MARKET AT 7
Good evening. Nvidia just posted the biggest number in tech, and the market spent Wednesday holding its breath waiting for it – Wall Street closed almost flat, and then Nvidia beat every measure that mattered once the bell rang.
Closer to home, a hotter-than-expected inflation read has Australia's biggest bank tipping another rate hike, and the ASX felt it. Here's what moved markets today:
In tonight's newsletter:
Nvidia's stock jumps in pre-market trading after earnings beat
ASX 200 falls as hot inflation pushes CBA to tip a rate hike
Oil extends its slide as Middle East diplomacy eases fears
Gold rebounds, bitcoin cools before Warsh's Jackson Hole speech
Qantas profit slumps 20% on Middle East-driven fuel costs
Nvidia's stock jumps in pre-market trading after earnings beat
Nvidia reported second-quarter revenue of $96.2 billion, up 106% from a year earlier and above the $92.3 billion Wall Street expected, GlobeNewswire and CNBC data show.
Data centre revenue, the AI chip business, came in at $89 billion versus the $85.4 billion forecast, and the company guided next quarter's revenue to $108 billion, well above the $103.9 billion analysts expected.
CFO Colette Kress also told investors Nvidia expects income to grow 70% in fiscal 2028, nearly double what analysts were modelling. Shares jumped almost 6% in pre-market trade Thursday, a sharp turn from Wednesday's flat, cautious session on Wall Street. Source: GlobeNewswire, 26 Aug 2026 → · Source: CNBC, 27 Aug 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
This wasn't a beat. It was a beat on every single number that mattered, plus a guidance raise nobody was pricing in.
Awere hit hardestSX 200 falls as hot inflation pushes CBA to tip a rate hike
Australia's benchmark closed down 81 points, or 0.89%, near 9,047 on Thursday, marketindex.com.au reports — a two-session slide of 1.3% that dragged the index lower for the week.
The move followed Wednesday's inflation print: July's trimmed mean, the Bureau of Statistics' preferred measure of underlying price pressure, rose 3.6% year-on-year against forecasts for 3.5%.
Commonwealth Bank responded Thursday morning by reversing its earlier call and now expects the Reserve Bank to lift rates once more this year, likely in November. Rate-sensitive sectors were hit hardest, with discretionary retail, staples, tech and real estate all down more than 1.5%, IBTimes Australia reports. Source: marketindex.com.au, 27 Aug 2026 → · Source: IBTimes Australia, 27 Aug 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
CBA doesn't flip its rate call lightly. When Australia's biggest bank moves, it usually means the data left it no real choice.
Oil extends its slide as Middle East diplomacy eases fears
Brent crude fell 1.03% to $86.93 a barrel, and WTI dropped 1.06% to $81.36, Trading Economics data shows, taking Brent's decline this week past 7%.
Traders are weighing signs of diplomatic progress between Washington and Tehran against fresh Russia-Ukraine tensions — a genuinely mixed picture, not a one-way move. Brent is now trading below $88 a barrel, with WTI hovering near $82. Source: Trading Economics, 27 Aug 2026 → · Source: Bloomberg, 27 Aug 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
Oil traders are holding two conflicting risks at once, and for now the diplomacy is winning out over the war-risk premium. That balance can flip on a single headline.
Gold rebounds, bitcoin cools before Warsh's Jackson Hole speech
Gold rebounded above $4,600 an ounce Thursday, recovering most of Wednesday's loss, Bloomberg reports, as traders turned their attention to Fed chair Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole address as chair, due Friday morning.
Bitcoin eased to around $78,500 after topping $81,000 earlier in the week, as traders locked in profit on a rally that's still up roughly 25% for the month – Bitcoin's best August since 2017.
This year's Jackson Hole theme, "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy", puts stablecoins and digital-payments regulation on the agenda alongside the usual rate-path signals; a Bank of America survey found 69% of fund managers expect Warsh to strike a neutral tone. Source: Bloomberg, 26 Aug 2026 → · Source: XTB, 21 Aug 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
Everyone'sa neutral tone expecting neutral, which is exactly why an actually neutral speech would be the surprise. Priced-in consensus is the easiest thing in markets to get wrong.
Qantas' profit slumps 20% on Middle East-driven fuel costs
Qantas' underlying profit before tax fell 13.8% to $2.06 billion in the year to June, while statutory profit after tax dropped 19.6% to $1.29 billion, the airline reported Thursday.
Its fuel bill rose $610 million due to the impact of the Middle East conflict on oil prices, though fare adjustments and cost cuts limited the actual hit to earnings to $420 million.
Qantas will retire its A380 fleet from 2028 and expects delivery of up to 31 new aircraft next year, including the first of its long-range A350s for non-stop Sydney-London flights. Source: IBTimes Australia, 27 Aug 2026 → · Source: Bloomberg, 26 Aug 2026 →
OUR TAKE:
A fuel-cost story, mostly. Nothing here says the underlying business is in trouble.
QUICK HITS
Meta settles child social media addiction case for $16.7 billion. The company will pay 29 states, led by California, to resolve claims it engineered Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to kids, and must add daily time caps, stronger age-checking and expanded parental controls for teen users. Our take: a record-sized settlement, but Meta admitted no wrongdoing — the time caps and age checks matter more than the dollar figure. Source: CNBC, 26 Aug 2026 →
NZX 50 falls 0.9% as Precinct Properties drops on a discounted share placement. The slide erased earlier gains and pulled New Zealand's benchmark toward a six-week low. Our take: one company's capital raise dragging the whole index down says more about index weighting than the broader NZ market. Source: interest.co.nz, 27 Aug 2026 →
Tokelau loses 60% of its fishing revenue after Pacific fisheries expulsion. The territory was cut from the Vessel Day Scheme, which lets Pacific nations sell tuna-fishing rights and normally supplies about 95% of Tokelau's own-source revenue, forcing an emergency budget rewrite. Our take: for a territory this small, losing one regional scheme isn't a line item. It's most of the government's income gone at once. Source: RNZ, 21 Aug 2026 →
Those are your 5 minutes for tonight; see you at the same time tomorrow. - Miko Santos