P 500 added 0.5%, the Nasdaq Composite 0.9% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.5% — its first winning week in three. What carried them was earnings: Nvidia jumped 8.7% on Thursday after a blowout quarter, and Salesforce rose 22.6% in a single session, its best day in years.

Monday 31 August then handed some of it back, as the United States and Iran exchanged fire for the first time in a month, oil spiked and the Dow shed 374 points.

Wall Street

The week opened badly for technology. On Monday 24 August the S&P 500 slipped 0.28% to 7,652.86 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.76% to 25,980.19 as chip stocks sold off — Micron dropped 5.8%, AMD lost more than 3% and Broadcom more than 2%. The Dow, with far less semiconductor exposure, actually rose 140.15 points, or 0.26%, to 53,417.16, helped by a retreat in Treasury yields.

Tuesday brought a broad recovery, the S&P 500 gaining 0.41%, the Nasdaq 0.68% and the Dow 0.22%, with investors shrugging off fresh Canadian retaliatory tariffs on US goods. Wednesday was flat and nervous: the S&P 500 edged down by less than 0.1%, the Dow dipped 0.2% and the Nasdaq slipped 0.1% as July's personal consumption expenditures data landed hotter than hoped and the market waited for Nvidia's results after the bell.

Thursday was the week. The S&P 500 rose 0.72% to 7,730.99 and the Nasdaq Composite surged 1.57% to 26,541.35 on the back of Nvidia and Salesforce. The Dow lagged badly by comparison, up just 105.56 points, or 0.2%, to 53,569.44 — a neat illustration of how much of this market's return now comes from a handful of technology names.

Friday undid part of it. After Warsh spoke, the S&P 500 fell 0.25% to 7,711.76 and the Nasdaq lost 0.52% to 26,402.42, dragged by semiconductors including Nvidia and Intel. The Dow finished essentially unchanged, down 9.45 points.

Monday 31 August, the most recent completed session, was the softer read. The S&P 500 fell 0.33% to 7,686.14 and the Nasdaq Composite eased 0.12% to 26,370.89, while the Dow dropped 374.09 points, or 0.7%, to 53,185.90 on renewed US-Iran hostilities. Even so, August closed as a winning month: the S&P 500 gained 2.6%, the Nasdaq 3.9% and the Dow 1.3% — a fifth consecutive monthly advance for the Dow.

The week's biggest movers

Abercrombie & Fitch was the week's most violent move, up about 35% on Wednesday — its biggest one-day jump since November 2025, on Bloomberg's reckoning. The retailer reported record second-quarter net sales and raised full-year earnings guidance sharply.

Salesforce closed Thursday at $252.10, up 22.6%. A move of that size in a company that large is genuinely rare. The trigger was a much bigger profit-guidance raise than the market expected, alongside a deepened partnership with AI developer Anthropic to embed Claude across Salesforce products under the "Claudeforce" banner.

Nvidia rose 8.74% on Thursday to $227.98, its biggest single-day percentage gain since April 2025. Notably, the stock still ended the week up only a little over 1% — it had fallen for seven straight sessions before Tuesday.

PG&E and Edison International were hammered on Monday after California's SB 492 passed without the per-incident liability cap utilities and investors had lobbied for. Edison International's fall of roughly 23% was reported by Bloomberg as its worst single day in more than 25 years, and several brokers cut their recommendations.

Dick's Sporting Goods tumbled 17% on Tuesday after missing on both earnings and revenue and cutting full-year guidance, with the newly acquired Foot Locker business the culprit.

PayPal fell 12.7% on Friday to $53.75 after Bloomberg reported that a consortium led by Stripe and Advent International had walked away from its pursuit of the payments group. Marvell dropped 10.1% to $217.10 the same day despite raising longer-term guidance — a reminder that expectations, not results, set the bar.

Company news in focus

Meta Platforms agreed on Wednesday to pay $16.7bn to settle claims brought by 29 state attorneys general over the mental-health effects of its platforms on children, ending a federal trial. With sterling around $1.35, that is roughly £12bn. About $12.7bn is guaranteed, with a further $5bn contingent on rival platforms adopting similar protections; the settlement also requires daily-use limits, overnight access blocks, expanded parental controls and stronger age verification. The total could reach $17.1bn.

Apple completed the most-watched succession in corporate America. Monday 31 August was Tim Cook's final day as chief executive after 15 years; John Ternus took over on 1 September, with Cook moving to executive chairman of the board.

The PayPal story was the week's biggest M&A event, and it was a deal that died rather than one that closed. The Stripe and Advent consortium had offered $60.50 a share — a bid PayPal's board considered inadequate — and the shares had risen around 30% since the approach first surfaced. Talks collapsed when the two sides could not agree on a higher price.

Elsewhere, Salesforce lifted its full-year revenue outlook partly on two pending acquisitions, Contentful and Fin. nVent Electric said on 24 August that it would buy Maverick Power for $1.75bn. Amazon rose 3.97% on Friday to $266.43 on a combination of new renewable power purchase agreements and a raised broker price target. And Workday climbed on Friday amid takeover speculation as well as its results.

Earnings in focus

Nvidia reported after the close on Wednesday and set the tone. Revenue came in at $96.2bn, up 106% year on year, with data centre sales up 117% to a record $89bn and earnings of $2.22 a share. Guidance mattered more: management pointed to about $108bn of revenue in the current quarter, plus or minus 2%, against roughly $104.2bn expected. Gross margin held at 75% and is guided to 74% next quarter. For UK readers, a single quarter's guidance of $108bn is close to £80bn.

Salesforce posted second-quarter revenue of $11.345bn, up about 11%, with adjusted earnings of $5.90 a share. It raised full-year revenue guidance to $46.1bn-$46.4bn and lifted adjusted earnings guidance to $16.67-$16.71 from $14.06-$14.12. Agentforce annual recurring revenue reached $1.5bn.

Workday reported revenue of $2.65bn, up 12.8%, and adjusted earnings of $2.75 a share, both ahead of forecasts, with subscription revenue up 13.9% to $2.47bn. It raised the lower end of full-year subscription guidance to $9.94bn-$9.95bn, and said AI now drives more than 25% of new annual contract value.

Abercrombie & Fitch delivered adjusted earnings of $4.17 a share on record net sales of $1.27bn, and raised full-year earnings guidance to $13.10-$13.60 from $10.20-$11.00, with operating margin guidance lifted to 14.5%-15%. It has spent $282m on buybacks this year, retiring about 7% of its shares.

Dick's Sporting Goods was the counterweight: adjusted earnings of $3.53 against $3.78 expected, revenue of $5.59bn versus $5.65bn, and full-year adjusted earnings guidance of $11.00-$12.00 against a $14.20 consensus. Its own stores grew comparable sales 4.9%; Foot Locker's fell 3.6% on a pro-forma basis.

Sectors in focus

Two things stood out. First, concentration. The Nasdaq's 0.9% weekly gain rested almost entirely on Thursday, and Thursday rested almost entirely on two companies. Strip out Nvidia and Salesforce and the week looks flat.

Second, and more revealing, semiconductors did not follow Nvidia higher. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF fell more than 3% over the week even as Nvidia rallied, with Micron, AMD and Broadcom all lower on Monday and Intel among Friday's drags. Marvell's 10% fall after respectable numbers fits the same picture: investors are becoming harder to please on AI hardware, even while the sector leader beats.

Energy was Monday's clear winner. As Brent crude pushed back above $90 a barrel, Chevron rose about 3% to $207.80 and ExxonMobil about 3% to $161.31, with oilfield services names including Halliburton also firmer. Utilities went the other way, dragged down by the California liability ruling that hit PG&E and Edison International. Consumer discretionary was split — Abercrombie & Fitch soaring, Dick's Sporting Goods slumping — which is closer to stock-picking than a sector trend.

Macro and the Fed

July's PCE report, released Wednesday, framed everything that followed. The headline index held at a 3.7% annual pace and core PCE rose 3.3%, a shade above the 3.2% expected and unchanged from June. Consumer spending rose 0.2% on the month.

Warsh's Friday speech built directly on that. He argued that better summer inflation readings did not show underlying trends had meaningfully improved, and noted that more than half of the goods and services the government tracks had risen 3% or more over the past year. The two-year Treasury yield, most sensitive to policy expectations, jumped more than 12 basis points to around 4.35%, and the ten-year finished the day at 4.73% — up from 4.7% on Monday. The dollar index rallied to a one-week high, while gold held above $4,600 an ounce.

Also on Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published its preliminary annual benchmark revision, marking down total non-farm employment for the year to March 2026 by 79,000, or 0.1%. That is a far smaller markdown than in recent years, and the final figure arrives in February 2027.

Monday's escalation between the United States and Iran, following strikes near the Strait of Hormuz, pushed Brent back above $90 and gave the inflation debate an unwelcome new input.

Still to come

The payrolls report on Friday is the one that matters most, because it is the last major labour-market reading before the September Fed meeting. After Warsh's speech, a market that spent most of 2026 debating the timing of cuts is now pricing a genuine chance of a hike — and the jobs data will either harden that or unwind it.

This article is for information and education only. It is not financial advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any investment. Always do your own research.