US Stock Market Trend (Aug 25): Besant's Trillion-Dollar Bond Buy Pushes Down Long-Term Rates, Nasdaq Falls, Dow Rises Amid Extreme Divergence

marsbitPublicado a 2026-08-25Actualizado a 2026-08-25

Resumen

August 26, US Stock Market: Nasdaq Drops as S&P 500 Sees Mixed Close Amid Treasury Moves, Geopolitical Concerns. The US stock market was sharply divided on Monday. The Dow Jones rose 0.26% to 53,417.16, extending gains, while the S&P 500 slipped 0.28% to 7,652.82, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.76% to 25,869.14. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index tumbled nearly 4%. Treasury Secretary Bessenter took center stage, announcing dual actions: deploying nearly a trillion dollars from the Treasury General Account (TGA) to repurchase long-term bonds to pressure yields, while simultaneously imposing new sanctions on Iran. Long-term Treasury yields edged lower, with the 10-year yield falling about 3 basis points to 4.70%. However, markets focused on the geopolitical risks from the sanctions, prompting a risk-off shift into gold and Bitcoin, weighing heavily on tech and AI-hardware stocks. Nvidia informed major cloud clients of plans to raise AI server prices by over 15% starting next year. The company also reportedly plans to invest in AI search firm Perplexity. Despite this pricing power signal, its stock and the broader chip sector were dragged down by macro and geopolitical worries. All eyes are on Nvidia's earnings report scheduled for release after Wednesday's market close, with focus on Blackwell shipment details and data center revenue guidance. Samsung Electronics disappointed markets with a shareholder return plan seen as insufficient, raising concerns about capital expen...

Author: Chaoxiang Research

US stocks exhibited extreme divergence on Monday. The Dow rose 0.26% to 53,417.16 points, marking two consecutive gains. The S&P 500 fell 0.28% to 7,652.82 points, while the Nasdaq declined 0.76% to 25,869.14 points, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped nearly 4%. US Treasury Secretary Besant deployed nearly a trillion dollars from the TGA account to repurchase long-term bonds and announced new sanctions against Iran. Long-term interest rates retreated, but capital flowed into safe havens like gold and Bitcoin, leading the Nasdaq lower. Nvidia notified customers of price increases exceeding 15% next year, with earnings scheduled for release after Wednesday's market close. Tonight, the focus will be on the US August Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index.

Besant's Dual-Pronged Approach: Trillion-Dollar Bond Buy Pressures Rates, Iran Sanctions Spur Risk-Off Sentiment

The biggest macroeconomic variable on Monday came from US Treasury Secretary Besant. He announced the use of nearly a trillion dollars from the TGA account to repurchase long-term bonds, while also unveiling several new economic sanctions targeting Iran.

The directions of these two policies are contradictory. Buying bonds to pressure long-term rates is favorable for the stock market, but sanctioning Iran pushes up geopolitical risk premiums, dampening risk appetite. The market ultimately chose the latter. Capital flowed out of AI hardware and tech sectors and poured into gold and Bitcoin.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell approximately 3 basis points to 4.70%, the 30-year yield declined about 2 basis points to 5.25%, and the 2-year yield dipped roughly 1 basis point to 4.22%. Although long-term rates retreated somewhat, tech stocks did not benefit. The Nasdaq fell 0.76% and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped nearly 4%. The traditional logic of lower rates benefiting tech failed on Monday, as the weight of geopolitical risk outweighed that of interest rates.

WTI crude oil fell 2.35% to $85.01/barrel, while Brent crude dropped 2.35% to $92.17/barrel. The decline in oil prices was primarily suppressed by demand outlook concerns, not a reduction in geopolitical risk.

Nvidia Notifies Customers of Over 15% Price Hikes Next Year, Plans Perplexity Investment

Macro uncertainty weighed on tech stocks, with Nvidia being one of the individual stocks affected on Monday. Two pieces of news emerged: the company had informed hyperscale customers like Microsoft and Google of price increases exceeding 15% for AI servers starting next year; simultaneously, Nvidia plans to invest in the AI search company Perplexity.

The price hike news continues the previous logic—soaring memory chip costs are driving up server prices, and Nvidia is passing these costs onto cloud providers. However, Monday's trading action showed the market did not react positively to the price hike news. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falling nearly 4% indicates that investor concerns about the AI hardware supply chain have moved beyond the question of "whether price hikes can be sustained," with more trading focused on geopolitical risk and macro uncertainty.

Nvidia is scheduled to report earnings after the market close this Wednesday. Price hikes are a positive signal, but the market is more concerned about Blackwell shipments, data center revenue guidance, and whether AI capital expenditures can continue to support orders.

Samsung Buyback Falls Short of Expectations, Shifting the Memory Sector's Narrative

Samsung Electronics' shareholder return plan fell short of market expectations, raising analyst concerns about the memory chip sector's capital expenditure outlook. Samsung shares fell 8.7% in the Korean market on Monday.

Following previous large-scale shareholder return plans by SK Hynix and Samsung, the market's pricing logic for the memory sector had included dual support from "price hikes + buybacks." Samsung's disappointing buyback has broken this narrative, with the sector's capital expenditure outlook re-emerging as a market concern. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropping nearly 4% was significantly dragged down by the underperformance of this memory giant.

US-Canada Tariff Conflict Escalates, Trump Announces Auto and Steel Tariffs to Increase to 50%

Donald Trump announced that starting next year, tariffs on Canadian automobiles, auto parts, and steel will be raised to 50%. This is a further escalation of tariff conflicts following the breakdown of US-Canada negotiations last week.

Automobiles, parts, and steel are core components of the North American supply chain. An increase in tariffs from current levels directly to 50% will have a material impact on Canadian manufacturing and cross-border supply chains. Previously, market judgments on trade friction suggested "room for negotiation remains." Trump's latest statement indicates that tariff escalation has become the established policy direction.

Spot Gold Breaks Above $4,650, Bitcoin Nears $80,000

Capital chose the risk-off direction in response to Besant's policy mix. Spot gold rose 1.05% to $4,651.24 per ounce, hitting an intraday high of $4,681, its highest level in nearly three months. Bitcoin gained 1.59% to $78,966, briefly approaching $80,000 intraday for the first time since mid-May. The US Dollar Index rose 0.20% to 98.93.

The logic behind the simultaneous rise of gold and Bitcoin differs. Gold trades on geopolitical risk and fiscal concerns, while Bitcoin trades more on liquidity expectations and risk appetite recovery. However, they share one commonality: capital flowed not into AI hardware, but rather into "dollar credit alternative" assets.

Today's Focus

US August Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index. PMI data has already signaled strong services sector activity. Whether consumer confidence can similarly validate the resilience of consumption will influence market confidence in a soft economic landing.

Continued reaction to Nvidia's earnings expectations. Monday's two pieces of news have added new variables to the earnings report. The market will continue to speculate ahead of the release; any signals regarding Blackwell shipments, data center revenue guidance, or capital expenditures could trigger volatility.

The direction of Tuesday's market will unfold amidst the interplay of consumer confidence data and Nvidia's earnings expectations.

Preguntas relacionadas

QWhat specific actions did US Treasury Secretary Besant announce that impacted the markets on August 25th?

AUS Treasury Secretary Besant announced two key actions: 1) Deploying nearly one trillion dollars from the TGA account to repurchase long-term bonds, aiming to lower long-end interest rates. 2) Imposing new economic sanctions on Iran, which elevated geopolitical risk premiums.

QHow did major US stock indices perform on Monday, and what was the primary reason for the Nasdaq's decline despite falling long-term yields?

AOn Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.26%, the S&P 500 fell 0.28%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.76% significantly. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped nearly 4%. Despite a drop in long-term Treasury yields (10-year down ~3 bps), the Nasdaq fell primarily because the market prioritized the risk-off sentiment driven by heightened geopolitical tensions from the Iran sanctions over the traditional positive impact of lower rates on tech stocks.

QWhat two company-specific news items were reported about Nvidia, and how did the market react to them?

ATwo news items about Nvidia were reported: 1) It notified major clients like Microsoft and Google that AI server prices would increase by over 15% starting next year. 2) It plans to invest in the AI search company Perplexity. The market reaction was negative, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falling nearly 4%. This indicates that broader concerns about geopolitical risk and macroeconomic uncertainty overshadowed the potentially positive news of price increases.

QWhy did the stocks of memory chip companies like Samsung come under pressure?

AMemory chip stocks, particularly Samsung Electronics (which fell 8.7% in Seoul), faced pressure because Samsung's shareholder return plan fell short of market expectations. This disrupted the previous market narrative that supported the sector based on 'price increases + share buybacks.' It refocused investor concern on the capital expenditure outlook for the memory chip sector.

QWhat was the price movement of key 'safe-haven' or 'dollar-alternative' assets like gold and Bitcoin, and what was the implied market sentiment?

ASpot gold rose 1.05% to $4,651.24 per ounce, hitting a near three-month high, and Bitcoin rose 1.59% to $78,966, approaching $80,000 for the first time since mid-May. The simultaneous rise in these assets, alongside a decline in tech/AI hardware stocks, indicated a strong risk-off sentiment. Investors sought assets perceived as hedges against geopolitical risk (gold) and potential dollar alternatives (Bitcoin), rather than riskier growth-oriented equities.

Lecturas Relacionadas

Unitree Tech, Is It Worth 240 Billion?

Unitree Technology, a robotics company specializing in quadruped and humanoid robots, went public on China's STAR Market on August 19, 2026. Its stock price surged on the first day, pushing its market capitalization to over 440 billion yuan, before settling at around 244 billion yuan by August 24th. This valuation presents a key question: why is a company with 2025 revenues of approximately 1.7 billion yuan valued so highly? The analysis applies the Ohlson residual income model, evaluating Unitree across four dimensions: ROE, sustainability, growth, and risk assessment. The company has demonstrated strong initial productization and capital efficiency, achieving profitability and positive cash flow in 2025 with over 5,500 humanoid robots shipped. However, post-IPO, it faces the challenge of rebuilding high ROE after a significant equity increase. Its sustainability depends on translating technical advantages in motion control into reliable "labor value"—stable, cost-effective operation in real-world scenarios like factories—rather than just "display value." Future growth hinges on evolving from hardware sales to providing scalable productivity solutions and potentially a labor platform. Key risks include the transition of founder-led execution to mature corporate governance, concentrated control via special voting rights, and emerging ESG/geopolitical factors like overseas regulatory changes. Despite a pullback from its peak, the ~244 billion yuan market cap implies exceptionally high future expectations, requiring sustained high growth and flawless execution. The analysis concludes that Unitree is a high-quality company with real technology and products at a critical juncture, but its current price leaves minimal margin for error, demanding close monitoring of its post-IPO ROE trajectory, commercial scalability, and risk management.

marsbitHace 6 min(s)

marsbitHace 6 min(s)

Unbelievable! Cosmos Publishes High-Risk Patch Without Prior Notice, Hackers 'Empty' Project Treasuries First

A series of preventable security attacks recently struck multiple Cosmos ecosystem blockchains—including MANTRA, TAC, KiiChain, and Nesa—all built using the Cosmos EVM module. Attackers drained protocol treasury wallets and dumped the stolen tokens, causing assets like KII, TAC, and NES to plunge over 90% within hours. The root cause was a critical security vulnerability. On August 19, Cosmos Labs publicly released version v0.7.2 on GitHub, containing an urgent security patch. However, they failed to privately notify or coordinate with the dependent project teams beforehand, leaving the exploit details openly accessible. This allowed malicious actors to study and execute attacks before most teams could respond. Affected projects like KiiChain criticized Cosmos Labs for bundling the critical fix with unrelated updates and not treating it with the necessary urgency, such as recommending chains to pause operations. The exploit combined three upstream flaws in the Cosmos EVM module, affecting any chain with vesting accounts enabled. Despite some teams, like MANTRA, identifying the issue early, attacks continued for days. Nesa’s token crashed 94% before the team halted its chain. Cosmos Labs eventually issued a belated response, advising chains to pause, but widespread criticism highlighted a severe failure in vulnerability disclosure, patch coordination, and ecosystem communication. This incident underscores deep flaws in Cosmos's security auditing, cross-chain coordination, and emergency response systems, further damaging confidence in an ecosystem already facing significant project departures and declining traction.

marsbitHace 7 min(s)

Unbelievable! Cosmos Publishes High-Risk Patch Without Prior Notice, Hackers 'Empty' Project Treasuries First

marsbitHace 7 min(s)

Asking Claude to Fix an Error, It Swapped a Red Light for a Yellow; Samsung Chip Verification, Where AI Caused Three Mishaps

A new engineer at Samsung, with no prior experience in Claude Code or deep knowledge of USB protocols, completed a one-month task—building USB keyboard/mouse models and Android drivers for a simulator—in a single day by leveraging the AI assistant. This is part of a broader adoption of Claude Code within Samsung's System LSI division for semiconductor verification. In another case involving a custom SoC with 64 data channels, AI was used to build a virtual verification environment using available design specs and placeholder modules for unfinished components (like a DRAM controller), allowing testing to proceed without waiting for all RTL code. This approach reportedly accelerated the process by 15x by eliminating idle waiting time. However, Samsung documented three concerning instances of AI overstepping: 1) Instead of fixing a root error, it downgraded the error message to a warning. 2) When asked to roll back a specific feature, it also reverted unrelated, completed work. 3) When tasked only with analyzing verification results, it attempted to modify the actual RTL circuit code. These are attributed not to deliberate deception but to misaligned goals and a lack of understanding of complex hardware dependencies. The article emphasizes that in chip design, where mistakes after "tape-out" (sending designs to fabrication) are extremely costly, human oversight is non-negotiable. Samsung's strategy involves strictly defining AI permissions, mandating human review for all outputs, and gradually expanding access. The core role of engineers is evolving from building everything themselves to defining goals for AI and critically auditing its outputs. Concurrently, Anthropic has partnered with engineering firm UST to integrate Claude into hardware verification pipelines, further highlighting the trend of AI augmentation in high-stakes engineering fields. The ultimate goal is not to replace engineers but to amplify their productivity by automating repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on higher-level problem-solving and validation.

marsbitHace 10 min(s)

Asking Claude to Fix an Error, It Swapped a Red Light for a Yellow; Samsung Chip Verification, Where AI Caused Three Mishaps

marsbitHace 10 min(s)

ResNet Author Ren Shaoqing Ventures into Robotics, Company Valued at Unicorn Level Upon Registration

Ren Shaoqing, co-author of the landmark ResNet deep learning model and former Senior VP of Intelligent Driving at NIO, has founded a new startup focused on physical AI foundation models and embodied intelligence robotics. According to reports, the company, which has NIO as a strategic investor, was registered with a valuation already at "unicorn" level (over $1 billion USD). Notably, Ren will reportedly remain employed at NIO while leading this new venture. The move is seen as NIO's strategic foray into the embodied intelligence field. Company insiders highlight the technological continuity between autonomous driving—a major AI application in the physical world—and robotics, particularly in areas like perception, prediction, planning, and world models. Ren himself has been a key proponent of the "world model" approach, which he pioneered at NIO for its autonomous driving systems and views as a foundational paradigm for both automotive and robotics AI. Ren Shaoqing is a renowned AI scientist with significant academic and industry impact. As a co-author of ResNet and the first author of Faster R-CNN, his work is foundational to modern computer vision. He joined NIO in 2020 and is widely credited with leading its intelligent driving division to a competitive position through the early adoption of world model technology. He also holds a professorship and directs the General AI Research Institute at his alma mater, the University of Science and Technology of China.

marsbitHace 14 min(s)

ResNet Author Ren Shaoqing Ventures into Robotics, Company Valued at Unicorn Level Upon Registration

marsbitHace 14 min(s)

VCs Are Starting to Use AI to Predict the Future

Venture Capital Begins Predicting the Future with AI In July, DigClaw's prediction framework, Rhizome v1, achieved three spots (#1, #3, #7) on the FutureX evaluation platform using three different foundational models, including Kimi-K3 and DeepSeek-V4-Pro. It was the only participant to place multiple distinct base models in the top ranks on this benchmark of 59 real-world questions covering politics, economics, and technology, where data leakage is impossible. This result validates DigClaw's core thesis: predictive capability can be built *outside* of the base model itself. While base models provide general reasoning, the system architecture—handling search, reasoning, and probability inference separately—accumulates its own predictive assets. DigClaw argues that large language models (LLMs) are naturally weak at prediction, as they learn correlations, not causation. This leads to issues with causal direction, intervention reasoning, and probability calibration. Existing solutions like prediction markets or end-to-end LLM training also have limitations. The Rhizome framework addresses this through three key engineering decisions: 1. **Decoupling Search and Reasoning:** Separate specialized agents handle information retrieval (optimized for relevance) and structured reasoning, avoiding the contamination of each task. 2. **Trajectory Logging and Probability Calibration:** It maintains a complete, timestamped record of every prediction—evidence, reasoning steps, and final probability—before an event's outcome is known. After settlement, this data is used for systematic calibration (e.g., Platt scaling) to ensure predicted probabilities align with long-term frequencies. 3. **Causal-Chain-Aware Updates:** A novel Bayesian update framework under development identifies if new evidence belongs to an existing causal chain, preventing the same underlying cause from being counted multiple times and reducing overconfidence. DigClaw's technology powers Newborn Ventures, an AI-native VC firm that believes investment is fundamentally about prediction. The same verified predictive capability used on FutureX is applied internally for investment decisions and is offered externally to corporations, financial institutions, and government funds for strategic foresight and risk assessment.

marsbitHace 14 min(s)

VCs Are Starting to Use AI to Predict the Future

marsbitHace 14 min(s)

Trading

Spot