Gold has risen for five straight weeks.

Bitcoin touched $80,000.

Federal government debt has exceeded $40 trillion.

Investors are looking for protection from debt, dollar and rate risk. At the same time, tariffs are escalating and Nvidia is heading into earnings with high expectations.

Debt Fears Are Lifting Gold and Bitcoin

Gold touched a three-month high Monday after gaining more than 5% the previous week.

Bitcoin rose 2% Monday after gaining 22% the previous week. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar index reached a three-month low last week and recorded its third weekly decline in four weeks.

July's U.S. budget deficit reached a five-year high, while total federal government debt exceeded $40 trillion. The 30-year Treasury yield reached 5.34% last week, up from 4.82% in late June.

Money is moving into gold. Global physical gold-backed ETFs attracted $6.4B last week, the third-largest weekly inflow on record.

The connection is simple. More debt concern can hurt the dollar, and a weaker dollar can support demand for gold and Bitcoin.

But a weaker dollar could also add to inflation pressure.

Treasury plans to raise the maximum size of its bond buybacks from $2 billion to at least $4 billion, and reports said it may use its roughly $950B to $1T General Account to support larger purchases of long-dated bonds. Yields initially fell after the announcement, then recovered.

That suggests investors did not see the plan as enough to fix the underlying pressure.

Nohshad Shah of Citadel said the policy could help bonds but cause outsized pain for the dollar. He also said worsening inflation could force the Fed to raise rates.

Fed funds futures showed about a 56% probability of an October rate increase, up more than seven percentage points from the previous week.

Gold and Bitcoin are rising as protection. But if dollar weakness adds to inflation, the response could be higher rates.

Canada Matches U.S. Tariffs Dollar for Dollar

Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on $19.94 billion of U.S. goods, matching Washington's new duties dollar for dollar.

The measures cover more than 700 goods, with rates from 15% to 50% starting September 8. Steel tariffs will rise from 25% to 50%, while dairy, seafood, appliances, wood, paper products and clothing are also covered.

Canada announced financial support for affected businesses and workers. President Donald Trump threatened more tariffs on Canadian autos, parts and steel.

Geopolitical Economy Report argued that the trade conflict will backfire, worsen the oil crisis and leave Canada with several possible ways to retaliate.

The dispute could stop here, or both sides could keep adding tariffs. We do not know yet.

Iran Sanctions Land as Oil Falls

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced an expanded sanctions campaign against Iran targeting digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping, with actions against about 60 entities, individuals and vessels.

Oil initially fell more than 2% as markets largely shrugged off the announcement.

A later market recap reported a 4% decline after reports that the U.S. offered Iran a deal involving the Strait of Hormuz and sanctions. President Trump also said the U.S. Navy had removed or detonated all mines from international waters in the strait.

During the same session, the 10-year Treasury yield fell from 4.72% to 4.62%.

Nvidia Must Support High Expectations

Nvidia earnings and PCE inflation data are scheduled for Wednesday. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is due to speak at Jackson Hole on Friday.

Options activity is already heavy. Nvidia and Tesla each recorded 1.8M options contracts in the latest session.

Raymond James raised its Nvidia price target to $352 from $330 and kept its Strong Buy rating.

Several AI-linked holdings attributed to Leopold Aschenbrenner rose before Nvidia's report:

• Bloom Energy gained 5.1%
• SharonAI gained 4.4%
• T1 Energy gained 3.9%
• Nebius gained 3.2%
• IREN gained 3.1%
• SanDisk gained 2.8%

The New Money App also reported a $3.6M purchase of Bloom Energy $270 calls at $24.20 per contract.

Expectations are high. Nvidia's report has to support them.

AI Demand Keeps Pressuring Capacity

IREN says it is targeting more than $4B in AI Cloud annual recurring revenue for 2026, with approximately 85% already contracted. Microsoft Horizon 1 has been delivered and accepted, and IREN has NVIDIA Exemplar Cloud status. It is also targeting 1.2 GW of AI Cloud capacity for 2027.

Bloomberg reported that OpenAI's Broadcom-built Jalapeno chip beat Nvidia's GB300 in internal testing on throughput per watt and response latency.

ClickHouse has passed $350M in annual recurring revenue, up 40% since May. OpenAI usage has reportedly increased roughly 10x over the past year to more than 30 petabytes per day, or around 30T events daily.

Other reported projects include Nvidia-powered SpaceXAI satellites using Vera Rubin systems, Amazon's Project Tetromino for delivery-station automation, and more infrastructure expansion at OpenAI.

Anthropic is expected to tell IPO investors that its total addressable market exceeds $30T. OpenAI data-center head Chris Malone left last week while the company works to expand infrastructure, revenue and computing capacity.

Future Stacked reported that Elon Musk said Starlink will eventually offer home internet and phone service through one account. The same post said Starlink already has performance problems in many regions because it does not have enough satellites for the traffic.

Demand keeps growing. That means more infrastructure and more pressure to add capacity.

Strong Results Are Meeting Harder Corporate Changes

Intuit reported fourth-quarter revenue of $4.4B, up 14% from the previous year and above the $4.27B estimate. Adjusted earnings were $4.03 per share, ahead of the expected $3.58.

But the outlook was weaker.

Intuit guided to fiscal 2027 revenue of $23.3B to $23.5B, below the $23.72B estimate. Adjusted earnings guidance of $22.88 to $23.12 was below the $27.32 estimate.

Strong quarter. Lower outlook.

Shein is preparing to list in Hong Kong next month after regulatory investigations, fines and environmental, social and governance concerns complicated earlier attempts. Reuters said those issues could still weigh on its valuation.

Unilever is selling food assets to focus on beauty, personal care and home products. It wants to show that a simpler company can produce higher returns and close the valuation gap with more focused rivals.

A Berkshire commentator expects earnings growth of 7% at best and low-single-digit returns over the next 10 to 15 years, while still viewing Berkshire as safer than the S&P 500.

Analyst Calls Mix With Speculative Claims

Goldman Sachs raised its Nebius price target from $286 to $328. Raymond James upgraded AMD from Outperform to Strong Buy, citing direct earnings leverage, data-center positioning and market-share gains.

Other claims were much more speculative.

An IREN writer expects a possible 2X to 3X move. A Marvell author expects short-term lows between $162 and $123 and long-term highs between $448 and $648, while giving a move above $289 a 40% probability.

A promotional list claimed gains above 400% in 2025 and named ONDS, SMR, OKLO, IREN, ACHR, JOBY, SMCI, NBIS, USAR, IONQ, RKLB and RGTI for 2026.

Mike Investing made claims involving OKLO, Bloom Energy and UUUU, and quoted Jensen Huang:

"Nuclear is a wonderful source of energy."

Nancy Pelosi's latest disclosure showed July purchases of Bloom Energy shares and long-dated calls. Investing Visuals reported purchases of up to $12M in shares and up to $5 million in calls.

A Vistra post cited buying or holdings by its CEO, Peter Thiel, David Tepper and Pelosi. A response questioned whether a 2000-share purchase meant much beside an existing holding above 1 000 000 shares.

Strategy reportedly holds roughly 4% of all Bitcoin and more than $6.6B in combined U.S. dollar cash reserves. SoftBank is preparing a record $6.3B Japanese retail bond sale to finance AI investments after exiting Nvidia.

Nvidia Also Faces an AI Counter-Thesis

Reuters reported signs of strain in China's AI-driven stock rally ahead of Nvidia earnings.

Wall Street Millennial argued that circular financing has played a major role in the AI boom, pointing to financial relationships among Nvidia, OpenAI and cloud providers.

Nvidia's report has to support high expectations while China's AI rally shows strain and critics question how much circular financing has helped drive the boom.