Bernstein analysts are out with a note on how Meta Platforms and EssilorLuxottica’s once-hot smart glasses business is running out of steam because of an emerging public backlash over privacy and surveillance, raising questions about whether the smart glasses industry as a whole is hitting a brick wall.

Luca Solca, Bernstein’s senior equity analyst and global luxury-goods sector head, covers companies including EssilorLuxottica, LVMH, Hermès and Richemont. He said Ray-Ban Meta glasses were initially a “commercial success,” but public opinion has since shifted against the glasses has drastically shifted, with folks online labeling them “pervert glasses” amid mounting privacy concerns.

EssilorLuxottica sold more than 7 million Meta AI glasses in 2025, compared with 2 million during 2023 and 2024 combined, Solca said. However, he warned that users are abandoning the glasses under social pressure. 

Unlike smartphones, the cameras are embedded inside ordinary-looking frames, and the blinking warning light can be covered with tape despite Meta’s efforts to prevent tampering. That has not stopped influencers and bad actors from using the glasses in ways that have angered the public.

“The court of public opinion has dubbed the Ray-Ban Metas’ pervert glasses,'” the analyst said, adding, “Public figures such as Jimmy Kimmel and singer Lorde have publicly spoken up against them over the past months, with distressing guerrilla ads by US and British advocacy groups being plastered over NYC and London to raise awareness and encourage boycotts.”

Solca continued:

Paradoxically, the characteristic that made Meta’s Ray-Bans so popular in the first place may be their downfall. 

The camera and technology blend seamlessly with the original design, making the Ray-Ban Metas a rather fashionable gadget.

However, this means that most people are unaware they are being filmed and unable to consent. 

Users can record hands-free, making it less obvious than when using a smartphone to do so. The blinking light that should alert them to this fact can be easily covered, despite Meta’s product updates to prevent this. 

There are countless videos online instructing users precisely how to bypass this feature. German nonprofit group HateAid calls for ensuring ‘safety by design,’ pointing to the fact that Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses are ‘indistinguishable’ from ordinary glasses. They are requesting that authorities make sure the glasses are ‘clearly identifiable.’

Solca then makes the case that the mounting social backlash makes it more positive on EssilorLuxottica. Slower smart-glasses adoption reduces the risk that technology companies will cannibalize the traditional eyewear market, dilute industry margins and turn glasses into another low-margin consumer-electronics category

Solca explained: 

All of the above makes us, ironically, more positive on EssilorLuxottica. 

We wrote before about the impact of smart glasses on the group’s LT economics (EssilorLuxottica: Gauging Optionality) and estimated the right valuation in the current context at ~24x PE (EssilorLuxottica: The “right” valuation).

The public outcry against smart glasses makes the bearish scenario of a cannibalistic, disruptive and margin dilutive impact on the category less likely. 

However, given the optics of the problem, we wonder how much reputational damage has been done to the Ray-Ban brand. Will the Wayfarers be remembered as the ‘pervert glasses’ in the same way the Aviators are associated with Tom Cruise in Top Gun?

Solca maintained a Market-Perform rating and a 200 euro 12-month price target. Shares are currently trading around 156 euros and have more than halved since peaking around 319 euros in late 2025.

Our reporting over the past year has documented the mounting public backlash against smart glasses (see here), including the emergence of an app designed to alert users when the devices are nearby. 

President Trump has added fuel to the fire of controversy and speculation over the question of why CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a surprise and highly rare trip to Moscow on Tuesday.

Media accounts which seek to explain the nature of his meeting with top Kremlin intelligence officials, while apparently being snubbed by Putin in terms of a direct interaction, have shifted in days since the visit. The early ‘consensus’ was that he delivered a stern warning for Russia not to attack any NATO state. But President Trump has poured cold water on this explanation, appearing to dismiss it outright in his latest comments. 

“I’ve had good talks with him. He’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory,” Trump said of Putin on Thursday while talking to reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump didn’t answer specifically when pressed on if the president directed Ratcliffe to deliver a warning to Putin to not attack NATO. “I don’t want to comment on that but they’re not going to attack,” Trump said.

While many times over the course of the Ukraine war, European heads of state have claimed that Russia is expansionist and seeks to attack countries in Europe beyond Ukraine, this has not ever been a public allegation of Trump, who has tended to downplay it as a possibility. 

Trump did deny the reports centered on Ratcliffe in an interview with Axios Thursday, saying “Ratcliffe sees his Russian counterpart once every six months or once every year. They have a very good relationship. There was no message and there was nothing unusual.”

And when asked over whether he’s concerned that Putin might attack NATO or deeper inside Europe, Trump replied, “I am not concerned … at all. There is no problem.” According to more:

The president called Ratcliffe’s trip “standard business” and expressed puzzlement over the media accounts of it.

But the reality is that no CIA director has made such a trip in well over four years. The prior time was November 2021, when then-CIA Director William Burns traveled to Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials and issued a stark warning against invading Ukraine.

It was also highly unexpected in terms of timing, given the stalemated nature of the Ukraine conflict, and the fact that zero peace negotiations are happening. There has not even so much as been any efforts at achieving a short-term ceasefire, akin to last year’s Christmas truce.

Trump in the Oval on Thursday declaring confidently that no, the Russians are not going to attack NATO:

REPORTER: Did Ratcliffe delivered a warning to Russia not to attack NATO territory during his trip?

US PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I don’t wanna comment on that, but they’re not going to attack NATO. pic.twitter.com/TbAvq8NUJR

— Status-6 (War & Military News) (@Archer83Able) August 27, 2026

One theory on the motive for Ratcliffe’s trip, which has gained traction among independent analysts, is that it was focused on the Iran war amid allegations from US officials that Russia has assisted Tehran with targeting information on US troop and base whereabouts in the Mideast region.

At times throughout Operation Epic Fury, Tehran appears to have even targeted CIA stations. The bulk of American military assets and bases in the Gulf countries have suffered severe damage earlier in the conflict, resulting in a Pentagon troop drawback to safer areas. This is indeed a big deal if it is the case that Russia or China (or both) have handed the Iranians intel to help push back American bases and forces.

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge on Tuesday again barred a Texas law that restricts public drag performances, ruling for a second time that the measure violates the U.S. Constitution’s free-speech protections.

U.S. District Judge David Hittner in Houston declared Texas Senate Bill 12 an unconstitutional restriction on speech. He permanently enjoined Attorney General Ken Paxton from enforcing it.

“For those who find such activities as described in this case offensive, the solution is relatively simple … just don’t go,” Hittner wrote in his opinion.

The ruling marks the second time Hittner has found the law in violation of the First Amendment. He granted a restraining order against the legislation in 2023. A Fifth Circuit panel later vacated the injunction in 2025 and remanded the case, allowing the law to take effect while the appeal moved through the courts.

Hittner reconsidered the First Amendment challenges under the Supreme Court’s Moody framework – which provided criteria for determining whether performers’ rights were violated – and the vagueness claims in the context of court precedent. He again found the statute overbroad and unconstitutionally vague.

The amended final judgment, entered Aug. 25, finds Senate Bill 12 violates the First Amendment as incorporated by the 14th Amendment, and immediately and permanently blocks the attorney general from enforcing it.

Senate Bill 12, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in June 2023, targets “sexually oriented performances,” imposes civil penalties on businesses hosting them when minors are present, authorizes local governments to regulate such shows, and creates Class A misdemeanor criminal penalties for performers of up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

The law bans “the exhibition of sexual gesticulations using accessories or prosthetics that exaggerate male or female sexual characteristics” in public or in venues where people under 18 might see them. It defines a sexually oriented performance as a visual performance featuring a nude performer or one engaging in sexual conduct that appeals to the prurient interest in sex.

Hittner found that performers ranging from Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley to Miley Cyrus could have faced penalties if their acts were viewed as erotic. Accessories and prosthetics that exaggerate sexual characteristics, hip gyrations, or certain clothing and gestures risked triggering the law even in non-obscene contexts such as theater, dance, or impersonation acts, he said.

Paxton, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, on Wednesday said he plans to appeal the decision.

“This is a profoundly flawed decision that endangers our children and is an affront to Texas values,” he wrote in a post on X. “I will appeal this decision immediately and continue to fight to protect our kids.”

Paxton’s office defended the legislation as a measure to protect children, pledging to exhaust the court system in pursuit of implementing the law.

Opponents said the law was too broad and aimed at LGBT performers.

“Today’s decision confirms that the Legislature’s attempt to ban drag performances was unconstitutional from start to finish,” Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, which represented the plaintiffs, said in an Aug. 25 statement. “Drag has a rich history as a refuge of joy and liberation for countless Texans, and it’s not going anywhere.”

In our preview of today’s preliminary benchmark revision of US jobs – published by the BLS ‘conveniently’ just as Kevin Warsh started to speak – we said that according to Goldman calculations, for the first time in 3 years and just the second time since 2018, the BLS was going to revisedpayrolls modestly higher “based on the nine months of data released since the last benchmarked period, March 2025.”

Specifically, Goldman’s economists expected “a preliminary upward revision on the order of 50-450k which would translate to a 5-40k upward revision to monthly payroll growth over April 2025-March 2026. A final revision of this magnitude would result in the average pace of payroll growth over April 2025-March 2026 being revised up from about 25k/month currently to 30-65k/month.”

Alas, for one more year, it was not meant to be, and this morning the BLS announced that according to the preliminary estimate of the Current Employment Statistics (CES), the 2026 benchmark revision to total nonfarm employment for March 2026 was -79,000.  While just why of a positive revision, it was a far cry from last year’s record 911K negative job revision. For context, annual benchmark revisions over the last 10 years have had absolute average of 0.2% of total nonfarm employment.

Additionally, the revision for total private employment was -178,000, which means that government jobs were revised higher by 99K.

The 178,000 negative revision for private payrolls in the year through March reflected weakness in retail trade, education and health services, manufacturing and business services. Employment increased in transportation and warehousing, information, financial activities and construction. 

It is likely that the final final revision will actually tip into the positive. In accordance with usual practice, the final benchmark revision will be issued in February 2027 with the publication of the January 2027 Employment Situation news release. As we noted earlier, preliminary estimates for the benchmark revision tend to understate the final revision: the nextx chart shows that the preliminary estimate has been below the final revision in each of the last six years, by roughly 100k on average, which suggests that today’s -79K print will end up being in the +20K ballpark. This reflects that the QCEW itself has been revised up in every quarter since 2019 with the exception of 2020 H1, potentially reflecting ongoing issues with initial submissions to the administrative records that inform the QCEW

Before today’s revision, government payrolls data indicated employers added 211,000 jobs in the year through March on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, or an average of 17,600 per month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The preliminary benchmark revision suggests average job growth was likely closer to 11,000 a month.

Preliminary benchmark revisions have now lowered employment estimates in seven of the past eight years. Even so, the latest adjustment suggests that the labor market is roughly balanced – with employers slow to hire new workers but also slow to fire existing staff.

The BLS each year benchmarks the March payrolls level to a more accurate but less timely data source called the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages that’s based on state unemployment insurance tax records and covers nearly all US jobs. While the new information improves the accuracy of its data, the process has gained additional attention in recent years.

Last year’s preliminary adjustment slashed employment estimates by the most on record, reigniting White House criticism of the BLS. About one month prior to the 2025 preliminary benchmark release, President Donald Trump fired the agency’s leader after a separate monthly report showed weak job growth. The Senate confirmed Trump’s pick to lead the BLS – Brett Matsumoto – on Aug. 7. Matsumoto, a PhD economist and BLS veteran, now helms an agency responsible for publishing some of the most market-moving statistics in the world.

What is behind the chronic negative revisions? First, there is the chronically wrong birth-death model, discussed extensively here in recent years. Yet just 14% of last year’s very large revision can be attributed to miscalibration of the birth-death model; the bulk instead falls into the residual category which would capture the reporting error arising from a systematic undercount of unauthorized workers.

As we discussed first a few years ago when we correctly previewed the massive negative revisions to 2023 and 2024 data, since the QCEW is based on unemployment insurance records, it likely excludes most unauthorized workers, who contributed to employment growth in the periods covered by those benchmark revisions. In most cases unauthorized workers do not qualify for unemployment insurance, so employers might see little reason to pay unemployment insurance tax on their behalf and might even see it as a needless risk in the cases of any immigrants they are employing who do not yet have work permits.

As such, the Trump admin’s aggressive purging of illegal aliens – and workers – has led to significant real-time overestimates of the labor market in the monthly series, which are then revised away every year once it becomes clear that there were far fewer illegal aliens in the workforce. 

Brent crude futures initially jumped overnight after The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump has no interest in reviving the memorandum of understanding (interim peace deal) reached with Iran in June. The war-risk premium in Brent has since faded in New York premarket trading amid mounting developments this week that major Gulf producers, including Kuwait and Qatar, are increasing tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Emerging diplomatic traction between Oman and Iran has also further reduced the perceived risk of a prolonged disruption.

Reinforcing this week’s developments, new data from Daan Struyven, Goldman’s co-head of Global Commodities Research and head of oil research, show that Persian Gulf oil exports have recovered to more than two-thirds of prewar levels.

Struyven wrote in a note late Thursday that Gulf-area exports of crude and petroleum products have rebounded sharply to between 15 million and 16 million barrels per day, up from a March low of 5 million to 6 million barrels per day.

He said crude flows remain 7 million to 8 million barrels per day below prewar levels, but the recovery has been strong enough to ease fears of a prolonged disruption at the world’s most important maritime chokepoint.

Oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz are estimated at 8 million to 10 million barrels per day. Traders surveyed by Bloomberg place that range much lower, at between 6 million and 8 million barrels per day.

“Although our estimates focus on total Gulf flows, the upward revisions suggest Strait of Hormuz oil transits are likely close to US officials’ 8-10mb/d estimates. The rise in dark crossings by specialized shippers and in ship-to-ship transfers shows that producers and shippers are adapting to the Middle East conflict,” Struyven told clients.

Related:

• Oil Dumps As Iran, Oman Push To Reopen Hormuz; Satellite Image Shows Gulf Producers Ramping Up

He noted, “Shipping markets now price in disruptions likely continuing well into 2027 (Exhibit 7). Still, potential additional dark flows and price-sensitive China net crude imports may moderate the upside to crude oil prices even if Mideast disruptions last longer. We continue to see greater price upside to European natural gas prices and deferred oil product prices in persistent disruption scenarios than for crude.”

Readers by now understand that the energy crisis is not necessarily in crude oil but, in fact, in refined products, with the U.S. diesel crack spread trading at $93 per barrel Friday morning. The spread blew out last week, reaching a record above $100.

The takeaway from Goldman’s Struyven is that, even though the critical waterway has not fully reopened, a growing fleet of dark tankers is transiting the strait and defying Iran’s blockade. That raises the question we have asked in recent weeks: Is Iran’s geopolitical leverage over the Strait of Hormuz eroding?

Overnight, Trump posted an image on Truth Social depicting the Strait of Hormuz as “New U.S. Territory.”

In late March, we cited a note from Zoltan Pozsar’s advisory firm, Ex Uno Plures, pointing out that Trump was “methodically building a portfolio of assets” to pressure China, including adding the Strait of Hormuz (read here).

The question is whether Trump will stop at Hormuz or embark on another crusade in the Gulf and take Iran’s Kharg Island. This newly minted portfolio also includes Venezuela, where the U.S. is nearing a deal to secure long-term energy-producing assets in the country.

Professional subscribers can read the full GS note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Authored by Tom Gantert via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on three organizations it accuses of supporting far-left terrorism.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Aug. 26 sanctioned Italy-based Autistici/Inventati, the UK-based Palestine Action, and the transnational organization Masar Badil under executive order 13224, the government’s principal counterterrorism sanctions authority.

“Far-left extremists, their fronts, and their enablers should be on notice: We will bring the full weight of our economic tools to bear,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Political terrorism has no place in our society, and we will continue to cut the financial lifelines of these groups until they are eliminated.”

Among the services the Treasury Department described Autistici/Inventati as providing to violent left-wing groups were website hosting, encrypted email, online chat, and video conferencing.

Autistici/Inventati restricts its services to people and organizations it has vetted who are aligned with its “anti-fascist,” “anti-militarist,” and anticapitalist ideology, according to the Treasury Department.

Austistici/Inventati was accused by the U.S. government of providing services to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the UK, and the European Union.

The Treasury Department also sanctioned Palestine Action, accusing the organization of committing break-ins at defense facilities and British military installations, injuring UK law enforcement officers, and causing millions of dollars in damage to military equipment. The British government designated Palestine Action as a terrorist organization in July 2025.

The organization Masar Badil was sanctioned for allegedly operating on behalf of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which the United States and Canada sanctioned in 2024. The Treasury Department described Samidoun as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.

Autistici/Inventati denied the allegations in a statement posted on its blog, Cavallette. It described itself as a small, volunteer-run technology collective providing “digital self-defense” tools and communications services to activists, individuals, and organizations.

“We will not back down,” the collective said, calling the allegations false and politically motivated. “Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism. Protesting is not terrorism.”

Huda Ammori, cofounder of Palestine Action, responded to the terrorist designation on X.

“As a Palestinian and Iraqi, the fact the country which destroyed both my homelands is calling me a terrorist, is beyond hypocritical,” Ammori said in a post on X on Aug. 26.

He said President Donald Trump “is the antithesis to everything Palestine Action stands for.”

Masar Badil also took to X to respond.

“Washington will not criminalize the struggle of our people nor will it strip them of their right to resistance and return,” the organization posted on X on Aug. 27.

The U.S. sanctions block property and financial interests belonging to the designated parties that are in the United States or controlled by U.S. persons. They also generally prohibit Americans from conducting transactions involving the sanctioned organizations.

Foreign financial institutions may also face penalties for knowingly facilitating significant transactions on their behalf. The Treasury said sanctions may be lifted if designated parties successfully petition for removal or change the conduct that prompted the action.

Summary:

• Caracas Mulls OPEC Exit 
• U.S. is Nears Deal For 17 Venezuelan Oil Fields under 100-year Leases Operated by U.S. oil companies
• Trump Close To ‘Massive’ Deal For Seizing Stake In Venezuela’s Vast Oil Fields

Focus on the Strait of Hormuz is shifting to South America late in the week as the Trump administration moves to secure new long-term crude supplies in Venezuela. The U.S. is nearing an agreement that could place 17 Venezuelan oil fields under 100-year leases operated by U.S. oil companies.

According to Bloomberg, sources told the outlet that Caracas has discussed a possible exit from OPEC with U.S. officials. The sources said no final decision has been made, but the discussions come as the U.S. negotiates 100-year leases on several Venezuelan oil fields that require billions of dollars in investment.

Such an exit from OPEC would be symbolic, given that the South American country was one of the organization’s five founding members in 1960 and played a key role in establishing the expanded OPEC+ alliance with Russia in 2016.

More recently, the United Arab Emirates became another producer to announce its departure from OPEC. Venezuela is only considering withdrawal, while Iraq has expressed frustration but has yet to announce a formal exit.

A Venezuelan exit would not result in an immediate surge in crude production because of years of underinvestment, which is why the U.S. is seeking to take a large stake in the nation’s oil fields.

Venezuela currently produces about 1.16 million barrels per day, according to a Bloomberg survey, and is not subject to an active OPEC quota.

For President Trump, a U.S.-Venezuela energy alliance could prove very valuable by weakening OPEC, increasing non-Middle Eastern crude supplies, pressuring oil prices and locking down a massive reserve base in America’s backyard.

Trump Close To ‘Massive’ Deal For Seizing Stake In Venezuela’s Vast Oil Fields

Amid ongoing global oil supply disruptions due to the Iran war and Hormuz Strait crisis, and also as Ukraine’s war on Russian oil refineries and export terminals heats up, the Trump administration has been scrambling to tap new reliable and long-term energy sources.

Now, nearly eight months since the US miliary raid on Caracas which removed from power and captured socialist President Nicolás Maduro, and the Trump administration is said to be on the brink of a massive deal to gain ownership stake in the countries vast oil resources.

Axios is newly reporting Thursday of ‘negotiations’ (sure) in the works: “The historic deal would more than double U.S. oil reserves by drawing from a country that has the world’s largest proven reserves.”

The report cites one official as saying that “Calling this deal huge would be an understatement” as is is “massive.”

The wars in Iran and Ukraine, and especially the race to reopen Hormuz to international crude transit, have added heightened urgency to the talks – and given the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has reached a 40-year low.

Over a dozen productive oil fields are said be central to the “talks”, with Trump officials hoping for a quick breakthrough after long hyping Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” and what it can do to bolster American energy independence and security. Of course, instead of ‘talks’ or ‘negotiations’… in reality this is more simply about hammering out details on what orders will be dictated to the ‘new’ post-Maduro US client state in South America.

Axios details further of what’s at stake in the deliberations with Caracas:

• The fields in question, which has 90 billion barrels of proven reserves, used to be controlled by former Venezuelan insiders — including some who’ve been indicted — as well as interests once controlled by China, the official said.
• In return for giving the U.S. an ownership stake, Venezuela’s government would benefit from private companies, including American firms, developing the fields and returning more oil revenue to that country.

But this latter note remains the big question and risk, in terms of a potentially long timeline before the new potential Venezuelan oil flows make a noticeable difference.

Though sitting atop the world’s biggest proven oil reserves, Venezuela has long been known for its derelict and largely defunct infrastructure for getting crude out of the ground and refining. There’s also the question of security, which has been a source of discussion between the US admin and American oil companies being courted.

The oil majors must be convinced that they can operate in enough safety to be successful, not just for the coming months, but for years down the line. But if a broad and major ‘deal’ is struck with Caracas, these issues will probably look minor. 

There are also lingering transparency and accountability questions concerning the Venezuelan oil exports that Washington already took over since Maduro’s ouster. This summer, the Council on Foreign Relations asked ‘where has all the money gone?’…

In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight. While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds since seizing control of the country’s oil exports following the January 3 military intervention that deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

The CFR also wrote:

The Trump administration has shared some details with Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in January that $300 million had flowed through a “short-term” account in Qatar and been disbursed to Venezuela, while another $200 million was “still sitting” in the account. He indicated the administration would conduct a retroactive audit on the funds that moved through the Qatar account. The following month, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said during a press interview that the full $500 million had been transferred to Venezuela and that the administration would use U.S. Treasury accounts going forward.

But the administration has yet to provide a public accounting of the Qatar account, including how the funds were spent or what safeguards were in place to prevent corruption and money laundering. In April, a State Department witness told Congress that the department had authorized the disbursement of about $3 billion to Venezuela, but the witness did not know how much money remained in the U.S. Treasury accounts. It is not clear if the balance in either the Qatar or U.S. Treasury accounts has been shared with Congress.

The last public update was shared by President Trump to reporters in late July. He indicated the US has collected more than $13 billion from the sale of Venezuelan crude.

″$13 billion from Venezuela? I think even more than that,” the president previously told reporters, and boasted that “We’ve paid for that war many times over.”

With both the Venezuelan oil export control scheme and this new plan for US companies to move in based on a grand deal, the White House is touting that this is all about securing America’s energy future.

But as for the Venezuelan people’s future…

🇻🇪 Washington Is Making Venezuela Pay for Its Own Occupation — 32% of Oil Revenue

The U.S. invasion has turned Venezuela’s oil industry into a revenue stream for Washington. Economist Francisco Rodríguez says the Trump administration has charged Venezuela $4.7 billion, or 32%… pic.twitter.com/3jwxLHLWZe

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 14, 2026

“President Trump is close to securing America’s energy future for generations to come, not just in the U.S. but in the hemisphere,” an official said to Axios.

As a reminder Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez was previously Maduro’s Vice President, and so the chavista socialism system is still actually in place, even if the new ruling regime is in reality now a puppet of Washington interests.

While President Trump initially declared that Washington would effectively “run” Venezuela, he later had openly endorsed Rodríguez as a temporary caretaker during the transition, despite her being as hardcore a Leftist pro-Maduro figure as anyone.

Among the first US actions with a compliant Rodríguez at the helm in Caracas was to cut off Venezuela’s oil supply to nearby ally Cuba. So ultimately, an eventual grand deal for American companies to take over Venezuelan oil fields should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to what Washington’s real long-running regime changes aims in Venezuela were all about. In the meantime Western MSM outlets like Axios still pretend in their framing of these developments that the US is at the helm of some kind of “rules-based order”.

On Friday at 10am ET (at the same time as Chairman Warsh’s Jackson Hole remarks), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will publish its preliminary estimate of the benchmark revision to the level of nonfarm payrolls for March 2026. The final benchmark revision will be issued and incorporated into nonfarm payrolls alongside the January 2027 employment report in February 2027.

The key source data for the benchmark revision comes from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which is derived from state unemployment insurance records, and which is much more accurate than the BLS’s own internal surveys. The March 2026 QCEW data will be released at the same time as the preliminary benchmark estimate, introducing uncertainty around the ultimate size of the revision. However, as Goldman writes in its revision preview note (available to pro subs), based on the nine months of data released since the last benchmarked period, March 2025, a modest upward revision appears likely, the first one since 2022  and follows the massive negative revisions of 2023 and 2024.

Indeed, Goldman expects a preliminary upward revision on the order of 50-450k which would translate to a 5-40k upward revision to monthly payroll growth over April 2025-March 2026. A final revision of this magnitude would result in the average pace of payroll growth over April 2025-March 2026 being revised up from about 25k/month currently to 30-65k/month.

The preliminary estimate for the benchmark revision will likely understate the final revision: the chart above shows that the preliminary estimate has been below the final revision in each of the last six years, by roughly 100k on average. This reflects that the QCEW itself has been revised up in every quarter since 2019 with the exception of 2020H1 (chart below), potentially reflecting ongoing issues with initial submissions to the administrative records that inform the QCEW.

Revisions to the QCEW are one reason why the BLS only benchmarks payrolls to the QCEW annually and with a long lag.

An upward benchmark revision would mark the first since 2022. The last two benchmark revisions in particular have been quite negative, in our view likely reflecting difficulties accounting for unauthorized workers in the QCEW. (This potential undercounting is less of an issue for this year’s benchmark given the sharp slowdown in immigration, and should also be less of an issue going forward.) As we discussed first a few years ago when we correctly previewed the massive negative revisions to 2023 and 2024 data, since the QCEW is based on unemployment insurance records, it likely excludes most unauthorized workers, who contributed to employment growth in the periods covered by those benchmark revisions. In most cases unauthorized workers do not qualify for unemployment insurance, so employers might see little reason to pay unemployment insurance tax on their behalf and might even see it as a needless risk in the cases of any immigrants they are employing who do not yet have work permits.

The BLS provides a decomposition of the sources of benchmark revisions each year, split between revisions that arise from miscalibration of the birth-death model and revisions from other sources, such as sampling and reporting errors. Consistent with difficulties accounting for unauthorized workers, only a modest share of the last two benchmark revisions – and just 14% of last year’s very large revision – can be attributed to miscalibration of the birth-death model; the bulk instead falls into the residual category which would capture the reporting error arising from a systematic undercount of unauthorized workers.

More in the full Goldman note available to pro subs.

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Democratic Socialism promises affordability and fairness. The bill, from Caracas to Copenhagen, is something else entirely.

On January 1st, a self-described democratic socialist was sworn in as mayor of the largest city in America. Weeks before that, socialist candidates swept a wave of primaries, sending the largest bloc of socialist legislators in New York history to Albany and two more to Congress. Then a billionaire governor, JB Pritzker, went on CNN, was asked whether the socialist wins were a good thing, and answered that they are “the recipe for winning in 2026 and beyond.” Make no mistake, democratic socialism is no longer a fringe idea in America. It’s a live political program with real momentum. The only question that matters is what it delivers after you buy it.

I have been managing money for a very long time through many market cycles, from manias to crashes. Over that time, I have learned to separate what a policy promises from what it produces. So let’s do that honestly here, starting with a concession most defenders of markets won’t make: Capitalism has flaws.

Capitalism Has Flaws

Capitalism is not perfect, and pretending otherwise is how you lose the argument before it starts. The system distributes rewards unevenly, routinely runs in boom-and-bust cycles, and has produced a K-shaped economy where asset owners pulled away from wage earners after 2008 and again after 2020. Housing, healthcare, and childcare have all outrun paychecks, and younger workers look at home prices and tuition bills and conclude the game is rigged.

I get it, and most importantly, I agree.

However, here’s the part that should bother free-market defenders most. A lot of that anger is aimed at something real. As I’ve written before, the serial bailouts since 2008 have socialized losses for the powerful while everyone else has absorbed the cost. That’s not capitalism working. That’s capitalism being corrupted. So when a 28-year-old votes for Zohran Mamdani, the grievance underneath the vote is not stupid. It’s the diagnosis of the cure that fails, and it fails badly.

Let’s dig into something equally important.

Democratic Socialism Is Not Social Democracy

The biggest source of confusion in this whole debate is the word itself. People use “socialism” to describe two systems that could not be more different, and the sloppiness is doing real work.

Socialism, in the textbook sense, means the state or “the community” owns the means of production. The government runs the factories, the banks, and the farms. Central planners, not markets, set prices. Social democracy is a completely different animal. It keeps private ownership, market prices, and free trade fully intact, then layers a large, tax-funded welfare state on top. One replaces the market. The other feeds off it.

Why does the distinction matter so much? Because the countries that collapsed were the first kind. And the countries American progressives actually point to, Denmark and Sweden, are the second kind, which is “Democratic Socialism.” They aren’t socialist at all. We’ll get to why that gap sinks the whole pitch. First, the table.

The Purest Version: Collapse, Then A New Elite

Start at the far end of the spectrum, because that’s where the theory gets its cleanest test. Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America, sitting atop the world’s largest oil reserves. Then Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro nationalized hundreds of companies, imposed price controls, and expropriated private land in the name of the people.

The result was the deepest peacetime economic collapse in modern history outside of war. Output per person fell by roughly three-quarters. Food production dropped 75%. Inflation crossed a million percent. Nearly eight million people walked out of the country on foot.

One point critics will reach for is U.S. sanctions. That is true, but those sanctions arrived later and only deepened the existing wound. But the collapse was well underway before the 2017 sanctions, and other oil states rode out the same 2014 price crash with their economies intact. The wound was self-inflicted. During the boom years, many Western admirers held up Venezuela as proof that socialism works. It wasn’t.

Now, the part that the brochure never mentions, and what you have to be very careful of when voting for it. Socialism promises to abolish the elite. In reality, it only installs a new and more deeply entrenched one.

The Soviet Union had its nomenklatura, the party class with private stores and country dachas. North Korea is on its third generation of hereditary Kim rule, a monarchy with a red flag. China favors its “princelings,” the descendants of the original revolutionaries. Venezuela produced the boliburguesia, the connected insiders who grew rich while the country starved. So, the reality is that SOMEONE will always end up on top, it just won’t be you or the average worker.

Look at who leads the movement here at home. The new face is Mamdani, son of a Columbia University professor and a globally acclaimed filmmaker. The loudest establishment cheerleader is Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt fortune, worth close to $4 billion, assuring everyone that taxing the rich is only fair. These are not people who have missed a meal. That’s the pattern across a century of these movements, and it’s no accident. The bigger the state you build to deliver “equality,” the bigger the prize for whoever captures it.

Markets, Not Manifestos, End Poverty

Run the film in reverse, and the lesson is just as sharp. Under Mao’s fully planned economy, the Great Leap Forward produced the deadliest famine in human history, killing somewhere between 10 and 40 million people. Then Deng Xiaoping said four words that changed the world: “Poverty is not socialism.” He handed farmers their own plots, opened special economic zones, and let prices and trade do their work.

The result is the single largest reduction in human poverty ever recorded.

China’s extreme poverty rate fell from roughly 88% in 1981 to under 4% by 2016. Around 800 million people climbed out of destitution, accounting for about three-quarters of all global poverty reduction over that period. India tells the same story after it dismantled its socialist “License Raj” in 1991 and let markets breathe.

Here’s the point, and it’s the one that should stop a thoughtful young voter cold. China is not free. It’s an authoritarian state. Yet the moment it let private ownership and market prices operate, outcomes improved faster than any welfare program in history could dream of. That’s how much power sits in the market mechanism, and it’s exactly the machinery socialism proposes to switch off. We’ve laid out the deeper data on this in Capitalism: The Road To Wealth And Happiness.

“But Scandinavia Works”

This is the strongest argument the other side has for democratic socialism, so let’s take it seriously. The Nordic countries have universal healthcare, cheap college, low poverty, and citizens who report being among the happiest on earth. Bernie Sanders has spent a decade telling Americans to look to Denmark and Sweden. If that’s democratic socialism, why not copy it?

Because it isn’t socialism. Not remotely. Denmark’s own prime minister traveled to Harvard to correct the record, telling Americans plainly, “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.” The Nordics rank among the freest economies in the world. On the Fraser Institute’s index, Denmark sits at #10, ahead of most of Europe. They have flexible labor markets, no legislated national minimum wage, strong property rights, aggressive free trade, corporate taxes lower than ours, and, in Sweden’s case, a nationwide school voucher system American progressives would call heresy.

When you compare Venezuela to Denmark, the word “socialism” gets stretched across right next to each other, and the argument ends itself.

Denmark also got rich first, back when it was a low-tax economy, and then reformed hard back toward markets in the 1990s after the welfare state had stalled its growth in the 1970s and 80s. And here’s the detail the pitch always leaves out. They pay for it by taxing the middle class, not just billionaires.

Think a 25% national sales tax and income tax rates that bite ordinary workers, not a magic levy that falls only on the yacht crowd. The Nordic model is capitalism with a big, broadly financed welfare state. Copy the capitalism if you like. The part U.S. socialists want to skip, the broad taxes and the market discipline, is the part that makes the whole thing stand up.

The Bill Comes Home: Taxes, Wealth, And Free Money

The American program for democratic socialism rests on two pillars: much higher taxes and some form of guaranteed income. Both have a track record, and neither is kind.

Start with “tax the rich,” which assumes the rich aren’t already carrying the load. They are. The top 1% of earners pay 38% of all federal income taxes while earning about 21% of the income. The top 10% pay more than 70%, and the top half pays 97% of the entire federal income tax take. The bottom half pays a little over 3%. We run the most progressive income tax in the developed world.

Now to the fairness point people raise, and it’s a fair one. Lower earners still pay payroll taxes. True. But once you count what comes back, the picture flips. The Congressional Budget Office finds that after transfers, Medicaid, food assistance, and refundable credits, the lowest fifth of households carries a net federal tax rate of roughly 0.5%.

In 2020, it went negative, meaning they received more than they paid. Over half of all means-tested transfers flow to the bottom fifth, three-quarters to the bottom two-fifths, while the top fifth pays more than two-thirds of all federal taxes. The reality is that the productive top is already funding the safety net. There’s no vast, untapped vein of “the rich” sitting there to bankroll a far larger state.

So how do the countries that actually run these programs pay for them? Not the way the slogans suggest. The math of democratic socialism forces the burden down onto the middle. Here is what the American tax base looks like today, next to what it would have to become if we adopted the Nordic model these candidates hold up as the goal.

Read that table again, because it’s the whole argument in one frame. In America, the top rate hits at roughly 9x the average wage. In Denmark, it is about 1.3x the average wage. The barista and the surgeon land in nearly the same bracket, and a 25% sales tax greets both of them at the register on almost everything they buy. That is not a tax on the rich. It’s a tax on working and middle-class life, and it has to be, because as the Tax Foundation flatly concludes, mirroring the Scandinavian model would raise taxes in the U.S. “especially on the middle class.”

What about a wealth tax, then? Europe already ran that experiment. In 1990, a dozen countries levied one. Today, four do. France lost an estimated 12,000 millionaires in a single year and raised less than 0.2% of GDP before scrapping its version. Capital and the people who own it don’t sit still and wait to be taxed. They move.

And the second pillar, universal basic income? A recent review of 122 guaranteed-income pilots found that the larger, more credible studies showed employment falling rather than rising. The deeper flaw is one of economic gravity. Production has to come before consumption. Send out checks without new output, and prices simply rise to swallow them, exactly what 2021 showed. We covered this at length in UBI: Tried, Tested, and Failed As Expected and in A Robot Economy. All of it lands on a country already carrying $39 trillion in debt, north of 120% of GDP, spending more than a trillion a year just on interest. There is no fiscal room for this. None.

Every Flaw, Made Worse

Here’s where it comes together. Go back to capitalism’s real flaws, the ones I named up top, and watch what social democracy actually does to each one.

Worried about inequality? Socialism produces the most extreme concentrations of power and wealth on record, and it hands them to a political class you can’t vote out and can’t compete with. Money inequality is at least contestable. Power inequality is not. On top of that, funding the program with a printing press delivers inflation, which is the single most regressive tax there is. It robs the poor first. The cure deepens the disease.

Angry about cronyism and bailouts for the connected? Then the last thing you want is a bigger state. Every dollar of economic activity you route through government becomes another dollar the well-connected fight to capture. The bigger the prize, the harder they fight, and they always win. You don’t end cronyism by enlarging the thing cronies feed on. You starve it.

Furious about the cost of housing, healthcare, and childcare? Those are already the three most government-distorted markets in America. Rent control shrinks the housing supply. Subsidies poured in without new supply getting absorbed into higher prices, which is why childcare grew less affordable even as the subsidies grew. More of the same intervention makes the scarcity WORSE, not better. And stagnant wages? Wages rise on productivity, productivity rises on investment, and investment flees higher taxes and capital controls. Ask the thousands who left France or the millions who left Venezuela.

So yes, capitalism is flawed, but democratic socialism only makes it worse. But the honest fix is to remove the distortions, end the bailouts, stop debasing the money, break the regulatory capture, and clear the way for supply. That’s the argument I’ve made for years in pieces like our work on productivity and jobs. The fix is more competition and sounder money. It is not a system that takes every flaw you’re angry about and pours gasoline on it. As Howard Marks likes to say about cycles, the seeds of the next problem are planted in the solution to the last one. Social democracy is that seed.

What It Means For Your Money

So, what does this have to do with money and your portfolio? A durable shift of democratic socialism toward higher taxes on capital, wealth levies, and deficit-financed transfers changes the terrain on which investors stand. It raises the odds of higher structural inflation, pressures the currency, and invites the kind of capital flight that has followed these policies wherever they’ve been tried.

The practical takeaways are straightforward. Own productive assets, the businesses and hard assets that hold value when money is being debased. Watch policy risk at the state and municipal level, where these ideas arrive first and where capital and residents vote with their feet. And keep the long view. The market engine that compounds wealth over decades is precisely what’s on the ballot. Protecting your exposure to it is not a political act. It’s a risk-management one.

The appeal of democratic socialism is real because the pain it speaks to is real. I won’t pretend otherwise. But intentions are not outcomes, and history has handed us the outcomes in ink, from Caracas to the old Soviet bloc to the Nordic countries that quietly kept their capitalism. The promise is a beautiful cake. The aftertaste is shortages, capital flight, inflation, and a new elite standing where the old one used to be.

Capitalism’s flaws are worth fixing, and we should fix them. Replacing the system that produced the highest living standards in human history, in order to cure its imperfections, is how you end up with the imperfections and none of the living standards. That’s the trade on the table. Look closely before you take it.

US stock futures are flat and rates rise ahead of today’s main event: Fed chief Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech at 10am ET (full preview here) as traders seek clarity on his economic outlook and his strategy for lowering inflation back to the Fed’s 2% target. As of 8:00am ET, S&P futures are little changed and Nasdaq 100 futures are lower following the Nvidia-driven rally for the index in the prior session, when however only 30% of the S&P and 1 of 11 sectors closed green as the index continues to be carried by a handful of AI names while the median stock goes nowhere. Pre-market, Mag 7 stocks are mostly higher led by TSLA (+0.6%) and AMZN (+0.3%); NVDA is the laggard (-0.5%). PayPal slumped 16% in premarket trading after Advent and Stripe abandoned their pursuit of the firm. Overnight, headlines were largely quiet with WTI dropping further as the Iran conflict remains quiet. Bond yields are 1-2bps higher (10Y 4.69% and 3Y rates up two basis points to 5.21%) while the dollar and gold barely budged. Brent crude fluctuated. Copper headed for a ninth weekly gain, the longest run since 2020. USD is flat. Commodities are all modestly higher across base metals, precious metals (silver +1.5%) and ags. Today’s US economic data calendar includes August MNI Chicago PMI (9:45 a.m. New York time, several minutes earlier for subscribers), August final University of Michigan sentiment (10 a.m.) and August Kansas City Fed services activity (11 a.m.). 

In premarket trading, Mag 7 names are mostly higher: Tesla +0.4%, Alphabet +0.3%, Amazon +0.4%, Meta +0.2%, Apple +0.2%, Microsoft -0.3%, Nvidia -0.3%

• Affirm Holdings (AFRM) climbs 13% after the financial technology company forecast revenue for the first quarter that beat the average analyst estimate. Also, the company and Shopify expanded their global partnership to launch Shop Pay Installments in Australia.
• Autodesk (ADSK) falls 4% as the application software company forecast adjusted earnings per share for the third quarter that missed the average analyst estimate. Citi notes that the company’s sales growth looks to be moderating in the second half of the year.
• Elastic (ESTC) rises 18% after the company boosted its adjusted earnings per share guidance for the full year and posted guidance that beat the average analyst estimate.
• Gap (GAP) gains 14% after the apparel retailer named Michael Francis as head of Old Navy and profit outpaced estimates, offsetting a sales decline at the value chain and lower sales guidance.
• Marvell Technology (MRVL) reported second-quarter results that modestly beat expectations and gave an outlook that is above the analyst consensus. However, shares of the chipmaker are down 7%; the stock had soared more than 180% this year, as of its Thursday close.
• PayPal (PYPL) falls 17% as people familiar with the matter say that a consortium of buyout firm Advent and payment processor Stripe has decided to abandon its pursuit of the fintech pioneer.
• SentinelOne (S) falls 3% as the cybersecurity platform’s forecast for fiscal-year adjusted EPS trails the average estimate.
• Solstice Advanced Materials (SOLS) rises 15% after the company and Element Solutions mutually agreed to terminate their merger pact.
• Ulta Beauty (ULTA) falls about 1% as higher discounts and promotions weighed on the cosmetics retailer’s margins. Analysts said gross margins were underwhelming but noted guidance could be conservative.

In other corporate news Gap jumped in premarket trading after naming a retail industry veteran as head of Old Navy and reporting profit above estimates, offsetting a sales decline at the value chain and lower sales guidance. Tencent released a foundation model it says outperforms rivals Z.AI and Moonshot AI in internal tests. The UAE has given SpaceX’s Starlink a 10-year general satellite services license. Fox responded to a Reuters report that Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch are considering a recombination of Fox and News Corp., saying there have been no discussions on the topic since consideration of a possible merger in 2022. Element Solutions and Solstice Advanced Materials mutually agreed to terminate their merger pact.

As described in our Jackson Hole preview (here) Warsh’s address, scheduled for 10 a.m. New York time, is shaping up as a crucial moment for markets as doubts about his commitment to taming inflation have helped push up long-term yields. A divided policy committee and the Treasury’s bond market intervention are further complicating the backdrop.

“Investors are reluctant to increase their exposure just hours before Kevin Warsh’s speech,” said Nabil Milali at Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management. “His recent comments have been so vague that no one knows what to expect today, with some investors anticipating a very hawkish message and others expecting the exact opposite.” 

Warsh’s speech could flatten the US yield curve, bolster risk appetite and support the dollar, if he gets it right, according to Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett. “What investors want to see is the framework that the Fed is using to think about the economy to allow markets to better assess incoming data,” said Hugh Gimber, global markets strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management. “That’s the piece that’s been missing at the moment.”

Goldman rates trader George Cole made the following notable remarks ahead of J-Hole:

Obviously the speech is very interesting in the context of the buyback announcement, the Druckenmiller op-ed, and the July meeting, which was a head-scratcher. He seemed to endorse the idea that higher long-end yields were a reflection of the market finally standing on its own feet and getting some vol back after years of central bank repression. I think that’s a somewhat false narrative, but that was the story he gave us — only for Bessent to say the market doesn’t understand the fundamentals, has the price wrong. Philosophically, you can’t claim to want an unpolluted read of market pricing while bullying that same market. So we’d be surprised if he re-runs the July script and celebrates the move higher in long-end yields.

What we’re looking for instead is something vol-reducing: marginally hawkish near term, but fundamentally calming. The market isn’t worried about the Fed’s stance — it’s confused about what the Fed is actually doing.

Three things would help: 1) a clear statement that the policy rate, not long-end yields, is the main transmission mechanism; 2) an acknowledgement that recent data has been encouraging and reaffirms recent FOMC decisions — not forward guidance, but evidence the Fed is reading the data in a familiar, sensible way; and 3) a recommitment to price stability that sounds a bit more like June.

The speech will be more significant for foreign-exchange, gold and bond markets than for equities, said Ulrich Urbahn at Berenberg. History suggests a similar response, with the S&P 500 gaining just 0.4% on average in the week following the gathering, data compiled by Bloomberg show. “A firm message on inflation, fiscal credibility or the need to preserve restrictive policy would tend to lift real and nominal long-end yields, support the dollar and pressure duration-sensitive assets,” Urbahn said.

Bloomberg’s Editorial Board writes that investors demanding clear answers to their many questions from his speech are almost certain to come away disappointed.

“Warsh can and should try to dispel some of the doubts that have arisen since his appointment began in May. But it’ll be a while before he can provide a definitive account of his preferred approach to monetary policy. Having commissioned five task forces of eminent experts to offer advice, he has little choice but to wait until they’ve reported back and he and his colleagues have discussed the findings.” – Bloomberg Editorial

What can’t wait, though, is a commitment to investors that the Fed will freely explain the rationale for its actions going forward. To put it more bluntly, Warsh needs to say: “Message received.”

Elsewhere, Citadel Securities posted a record $7.3 billion of trading revenue for the second quarter, more than triple on a year earlier. A US judge ruled that the Trump administration must lift its ban on Anthropic’s AI technology for federal agencies.

The flood of debt financing for AI capex is causing “indigestion” in fixed-income markets and fueling yields, but that dynamic should result in decent longer-term returns for investors, according to Pimco. Meanwhile, BCA Research chief economist Peter Berezin highlights that hyperscaler depreciation expense is set to jump to over $500 billion by 2030, equal to the expected operating profits of all five companies in 2026.

In other assets, oil exports from the Persian Gulf have recovered to around two-thirds of pre-war levels, according to Goldman Sachs. Copper edged closer to a record high, with three-month futures trading above $14,300 a ton in London, on track for a ninth weekly gain, the longest such run since 2020.

In geopolitics, the US is in talks with Venezuela to take a large stake in its oil fields, which would extend the Trump administration’s influence on the post-Maduro government and the nation’s vast energy reserves. Iran said putting US diplomacy back on track “isn’t impossible.”

The Stoxx 600 is up by 0.5% in a broad rally in European equities, and set for a fifth straight monthly advance ahead of speeches by central bankers at the Jackson Hole economic symposium. Consumer, autos and chemicals sectors are the best performers. Media and real estate are among the few decliners. Here are some of the biggest movers on Friday:

• BMW rises as much as 2.4% and Forvia gains as much as 4.9% as Citi places the stocks on positive watches, saying there may be some room for relief from current low levels as the automotive sector continues to face structural challenges.
• Ackermans shares rise as much as 8.5% as KBC Securities says the investment company had “closed a solid first half.”
• Interparfums shares gain as much as 5.4% as Oddo BHF raises its recommendation on the French firm to outperform from neutral, saying new products should boost revenue.
• Hays gains as much as 6.2% as Panmure Liberum upgrades to buy, boosts its price target to a Street-high and says “for the first time in a long time” there is asymmetric risk profile to the upside on estimates.
• Strabag shares rise as much as 12% after the Austrian construction company boosted its Ebit margin forecast for the full year.
• Recticel gains as much as 6.7% with KBC Securities saying the insulation product manufacturer exceeded first-half consensus adjusted Ebitda expectations by 9%.
• Goodwin shares rally as much as 13% after the engineering company reported record profits in the last financial year and announced plans to return a “substantial part” of any proceeds from selling its Mechanical Engineering division to shareholders.
• Sivers Semiconductors fall as much as 22% after the Swedish electrical component manufacturer reported second-quarter earnings which included a drop in net sales and accelerating operating losses. Shares are still up over 600% year to date.
• Boozt falls as much as 8.5% after an offering of shares by holder Ferd prices at SEK145/share, a 7.05% discount to Thursday’s close.

Asian stocks edged higher, with cyclical sectors among the top gainers, as investors awaited Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s speech at Jackson Hole later today. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index was up 0.2% after rising as much as 0.6%. Financials, industrials and materials were among the best-performing sectors on the gauge. Meanwhile, a subgauge of tech shares gave up early gains spurred by optimism over Nvidia’s strong outlook. The MSCI Asia gauge was up 0.4% for the week, on track for a fifth weekly gain in six. The regional benchmark is up 3.1% so far in August, poised for its first monthly increase since May. Still, sentiment remains fragile amid continued concerns over Big Tech spending, geopolitical tensions and elevated oil prices.

“Despite the strong performance of US stock indices yesterday, we saw this morning that risk appetite remained limited in Asian markets, mainly because investors are reluctant to increase their exposure just hours before Warsh’s speech,” said Nabil Milali, a portfolio manager at Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management. “His recent comments have been so vague that no one knows what to expect today, with some investors anticipating a very hawkish message and others expecting the exact opposite.”

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index is little changed; the yen led losses among major currencies, moving closer to 160 against the dollar and heading for its lowest level since the coordinated  US-Japan intervention at the end of July. Japan spent a record $96.4 billion over the past month to support the currency, according to data released by the Finance Ministry on Friday.

In rates, treasuries are mostly muted as investors await Warsh’s Jackson Hole address, and hold small losses, lifting yields by about 1bp inside this week’s ranges, with Warsh holding the potential to alter market pricing for a single quarter-point interest-rate increase by year-end and high likelihood of a second by mid-2027. 10-year yield is about 2bps higher on the day near 4.69%, outperforming UK and German counterparts.Yield-curve flattening trend unleashed by last week’s Treasury Department decision to expand buybacks targeting 10- to 30-year sectors has stalled.5s30 spread, about 1bp wider near 80bp, fell below 79bp Thursday to the lowest level since July 29, most recent Federal Reserve decision date, while 2s10s, more than 1bp steeper near 45bp, breached 43bp, lowest since Aug. 7.  IG credit new-issue calendar is anticipated to be light through month-end; activity ground to a halt Thursday.

In commodities, oil prices lower with Brent hovering around $89/barrel and WTI around $83, while gold is holding close to $4,600/oz and silver is rallying. Bitcoin is trading below $80,000.

Today’s US economic data calendar includes August MNI Chicago PMI (9:45 a.m. New York time, several minutes earlier for subscribers), August final University of Michigan sentiment (10 a.m.) and August Kansas City Fed services activity (11 a.m.). Fed speaker slate also includes Cleveland Fed’s Hammack at 9 a.m. and Chicago Fed’s Goolsbee at 12:40 p.m.

Market Snapshot

Top Overnight News

• The top US commander for the Middle East said that American forces have cleared Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz, after Washington’s allies expressed doubts about similar claims by President Donald Trump.
• Qatar’s prime minister visited Tehran on Thursday in an effort to revive stalled diplomacy six months into the war, as U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington was not currently talking to Iran. RTRS
• Venezuela is considering whether it should quit OPEC, according to people familiar with the matter, potentially delivering a fresh blow to the oil cartel it helped create more than six decades ago. BBG
• Jackson Hole Preview: Warsh to speak at 10am & GS econ expects him to reiterate his commitment to the 2% inflation target, expand on the rationale behind his approach to Fed communication and offer thoughts on some bigger picture topics such as productivity growth or shocks to the global economy that he alluded to at his last press conference. He’s likely to acknowledge the better recent inflation news but is unlikely to provide any policy guidance. Full Preview here
• Howard Lutnick accused Canada of scuttling trade talks by adding last-minute demands, saying PM Mark Carney had political incentives to kill an emerging deal. BBG
• A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the Postal Service from inserting itself into the election process while litigation continues: NBC
• Nippon Life Insurance Co., Japan’s largest life insurer, said it is open to becoming a net buyer of government bonds next fiscal year as it finds current interest rates attractive. BBG
• Japan spent a record $96.4 billion over the past month to support the yen, underscoring the authorities’ willingness to deploy increasingly aggressive tactics to put a floor under the currency. BBG
• Tokyo’s key inflation gauge accelerated for a third month even as the government took steps to reduce energy costs, bolstering the case for another Bank of Japan interest-rate increase as market expectations mount for a move in September. RTRS
• Spanish inflation surged to 4.5% in August, more than double the ECB’s target, while France’s 2.7% reading exceeded expectations, strengthening the case for a rate increase next month. BBG
• US President Trump’s administration is mulling a 500mln gallon boost to 2027 biofuel quotas to offset exemptions

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mostly positive but with gains capped following the varied performance stateside, where all indices rose and the Nasdaq outperformed post-NVIDIA earnings, but almost all sectors were in the red aside from tech, while the attention turns to the Jackson Hole Symposium and Fed Chair Warsh’s keynote speech. ASX 200 was higher with notable outperformance in tech, although consumer stocks and real estate lagged amid the recent increased bets for the RBA to resume its hiking cycle next month. Nikkei 225 rallied as participants digested the latest data releases, including a surprise decline in the Unemployment Rate, while Tokyo CPI matched estimates, with the Core reading remaining beneath the 2% goal. KOSPI bucked the trend amid weakness in South Korean tech giants despite the sector doing much of the heavy lifting across global markets, while there was a report that SK Hynix lagged rivals in NAND process-node transitions, with slower upgrades and reduced NAND capex eroding its cost competitiveness and market share. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were kept afloat but with the upside limited amid a slew of earnings releases and with participants also bracing for results from Chinese big banks.

Top Asian News

• S&P affirmed China at A+; Outlook Stable. Said a stable outlook on long term rating reflects the view that China will provide larger fiscal support to keep the economy growing at around 4% over the next two years.
• China’s Ministry of Finance said the country will implement proactive macroeconomic policies in the second half of the year; long term positive fundamentals remain unchanged.

European bourses are entirely in the green, with the CAC 40 the clear outperformer as it rebounds from yesterday’s downside. The main driver of Thursday’s losses was the presidential debate that took place between candidates. The key focus was on how the candidates would approach France’s debt problem; no consensus was agreed on the stage on how to solve the problem, but suggestions ranged from waiving interest payments on ECB-owned debt to cutting welfare spending. Overall, Politico says no candidate pulled off a clear winner and that the presidential race remains open. Sectors highlight the positive bias. Consumer Products & Services top the sector pile, with Autos and Chemicals rounding out the top 3 performers. To the downside is Media, followed by Real Estate and Retail. Key movers include: UK defence names, FT reported that Chancellor Healey will shelve its defence spending target at October’s budget; EssilorLuxottica (+3.3%), announces share buybacks of up to 5mln shares; Strabag (+10.7%), H1 revenue beat and raises its FY26 guidance; Siemens (+1.5%), upgraded to buy at Erste.

Top European News

• UK Chancellor Healey will reportedly shelve defence spending target when presenting October budget, the FT reported.

FX

• G10s lack a bias ahead of the Warsh Jackson Hole speech with **most currencies flat vs the USD. **
• DXY ekes modest gains after surpassing the 200DMA of 99.16 ahead of Fed Chair Warsh’s speech. Performance across majors is lacklustre with most currencies weaker, albeit small in magnitude.
• Into the speech, some analysts have suggested that the market could again be left disappointed; Saxo Bank says the title of the forum suggests that Warsh will deliver thoughts on the potential use of stablecoins for financial system plumbing rather than the Fed’s thoughts on interest rates – Previous Fed chairs have used the forum to signal upcoming policy actions. However, Warsh has begun his term with a bias against issuing any forward guidance, and has made the case that such guidance can shackle officials to their earlier forecasts, and his approach of little guidance will allow markets to interpret the data themselves.
• MUFG says the closest historical comparisons to today’s speech are “probably 2008 or 2016” given the level of uncertainty, which both garnered 0.7% move in EUR/USD – FX options price a 46pip move in EUR/USD today, lower than the historicals that MUFG refers to.
• While OATs saw some weakness at the open, EUR was steady throughout the French Presidential debate. Focus now shifts to Fitch’s rating on France this evening, seen unchanged, and the Socialist party which are set to unveil demands for France’s 2027 budget over the weekend. EUR/USD likely at the whim of the Buck into the highly anticipated Warsh speech, 200DMA c. 10 pips below will likely support the pair for the moment.
• GBP/USD is flat but off worst levels after finding support at 1.3580. A couple updates on the domestic political front. The FT reported UK Chancellor Healey will shelve defence spending targets when presenting the October budget, a move which could save as much as GBP 10bln/year, based on OBR forecasts. It was separately reported that there could be potential modifications to council taxes, though no GBP move was seen on this report.

Fixed Income

• Fixed benchmarks are under very mild pressure this morning, but with price action ultimately muted ahead of the day’s key risk events. USTs (-2 ticks) trade within a narrow 108-16 to 108-20 range, whilst Bunds (-21 ticks) and Gilts (-29 ticks) are hampered by elevated gas prices.
• USTs are trading in an exceptionally thin range this morning as attention remains on two key risk events. Firstly, Fed Chair Warsh is set to speak at 15:00 BST (10:00 EDT). Whether he touches on monetary policy remains to be seen, but even if he doesn’t, there is a risk markets will begin to price in credibility woes once again. At the same time as Warsh, the BLS will release the annual NFP benchmark revision; consensus sees a revision of +200k.
• Over in Europe, EGBs and Gilts have been subject to a few days in the red, as gas prices remain elevated. A lot of that pressure is attributed to fears surrounding low gas storage, and recent punchy rhetoric out of Russia has also not helped the mood.
• For France specifically, OATs have had the first Presidential debate to digest. Ultimately, there was no clear victor, but the confab made evident the stark contrast in views held between parties. This can be evidenced in the 10yr OAT/Bund spread, which remains near recent highs at 85bps, but ultimately fairly stable today.
• OATs (-15 ticks) are faring a touch better vs peers this morning, potentially as leading candidate Le Pen provided further colour on how she would solve France’s debt problem. She noted that spending needed to be cut, arguing that France should not commit more than EUR 5bln to the EU (vs ~EUR 29bln in 2026). She said she would present a EUR 125bln cost-cutting plan before the next budget debate, which will only happen once PM Lecornu submits the 2027 budget bill (end-Sept).
• Italy sells EUR 6.5bln vs exp. EUR 5.75-6.5bln 3.15% 2031, 4.00% 2036 BTP and EUR 2bln vs. EUR 1.5-2bln 1.773% 2034, 1.645% 2035 CCTeu.
• Japan sells JPY 2.15tln 2-year JGBs: b/c 2.97x (prev. 3.63x), average yield 1.708% (prev. 1.483%), Tail in price 0.034 (prev. 0.007).
• Australia sells AUD 800mln 4.25% December 2035 Bonds: b/c 3.88x, avg. yield 5.0539%.

Commodities

• Geopolitical updates have lacked anything tangible, even though rhetoric has been hawkish. US President Trump dismissed immediate negotiations and suggested sanctions and the Hormuz blockade are putting Tehran under severe strain. Washington says the Strait of Hormuz has been cleared of mines and shipping lanes reopened, while Treasury Secretary Bessent is pushing G20 countries to cut Iranian and IRGC revenue flows. Iran, meanwhile, says it is preparing conditions for reopening the Strait, has agreed on a potential corridor with Oman, and warns it could strike US military and economic interests if pressure continues. Despite mediation efforts by Oman and Qatar, the US says no negotiations are currently planned and does not recognise the reported Iran-Oman arrangement.
• Nonetheless, amid the lack of a notable escalation, WTI and Brent futures are subdued intraday, with the former in a USD 82.54-83.78/bbl range and the latter in a USD 87.60-88.61/bbl range. Participants, as usual, are eyeing any tangible updates on escalations/de-escalations. Dutch TTF, conversely, is firmer by around 2.2% at EUR 69.79/MWh, continuing to be buoyed by supply concerns as Europe replenishes winter stock. Note that the contract briefly notched the EUR 70/MWh mark.
• Precious metals are firmer despite a resilient USD against the backdrop of softer oil prices, but following two sessions of weakness. Spot gold resides towards the top of a narrow USD 4,571-4,614/oz range within yesterday’s band between USD 4,564-4,643/oz. Spot silver gains after finding a comfortable footing above its 100 DMA (USD 68.19/oz), with the precious metal back on a USD 70/oz handle in a USD 68.44-70.95/oz range.
• Base metals mostly eke mild gains despite DXY remaining resilient, and with downside capped amid expectations for near-term Chinese stimulus. 3M LME copper resides in a USD 14,277.65-14,345.00/t range at the time of writing.
• Venezuela is reportedly mulling leaving OPEC, according to people familiar with the matter.
• Saudi Aramco reportedly sold around 4mln barrels of Arab Medium and Heavy crudes to Chinese refiners for loading in September at locations just outside Hormuz, Bloomberg reported.
• Chinese State Planner is to raise domestic gasoline prices by CNY 375/t and diesel by CNY 360/t.
• Kazakhstan has restored oil production to normal levels, which were previously reduced due to the attacks on the CPC, according to Interfax.
• Qatar Energy extended the LNG force majeure to Edison (EDNR IM) until November 4th.
• Global Aluminium producer is seeking a premium of USD 310/t for October-December 2026 in talks with Japan (-22% Q/Q), according to source reports.
• Ukraine’s agriculture minister said the country’s winter wheat planting area is expected to decline in 2027.

Trade/Tariffs

• Canada’s ambassador to Washington said Canada cannot accept a US trade deal unless it ensures survival of robust Canadian auto assembly and parts industry, while he stated that Canada’s removal of tariffs on US seafood was done more for technical reasons than as a sign of a quick resumption of negotiations.

Central Banks

• ECB’s Kazaks said that inflation must not be allowed to take root.
• Poll shows 27 out of 31 economists expect the RBNZ to raise the OCR by 25bps to 2.75% at next week’s meeting, while more than two thirds of economists at least one more rate hike after September to lift the OCR to 3.00% or above by year-end

Geopolitics: Iran

• Two regional sources told Axios that in recent days Iran has shown renewed interest in negotiations, Axios reported.
• US President Trump posted that “Iran Is a Failing Nation!”, while he separately commented “I don’t want to meet, they do. In fact, they are begging to make a deal”.
• US Central Command Commander Cooper said the US military successfully cleared sea mines laid in Strait of Hormuz and international shipping lanes are open.
• Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi said discussions with Qatar’s PM and foreign minister showed diplomacy could be restored, but argued that the US must abandon pressure, build trust, respect Iran’s rights, and honour its commitments.
• Iran’s Parliament Member Kawsari said “Any agreement with Oman is subject to the lifting of the naval blockade.” US messages have reached through Qatar, Oman and Pakistan, but Iran will only enter the operational phase after implementing several paragraphs.
• Yemeni sources reported that Saudi artillery targeted residential villages in the Al-Thabit area of Qatabar, Saada Province, Yemen, Nour News reported.

Geopolitics: Ukraine/China

• Ukraine’s Military said it struck an oil refinery in Yaroslavl, Russia.
• Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara said Japan will respond calmly and appropriately to relations with China and will keep dialogue open.

US Event Calendar

• 9:45 am: United States Aug MNI Chicago PMI, est. 57.9, prior 57.6
• 10:00 am: United States Aug F U. of Mich. Sentiment, est. 51, prior 51

Central Banks

• 9:00 am: Fed’s Hammack on BTV
• 10:00 am: Fed’s Warsh Speaks at Jackson Hole Symposium
• 12:40 pm: Fed’s Goolsbee Speaks on CNBC

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Markets put in a very mixed performance yesterday, as investors grappled with several competing trends. On the upside, Nvidia’s results led to renewed optimism around AI, and the resulting bounce in tech stocks pushed the S&P 500 (+0.72%) to its best day in three weeks. But apart from the tech rally there were consistent losses, and Europe’s STOXX 600 (-0.69%) had its worst day in a month thanks to a fresh rise in energy prices, alongside a notable underperformance for French banks. So the mood was more downbeat than the headline numbers suggested, with over two-thirds of the S&P 500 still lower on the day, and long-end bond yields creeping higher.

Before we get on to that however, the market focus today will be on the Jackson Hole symposium, where Fed Chair Warsh is speaking at 3pm London time. This is a significant one, as the speech is often used by Fed Chairs to make big announcements or send policy signals. Indeed, last year saw former Chair Powell acknowledge “the shifting balance of risks”, which set the stage for rate cuts to resume the following month. And with market pricing for the September Fed meeting still in the balance (35% chance of a hike), today’s speech is particularly important.

This year, we don’t know what Warsh is going to talk about, but he said in July that he was undecided “whether it’s going to be a big-picture speech or whether it’s going to be a more traditional set up for all the action we’re going to have between September and December”. So that leaves him a few options for today. According to our US economists, they think that a “big-picture” speech could include a discussion of the Fed’s taskforces, or potentially on AI’s economic impact. Alternatively, the “more traditional” speech might see Warsh do a “cleanup” of the July press conference, and he may wish to counter one market narrative that Fed policy actions could be delayed until the task forces have completed their work. See their full preview (link here) for more details.

With all that to look forward to, we actually heard from several Fed speakers yesterday, which demonstrated the current divide on policy. Some suggested that more restrictive policy was required, including Cleveland Fed President Hammack, who voted for a hike last time. She reiterated that “I think it’s appropriate for us to put some restraint there to help bring inflation back down to target”. Meanwhile, Kansas City Fed President Schmid (a non-voter this year) said “I would probably put myself in that camp” of colleagues who dissented. But Boston Fed President Collins said that “I continue to see rates as mildly restrictive”. And Chicago Fed President Goolsbee said he wanted “evidence that this inflation shock is not going to be persistent”, but he also said “I’m OK with waiting as we’re getting that.”

Against that backdrop, bond yields crept up a bit yesterday, although that had more to do with the rise in oil and gas prices than the Fed commentary. So Treasury yields saw moderate increases across the curve, with the 2yr yield (+2.2bps) up to 4.23%, the 10yr yield (+2.9bps) up to 4.68%, and the 30yr yield (+2.6bps) up to 5.19%. And similarly in Europe, the 10yr bund yield (+1.9bps) closed at 3.25%, less than a basis point beneath its post-2011 high from last week, with 10yr OAT yields (+1.5bps) and BTP yields (+2.0bps) also higher.

Yet even as the bond story was fairly consistent yesterday, equities saw an incredible divergence on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, the primary driver was Nvidia’s earnings the previous day, with their share price up +8.74% in response. Indeed, it was Nvidia’s best daily performance after an earnings release since May 2024, and it makes a change from the previous 4 quarterly results, when Nvidia fell the following day. Meanwhile, the optimism around AI helped other tech stocks more broadly, with the NASDAQ up +1.57%, whilst the S&P 500 (+0.72%) closed back within 1% of its record high.

However, the strength in tech masked plenty of equity weakness elsewhere. In fact, over two-thirds of the S&P 500’s constituents fell yesterday, with every major sector group falling except information technology (+3.40%), and the equal-weighted S&P 500 fell -0.29%. Meanwhile in Europe, the story was also pretty weak thanks to the latest rise in energy prices, which raised concerns about faster inflation. So the STOXX 600 (-0.69%) saw its worst performance in a month, and there was a particular underperformance for France’s CAC 40 (-1.68%). That came as multiple French banks fell back, with BNP Paribas (-4.79%), Crédit Agricole (-3.97%) and Société Générale (-4.99%) all lower. Those declines came ahead of a French presidential debate yesterday evening that was dominated by the country’s rising public debt. 

Otherwise, the generally downbeat mood yesterday wasn’t helped by the latest rise in oil and gas prices, which added to fears about inflationary pressures. For instance, Brent crude was up +2.12% to close at $89.70/bbl, ending a run of 3 consecutive declines. That came as there were still few signs of progress to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Fox News interview that “No negotiations are happening right now, and this will continue until the president feels that maybe they come to the table in a meaningful way”. Meanwhile, the WSJ reported that the Trump administration told mediators it has no interest in returning to the terms of the memorandum of understanding agreed in June.

Overnight in Asia, bond yields have continued to move higher, which follows weaker demand for a 2yr auction in Japan. So this morning we’ve seen Japan’s 2yr yield (+2.0bps) rise to 1.70%, its highest since 1995. That also follows the latest Tokyo CPI print for August, but that was as expected, with headline CPI rising a tenth to +1.9%. Nevertheless, yields have also risen elsewhere, with Australia’s 10yr yield (+2.6bps) up to a post-2011 high of 5.12%, whilst the 10yr US Treasury yield is up another +0.6bps this morning to 4.68%.

Meanwhile for equities, we’ve also seen a mixed performance overnight. That includes a decent decline for the KOSPI (-1.24%), and the CSI 300 (-0.10%) has also lost ground. However, several other indices have made decent gains, including the Nikkei (+0.75%) and the Hang Seng (+0.47%), alongside a modest advance for the Shanghai Comp (+0.08%). Looking forward, US equity futures are little changed however, with those on the S&P 500 down just -0.04%.

Finally, there wasn’t much data yesterday, but the US weekly initial jobless claims were better than expected, falling to just 203k in the week ending August 22 (vs. 208k expected). Otherwise, the US merchandise trade deficit widened to $118.8bn in July (vs. $100.5bn expected), which is the biggest it’s been since March 2025.

Looking at the day ahead, the main highlight will be Fed Chair Warsh’s speech at the Jackson Hole symposium. Otherwise, we’ll hear from the Fed’s Hammack and the ECB’s Schnabel. Then on the data side, we’ll get the flash CPI prints for August from France and Spain, German unemployment for August and Canada’s Q2 GDP. And in the US, we’ll also get the MNI Chicago PMI for August, and the University of Michigan’s final consumer sentiment index for August.