Consensus estimates on earnings are a bit of a mug’s game when it comes to Nvidia, the chipmaking behemoth at the heart of the artificial intelligence buildout.

Jensen Huang’s company’s consistent beat-and-raise behavior, along with its outsized macroeconomic importance to the computing infrastructure boom, has loosened the tie between its quarterly performance and analysts’ expectations.

What Wall Street really pays attention to are the so-called whisper numbers that reflect Nvidia’s history of outperformance and the level of demand for emergent AI technology.

(Continue Reading – CNBC)

Prices consumers pay for a variety of goods and services rose slightly in July, according to the Federal Reserve’s main inflation gauge.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, which the Fed uses as its preferred forecasting tool, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3.7%, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Both were 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus.

But stripping out volatile food and energy costs, core PCE posted respective gains of 0.2% and 3.3%, in line with forecasts. While the Fed considers both measures, policymakers generally see core inflation as the better measure of longer-term trends.

The report also showed that personal income rose 0.4% while spending increased 0.2%, both stronger than expected.

(Continue Reading – CNBC)

Investors this week will watch the annual Jackson Hole symposium for clues on how policymakers plan to navigate a landscape in which higher Treasury yields could do some of the tightening work for them.

The central bank has often used the Wyoming gathering, hosted by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, to flag its expectations for rate policy, but few investors expect President Trump's new Chair Kevin Warsh to honor that tradition in his debut speech on Friday. He has abandoned the forward guidance investors were long accustomed to, contending traders and portfolio managers should scrutinize market signals instead.

(Continue Reading – Reuters)

The cost of doing business as a global social media company just got a little higher.

Meta agreed to settle a social media addiction case with a group of state attorneys general on Wednesday, marking a historic moment in the broader backlash against the rise and ubiquity of social media platforms.

Meta denied wrongdoing but is on the hook for $17 billion.

That figure, while a massive sum, is a fraction of the company's worth. More significant than the financial penalty is the precedent this agreement will set for seeking remedies for what many see as predatory app design and for how social media companies shape products moving forward.

(Continue Reading – Yahoo)