Markets Week-Ahead
📅 AI Stocks Week-Ahead — Sunday, August 23, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Prior week recap: SPX -1.4% · NDX -2.1% · DJI -0.8%
A bond-led week: the 10-year pushed to about 4.73% and the 30-year to 5.27%, and long-duration tech wore it — info tech shed more than 3% and the S&P and Nasdaq both snapped three-week win streaks. Friday's bounce (SPX 7,674.37, Dow +1%) was repair, not reversal, while bitcoin ripped 22% to $77,000 on Bessent's Treasury buyback liquidity.
Sunday futures: S&P +0.1% · Nasdaq +0.2% · Dow flat
Quiet open. Nasdaq futures sit near 26,250 with crude at roughly $87 — oil and yields are still the tax on multiples. Weekend flow: Bessent's Monday press conference detailing what he's called the broadest coordinated economic isolation campaign against Iran, US–Canada tariff noise, and reports that Anthropic could file for an IPO as soon as month-end at SpaceX-scale, with annualized revenue near $65B. Anthropic and OpenAI aren't tradable — the read-through is AVGO, where analysts now peg Anthropic as the mystery ~$10B customer.
Earnings this week:
• Monday, Aug 24 — nothing material after the close
• Tuesday, Aug 25 — quiet ahead of the main event
• Wednesday, Aug 26 (AMC) — NVDA (Q2 FY27; consensus ~$92B revenue, ~$2.08–2.09 EPS vs. ~$91B guided), CRM, CRWD, MDB, Synopsys
• Thursday, Aug 27 (AMC) — Marvell (MRVL), Dell, Autodesk, Workday, Intuit-adjacent software tape
• Friday, Aug 28 — nothing meaningful; the tape belongs to the Fed
Note: SNOW is not this week — Snowflake confirmed September 2.
Economic calendar:
• Tuesday, Aug 25 — Conference Board Consumer Confidence: the cleanest read on whether $87 oil is biting the consumer
• Wednesday, Aug 26 — July PCE / personal income & spending (core ~+0.2%), Q2 GDP second estimate (~1.5%), July durable goods (~+0.7%): a three-in-one 8:30 ET print that lands twelve hours before NVDA
• Thursday, Aug 27 — jobless claims (~210K), July goods trade balance
• Friday, Aug 28 — preliminary nonfarm payrolls benchmark revision, Chicago PMI: rates desks treat the revision as real event risk, not a formality
Fed events:
• Thursday–Saturday, Aug 27–29 — Jackson Hole Symposium, theme "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy"
• Friday, Aug 28 (morning) — Chair Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote. First FOMC decision after this is September 16, so the market will trade the long end off his tone on yields and financial conditions.
Watchlist catalysts:
• NVDA — Wednesday, Aug 26 AMC. Blackwell Ultra ramp, gross-margin durability, and the October-quarter guide matter more than the beat.
• CRM — Wednesday, Aug 26 AMC. The cleanest quarterly referendum on whether AI agents are converting to seat and consumption revenue.
• CRWD — Wednesday, Aug 26 AMC. Reports into a CTO departure that hit the stock August 20.
• MDB — Wednesday, Aug 26 AMC. Consumption trends read straight through to AI app-build demand.
• AVGO — no earnings, but the Anthropic-as-$10B-customer story is live and AVGO is up ~145% off its April low.
• MU — no earnings; Morgan Stanley's top 2026 semi pick and it surged August 20. Highest-beta NVDA derivative on the list.
• TSM, ASML, AMD, ARM, SMCI, PLTR, SOUN, IONQ, BBAI — no prints, pure NVDA-beta into Wednesday night; the small-cap AI names carry the most gap risk in both directions.