Plus: Digital dollar dominance | Friday, August 28, 2026 Axios Macro By Neil Irwin and Courtenay Brown · Aug 28, 2026 The Jackson Hole symposium is underway! Below, Neil reads between the lines of Kevin Warsh's much-anticipated first policy speech as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Plus, the lessons for the U.S. dollar's future as the global reserve currency from a paper presented this morning in the Grand Tetons. Today's newsletter, edited by Jeffrey Cane and copy edited by Katie Lewis, is 990 words, a 3.5-minute read. 1 big thing: Warsh's big reset Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh arriving for dinner yesterday during the Kansas City Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images In a room filled with colleagues and global central bankers, Warsh cleared up key ambiguities this morning left by a late July press conference that stoked financial market anxiety. The big picture: It doesn't take any radical analytical leaps to see that he laid the groundwork for one or more interest rate hikes in the months ahead, should inflation not show clearer evidence of falling toward 2%. State of play: Much of the speech consisted of back-to-basics Fed speechifying, after his recent performances have drawn criticism for being vague and lacking detailed analysis of the economy or policy. He affirmed that 2% inflation, under its preferred gauge, is the central bank's goal and that adjustments of short-term interest rates are the primary tool for achieving it. He walked through his views of the state of the labor market, inflation dynamics, and financial conditions. He then summarized the policy implications of the current (to use a favorite Warshism) conjuncture. Zoom in: Warsh said that the central bank 's leaders have "work to do" if they are not confident that inflation is moving to 2% "clearly and at sufficient speed," implying that interest rate hikes are ahead in the absence of an improvement in price pressures. He said while this summer's inflation data has been better than expected, it was not enough to convince him that underlying price pressures are meaningfully improving. What they're saying: "[T]here should be no misunderstanding," Warsh said in the text. "The Fed's price-stability objective of 2 percent, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, is a firm, fixed target." In July, he had mused about alternate measures of inflation. Moreover, he said, "short-term interest rates are the predominant tool to achieve the dual mandate." In light of booming markets, fueled by AI bets, Warsh said that "on balance, I would be hard pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive," which also points to the possibility that interest rates are too low. Yes, but: Warsh resisted calls from Fed watchers to deliver more detail about how the central bank may react to incoming data. "So, if forward guidance is ill-suited to normal times, then how about the new Fed chief commits—at the very least—to an explicit reaction function?" he said. "Surely, he should tell us his interest rate path—if, say, the data were to come in hot or cold. I wish our understanding of the economy were so precise as to provide a mechanical, tried-and-true answer." "But our knowledge just doesn't extend that far—at least not yet—and the factors most relevant to the proper conduct of monetary policy change over time. Providing forecasts to illustrate the Fed's reaction function works better in theory than in practice, better in the lab than in the field." The intrigue: Traders now see a 56% chance of a rate hike at the Fed's mid-September meeting, up from 35% before Warsh's speech, according to CME FedWatch. Zoom out: In the 16-page speech, Warsh also explored the possible economic consequences of AI, which he sees as amounting to a "hinge point in history," though that section offered more questions about what the future may hold than definitive answers. "The potential for substantially higher growth is on the rise. Ever-expanding pools of capital are pouring into AI-related infrastructure of all sorts," he said. "A kind of hyper– Moore's law seems to be playing out. Scaling laws, too, are changing both the method and speed of innovation." A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Peek inside the forces reshaping health care with Axios Future of Health Care 2. The case for the dollar's digital edge Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios New financial technologies are making it faster and cheaper to move money across borders, seemingly reducing the world's reliance on the dollar . But new research presented at Jackson Hole suggests financial innovation may instead tighten the dollar's grip on global finance. Financial innovation is the gathering's theme, and central bankers are grappling with how these technologies reshape the financial system. Why it matters: Dollar dominance gives the U.S. enormous financial clout and helps keep demand for its debt strong. If the paper is right, stablecoins and other forms of tokenized money could strengthen that position, even as concerns grow about America's fiscal health. What they're saying: The authors argue that making currencies easier to access and transact in could steer more financial activity toward those that already dominate global finance. "Rather than dissipating network effects by leveling the playing field ... digitalization could intensify them," wrote Gordon Liao, Eswar Prasad and Tony Zhang, economists at Circle, Cornell University and Arizona State University, respectively. Circle issues USDC, one of the world's largest dollar-backed stablecoins. Zoom in: The authors use stablecoins — digital tokens backed by traditional assets — to model how new financial technologies could reinforce the dollar's dominance. They find that more companies would choose to borrow in dollars, creating more demand for dollar assets and making dollar markets deeper and more attractive to other borrowers. "Issuance be

(Again) 🥛 AI agents are transacting onchain 🤖 (Again) Chevy Cassar GM. This is Milk Road, the daily newsletter that's the well-timed assist right before your portfolio scores. Here’s what we’ve got for you today: ✍️ AI agents are transacting onchain (again). 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Wall Street Is Moving Onchain Faster Than Most Investors Realize . 🍪 Saylor: "STRC is digital credit." Bitcoin is digital capital. Optionality is a free trading community with 14 active traders, real-time trade alerts and end of day recaps. Join the Optionality community for free. Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko. AI AGENTS ARE PAYING EACH OTHER ONCHAIN AGAIN 🤖 Back in March, pretty much everyone agreed that AI agents paying each other onchain was a dead idea. And the numbers backed them up. Weekly machine-to-machine payments running on x402 (Coinbase's payments standard) had fallen more than 95% off their November high, down to under 1M a week. Even Coinbase's own product team admitted in March that the demand just wasn't there. And if you don’t know what x402 is - lemme help you out real quick. There's an error code baked into the internet called 402, "Payment Required," and it's sat unused since the 90s. Coinbase wired it up to stablecoins so software can charge other software per request. Your agent asks a server for some data, the server says "that'll be half a cent," the agent pays in USDC, and the data comes back. No account, no subscription, and no humans needed. But that November peak was a bit of a lie. Token Terminal counted 20.1M of those payments in the week of November 17, 2025, and 18.7M of them ran on Base. Chainalysis traced that surge largely to PING, a token you minted by paying $1 of USDC. I.e. people were paying to farm a coin, so the traffic was speculation, not legit agent-to-agent micropayments. So when it collapsed, the obituaries kinda wrote themselves. But while everyone was busy writing them, Amazon was building agent payments into Bedrock AgentCore (its main AI product for business customers), with Coinbase and Stripe supplying the wallets. That went into preview on May 7, then live for every AWS customer on August 18. Last week, x402 saw 8.7M payments, up from 4.1M the week before. (Doubling, week over week.) Source: Token Terminal Which would be a decent story on its own, but the interesting part is where all those payments went… FREE TRADING COMMUNITY WITH 14,000+ MEMBERS Optionality is a free trading community built around one thing: real traders. Here's what's inside: 14 active traders (7 day traders, 5 swing traders, 2 futures traders) Real time trade alerts End of day recaps Free chat channels $1 trial for 7 days to test the full PRO experience before committing 14,000+ traders are already on the server and it costs absolutely nothing to join this free community. Join the Optionality community for free. AI AGENTS ARE PAYING EACH OTHER AGAIN (P2) 🤖 If this were November all over again, the traffic would have gone straight back to the one chain that was paying for it all. Instead it spread across four: Base: down to 48% of the weekly count (from 93%). Solana: up from 6% to 38%. Everyone else: the remaining 14%. Source: Token Terminal Because Amazon wasn't the only one turning this on. Ramp switched x402 on for its 70,000+ business customers on August 20, and Google Cloud now lets agents pay per request for Gemini, BigQuery and Vertex AI over Solana. Vincent saw this one coming. He bought SOL for the PRO portfolio on March 31, at the exact bottom of the panic, writing: "Solana is a bet on agent payments. If AI agents start paying for APIs, compute, data, and each other, the winner is likely a chain built for small, fast, cheap, real-time transactions." His entry was $82.56. SOL's at ~$105 at the time of this writing. The volumes here aren't as wild as they were when there was a token to farm, and they're not meant to be. Agents pay per request instead of per purchase, so every payment is priced like an API call, which keeps things at pennies while software buys from software. 8.7M payments a week tells us that the plumbing is being used (though nobody's getting rich off the payments themselves yet). Which brings us to who's actually getting paid here. The standard charges nothing on each sale, by design. The money lands with whoever runs the wallet and earns interest on the dollars parked inside it. Which, in this case, is Coinbase. It wrote the standard, runs one of the two wallets Amazon shipped, and takes a slice of the interest Circle earns on USDC reserves. Last quarter that business brought in $292M, with a record $20B of USDC sitting inside Coinbase products (over 30% of every USDC in existence). When it comes to agent-to-agent payments onchain, we’ve barely begun to see the start of this adoption story. And Coinbase is set up to be one of the largest benefactors. Kyle called Coinbase below $60. It's ~$188 today, and still one of his largest holdings. Don't miss his next big call, try Milk Road PRO for $1. BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪 Got Bitcoin but need cash? Ledn lets you borrow against your BTC without selling it.* Tom Lee: Crypto winter may already be ending, and Wall Street could be caught underexposed. Saylor: "STRC is digital credit." Bitcoin is digital capital. Stablecoins are digital currency... the missing piece is stable, yield bearing, Bitcoin-backed digital money. Denelle Dixon: The CLARITY Act isn't going to open the floodgates, because they're already open. *this is sponsored content. Join the Optionality community for free. RATE TODAY’S EDITION What'd you think of today's edition? 🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛 F**king great 🥛🥛🥛 Meh, do better 🥛 You didn't bring the heat MILKY MEMES 🤣 Source: @boldleonidas Source: @ToolySOL ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛 VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY This content is for educational purposes only. Read full disclaimer Interested in reaching smart readers like you? Sponsor Milk Road Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026

BTC’s up 22% and John’s still holding cash... 🥛 Time to buy, or wait? 🤨 BTC’s up 22% and John’s still holding cash... Chevy Cassar GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that's the pressure washer blasting the grime off confusing crypto news. Here’s what we’ve got for you today: ✍️ BTC’s up 22% and John’s holding cash? 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Tom Lee: The Next 5 Years of Crypto Will Be About Ethereum . 🍪 BTC’s volatility hit historic lows right before the squeeze. On Sept 23, Milk Road's Martin sits down with Alumni Ventures to talk about blockchain and private markets. Save your free seat here. Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko. BITCOIN RIPPED 22% AND JOHN'S STILL SITTING ON CASH 🤨 Bitcoin just had its biggest week since late 2024. It ran from about $62,800 to nearly $80,000, and plenty of people were ready to call the bear market over right there. But our crypto analyst, John Gillen, isn't quite there yet - he’s still sitting on a good chunk of cash. Here’s where we’ve come from/where we’re at: On August 19, the U.S. Treasury said it would at least double the size of its long-end buybacks, from $2B to at least $4B per operation. (A buyback is the government purchasing back its own longer-dated debt, to keep that market functioning when nobody else wants to step in.) Bond yields dropped on the news. The 30-year fell 9 basis points to 5.196%, having just touched its highest level since 2007. Cheaper money is good for crypto, so crypto went nuts. But two things complicated the whole thing… First, the bond market handed a lot of its progress back inside a day, with the 30-year climbing seven basis points to 5.26%. Right back above where it sat before the announcement. Second, roughly $2.7B of bets against crypto got force-closed. I.e. a big chunk of that green candle was traders being made to buy, not choosing to. Which brings us to the level John actually cares about… Source: TradingView The 200-week moving average (blue) is the average price over roughly the last four years. In bear markets it tends to cap rallies, and in bull markets it catches the dips. Bitcoin's sits just over $64K, which it has now reclaimed and held above. That's the properly bullish part. But it's still stuck under the ceiling that capped this market back in May: the $83K level (white dotted line). Get a weekly close above that, and John thinks higher prices become more likely than lower, with a path into the 90s and maybe even $100K. Until then, he thinks $74K comes first. But the main reason he won't call the bottom has almost nothing to do with Bitcoin... FREE SEMINAR ON BLOCKCHAIN & PRIVATE MARKETS Is VC capital still flowing into crypto or has AI taken it all? Where is venture capital actually deploying across crypto and fintech right now? Join Sophia Zhao (Partner at Alumni Ventures ) and Martin from Milk Road for a live fireside conversation covering: Where capital is moving across blockchain and fintech What the next generation of blockchain companies are actually building How accredited investors can get exposure to private markets The best part? It’s completely free to attend and takes just one hour. Save your free seat here. BITCOIN RIPPED 22% AND JOHN'S STILL SITTING ON CASH (P2) 🤨 ETH spent about 30 weeks below its own 200-week average, which John puts at roughly $2,493. Call it $2,500. By his count, it's been rejected from that level four separate times in major market moves - and five separate times since Saturday. But still, no definitive break: Source: TradingView John wants a confident break above $2,500 if he’s going to call the bear market dead. That said… he does think the bottom is in. Right now, momentum is fading under resistance rather than building over support, so he expects a pullback before the next leg up. What he's watching is whether that pullback makes a higher low, or breaks the old ones. He thinks higher, because there’re enough sidelined buyers waiting to step in. He's treating the dip as a re-test, and plans to buy into it. Two dates to watch from here: Sept 9: when the bigger Treasury buybacks actually begin (they run through Nov 4). Sept 15: the Senate's procedural vote on the CLARITY Act. The two prices to watch: A weekly close above $83K on Bitcoin, and a weekly close above $2,500 on Ethereum. According to John, whichever way that second one breaks tells us whether we’re back or not. Btw - John's Bitcoin position is up 22% and his staked ETH is up 33%, both were bought before this run. And he's still holding cash for the re-test. You can track his deployments as they happen in Milk Road PRO for $1, here . BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪 $130M lost from "offline" wallets last month. See how Ledn and BitGo keep your Bitcoin safer.* Novogratz: Every major TradFi institution now accepts one thing - no more "crypto assets" vs "TradFi assets" - almost everything gets a tokenized version. Raoul Pal: Gold bugs have been doom-mongering for 30 years and missed everything. John Gillen: BTC’s volatility hit historic lows right before the squeeze. "94% of BTC’s history, it’d been trading with more volatility than it was prior to this short squeeze." *this is sponsored content. Save your free seat here. RATE TODAY’S EDITION What'd you think of today's edition? 🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛 F**king great 🥛🥛🥛 Meh, do better 🥛 You didn't bring the heat MILKY MEMES 🤣 Source: @ToolySOL Source: @naiivememe ROADIE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🥛 VITALIK PIC OF THE DAY This content is for educational purposes only. Read full disclaimer Interested in reaching smart readers like you? Sponsor Milk Road Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 ImpactDM Inc. operating as Milk Road 1257 Dundas St W Toronto, Ontario M6J1X6, Canada

Plus: Retail roundup | Thursday, August 27, 2026 Axios Closer By Nathan Bomey · Aug 27, 2026 Thursday ✅. Today's newsletter is 835 words, a 3-minute read. 📈 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed up 0.7%, as Nvidia's results led a slew of Big Tech earnings that breathed new life into software and the AI trade. 🥶 Today's stock spotlight: Wendy's (-13.6%) fell on a Reuters report yesterday that activist investor Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management had cooled on its talks for a takeover bid. 1 big thing: AI arms race Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios Yesterday Nvidia lifted AI investors' spirits. Today came a warning about another side of the AI boom: Lock up your critical infrastructure — the cyberattacks are coming. Zoom in: OpenAI, Anthropic and more than 100 other companies — ranging from AI companies and cloud providers to telecoms and financial firms — warn in an open letter that organizations now only have months to prepare, Axios' Sam Sabin writes . They lay out a plan for how all companies and governments, as well as cybersecurity and AI companies, need to adapt to prepare for the changing threat landscape. Among the suggestions: "Raise the security bar for what you buy, build, and deploy, including AI-generated code." They implore cybersecurity and technology companies to quickly test and build out tools that make "AI-powered defense accessible and deployable for critical-infrastructure operators," among them hospitals and water treatment plants. The big picture: The warning comes amid a wave of cyberattacks against critical infrastructure, including one that targeted U.S. water systems with an apparent AI-generated exploitation script . AI models are now drastically lowering how much time and energy hackers need to put into those preparations, experts previously told Axios. Cybersecurity stocks , meanwhile, soared today. Okta closed up 28.6% after yesterday's earnings, where it said it closed dozens of new AI deals and highlighted its growing opportunity in securing the identities and access of AI agents. CrowdStrike rose 20.5%, projecting better-than-expected full-year revenue powered by risks from the AI boom. "We're in an arms race," CEO George Kurtz told investors. "The agent of today is both a friend and foe." Go deeper 2. 🔍 Retail roundup: What we learned Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios Several of America's most prominent retailers reported earnings today, providing a mixed look at consumer health. 💵 Zoom in: Dollar General and Dollar Tree both reported gains in customer traffic from the same period a year ago. And both saw gains in same-store sales, at 3.5% and 3.7%, respectively. Both dollar chains benefited from higher-income shoppers trading down. Consumers with more than $100,000 in income are increasingly shopping at Dollar General, CEO Todd Vasos said on an earnings call. Dollar Tree said it saw sales gains skewing to the middle- and higher-income households. 🏷️ Both companies defended their promotional and pricing strategies on earnings calls, citing strained consumers constantly on the hunt for value. 💻 Best Buy, meanwhile, posted enterprise comparable sales growth of 4.1%, sailing past S&P Capital IQ expectations of 1.6%. The company also raised its sales outlook. Yes, but: One thing worrying the market is the onslaught of higher electronics prices driven by memory chips. Incoming Best Buy CEO Jason Bonfig said the company is tracking "unit declines in the high single digits" due to memory price hikes. 3. Other happenings Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images 👖 Gap announced a new CEO for Old Navy as the brand reported a drop in comparable sales. ( CNBC ) ⛳️ Golf equipment maker Callaway cut ties with Good Good after the YouTube brand made a controversial ad in which a golfer shoves a woman to the ground. ( CNN ) ⚽️ Joshua Kushner and his firm Thrive Capital are being pulled into the feud between soccer's two biggest governing bodies, as UEFA seeks documents from them for a possible criminal case against FIFA president Gianni Infantino over his failed plan to sell investors a stake in FIFA's commercial business. ( WSJ ) A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Why Media Is Betting Big on Live Experiences Media companies and brands are pouring money into live experiences as digital attention gets harder to capture. In the latest Media Trends Executive deep dive, Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn examine what's driving the boom – and where risks are emerging: Why consumers keep paying more for premium experiences, even as prices rise. How brands are chasing audiences IRL through experiential marketing and out-of-home advertising. How new event technology is changing the trade-off between security and privacy. 🔒 Get the full analysis – and exclusive intelligence on the forces reshaping media – by becoming a Media Trends Executive member. 4. ☔️ Kalshi's forecast: More weather wagers Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios Kalshi is partnering with the owner of the Weather Channel and Weather.com to exchange data on climate predictions and outcomes . The big picture: Kalshi is looking to beef up the weather predictions component of its exchange, allowing users to risk money on precipitation and temperatures. The Weather Co. will provide data that will serve as outcome verification for Kalshi traders. And the Weather Channel app and site will incorporate Kalshi prediction market insights. By the numbers: Kalshi said it's "pacing toward $1.1 billion in annualized volume as traders look to hedge weather risks or trade on shifting climate trends." 💭 Nathan's thought bubble: Prediction markets can serve as a hedging opportunity for businesses that are greatly affected by the weather — but the question is whether the societal benefits of hedging will outweigh the risks of users losing money on frivolous trades. A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Why Media Is Betting Big on Live Experiences Media companies and brands are pouring money into live experiences as digital attention gets harder to capture. In the latest Media Tr

Efficient AI, optimistic humans, pack reveals Byron Gilliam “ A large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations. ” — John Maynard Keynes Thursday links: Efficient AI, optimistic humans, pack reveals Optimal herding Two Fed researchers test how greater reliance on generative AI in investing and trading is likely to impact financial stability. The results are mixed. On the positive side, the study found that AI agents make rational trading decisions between 61-97% of the time, compared to just 46-51% for humans. Mostly that’s because agents base decisions on their own gathered information rather than following market trends, as so many of us do. (Gathering information is so hard, though.) The study says this could make markets behave more rationally: “Increased reliance on AI-powered trading advice could therefore potentially lead to fewer asset price bubbles arising from animal spirits that trade by following the herd.” John Maynard Keynes would approve: more mathematical expectations, less spontaneous decision making. However! The paper also finds that AI agents are “not purely algorithmic.” Instead, they seem to have “inherited elements of human intuition and bias.” For example, when the researchers deliberately labeled market data counterintuitively — green for down and red for up — the agents “produced few rational responses.” The authors attribute this to the “chaotic discourse of social media platforms such as Twitter (X) and Reddit” in the models’ training data. (Garbage in, garbage out, I guess.) The study cites Meta’s Llama 3 as particularly human-like, making trading decisions based significantly more on judgment and emotion. In one instance, the model stopped to question whether a market maker was trying to inflate the price of an asset it was trading. (I’ve often wondered the same.) But the models can also be too rational — because sometimes it’s right to follow the crowd. “As market trends can reflect the private information of others, it can be optimal from a profit-maximizing perspective to take trading history into account when making trading decisions,” the paper explains. Left to their own devices, agents failed to take into account what others in the market were doing, which led to “occasional suboptimal choices.” With training, however, “AI agents can be induced to herd optimally when explicitly guided to make profit-maximizing decisions.” “Optimal herding” makes markets more efficient by accelerating how quickly information is incorporated into prices. (Like when you take your money out of a bank just because you see everyone else is and then it turns out the bank was insolvent, for example.) The authors are hopeful that agents striking just the right balance of rationality and herding could lead to more efficient markets less prone to bubbles and busts. But they acknowledge the risks. “Attempting to fine-tune LLMs to behave optimally can thus have unintended consequences.” The optimism tax An analysis of 41.6 million trades on Kalshi shows that Keynes' “spontaneous optimism” is alive and well. In prediction markets, the study finds “traders systematically overbet YES in markets that predominantly settle NO.” This creates “a behavioral surplus” that makes it profitable for market makers to continue posting bids and offers, even in markets prone to insider trading. For example, the study cites the Kalshi market for “Will Jeff Bezos attend the Super Bowl?” where the price of YES fell from 70 cents to 30 cents after Bezos’ stepson mentioned to his University of Miami fraternity brothers that his family had other plans that weekend. The fraternity brothers’ profits were the market makers’ losses. Yet market makers still came out ahead thanks to the “optimism tax” they collect from uninformed traders. “This behavioral overpayment (or "optimism tax") generates a surplus that cross-subsidizes and outweighs the losses inflicted by informed traders,” the study finds. It’s like the long-shot bias seen in equities, horse racing, and lottery tickets — but in prediction markets, there’s an average -shot bias, too. Even in the case of the Bezos Super Bowl market — where informed NO bettors were especially active — market makers ended up turning a profit because uninformed traders had so heavily overpaid for YES. “The maker’s profit is a residual arising from the behavioral tax paid to her by uninformed YES takers on NO-settling markets minus the losses that adverse taker flow imposes,” the authors conclude. This is the math that confirms Keynes’ intuition about spontaneous optimism. It took data from Kalshi to prove it because, unlike in equities, market makers on prediction markets “overwhelmingly” hold their positions until resolution. Meaning, they’re not earning the spread between buyers and sellers like they do in the stock market. Instead, they’re earning on buyers being wrong most of the time. Because we all overestimate the odds of things happening. One-armed card bandits In an article on the gamblification of card collecting, Barron’s reports that GameStop offers a free-entry sweepstakes to win a Pokémon card worth $80,000. All you have to do is fill out an index card by hand, put it in a No. 10 envelope, and mail it to a PO Box. But good luck finding the address. This seemingly generous offer is a legal fudge: It’s how GameStop gets around online-gambling laws that would otherwise preclude it from selling “ digital pack reveals ” — the gacha-style, single-card pack openings that have recently become so popular. Adding a “no purchase necessary” option to the offering makes its virtual pack openings a sweepstakes, which is legal, instead of a lottery, which is not. (Only state governments, non-profits, and Native American tribes can run lotteries in the US.) I’m guessing nearly everyone makes a purchase, though, because the no-purchase offer is buried impossibly deep in the GameStop website. And even if you do

All eyes on Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech... August 28, 2026 Presented By Hey hey. It’s one of the last Summer Fridays of the year, so don’t wait any longer to check off the remaining items on your summer bucket list: ✅ Go mini golfing ✅ Shoot a hole-in-one ✅ Get accused of cheating ✅ Investigate the establishment and uncover widespread corruption ✅ Bring down mini golf empire Time’s running out! —Molly Liebergall, Sam Klebanov, Dave Lozo, Adam Epstein, Neal Freyman In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: Warsh’s big moment in Jackson Hole American and United’s international expansions Robot sprinters Markets Nasdaq 26,541.35 +1.57% S&P 7,730.99 +0.72% Dow 53,569.44 +0.20% 10-Year 4.672% +1.0 bps Bitcoin $79,982.24 +1.96% Salesforce $252.05 +22.58% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: Stocks rose yesterday as investors rode the good vibes of Nvidia’s blockbuster earnings from the day before. Salesforce joined the party, soaring to its best day since 2020 after beating earnings expectations and announcing it will be expanding its partnership with Anthropic. GIDDY UP All eyes on the new Fed Chair’s first rodeo Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock, Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images Today, JPow successor Kevin Warsh will deliver his biggest speech yet at the Federal Reserve’s annual Jackson Hole symposium, and the question on everyone’s mind is: Will he stay mysterious, or will he share his thoughts on the economy with the class? The Fed Chair’s Wyoming address is always closely watched, but eyes may be a bit more peeled this year. It’s Warsh’s first one since being confirmed in May, and so far, he’s been exceptionally cryptic: He abandoned forward guidance on interest rates, he floated the idea of fewer policy meetings, and Wall Street has criticized his inflation commentary as overly vague. Though Warsh intentionally keeps his trap mostly shut (he’s argued that too much transparency can limit the Fed’s flexibility and make markets overly dependent on its words), economists are losing patience. They want Warsh to speak on… Whether he thinks inflation has remained stubborn because the economy is too hot (a case for raising rates) or because of price shocks from tariffs and the Iran war (a case against raising rates). How he feels about the Treasury Department’s plan to support the bond market with a buyback , following a bond selloff that sent borrowing costs soaring. Warsh’s colleagues have been more outspoken “I believe now is the time to act” on raising interest rates, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack told CNBC yesterday. She was one of three voting members who wanted the Fed to raise rates by a quarter-point at its July meeting instead of holding steady at 3.5%–3.75%—marking the highest number of unified dissents on a Fed decision since 2016. Temp check: Based on softer economic data over the past two months, markets are betting that the Fed won’t raise rates at its September meeting. That sentiment could be strengthened or swayed today, depending on how coy Warsh plays his speech. —ML Sponsored By Bloomreach We can do more Laura DiGiovanna started on the sales floor and is now head of marketing at 260 Sample Sale, where she leads a department of 12, personalizing communications, content, and events for more than 400 brands. She knows the business from every angle, and that’s part of what makes her one of the best minds in marketing . On Sept. 23, Laura joins Bloomreach’s Best Minds series—highlighting the people doing the most interesting work in commerce—to share how she went from asking “Can we do more?” to knowing “We can do more” and how Loomi, an agentic personalization platform , helps her small (but mighty) team match its big ambitions. Register now to learn what it takes to be one of the best minds. Plus, join live and get a personalized gift from Bloomreach. World Tour de headlines Jim Watson/Getty Images 🇨🇦🇺🇸 Trump signs order renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” President Trump signed an executive order that will “immediately” change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” he told reporters yesterday. Like when Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” experts say that the president has the authority to rename the lake—which spans the US–Canada border—for official US government use only, and cannot force other countries to adopt the name. Trump also suggested he could rename the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. The move comes as trade talks between the US and Canada break down, with Canada placing retaliatory tariffs on the US in response to Trump’s 50% tariffs on many goods from the US’ northern neighbor. 🤖 Nvidia reportedly in talks to acquire Hugging Face for $13 billion. On the heels of its blowout earnings, the world’s biggest company by market cap is in talks to buy the AI platform best known for getting hacked, Hugging Face, Business Insider reported. The deal is not official and could still fall apart, but it reportedly values Hugging Face at more than $13 billion. Called the “GitHub of machine learning,” Hugging Face hosts millions of AI models and datasets, which would give Nvidia an in with developers and a funnel to its chips. Neither company responded to Business Insider’s request for comment. ⚽ Reports: UEFA preparing criminal complaint against FIFA president Gianni Infantino. According to multiple reports, UEFA is readying to file criminal claims in Switzerland (where FIFA is based) over Infantino’s failed $20 billion bid to sell a stake in the World Cup. UEFA, the soccer governing body in Europe, is reportedly seeking documents from Thrive Capital, the investment fund founded by Joshua Kushner that was set to be the anchor investor in Infantino’s proposal. UEFA’s filings suggest that Thrive’s investment may have been a “fraudulently off-market price promoted by Infantino for his own benefit.” Thrive declined ESPN’s request for commen

Plus: Stocks get SaaSy | Friday, August 28, 2026 Axios Markets By Emily Peck and Matt Phillips · Aug 28, 2026 🙌 It's Friday! We love to see it. Stock futures are little changed this morning as investors wait on Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh's 10am ET keynote speech. Markets are looking for some clarity on how the central bank views the inflation landscape. We'll be watching the reaction in Treasury yields, a turbulent place lately. 🗓️ Today, a missive from the sad housing market and a reversal for the so-called SaaSpocalypse. ☠️ Speaking of doomsday, read to the end for a look at what the Bureau of Labor Statistics has to say about AI's impact on different occupations. It's all happening! In 1,112 words, a 4-minute read. 1 big thing: The housing market's fragile place By Emily Peck Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios We need to talk about the housing market : It has been in a low-boil recession for four years now, with anemic sales and the appearance of high prices, somehow without tanking the overall economy. Why it matters: Homeownership is the bedrock of the economy — it's how most Americans build wealth — and changes in the residential real estate market ripple out into things like consumer spending, the job market and inflation. Catch up quick: Housing has been in the dumps ever since mortgage rates started climbing in 2022, but if you already have a home, you probably didn't think about it that much. Zoom in: Home sales are at levels last seen when the country was crawling out of a housing crisis more than a decade ago. Data: Redfin ; Chart: Emily Peck/Axios Friction point: Many folks don't want to give up their low mortgage rates and buy something else. Others are discouraged by the prospect of high mortgage rates and house prices that, in many markets, are still hovering at record highs. The intrigue: Those high prices are real, but they're also a bit of an illusion, investor Bob Elliott argued in a post this week. Homeowners aren't forced to find out what their home is really worth until they put it up for sale. "Most owners are locked in with a perception of high value, without actually being forced to turn it into liquidity," he wrote. That perception is making a lot of homeowners feel relatively well-off — and helping drive consumer spending, which powers the economy. Between the lines: "Without the perception of high prices there is a significant threat that the key linchpin of the whole economy might start to unravel," Elliott wrote. What to watch: At some point, folks do need to sell: Life happens; you need to move; you divorce, etc. Could that point be now? We're about five years out from the COVID home price spike — "and five years is about the time when people start thinking about moving again," says Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at real estate site Redfin. "Especially if they bought a home that they thought was going to be a starter." Some markets are already seeing falling home prices, she says, pointing to Seattle and some parts of Texas and Florida. "There's only so long that sellers can hold off." By the numbers: Those who do put their houses on the market don't always like what they see. Nearly 6% of home listings were taken off the market by sellers in July — meaning that they removed the listing without landing a sale or going under contract, per data from Redfin. Reality check: For all its woes, the housing market is still relatively strong, Fairweather points out. Homeowners are sitting on real equity that they could tap in moments of distress. And if a true economic recession were to hit, mortgage rates would likely fall — generating some real sales action. The bottom line: For now, the housing market recession isn't really dragging down the overall economy. If anything, people are still spending money because their homes make them feel rich. It's just sort of a weird situation. Data: Redfin ; Chart: Emily Peck/Axios 2. SaaSpocolypse, no By Emily Peck Data: Financial Modeling Prep ; Chart: Emily Peck/Axios Software stocks are so back. Why it matters: AI was going to obliterate the software sector, or so investors believed earlier this year, but it turns out that this stuff is hard to quit. Zoom in: The State Street Software and Services ETF, which tracks about 130 software and IT stocks, rose 5.2% yesterday, hitting a new all-time high. The fund has heavy exposure to software-as-a-service companies, or SaaS, including ServiceNow, Workday and DocuSign. You may recall that those stocks fell victim to the SaaSpocalypse we wrote about earlier this year. Where it stands: Investors really liked Salesforce's second-quarter earnings report, out after the close on Wednesday. The company, arguably the SaaS master, announced an expansion of a deal with Anthropic that was taken as a sign that AI would be a complement to its business — rather than its death knell. Zoom out: Salesforce stock soared 22.6% yesterday and is now trading close to where it was before the whole SaaSpocalypse got underway. The bottom line: To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the software industry were perhaps a bit exaggerated Data: Financial Modeling Prep ; Chart: Emily Peck/Axios A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Break through the noise with Axios Reach execs and business leaders with Axios. We'll help you tell your story in the right way: We'll distill your brand's message into its most effective form with Smart Brevity. No clutter, no filler — just clean, smart and effective. Contact us to learn more. 3. Where the jobs will be By Emily Peck and Erin Davis Data: BLS ; Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals Jobs in health care and social assistance are projected to see the most growth over the next decade, according to a report out yesterday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Why it matters: The explosive growth in these sectors comes courtesy of the changing fabric of the country — an aging population that needs more care. Those demographics are also a reason job growth overall is proje

Plus: Big box dinosaur Best Buy roars back. August 28, 2026 Good morning and happy Friday. America’s four largest ski resort companies are getting out over their skis and operating a price fixing “cartel,” according to a new antitrust lawsuit. Filed earlier this month by a group of skiers, the complaint alleges Colorado’s Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain, Michigan’s Boyne Resorts, and Utah’s Powdr shared confidential information between them so they could set “artificially high” prices and “avoid meaningfully competing with each other,” The Colorado Sun reported Thursday. Collectively, the four companies run 30 of the nation’s 32 largest ski resorts, the paper said. Vail and Alterra are already the subject of an anti-trust suit claiming they ran an “anticompetitive scheme” to set day ticket prices at $350 to strongarm customers into buying $1,000 season passes. And Vail is facing a third price fixing lawsuit, filed by a shareholder earlier this week, alleging it exchanges “confidential, competitively sensitive information” with competitors. With all that work, Vail’s legal team should have no trouble paying for their season passes. MARKETS S&P 500 7,730.99 ▲ +0.72% DJI 53,569.44 ▲ +0.20% CRM $252.05 ▲ +22.58% Stock data as of market close on August 27, 2026. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Act Now or Pay Later: Coalition of Top Companies Tells World to Get Its Act Together on Cybersecurity More than 100 companies including OpenAI, KPMG, Visa, Microsoft, and Citi signed an open letter Thursday warning that businesses and policymakers have “a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses” before the world’s IT systems are faced with “widespread and sophisticated” attacks enabled by artificial intelligence. They called on every organization to “raise the security bar” and for governments to coordinate cyber defenses at the local, national and international level and provide essential services like hospitals and water utilities with access to defensive technology. Access Denied We’re no longer talking about a future problem. Researchers at IBM found that, from March 2025 to February 2026, 25% of data breaches involved AI-enabled attacks, a more than 50% increase from the previous 12-month period. In so many words, Thursday’s letter says if AI threats aren’t top of your bosses’ agenda, their priorities are wrong. You now have one more reason to needle them at the next all-hands meeting. The letter advises companies to meet the threat of AI cyberattacks with “the urgency and coordination of an incident that takes precedence over everything except critical business operations.” The time to upgrade or replace security systems and add a mix of lower-cost and frontier defensive AI tools was yesterday. At least for investors, where there’s anxiety, there’s money to be made. And, as companies and governments mobilize to prevent the world from becoming a Harlan Ellison short story, cybersecurity executives are eating well: Shares in CrowdStrike and Okta surged 20% and 28%, respectively on Thursday, a day after both reported stellar earnings and raised their forecasts. Executives at both companies said cybersecurity spending is rising in step with artificial intelligence adoption. Palo Alto Networks, the world’s largest pure-play cybersecurity company, rose 12% Thursday. Shares in Palo Alto and CrowdStrike, the second largest in the sector, have both more than doubled in value in the last 12 months. Third-place Fortinet, which has also more than doubled in the last 12 months, rose 9.7% Thursday. Cases in Point: Among the more prominent AI-enabled cyberattacks revealed this year was the breach of nine government agencies in Mexico by one single operator, a sophisticated act that researchers at Gambit Security said would normally have required a team. Earlier this week, OpenAI admitted that, when one of its AI agents broke free of controls and independently hacked the startup Hugging Face, the illicit activity went undetected for a week. After the incident, over 1,300 employees from major tech companies signed a letter in July asking the government to regulate the development of AI. Hugging Face, unsurprisingly, signed Thursday’s letter. It also agreed to be acquired for $12.9 billion by Nvidia, who presumably has a good IT guy or two. Written by Sean Craig CONSUMER Best Buy Hikes Outlook After Hot Summer Quarter Photo via Weston Hancock / SOPA Images/Sipa USA/Newscom Hard times create geek men, geek men create good times. Despite tariff chaos, soaring electronics prices, and deflating consumer sentiment (not to mention all the other endless long-term structural headwinds for strip mall retailers), Best Buy delivered a strong beat in its earnings report on Thursday, hiking its outlook in the process. Its trick? Following consumers’ lead, wherever they may want to go. Gotta Buy ‘Em All Sales of new and emerging categories (read: geeky items du jour, such as AI-powered wearable glasses and collectible Pokémon trading cards) more than doubled in the quarter, CEO Corie Barry said in a call with analysts. That offset declines felt across traditional categories such as appliances and video games, though the company was quick to note that the latter category was doomed to look disappointing in comparison to last summer’s blockbuster launch of the Nintendo Switch 2. Overall revenue jumped 3.6% on the year, to just shy of $9.8 billion; its Computing and Mobile segment jumped 6.8%, as higher costs due to the AI-driven memory crunch offset lower unit sales. And while the company has pivoted hard into e-commerce in recent years, its physical footprint, a.k.a. the tactile experience, is beginning to pay off again: Visits to Best Buy stores rose 2.2% in the quarter, marking the chain’s first frame of positive traffic growth in four years, according to data from market intelligence firm Placer.ai. Meanwhile, traffic to stores outfitted with IKEA “shop-in-shops,” a recent partnership that allows consumers to pair Best Buy appli

Fed chair keeps the debasement bid alive while bonds stay nervous. 🚨5 key Levels As The Sticky Inflation Trap Emerges Fed chair keeps the debasement bid alive while bonds stay nervous. Aug 28 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . Hey Traders, Bitcoin is holding the $80,000 area after a fast week higher, still more spot-led than leveraged. Equities came into Friday on Nvidia’s AI bid, then faded in the futures as the tape waited on Jackson Hole. The tension is no longer last week’s Treasury buybacks. It is Kevin Warsh’s first keynote as Fed chair, due this morning, with inflation still sticky and the long end unconvinced. Crypto has treated fiscal stress as fuel; bonds have treated it as a term-premium problem. Our desk sees risk assets constructive into the speech, but the next hour matters more than the last print. A vague Warsh keeps the debasement bid alive. A hawkish line hits duration first. Here’s what we are watching. Poll of the Day ( Presented by Rain Trade ) 🎯 POLL Is Bitcoin's surge past $78k a genuine bear-market exit or a bull trap? 🚀 Real macro regime shift 🧱 Rejection at $81.8k 🪤 Short-squeeze bull trap Today’s Charts: Chart #1 – Litecoin(LTCUSDT) 1-Day Chart #2 – Jupiter(JUPUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #3 – Injective(INJUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #4 – VVV(VVVUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #5 – Circle Internet Group(CRCL) 4-Hour Stop Trading Headlines. Start Trading Alpha. The desk that moves before the market does • Live community of traders who actually execute, not just talk • Real-time calls dropped while the candle is forming, not after it closes • 4.9/5 rating by 1000+ traders because signal beats noise, every single time Join 247 Research. Get the 24/7 terminal free. 50% off your first month, USE CODE: terminal ($100 off) Chart #1 – Litecoin(LTCUSDT) 1-Day( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Litecoin has pulled back to find support following a sharp impulse toward the $55.34 swing high, retracing to trade around $48.94 on the 1-day timeframe. Functioning as one of the earliest decentralized peer-to-peer proof-of-work cryptocurrencies designed for fast transaction confirmations, low fees, and optional privacy via Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB), this long trade setup targets an upward continuation toward the $55.34 resistance target as long as the $43.09–$45.68 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $46 Stop Loss: $43 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $50 TP2: $55 Powerful narratives create powerful moves. With 247 Research , you get the insights to be early to the biggest trends in crypto. Chart #2 – Jupiter(JUPUSDT) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade ) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Jupiter has printed a sharp bullish expansion off its $0.1650 accumulation base, pushing above the $0.2081 breakout level to trade around $0.2327 on the 4-hour timeframe. Functioning as the premier decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator and liquidity routing protocol on Solana, offering spot swaps, limit orders, DCA tools, and perpetual futures, this long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.2712 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.1924–$0.2081 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $ 0.2081 Stop Loss: $0.1924 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.2395 TP2: $0.2712 Chart #3 – Injective(INJUSDT) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Injective has completed a multi-candle pullback following its impulse to the $6.000 level, forming a higher low and finding support along an ascending trendline near $5.284 on the 4-hour timeframe. Functioning as a high-performance Layer-1 blockchain optimized for decentralized finance, cross-chain derivatives, and orderbook-based trading applications via CosmWasm, this long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $6.253 resistance target as long as the $4.581–$4.999 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $4.999 Stop Loss: 4.581 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $5.627 TP2: $6.253 Chart #4 – VVV(VVVUSDT) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) VVV has faced a lower-high rejection following its strong rally toward the $18.500–$18.600 region, breaking down below short-term support to trade around $17.177 on the 4-hour timeframe. Functioning as a high-throughput digital asset protocol powering decentralized governance, staking utility, and ecosystem incentive mechanisms, this short trade setup targets a deeper mean-reversion move toward the $15.500–$16.000 liquidity basin as long as overhead resistance holds below $18.000–$18.700. Trade Levels: Entry: $17.96 Stop Loss: $18.85 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $16.73 TP2: $15.30 Markets go both ways. Get premium short setups delivered every day with 247 Research . Chart #5 – Circle Internet Group(CRCL) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) ( CRCL refers to the stock of Circle Internet Group and not a cryptocurrency.) Circle has printed an aggressive continuation rally off its August accumulation lows, breaking out and holding above the $90.62–$93.05 support shelf to trade around $94.25 on the 4-hour timeframe. Serving as the leading global digital currency and financial technology infrastructure company behind the fully reserved USD Coin (USDC), Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), and programmable Web3 wallet platform, this long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $110.24 resistance target as long as the $84.08–$90.62 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $90 Stop Loss: $84 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $100 TP2: $110 Banter’s Take As we head into Warsh’s keynote, the market is holding its breath for the next move. The setup is clear: vague rhetoric keeps the debasement trade alive, while any hawkish tilt will test duration first. Our desks are positioned to pivot instantly, so you don’t hav

Treasury Buybacks Fail as Jackson Hole Threatens Risk Asset Warsh Faces Jackson Hole as Bond Yields Defy Treasury Treasury Buybacks Fail as Jackson Hole Threatens Risk Asset Aug 28 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . GM Investors Fed Chair Kevin Warsh takes the stage in Jackson Hole amid an unprecedented clash between monetary policy and fiscal reality. Benchmark 30-year Treasury yields recently breached 5.3%, marking their highest level in nearly two decades. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attempted to calm sovereign bond markets by doubling long-term buyback operations. Historical data gives equity bulls little comfort, as Jackson Hole has repeatedly triggered sharp bearish reversals across the S&P 500. Previous symposium keynotes regularly hammered equities, sparking aggressive post-event sell-offs and multiday drawdowns. Institutional desks and crypto allocators are now looking to Wyoming for clear answers. With core consumer prices remaining sticky and labor data holding firm, monetary policymakers cannot afford missteps. Stop Trading Headlines. Start Trading Alpha. The desk that moves before the market does • Live community of traders who actually execute, not just talk • Real-time calls dropped while the candle is forming, not after it closes • 4.9/5 rating by 1000+ traders because signal beats noise, every single time Join 247 Research. Get the 24/7 terminal free. 50% off your first month, USE CODE: terminal ($100 off) The Speech Markets Want Versus the Speech Warsh Wants Warsh has been chair since May. He has held two press conferences. Both were designed to starve the market of forward guidance. That is a choice, not an accident. He has five internal task forces reviewing how the Fed operates, including communications. Until that report, he treats near-term rate talk as noise. Events did not cooperate. After the July FOMC held the funds rate at 3.50%–3.75% on a 9–3 vote, his press conference helped send the 30-year toward levels last seen in 2007. Three regional presidents wanted a hike on the spot. That is the widest public split in years. Wall Street then asked for a road map. Warsh offered altitude. The speech has two rooms. Markets want a plan to squeeze the last point of inflation. Warsh’s own colleagues want to know whether he thinks prices are high because of tariffs and energy shocks or because the economy is simply running too hot. The official program still matters as cover. That is the academic layer. The policy layer is fiscal dominance. Reuters asked the question the bond market is already pricing: who pays the government’s bill? If Warsh treats Bessent’s intervention as a neighborly liquidity operation, the long end will test him again. If he draws a line between Treasury cash management and monetary policy, the dollar and front-end rates will do the talking. Our research base case remains the high-altitude non-answer. That is the modal outcome because it matches how he has spoken since July. The market-moving risk is not a surprise cut. It is a sentence that sounds like a hike bias without naming September. Fed Policy Meets a Data Tape That Refuses to Clear The incoming numbers do not give Warsh an easy out. Headline PCE printed 3.7% year over year in July. Core PCE held at 3.3%. Headline CPI is running near 3.4%. Unemployment eased to 4.1%. PPI cooled. Services did not. Autos, housing, and recreation are still carrying the print. Oil prices have not returned to the pre-shock range that would let officials “look through” energy. September pricing has settled into a hold-with-a-hike-tail. Polymarket and Kalshi put odds near no change at 68–70% and a 25 basis-point hike near 30%. CME FedWatch has been a touch more hawkish at times, but the center of gravity is a pause. That is not comfort. It is a market that wants Warsh to bless the pause without saying so. Policy rate: 3.50%–3.75%; July vote 9–3 for a hold, three dissenters for a hike. Inflation: PCE 3.7% y/y; core PCE 3.3%; CPI ~3.4%; core still above the 2% target after five-plus years. Labor: Unemployment 4.1%; July payrolls slightly negative on the month. Long end: 30-year near 5.21%; 10-year around 4.66–4.67%. September odds: ~69% hold, ~30% hike; cuts are a rounding error. Scenario weights we are using: high-altitude non-answer 35%; hawkish clarity 25%; endorse Bessent 18%; rebuke Bessent 15%; dovish look-through 7%. The data section of this week’s tape is mixed on purpose. Goods eased. Services did not. That split is why a “big questions” speech can still reprice the front end in twenty minutes. Bitcoin, Equities, and the Jackson Hole Tape Crypto market analysis around this event has a habit. Jackson Hole weeks have more often been risk-off for Bitcoin than risk-on. Equities have shown the same dip-then-drift pattern when the chair surprises hawkish. This year the setup is different because the fiscal channel is louder than the rate channel. Bitcoin spent most of August trapped, then ripped more than 20% in a week as the 30-year tagged multi-year highs and Bessent announced larger long-end buybacks. Gold moved with it. The S&P 500 did not. That divergence is the story. Prior Bitcoin surges of that size usually arrived with falling long rates. This one arrived with yields still elevated. That is a debasement tape, not a liquidity-cut tape. By late week, BTC was wrestling with $80,000. Spot sat near $80,250 into Thursday’s cash close, with the S&P 500 around 7,731. Semiconductor stocks remain the equity market’s high-beta proxy for the same liquidity impulse. Oil prices are still high enough to keep headline inflation sticky and low enough, on some sessions, to let doves talk about looking through energy. On-chain data is not the driver today. Positioning is. If Warsh sounds hawkish, the first flush is usually in duration-sensitive risk: long-duration tech, high-beta

Media Trends Executive Preview Live experiences are becoming a growth engine. Media Trends Executive Preview Live experiences are becoming a growth engine. As digital media faces AI disruption and fragmented audiences, companies across entertainment, sports and advertising are finding something increasingly valuable offline: audiences willing to show up, spend more and stay engaged. Why it matters: The live experiences economy is creating new sources of pricing power, advertising revenue and audience loyalty, making IRL an increasingly important growth strategy. The latest members-only Media Trends Executive deep dive examines what corporate leaders should watch, including: Premium experiences are expanding pricing power. Fans are continuing to pay for VIP access, upgraded seating and exclusive moments, giving companies a path to increase revenue per attendee. Live audiences are attracting more ad dollars. As attention online shrinks, brands are investing in out-of-home and experiential marketing that connects with fans in real time. Sports rights are becoming an even more valuable media asset. Rising rights fees, streaming ad demand and growing interest in women’s sports are creating new upside well beyond ticket sales. Go deeper: Media Trends Executive give business leaders a closer look at the deals, business models and strategic shifts shaping media’s next growth era. Unlock the Full Analysis The bottom line: Live experiences are no longer just a post-pandemic rebound. They are becoming a durable source of pricing power, advertising revenue and audience growth. Media Trends Executive maps where strategy is shifting and what it signals for media, tech and entertainment leaders. Join now and unlock industry deep dives, platform updates and forward-looking analysis from Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn. PO Box 101060 Arlington VA 22201 LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram PO Box 101060 Arlington VA 22201 LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Instagram