Good morning,
I am nursing an aggressive tequila pineapple Pacifico hangover at the beach right now so today’s going to be a short one and general review of the week.
I’ve also got some squid and clams I’m itching to throw out into the bay this afternoon in pursuit of a decent lil shark.
We will get back to our regular schedule next week. Another quick note, Substack had added an AI detection tool to posts. So far it has been pretty mixed in my review. I’ve tested it a few different ways and on other posts on the site.
Sometimes it will flag what are clearly human written articles as AI and vice versa (full AI as human) so I wouldn’t read into it too much, you’re probably still the best judge of what’s what.
Anyway, Arb Letter will always be written by me. AI is used only in consolidating large amounts of data and/or organizing timelines/news headlines/data or larger complex themes/history.
It’s been great to get the DMs and messages from those of you who are already seeing some profits from our post on new themes/sectors to watch (below) we will continue to put out updates before year end on how some of these plays are evolving.
Finance News
Jackson Hole is underway now (August 27-29th), and today is the big day. New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will give his keynote at 10:00 a.m. ET (if you want to watch) which will be his first Jackson Hole address as chairman.
Seems the markets are focused on how he signals the Fed will respond to stubborn inflation and the recent turmoil in long term Treasury yields. Early reports state Fed officials at the conference have already sounded notably concerned about inflation.
Traders/speculators are flocking to Polymarket to make bets on what will be said during Warsh’s speech today. The news that likely kicked off the risk on resurgence we saw last week and this week was the Treasury's $4B bond buyback program so pay close attention to any more details on that.
NVDA 0.00%↑ had another absolutely monster quarter and I hope and pray the majority of you still have your exposure to this beast. Their revenue came in at $96.2 BILLION for the quarter, up 106% year over year, while Data Center revenue exploded vertically to $89 billion, up 117%.
Think about the scale here for a second.
Nvidia is now generating almost $100 billion in revenue in THREE MONTHS while still growing at triple digits. It’s almost inconceivable how large this company has become.
"Employers are treating more workers as disposable” according to Forbes/Unusual Whales
US corporate profits surged +22.8% YoY in Q2 2026, to a record $4.8 trillion (Kobeissi Letter)
As new videos continue to leak it is said that GTA 6 will reportedly feature Rockstar’s biggest map ever, reportedly 3x the size of Red Dead Redemption 2 map and 2x the size of GTA 5 map
Lumber prices fell to their lowest price of the year (BarChart)
Citadel Securities posted a record $7,300,000,000 of Q2 trading revenue (Polymarket Money)
President Trump said recently the 4 big meat processors are a "nasty Monopoly" that make life "miserable" for US farmers (WatcherGuru)
JPMorgan has warned of a large scale global food supply crisis that they say could hit within the next year. The bank is forecasting global food inflation to nearly double from 2.8% now to 5% by early 2027 (Hormuz Letter/JPMorgan Global Research)
PYPL 0.00%↑ got whacked pretty hard yesterday after a Bloomberg report said that Advent International and Stripe are now going to abandon their recently announced takeover plans. Seems like a bit of an overreaction.
President Trump gave one of his classic stock shoutout this week, this time saying that Micron MU 0.00%↑ is one of the hottest companies in the world. This came after Micron announced last week they plan to invest $10B in their research lab in Boise, Idaho.
"Combined with their previous TREMENDOUS 250 BILLION DOLLAR commitment, they are creating over tens of thousands of Great American Jobs. We are bringing Critical Technologies BACK to the U.S.A. Because of our Great Policies, Companies are investing TRILLIONS”
— President Trump on Micron
Market Activity & Moves
I added a decent position to $BOTZ yesterday. I’ve noticed if I talk about positions ETFs/stocks and don’t follow my own advice, they always rip months later, so this time I made sure to add more.
The robotics theme could take a few years to play out or we could see it get a nice little supercharge from the AI trade continuing. Either way there’s some big name exposure in BOTZ I’m comfortable holding for a while. I may add some SMCI 0.00%↑ soon as well.
On the recent crypto strength I took the opportunity to add some AVAX AAVE and PEPE.
I remain optimistic on crypto right now. There’s a growing audience of folks online who remain certain that this is simply a temporary pop during a continue bear market, but I think there’s some real strength to this move as Bitcoin looks to consolidate around the $78,000 to $80,000 mark.
Doesn’t mean we won’t see some more volatility into the Fall but I think we should all ask ourselves what late this year/early next year might look like if we do not end up revisiting the lows.
$ETH looks really solid, now trading around the $2,500 range. If it makes a move to $3,000 keep your eyes on $PEPE Chainlink Aave etc. As they will likely leg up on that move (if you want to dabble in something short term).
Solana is also beginning to surge back a bit and I expect it to help fuel another episode of meme coin madness sooner rather than later.
Global News
We’ve been so wrapped up in the markets that global news has kind of taken a back seat in the last 3 weeks or so of Arb Letter.
Rest assured when we get closer to midterms I will throw some classic schizo rants your way but today we can go over the big surface level developments before the weekend.
Police reportedly raided the Minneapolis apartment of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s son, seizing guns and ammunition and arresting his roommate Abdulrahman Abdi. Hopefully he deports her, him, and anyone else related (Polymarket)
𝕏 revealed it uncovered a Chinese bot farm of roughly 200,000 accounts, including hundreds that were used to influence U.S. debate over AI data centers & energy policy (Polymarket)
The Financial Times reported that "On an average day, one in 10 young adults now has no in-person contact” (Unusual Whales)
U.S. and Canada tensions are escalating after the U.S. imposed 50% tariffs on Canadian goods and then threatened additional auto tariffs
Norway's King Harald V has died at 89. His son is succeeding him as King Haakon VIII
The art and entertainment worlds lost two major figures this week. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has died at 97, while Peter Cullen, the legendary voice of Transformer’s Optimus Prime, has died at 85
In a recent report LexisNexis Risk Solutions mentioned that they now have data on 500 million consumer identities. Which is funny because if you look at census bureau data they say the population of the US is about 340 million.
Who are those extra 160 million?
Illegals and undocumented people of course. Pretty insane to realize that the “official numbers” given by previous administrations, were of course lies. Everyone’s looking for the boggeyman when it comes to housing prices, groceries, cost of living etc. and the answer is right in front of your face.
The scale of this is absurd.
As we’ve said before. The current ICE deportations are literally scratching the filament of the surface. You would need large scale industrial deportations with absurd logistics at this point to possibly make a dent in the amount of people that should be deported from the country. It’s not going to happen.
Look out for our surveillance/prison/law enforcement stock plays to pop around midterms. The conversation and controversy around FLOCK cameras is already re-igniting this theme.
Insane footage and headlines have been emerging from flooding in Nepal.
A massive glacier and rock collapse in the Himalayas appears to have triggered a catastrophic wall of water, mud and debris that ripped through communities along the Nepal Tibet border that started in full on Wednesday.
Entire villages, bridges and roads have been wiped away, with the destruction stretching dozens of miles downstream. The sheer power and magnitude of the water is mind boggling. You can see one of the videos below that shows a family trapped in a less than sturdy dwelling as the valley is filled with a deadly combination of mud, debris, and rushing water.
As of this morning it is being reported hundreds have been confirmed dead and nearly 1,000 people remain missing in Nepal alone. Brutal to see, reminder that if you live in an area safe from natural disasters you are very fortunate!
Have an excellent weekend guys.
I will see you on Tuesday morning. Take some time to decompress, work out, and gain some mental solitude this weekend before saddling up again on Monday morning.
I will let you know if I end up catching a shark.
Andy
Check out Polymarket
Disclaimer - None of this is meant to be formal financial advice, I am a former corporate sales/trading guy with a monkey brain who writes about my own opinions each week. Investments in any market (crypto, prediction, equities, etc.) has the risk of 100% loss. Do your own research before investing or trading and never make decisions that are contrary to your own personal risk tolerance.
"The art and entertainment worlds lost two major figures this week" and doesn't even mention Dolly.....
Seeing strong returns on chain-link. Thanks for the guidance.