0824 | Semis Drag Stocks; Nvidia's Yellow Light; Yields Fall; Trump's 50% Auto Tariff Jan 1 2027

Mia: Welcome to After Market on Bri Radio. I'm Mia.

Milo: And I'm Milo. Today we're looking at a down day for U.S. stocks, chip weakness ahead of Nvidia's earnings, a pullback in Treasury yields, new tariff plans aimed at Canada, and rising crypto prices.

Mia: U.S. stocks fell on Monday, and it was semiconductor names doing the dragging, pulling the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq down with them. Investors were bracing for a heavy week of economic data and Nvidia's earnings, with the Jackson Hole economic symposium still on the horizon. In single names, Micron stock dropped this morning after a Chinese memory IPO filing. Coverage of that drop raised the question of whether Micron can fight off the competition, so the competitive impact of the filing remains an open question.

Milo: And that's the key spot to keep an eye on. Nvidia's numbers, the run of economic releases, and the Jackson Hole gathering all land this week, but whether Micron can hold its ground against that competition is far from settled.

Milo: On the charts, Nvidia's stock is showing a flashing yellow light heading into its earnings report Wednesday night. The caution comes from the chart analysis itself, not from any verdict on the report, because that outcome is still unknown. Jim Cramer's market preview makes the point that Nvidia's report matters this week, but it isn't the only thing driving the AI trade.

Mia: And Nvidia is pushing forward on the inference side. The company says its Groq racks will come online this year following that twenty billion dollar purchase, and the race to manufacture those chips and get them to customers shows how central low-latency inference has become to AI. With Nvidia, inflation data, and Jackson Hole all set to set the tone, and the Meta trial also resuming, it's a heavy week for Wall Street.

Mia: Treasury yields fell on Monday, and reporting traces that to a CNBC report that the Treasury could use its General Account to fund bond buybacks. Sources cited by CNBC say Bessent could tap the near one trillion dollar account for that purpose, which would hand the Treasury considerable firepower to influence long-term yields.

Milo: But whether that actually moves long-term rates is an open question. Interest-rate strategists at Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and other Wall Street firms say the buybacks will do little to reverse the jump in long-term yields. Citadel Securities went further and called the buyback financial repression, and prediction market traders doubted Bessent's interventions would push yields down. The German finance chief, separately, put the blame for the surging yields on Trump.

Mia: So the focused event now is Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's keynote at Jackson Hole later this week, the signal everyone's watching for yields.

Milo: President Trump said the U.S. will raise tariffs on Canadian imports of cars, trucks, and auto parts to fifty percent, effective January first, 2027. That's reported as an escalation of the U.S.-Canada trade war, though this is the president's stated plan, so whether the fifty percent rate actually takes effect on that date isn't established yet.

Mia: In the market reaction, steel stocks jumped as the tariff fight escalated, though no magnitude is attached to that move and no individual companies are named. With no follow-up developments reported, the focused question now is whether the announced tariff schedule holds as stated.

Mia: The Trump administration has rolled out a plan to isolate Iran's economy by threatening secondary sanctions on what it calls the country's enablers, and the signal there is that China is not exempt from the sanctions push.

Milo: But this is still at the threat stage. The plan has been announced, yet the actual imposition of the secondary sanctions, and what they'd do to Iran's economy, remain untested until the threat is actually carried out.

Milo: Bitcoin and ethereum were rising on Monday, August twenty-fourth, 2026, as investors looked for more Fed clues this week, according to Yahoo Finance. Crypto extended its gains after the biggest three-day rally since 2023, with bitcoin and crypto stocks continuing to advance after the flagship cryptocurrency broke out of its trading range.

Mia: And separately, Michael Saylor's Strategy Inc. is adding a fresh pool of cash to its balance-sheet toolkit, setting up a reserve it can use to buy bitcoin. That's part of an effort to keep flexibility while its once-powerful financing model remains under pressure. The thing to watch next is those further Fed clues investors have been looking for this week.

Mia: So to wrap it up, we've got stocks closing lower as chip weakness set the tone into Nvidia's earnings, and that report Wednesday night shapes up as the AI trade's biggest test of the week.

Milo: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.