To The Moon

Economic Preview: Key Data Releases (week of 31Aug2026)

Global Manufacturing Signals

China’s August Manufacturing PMI is forecast at 49.7, indicating a contraction in manufacturing activity. This release is especially important because China accounts for nearly one-third of global manufacturing output, so a weaker reading could point to softer global demand.

• Chicago PMI for August is forecast at 57.8, suggesting continued expansion in production and a potentially bullish signal for markets.

• S&P Global Manufacturing PMI for August is forecast at 53.2, also pointing to expansion.

• ISM Manufacturing PMI for August is forecast at 55.3, indicating further growth in manufacturing activity.

• ISM Manufacturing Prices for August will be an important gauge of producer cost pressures, which may eventually flow through to consumers.

Labour Market Data and Federal Reserve Focus

Several labour market indicators will be released in the coming week and are likely to be closely watched by the Federal Reserve ahead of its upcoming interest rate decision.

• JOLTS job openings for July will provide insight into labour demand.

• ADP Non-Farm Employment Change for August will offer an early read on private-sector hiring.

• Initial jobless claims will provide a timely view of labour market conditions.

• Average hourly earnings for August are expected to rise by 0.2%.

• Non-farm payrolls for August are forecast at 45,000.

• The unemployment rate for August is forecast at 4.2%.

Energy and Services Outlook

Crude oil inventories will be announced in the coming week and may provide insight into producers’ expectations for demand. A larger-than-usual drawdown would suggest a more bullish outlook for the market.

S&P Global Services PMI for August is forecast at 56.8, indicating expansion in the services sector. ISM Non-Manufacturing Prices and ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI for August will also be released, offering further insight into service-sector growth and potential price pressures.

Earnings Calendar (31Aug2026)

There are a few interesting earnings releases in the coming week that include Dell, NIO, Palo Alto, Asana and Broadcom.

Let us look at Broadcom.

Broadcom: Market View and Valuation

Technical analysis currently indicates a “strong sell”, while analyst sentiment points to a “strong buy”. The price target of $555.97 implies a potential upside of 42.6%, and the stock has risen 24.01% over the past year.

However, valuation appears stretched. With a P/E ratio of 61.2 and EPS of $6.19, the stock looks expensive on an earnings basis.

Financial Performance: 2021–2025

Broadcom’s financial performance strengthened significantly between 2021 and 2025, with revenue, operating income, and net income all showing strong growth.

• Total revenue rose from $27.4 billion to $63.8 billion.

• Operating income increased from $8.6 billion to $26.3 billion.

• Net income grew from $6.7 billion to $23.1 billion.

Profitability also remains strong. Gross margin on a trailing twelve-month basis stands at 76.28%, while operating margin and net profit margin are 44.17% and 38.85%, respectively.

Balance Sheet and Cash Flow

Broadcom’s balance sheet expanded over the five-year period. Total assets increased from $75.5 billion to $171.09 billion, while total liabilities rose from $50.5 billion to $89.8 billion. Total equity also grew from $24.9 billion to $81.2 billion.

Debt levels remain an area to monitor. Long-term debt to equity stands at 71.45% on a most recent quarter basis, while total debt to equity is 74.02%.

Cash generation has improved meaningfully. Cash from operations increased from $13.7 billion to $27.5 billion, while levered free cash flow rose from $11.8 billion to $25.0 billion over the same period. It is also encouraging that cash from financing has been falling, suggesting that the company may be reducing debt.

Q2/2026 News surrounding Broadcom

Broadcom reported record fiscal second-quarter 2026 revenue of $22.19 billion, up 48% year over year. Growth was driven almost entirely by artificial intelligence demand. Custom accelerators and high-speed networking chips supplied hyperscale customers, lifting AI semiconductor revenue to $10.8 billion, a 143 percent increase.Results demonstrated scale and execution. Management guided third-quarter revenue to approximately $29.4 billion and AI chip sales to $16 billion. It also restated full-year 2026 AI semiconductor revenue of $56 billion and more than $100 billion in fiscal 2027.Those longer-term figures were left unchanged. Investors had hoped for an upward revision. Combined with AI guidance that fell short of the most optimistic estimates, the outlook disappointed. Shares declined sharply in after-hours trading.The episode underscored a familiar market dynamic: record growth can still register as insufficient when expectations are already priced for acceleration. Broadcom delivered exceptional operating results; the stock reaction reflected the gap between performance and an even higher implied trajectory. - Grok & Gemini

For the coming earnings, the forecast EPS and revenue are $3.21 and $29.25B, respectively. Given the above, I prefer to monitor the stock for now.

Market Outlook of S&P500 (31Aug2026)

Technical Analysis Overview

MACD Indicator

The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicator for the S&P 500 is on a downtrend.

Moving Averages

Examining the moving averages, the most recent price action shows the last candlestick above the 50-day (MA50) and 200-day (MA200) moving average lines. This pattern indicates a bullish shift in the short and long term. Notably, both the MA50 and MA200 lines have continued to trend upward, indicating a bullish outlook in both the short and long term.

Exponential Moving Averages

This shows a bullish trend with a potential for reversal.

Chaikin Money Flow

CMF index shows a score of -0.10. This implies more selling momentum than buying momentum.

Other Technical Analysis

Based on the daily interval, technical analysis recommends a “Neutral” rating with 14 indicators showing a “Buy” rating and 7 indicators showing a “Sell” rating.

CNN Fear & Greed Index

With a score of “5r”, CNN’s Fear & Greed Index suggests that general market sentiment is “Neutral”, remaining in the “Neutral” sentiment from a week ago.

Weekly Outlook

Based on the above, the S&P500 should be BEARISH for the new week.

News and my thoughts from the past week (31Aug2026)

JPMorgan has said that there may be a large-scale food supply crisis in the next year. - Unusual Whale

Bill Gates accuses the tech industry of knowingly downplaying AI's risks because too much money is at stake. Executives are worried in private but won't say so publicly, he told the NYT. Their reasoning, in his words: "It's bad for us — the next trillion dollars we're trying to raise." Gates says the industry blew past milestones it once said would warrant caution: models escaping their creators' control, AI producing bioweapon recipes. - X user International Cyber Digest

AI agents are now using 5x more tokens than humans - X user Kalshi

David Sacks: “I got bad news for you, Chamath, an open source ban is coming. They're not going to call it that. They're going to say that we simply have to apply the same standards to open models that we apply to closed ones. Here's how they do it step by step, let me explain how regulatory capture actually works. So first of all, you have to get this regulatory apparatus. Dario wants an FDA for AI, but he doesn't have enough political support for that, so instead they do this Trojan horse of a FINRA for AI. They call it self-regulating, it's not really, but anyway, that gets them off the ground. Now they've created the standard-setting organization. Now they've got pre-release model testing. Then the pressure grows to codify that in law, so that happens next. And then what they do is they say, ‘Look, all these standards need to apply equally to all models.’ But here's the problem with that. Open models and closed models are technologically different. Once you release an open model into the world, you can't roll it back and you can't monitor exactly how people are using it because they run it on their own hardware. Dario says this is what makes open models dangerous. So what they're going to do is they're going to have the standard-setting body say, ‘Well, we have to set the standards for AI safety.’ By the way, Dario and OpenAI, they're going to fund the whole thing. They're going to contribute all the compute. They're going to be behind it. They're going to be the ones coordinating with the government officials because frankly, people in government have no idea how to monitor and control and set standards for AI safety. Technologically, this is way beyond them. So they're going to go to these companies and say, ‘Tell us how to do it.’ And so what will happen is the standards will get set, and then it'll be a very simple matter of fairness to say that the standards need to apply to open as well as closed models. The open models cannot comply in the same way, and gradually they will be shut out of the market.” - The All in Podcast

My Investing Muse (31Aug2026)

Layoffs, closures and Delinquencies

Technology job cuts in 2026 have already exceeded the full-year 2025 total, as companies shift budgets toward artificial intelligence and a narrower set of core products.Apple eliminated more than 200 positions: roughly 100 in Vision Pro, including a near shutdown of the gaming team and a smaller immersive-video unit, and about 100 in Siri and Intelligent Systems Experience as the assistant is rebuilt on a new AI architecture. LinkedIn is closing its Tel Aviv R&D center and cutting nearly all of its approximately 50 staff, a move disclosed earlier in August. TikTok cut 75 Bellevue roles, mainly engineers, data scientists, and TikTok Shop staff, after an earlier reduction of 250 jobs in Nashville. Oracle has instructed managers to identify double-digit percentage cuts on selected teams ahead of a fiscal second-quarter reset around early September.Netflix shut Night School Studio in Los Angeles and Moonloot in Helsinki and reduced other games roles to concentrate on kids, party, narrative, and mainstream titles. Zillow cut just over 500 jobs—about 7 percent of its workforce, not 5 percent—on 4 August despite profitable growth. Etsy let go of about 220 employees, or 12 percent of staff, mostly in product and engineering, to flatten management. Lufthansa began a first phase of up to 550 administrative full-time cuts at its core airline and group functions, part of a plan to remove about 4,000 office jobs by 2030.The pattern across tech, media, marketplaces, and aviation is the same: cost discipline and AI-led priority shifts, not a single demand shock. - Grok and Gemini

When Ice, Code and Midterms Collide

Late August 2026 feels crowded. A glacier-and-rock collapse on the Nepal–Tibet border sent a debris flood down the Bhotekoshi–Trishuli system, killing hundreds and leaving thousands missing. Early reports blamed a magnitude-4.4 earthquake; later analysis showed the collapse itself produced the shaking. New high-altitude lakes now sit above the same valleys—an immediate hit to people, roads, hydropower and Himalayan tourism.

Imaged dated 22 August 2026 from Robert Speta Facebook

In the Philippines, stacked storms and a strong southwest monsoon have left dozens dead and millions affected. These sit inside a strengthening El Niño expected to peak late in 2026 and shape the Southern Hemisphere spring and summer. El Niño is not the cause of every fire or flood. It is a multiplier for rainfall, crops and the chance that one shock arrives before the last is counted.

A run of large earthquakes from the Philippines and Japan to Indonesia and northern South America has revived Ring of Fire talk. 2026 is not clearly above the long-run rate of major quakes. It is a year in which big events have been visible and consecutive—enough to matter for insurance, ports and energy.

The same week, the AI growth story is being restated in public. Bill Gates argued the transition could be the greatest equaliser or the worst source of injustice, and that governments lack a plan. OpenAI and Anthropic are in the IPO queue after confidential filings, with valuations discussed near a trillion dollars. AI capex still props growth forecasts. It also now includes energy demand, data-integrity risk and the chance listings meet a market that has already priced perfection.

The United States heads into November midterms with presidential approval near second-term lows. A House loss is widely expected; the Senate is closer. Impeachment talk if both chambers flip is politics, not a pricing rule. Divided government and weak approval are: noisier budgets and less room for clean fiscal surprises.

The implication is simple. Watch food and energy logistics, shipping chokepoints, power for data centres, and the assumption that AI can underwrite everything else. Smaller risk and closer reading of actual budgets are the rational response when several slow systems start moving at once.

Financial Strategy and Outlook

Let us spend within our means, invest only what we can afford to lose, and avoid leverage. Let us review our current holdings and divest from businesses losing their competitive advantages. Additionally, I will consider adding both hedging strategies and defensive positions to our portfolio to mitigate risk.

As we move forward, it is crucial to conduct thorough due diligence before assuming any new responsibilities.

Wishing everyone a successful week ahead.

@TigerStars

$Vanguard S&P 500 ETF(VOO)$

$Cboe Volatility Index(VIX)$

$ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures ETF(UVXY)$

$Broadcom(AVGO)$