Hormuz Flare-Up Pushes Crude Oil Up 🚨5 Trades To Watch As War Starts Again ! Hormuz Flare-Up Pushes Crude Oil Up Sep 2 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, Overnight the US and Iran traded fresh strikes near the Strait of Hormuz, with Tehran answering across the Gulf. Traditional markets woke up to that flare-up on top of a deepening global bond sell-off and another weak session for equities after Wall Street closed lower to start September. The story is no longer Fed commentary. It is yields breaking out across the US, Europe and Japan at the same time crude stays bid on supply risk. Stocks are fading into a historically soft month, hike odds are rising, and bitcoin is trading with risk, not against it, as the latest hostilities hit. Sticky inflation plus an energy shock is still the tax on duration and risk assets. When sovereign bonds buckle, capital usually reaches for scarcity; today that bid is pausing while gold and crypto digest the same tape. Here is what we are watching. Poll of the Day ( Presented by Rain Trade ) 🎯 POLL Bond markets across 22 economies are under stress. How do central banks resolve the debt trap? 🖨️ Debt monetization / QE 🛑 Forced austerity 💥 Broader liquidity crunch Today’s Charts: Chart #1 – Bitway(BTWUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #2 – Zcash(ZECUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #3 – Flare (FLRUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #4 – Pump fun (PUMPUSDT) 1-Day Chart #5 – Moderna (MRNA) 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 – Bitway(BTWUSDT) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Bitway has concluded its post-spike consolidation range and pushed above the $0.42938 shelf, currently holding gains around $0.44268 on the 4-hour timeframe. Functioning as an enterprise-grade digital asset infrastructure and multi-chain payment custody protocol facilitating high-throughput transactions and settlement integrations, this long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.60819 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.37603–$0.42938 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.4293 Stop Loss: $0.3760 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.5134 TP2: $0.9083 Powerful narratives create powerful moves. With 247 Research , you get the insights to be early to the biggest trends in crypto. Chart #2 – Zcash(ZECUSDT) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade ) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Zcash (ZEC) has faced rejection after testing a double-top structure near the $880.00–$890.00 highs, breaking down below the local support shelf to trade around $805.41 on the 4-hour timeframe. Functioning as a privacy-preserving peer-to-peer cryptocurrency leveraging zk-SNARK zero-knowledge cryptography to support both transparent addresses and fully encrypted, shielded transactions, this short trade setup targets a deeper mean-reversion drop toward the $660.00–$700.00 liquidity pocket as long as overhead resistance holds below $820.00–$870.00. Trade Levels: Entry: $ 805 Stop Loss: $872 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $738 TP2: $656 Chart #3 – Flare (FLRUSDT) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Flare has pulled back to test its previous breakout shelf around $0.06419–$0.06524 following an explosive spike toward the upper wick highs, stabilizing to trade near $0.06524 on the 4-hour timeframe. Functioning as an EVM-compatible Layer-1 data blockchain that provides decentralized access to high-integrity off-chain and cross-chain information via its native Flare Time Series Oracle (FTSO) and State Connector protocols, this long trade setup targets an upward continuation toward the $0.07467 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.06075–$0.06419 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.00641 Stop Loss: 0.00607 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.00686 TP2: $0.00745 Chart #4 – Pump fun (PUMPUSDT) 1-Day( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Pump has printed a lower-high rejection following its vertical impulse toward the $0.005400 peak, breaking below local horizontal support to trade around $0.004206 on the 1-day timeframe. Serving as the native ecosystem asset tied to Solana's prominent token launchpad and meme-coin generation platform pump.fun, this short trade setup targets an extended mean-reversion drop toward the $0.002800–$0.003000 liquidity basin as long as overhead resistance holds below $0.004400–$0.005000. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.00440 Stop Loss: $0.00505 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.00361 TP2: $0.00267 Markets go both ways. Get premium short setups delivered every day with 247 Research . Chart #5 – Moderna (MRNA) 4-Hour( Powered by Rain Trade 📊) Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) ( MRNA refers to the stock of Moderna and not a cryptocurrency.) Moderna has established a higher-low consolidation above its recent base, pushing through local resistance to trade near $154.19 on the 4-hour timeframe. Functioning as a commercial-stage biotechnology pioneer developing transformative messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines and targeted therapeutics across respiratory pathogens, oncology, and rare diseases, this long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $200.87 overhead resistance target as long as the $132.68–$148.21 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $148 Stop Loss: $132 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $172 TP2: $200 Banter’s Take Geopolitical instability and a breaking sovereign bond landscape have shifted the narrative from simple Fed commentary to a genuine d

Oil Prices Explode While Bitcoin Absorbs The Macro Shakeout Hormuz Escalation Shakes Risk Assets Oil Prices Explode While Bitcoin Absorbs The Macro Shakeout Sep 2 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 The tape turned hostile this week for all the familiar reasons. United States strikes near the Strait of Hormuz and immediate Iranian retaliation have thrust energy straight back into the macro debate. Crude benchmarks rallied aggressively while diesel crack spreads exploded to record levels. Traditional risk markets reacted with immediate caution. Meanwhile, Bitcoin pulled back roughly six percent from its local peak near $81,500. Panic merchants are already calling this the cycle top. Our research desk is taking the opposite side of that trade. Short-term holders are banking profits, but structural damage is nowhere to be found. Institutional ETF demand remains elevated, global liquidity is expanding, and key support levels are fully intact. We view this volatility as an aggressive mid-cycle reset rather than terminal exhaustion. Here’s what our desk is watching. 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. Geopolitical Risk Fuels Oil Prices and Challenges Fed Policy The military escalation in the Middle East has completely altered near-term inflation expectations. Following American kinetic strikes on Iranian targets near Hormuz, Tehran launched direct retaliatory operations. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also discussed the possibility of freezing Iranian sovereign assets. Our research recalls the historical precedent here. When Western allies seized Russia's foreign reserves, Bitcoin surged by 30%. Weaponised dollar sanctions repeatedly force global capital to reconsider non-sovereign monetary alternatives over time. In the immediate term, oil prices are the primary economic transmission mechanism. West Texas Intermediate crude decisively broke above its multi-month upward trendline. Worryingly, US diesel refining margins surpassed an all-time high of $106 per barrel. Strong overseas exports have pushed domestic distillate fuel inventories to new seasonal lows. Retail diesel prices are now around $5.63 per gallon across the country. Diesel is currently worth significantly more than the crude used to produce it. In fact, the crack spread gap is greater than any stretch in modern market history. With diesel up 10% this week alone, freight, trucking and industrial heating will undoubtedly see higher input costs. This dynamic complicates short-term Fed policy significantly. Fed Governor Michael Barr stated that he would support higher interest rates if inflation moderation stalled. Former Governor Kevin Warsh took an equally hawkish stance at Jackson Hole. Benchmark ten-year Treasury yields climbed to 4.80%. However, our desk believes the financial panic is greatly exaggerated. Bessent explicitly described this move as a traditional supply shock rather than demand-driven core inflation. Historically, central banks have avoided directly tightening policy in response to isolated commodity supply shocks. Crypto Market Analysis and On-Chain Data Map the Shakeout Looking at the crypto market on lower timeframes, we see classic positioning turbulence. The spot demand has turned negative recently after a long period of aggressive build-up. Meanwhile, the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index slipped back into negative territory. This metric indicates American spot buyers are lagging offshore bids for now. Institutional flows also showed some small hesitation at the beginning of the month. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds experienced $236 million of outflows on September 2. That outflow followed Monday’s $217 million inflow and a whopping $3.5 billion August tally. One bumpy session doesn’t erase the strongest monthly institutional inflow since July 2025. The real issue is the short term holders cashing in their profits. Buyers have not seen profits this large since October 2025. Of course, the risk of local distribution increases when short-term holders are sitting on large gains. That dynamic causes violent shakeouts regularly to move coins from speculative to long term allocators. From our desk, we are closely tracking several technical levels and on-chain metrics: Short-Term Holder Cost Basis (~$70,000): This realized price acts as our primary structural floor and cycle line in the sand. Local Drawdown Depth (6%): The current pullback from $81,500 remains exceptionally shallow compared to the 12.4% historical golden cross correction average. The 50-Week Simple Moving Average: Past cycle analogs show Bitcoin wicks underneath this dynamic trendline rather than breaking it decisively. Approaching 50-Day and 200-Day Golden Cross: Daily moving averages are converging toward a bullish cross that historically precedes explosive upside expansion. Cycle Momentum Indicator: CryptoQuant’s proprietary cycle metric is officially flashing a macro bear-market reversal rather than a blow-off top. Daily RSI Retest: The recent momentum breakout line, which previously generated a 26% price surge, is currently undergoing a textbook retest. This temporary liquidity drain is expressed by the cross-alt positioning. High-beta altcoins will likely be aggressively de-risked as Bitcoin consolidates and spot demand fades. Speculative leverage is cut first to protect core spot exposure by traders. This rotation is normal procedure during mid-cycle pauses. Macro Trading and Global Liquidity Diverge From Equities Macro trading strategies require separating temporary headline n

Plus: Tepid job growth | Wednesday, September 02, 2026 Axios Macro By Neil Irwin and Courtenay Brown · Sep 02, 2026 The global bond market sell-off continues today, with long-term borrowing costs rising from Europe to the U.S. As G20 meetings wrapped up in Asheville, North Carolina, we heard top Trump administration officials offering a rosier read on surging bond yields. More below, plus an early read on private sector hiring ahead of Friday's government jobs report. 📚 Complexity hides reality. Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less, the new book by Axios' three co-founders, shows how to cut the clutter from work and life, including using AI to simplify rather than add more bloat. Preorder Simplify. Today's newsletter, edited by Jeffrey Cane and copy edited by Katie Lewis, is 1,014 words, a 4-minute read. 1 big thing: Trump's bond market test Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios The Trump administration is explaining the surge in long-term borrowing costs as evidence of a stronger economy, even as some leading investors see a warning about America's fiscal trajectory . Why it matters: If Trump economic officials are right, higher yields might reflect an economy strong enough to make its enormous debt burden more manageable. But worried investors see stubborn inflation that could keep rates higher for longer and a bond market forcing Washington to reckon with its debt sooner than expected. The intrigue: Whatever is driving the move, the fallout is the same: higher borrowing costs for consumers, businesses and governments. That cuts against the administration's promise to bring borrowing costs down, a key piece of its affordability agenda. Between the lines: We told you yesterday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the run-up in yields a "growth story" on the sidelines of the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in Asheville. The 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.8% this morning, the highest level in two years. The 30-year yield topped 5.3%, erasing the drop that followed Bessent's bond market intervention announcement last month and hovering near its highest levels since 2007. What they're saying: Bessent's argument is that stronger growth prospects — rather than higher inflation expectations as a result of, say, the renewed attacks between Iran and the U.S. — were fueling the rise in yields. "Right now we have what Alan Greenspan would have called a 'conundrum.' ... We have large borrowings by AI institutions," Bessent told reporters last night at a press conference. Bessent said private-sector executives at the G20 — including the Deere and Eli Lilly CEOs — described how their companies were already using AI to raise productivity. AI-related capital expenditures "will turn into productivity and that will be extremely disinflationary," Bessent told reporters. "I would guess that in the next six months, we will start seeing the benefits of that." He also said during the press conference that "interest rates will come down when we get on the other side of this," referring to the Iran war. Zoom in: David Zervos, chief market strategist at Jefferies, dismissed fiscal worries as the main driver of higher yields, pointing instead to fierce competition for capital. The economy looks like the "opposite of secular stagnation ... with a lot of competing sources for capital investment right now," he said. "There's just lots of other cool things to buy than an Italian government bond, or a U.S. government bond, or a Japanese government bond." The other side: The bond sell-off is global, with borrowing costs surging around much of the globe as governments contend with heavy debt loads and rising interest costs. The sell-off was on the minds of policymakers gathered in Asheville, with international finance officials saying it was a sign that markets are questioning governments' fiscal credibility. "Whatever issues they have been debating about at the G20 for years, like deficits — the market is staring them in the face and saying, 'We're not convinced you have the right plan here,'" Atlantic Council's Josh Lipsky, who's also a G20 veteran, told Axios. The bottom line: The bond market has become an important scorecard for the Trump administration, which has pointed to falling yields as validation of its policies. Now, higher yields make it harder to deliver on President Trump's promise to bring down borrowing costs and ease the affordability squeeze. Asked about that tension, Bessent pointed to rising real wages and said officials were working to reduce costs. A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Peek inside the forces reshaping health care with Axios Future of Health Care 2. Soft August hiring as jobs report looms Data: ADP; Chart: Neil Irwin/Axios Private employers added jobs at a tepid rate last month, ADP said, as economists await Friday's release of the official government employment data for August. Why it matters: The ADP data adds to the evidence that a surge in the job market this spring gave way to more moderate expansion over the summer. Driving the news: The payroll processing company reported that 38,000 jobs were added in August, the lowest since January and below forecasters' expectations. It was also lower than the revised 44,000 added in July. The strongest gains, as has often been the case in recent years, were in education and health services (45,000 jobs added) and leisure and hospitality (up 16,000). Laggard sectors included manufacturing (down 17,000 jobs) and professional and business services (down 16,000). What they're saying: "If you want to look for places of disappointment, [manufacturing] is the one I would point to," ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said in a call with reporters. "It's kind of retreated back to its long-term job loss instead of job creation," she said. "So we're going to be watching that sector to see if this is the reversion back to a declining trend after a few months of at least a little bit of positivity." What's next: The Labor Department's Augu

This is the key bottleneck in the robotics buildout. The hand problem is harder than the brain problem This is the key bottleneck in the robotics buildout. Archie Keshan GM. This is Milk Road Stocks, where the next AI trade might have a pair of hands. The robotics boom is coming. We spoke to a 40-year robotics veteran to find out where the bottlenecks are and broke it down in this edition. First, a quick detour to private markets. On Sept 23, Milk Road's Martin sits down with Alumni Ventures to talk about blockchain and private markets. Save your free seat here. THE NEXT AI TRADE WILL HAVE ARMS 🦾 Yesterday, Jensen Huang said physical AI could eventually be 10x bigger than digital AI. Why? Because 90% of the world's work still happens in the physical world. Source: @Geiger_Capital Jensen thinks the robotics boom could be enormous. And that’s why we brought Scott Walter on the pod to talk about this buildout. He's worked in robotics for 40+ years, so he knows a thing or two about robots. Here's what stood out: If millions of humanoid robots are coming, someone has to build all the parts: Motors. Actuators. Sensors. Hands. Magnets. The machines that build those components. Source: @MilkRoadStocks Most people assume the AI brain is the bottleneck. But Scott says the brain and the hardware can both be bottlenecks. Sometimes the AI is ready, but the hardware isn't. And right now, the hand may be the hardest problem to solve. There are two main camps: Camp one: The “tendinistas” These hands use cables that work like human tendons. The upside: They're lightweight, flexible and very dexterous. The downside: Tendons can break and are difficult to control precisely. 1X is one of the major humanoid companies pursuing this approach. Camp two: Direct-drive hands These put small motors directly inside the fingers and knuckles. The upside: They're stronger and more durable. The downside: They're heavier and currently less dexterous. Nobody has figured out the perfect solution yet. And that's what makes this interesting. The robots getting all the attention right now (the ones doing backflips, sprinting down tracks, marching in formation) mostly don't have hands at all. But the real robotics race may come down to something much less exciting: who can build a hand that actually works. Tesla famously showed off its 22-degree-of-freedom hand (22-DOF) but Scott says the company hasn't publicly demonstrated meaningful dexterity from it since the original announcement. If you want to see which companies are working on the robotics supply chain, Goldman Sachs released a report this week mapping out the major players: Source: @MilkRoadStocks According to Jensen Huang, the robotics trade is just getting started. But our PRO analysts are already positioning for it. Melvin bought CCXI on July 1st and is still holding onto his position. Our PRO analysts were early to the memory trade with MU. Early to the neocloud trade with NBIS. Now, we’re looking to be early in the robotics trade with CCXI. If you want to see exactly what our analysts are buying, selling and watching, join Milk Road PRO for $1 . Join PRO for $1 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. 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 Stocks 1257 Dundas St W Toronto, Ontario M6J1X6, Canada

The bond selloff is escalating... September 02, 2026 Presented By Step on in. Yesterday officially marked the beginning of the late 2020s, according to Encyclopædia Britannica. We should have realized how fast time was moving. Turns out hindsight really is...2020. —Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Molly Liebergall, Adam Epstein, Neal Freyman In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: The bond meltdown going global MrBeast’s book on track to bomb Dyson’s $500 AI-powered camera toothbrush Markets Nasdaq 26,099.77 -1.03% S&P 7,631.54 -0.71% Dow 52,767.59 -0.79% 10-Year 4.796% +4.0 bps Bitcoin $77,256.95 -2.08% Dell $424.36 -6.94% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: Stocks slipped yesterday after the combination of the deepening bond crisis and renewed hostilities in Iran (more on both shortly) gave investors the spooks. Elsewhere, Dell fell ahead of its Q2 earnings report, briefly blunting its bonkers momentum before moving up again in after-hours trading. BONDING MOMENT The global bond selloff escalates Niv Bavarsky This is not what John Lennon had in mind when he hoped “the world will be as one.” Government debt was on sale in several countries yesterday, with bond prices hitting longtime lows for the same reasons that had traders dumping US Treasury bonds in recent weeks. Investors around the world are demanding higher premiums for holding longer-term government bonds amid fears of unsustainable debt levels and persistent inflation that could prompt central banks to hike interest rates. The inflation concern deepened after the US and Iran began exchanging fire again over the weekend following a month-long pause, pushing oil prices up by almost 6% this week. Global sale Bloomberg calculates that the G7 developed economies saw their average government bond yields—which move in the opposite direction to bond prices—rise to the highest level since 2000: The yield on the 30-year UK government bond hit its highest point since 1998 yesterday. Japanese 10-year government bond yield broke 3% yesterday for the first time since 1996 amid reports that the government is due to expand its budget, while lowering taxes. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested he thinks the country’s central bank will raise interest rates to support the yen. France’s 10-year bond yield rose to near 2008 highs last week due in part to concerns about unsustainable levels of government borrowing. Stateside… Treasury bond yields rose slightly. Last month, they hit the highest level since 2007, declining briefly after Bessent announced the expansion of a government bond buyback program, before rising again. Meanwhile, the trading odds that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its next meeting nearly doubled to almost 70% since last week. Why it matters: Aside from raising borrowing costs for governments, growing yields herald higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses. Meanwhile… G20 finance ministers are meeting in Asheville, NC this week, and how the Treasury intends to deal with the bond market is likely on the agenda. —SK Sponsored By Incogni Unknown number calling? It’s not random. The BBC caught scam call-center workers on hidden cameras as they laughed at the people they were tricking. The truth is, scammers don’t pick phone numbers at random. They buy your personal data from data brokers— your phone number, your email, and even details about your lifestyle . Once your data is out there, it’s vulnerable to phishing, impersonation, and even identity theft. That’s why Incogni helps: Delete your personal info from everywhere on the web. Monitor and follow up automatically. Keep erasing your data as new risks appear. You can’t stop scammers from existing. But you can make sure they don’t have your information. Try Incogni and get 55% off your subscription with code MORNING . World Tour de headlines Ali Saeedi/Getty Images 🌍 US launches new series of airstrikes on Iran. The US military struck Iran near the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, which it said was in response to recent attacks by Iran on commercial ships in the waterway. In a social media post, President Trump said that if Iran retaliates, “they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level.” Iran said it would respond with “crushing and devastating blows.” The renewed hostilities come after weeks of relative calm in the region, as the US pivoted to hitting Iran with economic sanctions instead of missiles. But the tit-for-tat strikes now threaten to increase tensions further, six months after the war began. More than 50,000 US troops are currently stationed in the Middle East, the largest buildup in decades. 🎥 Trump endorses bipartisan Hollywood tax incentive plan. One thing that apparently can bring Republicans and Democrats together is a love of the movies. President Trump threw his support behind a federal tax incentive for US film and TV production, which California lawmakers have long suggested to prevent industry jobs from leaving for other countries. Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, said he was in “strong agreement” with Trump on the issue. Per Variety, around 73,000 US film jobs—two-thirds of which were in Los Angeles—have been lost since 2022 as aggressive tax incentives and lower labor costs increasingly lure productions overseas. 🇨🇦 Carney asks US to “stop doing memes” amid trade war. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters yesterday that he is open to resuming the stalled trade talks between the US and Canada, but only “when the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough and start being serious.” The PM’s comments were in response to a question about Trump administration officials making fun of Canada’s military, CNBC reported. “It’s beneath their office,” Carney added. Negotiations are at a standstill after the US slapped Canada with 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of goods last month and Canada responded

Plus: Data center surge! | Wednesday, September 02, 2026 Axios Markets By Emily Peck and Matt Phillips · Sep 02, 2026 🐪 It's midweek. There's nothing for it but to soldier on. 🔻 S&P 500 futures are down again in the premarket session, following three straight days of modest declines for the blue chips. Rising bond yields and oil prices remain the drivers, overshadowing the huge quarterly numbers reported by Dell Technologies after yesterday's close. Today, we explain how it's possible, in these turbulent times, for a company to borrow money while offering investors very little in return. (Hint: A turbulent stock market helps.) Plus, Matt has an eye-popping data center chart. 📚 Complexity has a cost: All those layers, dashboards and check-ins take away from what really adds value. "Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less," a new book by the three Axios co-founders, shows you how to delete what's clogging your life and work so you have more time. Preorder "Simplify. " Shall we? In 1,070 words, a 4-minute read. 1 big thing: AI frenzy feeds zero-bond boom By Emily Peck Data: Dealogic; Chart: Emily Peck/Axios Investor fervor for the AI boom is so strong that companies are able to borrow billions of dollars right now essentially for free. Why it matters: The record surge in zero-coupon convertible bonds — which don't pay regular interest — is surprising given that we're in a higher rate environment. Typically, that would mean companies would pay higher borrowing costs. State of play: The overall market for these "converts" is booming. As of Sept. 1, companies issued $186.8 billion globally in convertible bonds across 362 deals — that's already more than last year, per data that Dealogic shared with Axios. 60% of these bonds are related to the AI boom: hyperscalers, neoclouds, semiconductors and energy companies benefiting from data center construction among them, says Venu Krishna, head of U.S. equity strategy at Barclays. Zero-coupon issuance made up about 43% of the overall total, close to $80 billion — that is the largest amount of any full year going back to 1995, per Dealogic. The latest: Just this week, Nvidia invested $3.5 billion in a $3.9 billion zero-coupon bond issued by MediaTek, a Taiwan-based chipmaker. Google parent Alphabet also participated. How it works: A convertible is something of a bond-stock hybrid. Say a company wants to borrow $100 and does so by issuing a bond that gives investors the right to convert the debt at a later date into its stock at an agreed-upon higher price. If the stock doesn't go up by that much, investors have the option of simply getting paid back the $100. Right now these are getting priced aggressively. Stocks would have to move up a lot for converts to pay off — typically around 40%, analysts say. If they do, investors get a tidy payout over a longer time frame than you can get just buying options. The intrigue: Typically, even with a zero-coupon convert, there may be some yield baked into the agreement — a company might sell a $100 face value bond for $90, which repays $100 at maturity. But what's unusual now, says Barclays' Krishna, is that many of the zero-coupon converts are being issued at face value — no baked-in yield. The big picture: The demand for exposure to the AI buildout is so strong that investors are willing to look past rising rates to bet on rising stock prices. It's a very favorable environment for companies issuing debt, and they're "taking advantage of it," says Michael Youngworth, head of global convertibles and preferred strategy at Bank of America Securities. "I don't necessarily think just because we see a lot of convertibles, it's a bubble indicator," he says. "But I do think it suggests that there is some froth." Flashback: In 2021, when certain tech stocks were surging as everyone was forced to stay at home, Peloton's stock was at all-time highs. The company issued a zero-coupon convert, and eventually the stock fell by more than 95%. "That's an instance where investors overpaid," Krishna says. Zoom in: Another part of the convert's appeal has to do with what Matt wrote about last month — single-stock volatility is high, while the overall S&P 500 index is relatively calm. That volatility is drawing in huge interest in convertibles from arbitrageurs who buy the convertible bond and short the stock underlying it, Youngworth notes. Arbitrageurs account for roughly two-thirds of the market for convertibles. The more volatile the market, the more they make. What to watch: If volatility dries up, the risk is that these investors pull back from the market, Krishna says, emphasizing that this isn't his current base case. "These shops may pack up and move on to something else, and that leaves us with a market that is loaded with paper, and not enough investors to sop it up." 2. Charted: Data center construction surge By Matt Phillips Construction spending on AI data center "shells" soared in July, rising at an annualized rate of nearly 60% from July 2025 levels. Why it matters: It shows the AI building frenzy was gathering strength this summer, even as — or perhaps because — a bipartisan backlash grows. By the numbers: Data center construction spending jumped to an annual pace of more than $75 billion in July, Census Bureau data released yesterday showed. That figure represents the value of the construction "put in place" during the month. It covers only the construction costs for the massive warehouse-like structures — often referred to as shells — that will be filled with racks of servers, processing units, memory chips and the fiber-optic connections that AI relies on. Reality check: Despite the gobsmacking amount of money being spent on data center construction, it's a pittance compared with what it costs to fill a data center with increasingly expensive processors and memory chips. The bottom line: Estimates peg construction at roughly 20% of all-in costs for a data center. A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Peek inside the forces reshapin

Bill Gates-backed Fervo Energy finds a geothermal power customer in Google. September 2, 2026 PRESENTED BY MISO ROBOTICS Good morning. It was bonds away around the world again on Tuesday. International benchmark Brent crude rose 5.3% to $95.31, a signal to investors that inflation is likely to track higher as long as energy supplies remain strained by the conflict. The prevailing view is central banks will be left with little choice but to raise interest rates. For consumers, higher rates generally mean higher payments on mortgages and auto and student loans. For world governments, already grappling with ballooning debt piles, borrowing also becomes more expensive. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury surged three basis points to a 20-month high of 4.78% on Tuesday. The yield on the British 10-year gilt at one point reached 5.26%, the highest since 2008. Germany’s 10-year yield touched 3.35%, the highest since 2011, and Japan’s 10-year yield reached 3% for the first time since 1996. Any chance you can put a federal budget on Klarna? What do you mean that’s what we’re already doing? MARKETS S&P 500 7,631.47 ▼ -0.71% DJI 52,766.88 ▼ -0.79% PHYS $32.77 ▼ -3.08% *Presented by Sprott. Stock data as of market close on September 1, 2026. Every PHYS share is backed ounce-for-ounce. Redeemable in bullion. *Please see important PHYS disclosures below. TECHNOLOGY Dell Buoys AI Trade Amid Looming Chip Shortages Dell used to be known as the maker of the cobweb-covered, 15-year-old PCs in your company’s IT department that, as the occasional intern learns, somehow still work. Amid the artificial intelligence trade, it has followed the company slogan and found The Power to Do More . On Tuesday, Dell smashed Wall Street’s expectations with its latest quarterly earnings , posting revenue of $47 billion, up 58% year over year, and non-GAAP operating income of $5.9 billion, up 160%. Investors spent the day fretting that Dell, now a key cog in the AI supply chain, wouldn’t live up to the hype, sending shares down 6.8%. After the bell, it was clear one of the biggest growth stories of 2026 has a few more chapters left. Dell Me Something Good Dell entered Tuesday up 238% on the New York Stock Exchange this year. No longer just a PC-maker, it builds AI-optimized servers that can host heavy workloads and power the training of advanced models, making them crucial components in the technology’s development. For this reason, Wall Street expected nothing less than explosive growth on Tuesday. Anything less would have been viewed as a lagging indicator that AI spending was running out of steam. But, in addition to beating top- and bottom-line estimates, Dell raised its full-year 2027 revenue forecast by $25 billion to $192 billion, nearly $18 billion more than the Wall Street consensus. AI-specific revenue supports the bullish premise: Dell’s AI-optimized server revenue came in at $16.4 billion, up 100% year over year. Crucially, the AI server business had a record $95 billion backlog as of the end of the second quarter. Shares in Dell rose 8% in after-hours trading. Much of Dell’s success this year is already priced in, although 18 of 25 analysts tracked by Zacks Investment Research rate the stock as either a buy or a strong buy. Margin Call: One important figure was Dell’s non-GAAP gross margin, which was 21% of revenue, more or less in line with the past year. Dell’s margins are an especially important metric because the company is both a beneficiary and a victim of the market’s bullish attitude toward AI. Dell’s AI-optimized servers require two components, advanced graphics processing units and high-bandwidth memory chips, that are becoming increasingly expensive due to demand across AI industries and consumer electronics. Apart from costs, chipmakers say AI memory shortages are likely to stretch into 2027 and beyond, capping the ability of Dell and other AI infrastructure suppliers to fill demand. As COO Jeff Clarke put it in May: “We have a supply issue. We are supply-constrained in the second half. It is not a demand issue for us.” Written by Sean Craig PRESENTED BY MISO ROBOTICS Why’s This Robot Called Flippy? Photo via Miso Robotics A french-fry robot with a name like Flippy? That doesn’t make sense. Miso Robotics has heard it all before. But ask restaurant operators like White Castle or the Cal State University System that deploy Miso’s Flippy Fry Station robot, and it makes a lot more sense. In the $1T fast-food industry, Flippy flips restaurant operators’ bottom lines , helping boost each location’s profits up to 4X. And with a $4B/year revenue opportunity at fry stations alone, it’s anything but … small potatoes. Now, after closing two major asset acquisitions this year , Miso has just added big-name customers like Jersey Mike’s and Cinnabon, and has grown its patent portfolio by ~10X, reaching 300+. Flippy even entered its first NBA arena. Join 44K+ everyday investors like you backing the Flippy robot. Hurry to invest in Miso at $5.48/share by 9/17. ** ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Bill Gates-Backed Fervo Energy Joins Firms Profiting From Data Center Buildout Don’t call it niche clean-energy tech. Geothermal has made a grand entrance to the data center stack. On Tuesday, Fervo Energy announced a deal to sell nearly 400 megawatts of power to Google for a potential data center in Utah. Backed by Bill Gates through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, Fervo uses oil and gas fracking methods to develop geothermal energy, which is essentially heat that comes from deep within the earth. The company plans to start providing the energy to Google from its Cape Station project in Utah in 2028. Data Center Darlings As recent years have shown, AI data center buildouts can do wonders for unexpected companies. Just ask Generac, the company you probably associate with making the generator in your backyard that’s now planning a massive factory expansion to create data center generators, or HVAC company Comfort Systems, w

Welcome to Axios Live, where leaders, innovators and change-makers connect in real time. Our events bring editorial excellence to the stage with one-on-one interviews, insightful panels and spaces designed for meaningful connection. You will receive: Exclusive updates on upcoming events. Invitations to our most sought-after programs. Early RSVP access to high demand gatherings. How you’ll experience Axios Live: Premier Events: Flagship summits in D.C., NYC, SF, LA and beyond. Mainstage Events: Thought-leadership programs in major cities and local markets. Axios Houses: Immersive pop-ups at global events like Davos , SXSW and Cannes . PO Box 101060 Arlington VA 22201 PO Box 101060 Arlington VA 22201 Facebook X Instagram LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram LinkedIn

PLUS: The debasement trade is back to Bitcoin. 🥛 Playing with fire 🔥 PLUS: The debasement trade is back to Bitcoin. John Gillen GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that drops macro alpha into your inbox every Tuesday to blow you away with government bond buybacks, ballooning deficits, and foreign exchange interventions, and most of all, what does all of this have to do with crypto? Here’s what we’ve got for you today: ✍️ The yield cap trap. ✍️ Intervention epidemic. ✍️ The debasement trade strikes back. 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Bitcoin at $79K: Bottom Confirmed or One More Crash Coming? 🍪 Capital vs labor has always been the defining political battle, but we're about to replace that entirely. Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko. THE YIELD CAP TRAP When governments run massive primary deficits, debt servicing costs skyrocket. That is a nice way of saying that we’ve been spending way more than we have for so many decades that the interest payments are getting so expensive we’re struggling to pay them. As a result, people are doubting that the governments that have been doing this will be able to pay back their debts. This means they are less interested in buying government bonds. This dynamic has been pushing bond yields up. Higher yields attract buyers, but buyers aren’t stepping in, so the yields keep rising. Enter U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He has aggressively doubled long-end Treasury buybacks (10- to 30-year bonds) to keep borrowing costs artificially suppressed. As Brookings economist Robin Brooks warns, trying to cap long-term yields without fixing underlying fiscal deficits is "playing with fire" . Source: @robin_j_brooks Mechanism : If bond prices aren't allowed to clear naturally, macroeconomic pressure spills straight into foreign exchange markets. Result : Instead of bond yields spiking, the U.S. Dollar takes the hit. The dollar has dropped about 10% on a broad trade-weighted basis. Blueprint : This mirrors Japan’s Yield Curve Control (YCC) playbook, where strict bond yield caps triggered a multi-year slide in the Yen. So, how do governments stop their currencies from collapsing? Great questions, I’m so glad I asked it. INTERVENTION EPIDEMIC You may have noticed how a lot of governments are getting a lot more involved in bond and currency markets these days. The fancy central banker word for this is an “intervention.” The more honest word for it is “panic.” Recent interventions highlight just how constrained policy authorities have become: The Euro-Yen Twist : During joint U.S.-Japan operations to support the Yen, the U.S. Treasury used Euro reserves to buy Yen instead of liquidating U.S. Dollar assets. Why? Selling Treasuries would have pushed U.S. yields up. Proving Bessent prioritized bond market insulation over standard FX defense mechanics. Undervalued renminbi : China's Real Effective Renminbi (RMB) remains 10% to 20% undervalued, driving non-commodity trade surpluses toward 3.5% of GDP. Argentine swap line : The U.S. Treasury launched a $20B swap facility with Argentina, a rare intervention outside a global financial crisis for a sovereign issuer with a history of defaults. Source: Milk Road Things are getting way out of whack, and these governments are running out of options to maintain normalcy. So, what happens next? Capital fleeing these sinking ships is looking for a hard asset that is safe from debasement. If only there were a peer-to-peer electronic cash system… 😀 THE DEBASEMENT TRADE STRIKES BACK With fiat currencies taking the strain of fiscal doom, institutional capital is pivoting into non-sovereign hard assets and low-debt havens: 1. Gold : Gold has surged over 65% past $4,500/oz. Uniquely, gold is rallying alongside high nominal yields as central banks and funds hedge against debt growth and currency weaponization. 2. Bitcoin (my favorite) : Derivatives markets reflect heavy call option open interest across $80,000 to $100,000 strikes, signaling structural demand as a non-sovereign macro hedge. 3. Low-Debt havens : Capital is accelerating out of high-deficit nations into fiscally conservative economies like Switzerland (CHF) and Denmark (DKK) . The Bitcoin bear market may not be totally over yet, but the bottom is certainly forming. All of this sets up the foundations of a long and sustained increase in demand for Bitcoin, or, in other words, a new bull market. Stay patient and make your plans now. The bulls are coming. If you want to see how the other Milk Road PRO analysts and I are positioning for the next crypto bull market, join us in PRO right now for just a buck! In the meantime, stay safe, stay educated, and stay bullish! BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD 🍪 Want to reach 88,000 crypto and AI investors a day? Milk Road is booking Q4 sponsorships now so book a call now. Breakdown: Dan Tapiero manages $1.4B across 22 crypto companies, and we just broke down the spread… Tom Lee: The current financial system has $150T in liquid assets driven by just two asset classes (bonds and stocks). Tokenization expands the addressable market. Raoul Pal: Capital vs labor has always been the defining political battle, but we're about to replace that entirely. 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: @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: Apple, OpenAI get testy | Tuesday, September 01, 2026 Axios Closer By Nathan Bomey · Sep 01, 2026 Tuesday ✅. Today's newsletter is 853 words, a 3-minute read. 📉 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed down 0.7%. 🔥 Today's stock spotlight: Dell Technologies shares were up almost 9% in extended trading on a better-than-expected quarter and the company boosting its full-year forecast on the strength of AI server sales. 1 big thing: Yields of yore By Matt Phillips Data: FactSet; Chart: Matt Phillips/Axios Yields on long-term government debt are hitting levels seldom seen in recent decades. Why it matters: The global move higher will raise borrowing costs for consumers, corporations and governments worldwide, and may create malaise in the stock market. Besides helping to set the price for government borrowing, government bond yields act as the floor for most other interest costs on debt — from consumer credit cards to corporate bond issues to mortgage rates. 📈 As they rise, typically all other interest rates do too. The latest: The U.S. 10-year Treasury note touched 4.80% this afternoon, territory it briefly saw in October 2023. (Before that, the T-note last spent significant time there in 2007.) The yield on the Japanese 10-year government bond hovered near 3% after briefly touching that level, which it hadn't breached in roughly 30 years, according to Bloomberg . Other large, developed nations, such as Britain, Germany and France saw their long-term bond yields climb toward turf not seen in a decade or more. Traders pointed to the rise in such rates as a reason the stock market slumped. 🛢️ Between the lines: Analysts pointed to recent Iranian attacks on oil tankers — and the resulting jump in oil prices — as a key contributor to the bond sell-off. That's because it could worsen inflation dynamics worldwide, especially in countries like Japan, which are heavily reliant on Mideast oil. The big picture: Inflation is the key bogeyman for bond investors as it cuts into the fixed return of bonds. 2. 🌶️ It's getting hot in here Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images A legal fight between Apple and OpenAI over alleged trade secret theft is getting pretty spicy. 👉 OpenAI, responding to Apple's preliminary injunction request, called the dispute today "a mess of Apple's own making," and said its accuser "is trying to blame everyone else," Axios' Herb Scribner writes . 🗑️ Apple said in a court filing that OpenAI was actively destroying evidence in the case, as first reported by Bloomberg . Catch up quick: Apple sued OpenAI in federal court in July, alleging that the AI company used Apple employees to obtain closely guarded hardware secrets in an effort to develop its own consumer hardware products. OpenAI claims that it never sought Apple's secrets, and it's argued the lawsuit was really about Apple's struggle to retain engineers and keep pace in AI. Apple has made clear that it wants the courtroom battle to head into the discovery phase , suggesting OpenAI's arguments for dismissal would be answered through discovery. 🌶️ OpenAI snapped back in today's filing, alleging that Apple had not done enough to protect itself, saying it "cannot use its own sloppy procedures to blame others for its own mess." 🍿 What's next: The case is scheduled for a court hearing before a judge on Oct. 1. Go deeper 3. Other happenings Stan Kroenke. Photo: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images ⚾️ Stan Kroenke has agreed to buy a controlling interest in the Los Angeles Angels from longtime owner Arte Moreno, adding MLB to Kroenke's sports portfolio, which includes the NFL's Los Angeles Rams, the NBA's Denver Nuggets and the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL. ( ESPN ) 🥛 Chobani announced plans to invest $1.2 billion to make a high-protein milk product at a former Keurig Dr Pepper facility in Pennsylvania. ( Bloomberg ) ☁️ Anthropic agreed to a $35 billion cloud-computing deal with Lambda via a data center in Texas. Nvidia, an investor in Lambda, will hold the lease on the operation. ( WSJ ) A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Sports media's next big opportunity 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. The latest Media Trends Executive analysis examines how sports are reshaping the media business — and where the biggest opportunities are emerging. Read the full analysis. 4. 🦷 Plaque to the future The Dyson CameraJet AI-powered toothbrush allows users to see their teeth live in the MyDyson app. Photo: Dyson If you've always wanted a $500 AI-powered toothbrush, well, your teeth are going to be very happy. 🪥 State of play: Vacuum cleaner maker Dyson today revealed the $499.99 Dyson CameraJet , which took six years of R&D, 16 million lines of code and a machine learning system trained on 470,000 dental photos. Features include: 📸 A 100,000-pixel macro lens camera that assesses 28 live photos per second "to identify and target gaps between teeth in real time" and then delivers a "conical burst of mouthrinse to floss while you brush." 💦 A 12.5-milliliter "anti-gravity" tank that dispenses mouthrinse and is "optimized to clean the gaps in one session without flooding the mouth." ⚡️ A docking station that refills the toothbrush in three seconds and charges it between use. 🧘 A contoured bristle brush head with "a sonic dampener for optimal acoustics and comfort." 🛜 WiFI connectivity with a live camera so that users can see their teeth in the MyDyson app while they're being cleaned. 💭 Nathan's thought bubble: For $500, I feel like I shouldn't even have to use my hands to brush my teeth. A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Sports media's next big opportunity 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. The latest Media Trends Executive analysis examines how sports are reshaping

The surprising resilience of pre-FDIC banking Byron Gilliam “You're thinking of this place all wrong, as if I had the money back in a safe.” — George Bailey on fractional-reserve banking It's a wonderful bank The fundamental promise of banking is that everyone can have their money back whenever they want it — as long as they don't all want it at the same time. We learned that from George Bailey. "You're thinking of this place all wrong, as if I had the money back in a safe,” he told the customers making a run on the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan. “The money's not here. Your money's in Joe's house, that's right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and a hundred others.” “ You’re lending them the money to build and then they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can," he explained. The crowd of worried customers was not immediately reassured. George had to offer $2,000 of his own money to fend off the run. Even then, the bank wasn’t truly saved until the very end of the movie, when friends and customers donated enough money to cover an $8,000 hole in the bank’s balance sheet. Austrian economist Murray Rothbard would have told them to let Bailey Bros. fail. “Fractional-reserve banking is a shell game, a Ponzi scheme, a fraud,” he once wrote . He believed banks were only able to perpetrate that fraud because bankers like George Bailey misrepresent how they were able to make so many loans. “Because everybody's been inured to thinking that the banks simply borrow our money and re-lend it,” Rothbard explained in a lecture, “it's very difficult to make the mind shift and realize that the banks are really engaging in a form of legalized counterfeiting.” In other words, if people understood how fractional-reserve banking really worked — that the banks create money “out of thin air” — everyone would ask for their money back at the same time. Even the best banks would fail. This bleak view of banks seemed to receive academic support when economists Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig wrote a canonical study on the precariousness of fractional-reserve banking: Bank Runs, Deposit Insurance, and Liquidity . The study formalized Rothbard’s intuition that banks that fund long-term loans with on-demand deposits are at risk of a debilitating run, even if the assets are sound. Fears of a bank failure can therefore be self-fulfilling: "During a bank run, depositors rush to withdraw their deposits because they expect the bank to fail,” the authors explain. “In fact, the sudden withdrawals can force the bank to liquidate many of its assets at a loss and to fail." “It need not be anything fundamental about the bank's condition,” they added. Instead, “anything that causes [depositors] to anticipate a run will lead to a run.” “Even 'healthy' banks can fail.” Diamond and Dybvig reached that worrying conclusion primarily with a theoretical model grounded in math and game theory. A new study suggests the model does not reflect reality. In Bank Runs With and Without Bank Failure , economists Sergio Correia and Stephan Luck of the Federal Reserve, and Emil Verner of MIT, assembled a database of 3,984 bank runs that occurred in the United States between 1863 and 1934. Each incident — scraped from newspaper accounts by a large language model — is documented on a website that details why the run started and how it was resolved. The surprising finding is that most of the runs ran out of steam before threatening the bank: “There are more runs without bank failure than runs with failure,” the authors found. This is not what you’d expect from the self-fulfilling Diamond-Dybvig model. Even among banks with “very weak fundamentals,” only 59% failed after experiencing a run. Rothbard, I think, would have expected that number to be 100%. Banks with the strongest fundamentals, meanwhile “seldom fail,” even when subject to a run. The authors’ takeaway? “This pattern casts doubt on a strong form of the view that liquidity problems alone can trigger severe financial distress.” That, I think, is their polite way of saying that Diamond, Dybvig, Rothbard, gold bugs, and Bitcoiners are wrong about fractional-reserve banking. Stack ‘em high Diamond and Dybvig were right about at least one thing: "A bank run in our model is caused by a shift in expectations,” they noted, “which could depend on almost anything.” My random sampling of the Bank Runs database turned up some prime examples. In 1910 , a run on the Merchants National Bank in Los Angeles, CA, began when a visit from the boxer Jim Jeffries drew a crowd of boxing fans to the bank. “Scores of depositors, thinking something was wrong, began cashing in,” a newspaper reported, “and not until the fighter retired did the frightened patrons become reassured.” Jeffries, it turned out, was at the bank to open an account and deposit some of his championship winnings. In 1924 , a run on the Metals Bank & Trust Company of Butte, MT, got underway after someone overheard a joking bet that the bank would not open the next day. The bank stayed open for four hours after the regular closing time to satisfy withdrawals, a newspaper reported, “and only ceased payments to depositors when darkness made it unsafe.” The joke was that the bank would indeed be closed the next day — for Lincoln’s birthday. In 1929 , a run on the Bay Ridge Savings Bank in Brooklyn, NY began amid rumors that its president had died. Fortunately, the bank had been “warned in advance of the false rumors,” a newspaper reported, giving the bank time to have $14 million of cash on hand to meet withdrawals. The truth was that the bank president had gone to Connecticut to have a carbuncle removed from his neck. (He survived the procedure.) Again, this was just a random sampling of the database. But the peaceful resolution of each of these runs seems to refute the strongest interpretation of the Diamond-Dybvig theory: Bank runs, it turns out, are rarely self-fulfilling. It did sometimes happen, thoug