💵 Treasury and Fed Pull Apart

On August 19, Scott Bessent doubled Treasury buybacks to $4 billion a week. The 30-year yield fell about 10 basis points, then reversed. The 10-year reached 4.704% and the 30-year 5.248%.

The pressure is structural: US debt has crossed $40 trillion, the deficit is on pace for $1.9 trillion, and tech companies are issuing debt for AI and data centers.

On August 28, Kevin Warsh called the 2% inflation target firm and fixed and would not rule out a September hike. Yields rose again, erasing Bessent’s gains.

Japan faces a similar conflict. The Bank of Japan is hiking rates while the government spent 15.4 trillion yen on intervention. The yen still trades above 160 per dollar.

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🍏 Tim Cook Steps Down at Apple

Tim Cook steps down as Apple CEO tomorrow. Apple grew from $350 billion to $5 trillion under his leadership, a 14x rise.

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Ask who you’d want beside you on your last day, then meet them often.

~ Warren Buffett

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⚽️ Messi Retires From Argentina

The announcement came weeks after his father, Jorge Messi, died at 68.

Lionel Messi has officially retired from Argentina’s national team.

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🔍 Chip Designers Keep Options Open

On August 18th, Marvell received Google’s warrant for 58,970,907 shares. Most vests in 240 tranches tied to $500 million in custom-product revenue, implying a $120 billion ceiling, not a purchase commitment.

Thirteen days later, Alphabet joined NVIDIA in MediaTek’s $3.9 billion convertible bond. NVIDIA took $3.5 billion, and both had named MediaTek an NVLink Fusion adopter before investing.

Marvell and MediaTek support NVLink Fusion, UALink and UEC. The deals disclose no shipments, royalties or margins.

If custom silicon uses NVIDIA’s fabric, CPUs and networking, NVIDIA may lose less. If UALink wins, designers still get paid. The question is whether fabric revenue outweighs lost die sales.

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Comfortable retirement costs vary.

Country matters.

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“Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.”

Warren Buffett

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📸 GoPro Surges on Markiplier Stake

GoPro rose 160% in 2 days, including 80% in premarket today, after Markiplier disclosed an 8.5% stake, making him the largest shareholder. He called the stock undervalued and wants to see a turnaround.

The timing coincides with GoPro’s Mission 1 Pro cinema camera hitting shelves tomorrow. Short interest at 16.5% of the float added fuel as buyers rushed in.

The fundamentals remain weak. Revenue fell 31.3% year over year last quarter, and GoPro has disclosed doubts about its ability to continue as a going concern.

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💸 Bitcoin’s Green August

Bitcoin closed August up 25.1%, from $62,794 to $78,545. It was the first green August during a bear market and the 3rd-best August in Bitcoin’s history.

A short squeeze drove the move. Monthly liquidations reached $12.65 billion, including $5.8 billion from Aug 17-21. Aug 19 saw $2.7 billion in short liquidations, the biggest single day on record.

July and August both closed green. Historically, September has closed red every time that has happened.

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🤖 Anthropic Rebuilds Government Relationship

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says the Trump administration now trusts Anthropic, which is “back on the right side” after months of clashes.

The conflict led the Pentagon to blacklist Anthropic as a supply chain risk, the first time an American company received that label. A federal judge struck it down in August, ruling it violated Anthropic’s constitutional rights.

Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown helped repair the relationship. This week, he is standing beside Lutnick at the G20.

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🪙 Trump $1 Coin Enters Circulation

The 2026 President Trump $1 coin goes on sale today and enters circulation, making him the first sitting U.S. president featured on a circulating coin.

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“Every single country needs to build infrastructure” to support its own AI economy.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, told G20 leaders that being left behind is the “single worst outcome” as fear slows adoption while the rest of the world keeps building.

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🤖 OpenAI Releases GPT-6 Astra

OpenAI just released GPT-6 Astra, calling it a “generational leap” and saying people may look back at this model as when AGI arrived.

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💰 US Treasury Debt Buyback

The US Treasury bought back $12.5B of its own debt, its largest buyback in over 3 months.

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Jim Simons was the 55th richest person in the world. His approach to investing is grouped into 5 processes:

🖱️ Quant and data-driven approach.

🖱️ Systematic and algorithmic trading.

🖱️ Statistical arbitrage.

🖱️ Risk management.

🖱️ Iterative improvement.

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📉 Yen Strength Threatens Global Markets

USDJPY has fallen from 163.98 to 155.31, a 5.3% move in about five weeks. The yen alone is up 2.5% this week, creating a serious risk for global markets.

The trade is simple. Investors borrow cheap yen, convert it into dollars, and buy assets such as US stocks and bonds. Because the loan is in yen, a stronger yen makes repayment more expensive.

At 10x leverage, a 5.3% move against the trade wipes out about 53% of the trader’s cash cushion. At 20x, it wipes out more than 100%. Forced selling, followed by more yen buying, can create a self-reinforcing unwind. The same loop drove the sharp global selloff in August 2024.

Japan has spent $169.5 billion this year trying to control the yen, including $52.8 billion in a single day. Markets now see a 75% chance of another Bank of Japan rate hike this month, up from 24% a month ago. Higher rates make yen borrowing more expensive.

The size of the trade is unknown, but past estimates put it in the hundreds of…

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🔍 Google's First $100,000

Google was founded this day in 1998. Its first investor wrote a $100,000 check.

They celebrated with breakfast at Burger King.

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“You need to be intellectually curious, really really open-minded, & you need to have courage.

And when I say courage, you need the courage to bet big & bet concentrated, but also the courage to fight your own emotions.”

Stanley Druckenmiller

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Recommended reading for investors.

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“If you’re a slightly above-average investor who spends less than you earn, over a lifetime you cannot help but get very wealthy.”

Warren Buffett

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📉 September Selling Imbalance

Algorithmic trading funds have about $9 billion left to buy if stocks rise, but could be forced to sell up to $163 billion if markets fall. That is an 18-to-1 imbalance between upside support and downside pressure.

Companies are also entering their September buyback blackout period, when they cannot legally repurchase their own shares ahead of earnings. That removes another major buyer at the same time.

Together, the market has limited support for a drop, but significant selling capacity that could make one worse.

✔️ @venture