Oil is above $90.

Markets now put the odds of a September Fed hike at about 60% to 66%, up from about 41% a week earlier.

At the same time, Big Tech booked more than $160bn in gains from investments in other AI companies.

Oil Is Making a Fed Hike Easier to Justify

Reuters reported that oil traded more than 2% higher after the U.S. struck Iranian launchers on Larak Island. U.S. officials said Iran then launched ballistic missiles at a U.S. airbase in Jordan.

Brent moved above $90. Energy stocks rose while most other sectors fell.

Higher oil adds to inflation pressure. More inflation pressure makes a rate hike easier to justify.

Markets put the odds of a 25 basis point Fed hike on September 16 at about 60% to 66%. A week earlier, the estimate was about 41%.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said inflation had not “meaningfully improved” and that the Fed had “work to do.” German inflation reached 2.9% in August as energy prices increased 10.5%, while core inflation stayed at 2.4%.

Trade tensions with Canada could make the oil problem worse, according to Geopolitical Economy Report. U.S. tariffs of 50% on about $27.6bn of Canadian goods took effect on August 22. Canada’s matching counter-tariffs are scheduled to begin on September 8.

Big Tech Booked a $160bn AI Windfall

Big Tech booked more than $160bn in gains last quarter from investments in other AI companies.

Those gains lifted reported earnings. But they were investment gains, not operating profit from selling AI products.

Evan | Investments cited Google’s 5% stake in SpaceX and 14% stake in Anthropic.

A response argued that Waymo is burning cash and predicted it will become a “huge money hemorrhage for Google” in 5 or 10 years. It also claimed Wayve offers better and cheaper software.

Those claims do not settle the question. Private-company investment gains can lift Google’s reported earnings. They do not tell us whether Waymo will become profitable.

Macs Join the AI Buildout

OpenAI has reportedly bought tens of thousands of Mac minis and Mac Studios for reinforcement learning and computer-use agents. Anthropic is renting Macs through Amazon’s AWS.

The reported reason is that memory capacity is becoming more important relative to raw GPU performance.

Developers are also connecting Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. They are dealing with context management, overlapping skills, usage limits, unreliable remote access, and weak time awareness during long runs.

ECC open-sourced a setup with 68 subagents, 286 skills, and 94 commands. Its own warning says not to install all 286 skills at once.

An unofficial Cursor leak claimed “Composer 3” beats Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol on coding and agent benchmarks at about 10 times lower cost. The claim is unconfirmed.

Other open-source projects are working on agent routing, remote Codex access, usage tracking, shared skills, and ways to visualize agent runs.

Broadcom and HBM Face Their Next Tests

Dray expects Broadcom to report Q2 earnings on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, and believes it will “CRUSH it.” Dray said Broadcom was trading below 20 times forward earnings.

Victor said the shares had fallen more than 20% from their recent peak and called them deeply undervalued and oversold. Those are views. The reported results will be the test.

Palo Alto Networks, Dell Technologies, and Medtronic are listed for Tuesday. Broadcom, Snowflake, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are listed for Wednesday. Lululemon, MongoDB, and Zscaler are listed for Thursday.

Elsewhere, SK Hynix is reportedly considering Intel Foundry for its next-generation HBM4E base dies. The reported case is more pricing leverage, more supply flexibility, and a second foundry option as HBM becomes more complex and expensive.

Automakers Are Moving Humanoid Robots Into Production

Dom Lucre reported that Tesla’s Optimus has entered production at Tesla’s Fremont factory, with public sales targeted for 2027.

Chinese automakers are building humanoid robotics operations too:

• Xpeng’s robotics unit raised $900M at a valuation above $6.3B.
• BYD introduced a robot for showroom customer service.
• SAIC deployed a robot to handle battery cells on a Buick production line.

The shared bet is that automakers can reuse their AI, battery, sensor, and manufacturing expertise in robotics.

Tesla’s valuation is much less settled. Cole Grinde argued that Robotaxi adds a trillion dollars to Tesla’s value. But the same material says Tesla would need 2.6M fully operational Robotaxis to catch Google’s profit this year, and argues that Tesla is overvalued for now.

Shay Boloor’s future $1T SpaceX and Tesla Terafab was a social-media claim, not a reported project plan.

Value Investors Are Looking Beyond Expensive U.S. Stocks

One value-investing speaker compared an S&P 500 P/E ratio near 30 and a CAPE ratio above 40 with emerging-market P/E ratios ranging from about 10 to five or six.

The proposed response was not to sell everything. It was to diversify gradually, research carefully, size positions carefully, and buy with a margin of safety.

KWEB, Tencent, Prosus, Naspers, JD.com, and an unnamed Indonesian company were under consideration.

China’s official manufacturing PMI improved from 49.2 in July to 49.8, but stayed below 50. Shein shares fell 10% in their Hong Kong debut and dropped below their offer price.

Bloomberg reported that Taiwan’s regulator had started an overhaul of the island’s $1.2 trillion life-insurance industry. Another Bloomberg item described Hong Kong and Singapore competing to become Asia’s leading financial hub.

Crypto Faces the Same Rate Question

Tom Lee kept a 10% September stock-market pullback as his base case. But he also said growing concern could produce an upside surprise.

Fundstrat’s base case for the September 15 Fed meeting is no hike and no cut. Lee said that outcome could produce a strong rally. He also said Bitcoin could reach 150 and move into six figures.

A Fed hike creates a harder test. Lee said crypto’s response may depend on what happens to long-term yields afterward.

Friday’s Jobs Report Is the Next Test

SPY was about 1% below its all-time high, even as several high-beta growth stocks had fallen sharply. IREN was down 53%. TE was down 60%.

The cited risks include rate volatility, persistent inflation, high energy prices, two-decade-high yields, midterm uncertainty, and lofty expectations. ClearValue Tax warned that a September 16 rate increase would be “ugly” for stocks, precious metals, and crypto.

The consensus forecast for Friday’s jobs report is roughly 50,000 additional jobs after a 23,000 decline in July.

A weak result could reduce expectations for a hike. A strong result would reinforce Warsh’s inflation message.