What a week! Moderna (MRNA) announced a major cancer vaccine breakthrough. Rising Treasury yields have traders on edge, even with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cranking up buys of long-dated bonds. And Wal-Mart (WMT) announced disappointing sales.
Now let's dig into the most interesting stories in the market ahead of a very busy week for tech earnings and economics.
Nvidia Needs a Shock
Nvidia (NVDA) earnings are coming in hot on Wednesday, August 26.
And it looks like we need a big monster beat and guidance to catapult the stock higher.
The stock has sold off the day after earnings 4 straight times, and in 6 of the last 8 quarters.
You can see this on the right-most column here:
The culprit is shrinking revenue beats.
Yes, the company is growing fast but gone are the days of giant revenue beats, which is the heart soul of momentum stocks.
Nvidia always reports strong numbers, but they it's been years since they've shocked the market with blockbuster sales and guidance.
Will that change next week?
With the way hyperscalers like Meta (META) and Alphabet (GOOGL)
are spending money, anything is possible.
But for now the bears seem to have the post-earnings advantage.
Speaking of earnings...
Jensen Huang's Other Favorite Stock Reports Earnings
I'll go out on a limb and say Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's #1 stock is Nvidia.
His second favorite appears to be Marvell Technology (MRVL), a stock I bought myself.
One reason I jumped on Marvell was because Mr. Huang called it "the next trillion dollar company" back in June.
Marvell reports after the close Thursday.
The company has its fingers in multiple AI data center applications, so we'll get even more insights on AI infrastructure spending trends.
Traders will also be eager for more details on Marvell's monster chip deal with Google.
To make a long story short, Google's gonna spend a ton of money on Marvell chips.
And in return, Google gets the right to buy up to 58,970,907 Marvell shares at $206.58.
The more Google spends, the more Marvell shares it can buy.
That's great for Marvell shareholders because Google has a financial incentive in keeping Marvell's stock price as high as possible.
Jensen Huang gave me a reason to buy.
Google gave me a new reason to stick with it.
But with Marvell's stock 44% off the June 29 lows, it's hard to argue that expectations are anything but high:
And on Friday, we saw an interesting piece of news from Marvell competitor Broadcom (AVGO), which makes me think...
The Banks Might Be the Best "Secret" AI Stocks
Bloomberg reported that Broadcom is looking to raise more than $60 billion in its newest AI debt financing deal.
2026 has seen a wave of capital raises from the likes of Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), Nebius (NBIS), CoreWeave (CRWV), Iren (IREN), Terawulf (WULF), and so on.
And that money is going straight into AI infrastructure.
Plus, it's a major IPO year with SpaceX (SPCX), Cerebras Systems (CBRS), SK Hynix (SKHY), and eventually Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, and Stripe.
And the M&A market has been quite strong thanks to megadeals like the Paramount/Warner Bros combination.
This means lots of deal fees for investment banks like Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman Sachs (GS), regardless of which actual AI companies end up dominating.
And as long as AI doesn't put the bankers out of business (it won't), Wall Street will print money from AI-related dealmaking.
So they are next on my buy list.
The Great Biotech Short Squeeze
The State Street SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI) is up over 36% in 2026, putting it at #3 on our ETF leaderboard:
Biotech got a turbo boost this week when Moderna (MRNA) announced successful trial results for an mRNA vaccine for melanoma.
But what many people are missing about the biotech boom is the impact of short squeezes.
The XBI ETF itself has short interest of 116%, because ETF shares can apparently be borrowed and shorted multiple times.
And the average stock in the XBI ETF has short interest of 14.3%.
For comparison, the average short interest of a stock in the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) is just 4.0%.
Traders Are Still Skittish
The latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 35.5% of investors are bullish.
This is the 5th straight week of below-average bullishness, which I chalk up to stubborn inflation (I mean the real inflation we feel, not government numbers) and other economic concerns.
So even with equities near record highs, the crowd is unwilling to say "I love this and we're going higher."
On balance, this is positive because it implies a lack of euphoria.
Meanwhile, the CNN Fear & Greed Index, is at 57, indicating modest Greed.
So sentiment remains neutral overall.
There just aren't strong feeling on either side.
Technically, this is the fourth straight week of below-average bullishness, despite a string of all-time highs.
I take this as positive, because it implies there is still a lot of doubt facing this market.
Meanwhile, CNN's Fear & Greed Index is at 65/100, signifying modest Greed:
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Next Week's Calendar Is Stacked
Aside from Nvidia and Marvell's earnings, we have a lot going on next week.
In economics, we have CB Consumer Confidence, Core PCE Price Index, GDP, and Durable Goods.
And of course there's a chance Fed Chair Kevin Warsh makes a market-moving announcement at Jackson Hole on Friday.
And on the earnings side, we'll be watching CrowdStrike (CRWD), Salesforce (CRM), AutoDesk (ADS), and Workday (WDAY), which will give us key insights on software demand amid concerns about encroachments from AI.
Here's the full calendar:
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