September Setup: Fed Pivot, Gold’s New Highs, Bitcoin’s Coil, and US Mineral Ambitions

Nvidia vs. The Fed: Who’s Boss Now?

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Headline Revenue: Q2 revenue surged to $46.7B, up 56% YoY, with EPS at $1.05—both comfortably above consensus.

Growth Drivers: Relentless demand for Blackwell AI chips and data center hardware powered results. Management doubled down with a $60B buyback and $10B in shareholder returns.

Data Center Miss: The core segment—data centers—printed $41.1B, narrowly missing the street’s $41.29B estimate.

Caveats: Absent H20 chip sales to China, swelling inventories, and softer margins kept the afterglow in check. Red tape from a revenue-share deal with Washington is also slowing rollouts.

Stock Reaction: Shares slipped ~3% after hours—evidence that even massive beats can disappoint when expectations are stratospheric.

Macro Market Impact: Despite the fireworks, S&P futures, gold, Bitcoin, the dollar, credit spreads, and Treasuries barely budged. Nvidia may dominate productivity’s future, but Powell still won this round of market reaction.

The old mantra “Don’t fight the Fed” is meeting a new rival: “Don’t bet against the chipmakers.” But this week, Powell had the louder signal.

Powell’s Pivot: Jobs Over Inflation

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At Jackson Hole, Powell reframed the Fed’s priorities. 

Tariff-driven inflation? Real, but temporary. 

 Jobs? The real worry.

• Immigration policy is denting payrolls.
  
• May and June’s downward revisions spooked the Fed.
  
• With policy already “restrictive,” Powell believes he can ease without re-igniting inflation.

Markets cheered. Powell looked less like an inflation hawk, more like a pragmatist navigating weak labor, fiscal debt math, and geopolitical shocks. Quietly, Treasury’s ballooning interest costs make lower rates more than just monetary policy—they’re fiscal necessity.

Lisa Cook Fired: Bad Optics, Worse Judgment

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• Cook’s dismissal looked messy but was inevitable. Two back-to-back residential mortgages flagged red for regulators. No charges yet, but DOJ scrutiny made her role untenable.
• In any compliance-driven industry, this would have triggered a suspension. Credentials can’t offset poor optics. At the Fed, governance still matters.
• Cook’s suing Trump (who isn’t?), and says she won’t be ‘bullied’. Let’s see the substance of her defense.
• If Trump’s firing holds, his appointees will have four of seven voting governors.

Government, Inc.

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Anthony Pompliano argues Washington is being run like a business. He’s not wrong:

• The alleged wisdom of open markets, free trade, and borderless economics is like a failed strategy being rebooted.
  
• Taxpayers as ATM—shareholders/voters revolted last November.
  
• Politicians are outsourcing accountability while deficits compound from pet projects and boundless entitlements offered to buy votes.

The “government isn’t a business” defense is how trillion-dollar deficits metastasized. The global reset won’t wait for Washington’s denial.

Energy, Russia, and the Bond Market

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Russia continues to gain ground in Ukraine as Western support wanes. Every barrel of offline Russian crude tightens U.S. Treasury math. Oil shocks push inflation expectations higher and Treasury funding costs wider.

Sanctions don’t solve it. Wall Street still needs supply continuity. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent knows it—even if he can’t say it.

China’s Rare Earth Chokehold

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U.S. defense manufacturing runs on Chinese rare earths. Decoupling talk is political theater. Supply chains remain bottlenecked. Tariffs may weigh on China’s growth, but Washington still imports dependency along with the minerals.

Kenya’s RMB Debt Shift: Currency Wars in Motion

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Kenya’s choice to re-denominate debt into yuan highlights Beijing’s rise as global lender. The RMB is becoming the currency of sovereign survival, while the dollar remains the currency of global allocation.

The USD still dominates, but its monopoly is eroding at the margins. Future crises may not follow the old dollar wrecking-ball script.

Big Picture: A Fractured Order

• U.S. equities remain the anchor but diversification flows are rising.
  
• Old monopolies—monetary (Fed), military (U.S.), energy (West)—are fracturing.
  
• Tech giants like Nvidia, supply shocks, and alternative funding regimes are redrawing the map.
  
• Interdependence, not dominance, is the new macro law.
  
  

The superpower era is giving way to fragmentation. Investors who don’t adapt will miss the new playbook.

Macro Odd Lot: Swift & Kelce’s Pre-nup M&A

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Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement isn’t just a love story—it’s a liquidity event. $1.7B combined net worth, lawyers on speed dial, and GDP implications fit for a Treasury briefing.

Call it: Love Story, Baby, Just Sign Here.

In The Markets

Equities: Still dominant, though allocations to Europe/Asia accelerating.
Energy: Oil risk premium remains embedded in Treasury math.
FX: RMB rising as funding currency, dollar softening at the edges.
Tech: Nvidia results ≠ market mover; Powell still has the mic.

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Kyiv’s $150B Framework — Europe Pays, America Sells

Ukraine is floating a $150B package: $90–100B in U.S. weapons financed largely by European partners, plus $50B in joint drone production with American firms. The aim: secure U.S. guarantees, tie Europe to long-term financing, and lock in U.S. industrial participation post-accord.
Investor read-through: Whether war drags on or peace takes hold, U.S. defense revenues are baked in.

Chips as Cash Register and Cudgel

Washington is weighing converting CHIPS Act (Biden-era legislation) subsidies into ~10% non-voting equity in Intel, while demanding a 15% skim on Nvidia’s China H20 revenues (with AMD reportedly in the mix). Subsidies become stakes; export licenses become toll booths.
Market angle: Intel cuts funding costs, its CEO gets out of Trump PR-jail, but the company inherits policy overhang. Nvidia preserves access to China at thinner margins, creating a precedent for license-conditioned economics.

Resetting Bargaining Power

Intel’s CEO drew rare public rebuke before reports of a U.S. stake surfaced. The sequence signals Washington’s tactic: first apply pressure, then attach capital and concessions. A similar logic shapes Ukraine—float peace terms, attach U.S. guarantees to industrial deals, shift financing burdens to Europe. After a disastrous first meeting at the White House, Zelensky learned the ropes: wear a suit (Trump asked nicely), and offer candy to the President.

Risk Map — Policy Volatility Premium

• Ukraine: Proposals touching Crimea or NATO renunciation collide with Kyiv’s constitution, sustaining demand for drones and air defense near term. Russia continues to pound Ukraine; Trump shakes his head, and Europe borrows at scale to fully re-arm.
  
• Policy volatility: Equity stakes, skims, and tariff threats can shift overnight. Watch CHIPS disbursement calendars and export-license reviews. This flatters China’s Made in China 2025 plan.
  
• Industrial crowding: Winners get capital and contracts; laggards face higher costs of capital and tighter scrutiny.
  

From Solyndra to Skims — The Policy Evolution

• Then (2011): Solyndra’s $535M DOE loan guarantee left taxpayers exposed to full downside with no upside levers. Bankruptcy cemented its infamy.
  
• Now (2025): Equity stakes, royalties, and conditional licenses tie support to performance. Taxpayers gain contingent upside, policymakers retain control.
  

Continuity: Public capital still steers industry.
Discontinuity: The model shifted from “guarantee the bet” to “own the option and meter the gate.”

Powell’s Jackson Hole Balancing Act

Navigating market sentiment, skewed toward a September rate cut, and his own focus on a legacy of not being Arthur Burns, Powell made the tightrope look like a suspension bridge and the markets cheered him all the way across.

Key Takeaways:

• He rationalized the tension in the data—CPI, PPI, and employment—with a classic bit of central banker-speak: “Distinguishing cyclical from trend is difficult.” Translation: reasonable folks can differ; the data can be confusing.
• He acknowledged the one-time price shock of tariffs. Yes, there’s uncertainty. Yes, impact is accumulating unevenly. But it’s “manageable,” and unless the labor market tightens, a wage-price spiral seems unlikely.
• GDP is slowing. Powell admits policy may be too restrictive.
  
• The neutral Fed Funds rate may be higher than we thought, but the time may be right to finally adjust policy.
  

But before we sign off on the full “Chairman Redemption” narrative, let’s check the history:

1. Tightened too much in Q4 2018—then promptly U-turned.
   
2. Eased too slowly in Q1 2020—late to the punch, pandemic edition.
   
3. Tightened too late in 2021-2022—no one forgets “transitory.”
   
4. Failed to adequately supervise in the lead-up to the regional banking crisis of 2023—“nobody saw it coming,” except, of course, the chart watchers.
   

Powell can’t pull legacy from the jaws of mediocrity just by #resisting Trump. But, he has baked in a cut for September.

How did the markets take it? Powell just lit a rocket:

• Stocks: bid
  
• Bonds: bid
  
• Precious metals: bid
  
• Bitcoin: bid
  
• USD: sell
  

Whatever the Fed’s gameplan, risk assets loved the vibe—at least for today. See asset table below for the play-by-play.

In The Markets — AI Rally Meets Reality

The AI trade hit turbulence. Earnings reality is replacing hype as capital rotates into balance-sheet strength and defensives. Regulators are tightening rhetoric on AI ethics. This week feels less like panic, more like a collective exhale — conviction over FOMO. And, to make a happy Friday, Powell took his foot off the brake—watch the markets burn some rubber.

Closing Thoughts

The only thing running harder than the market since April might be the collective imagination of AI boosters—until Sam Altman’s “pause” and Meta’s hiring freeze called time, and the markets paused. 

Enter Powell, just in time to stop the slide. But in Jackson Hole or on Wall Street, remember: the 12 Fed governors are just hikers, navigating terrain the Teton-sized terrain of broader financial markets. They should hand the short-term rate decisions to the markets, but, for now, Powell has avoided a fifth policy mistake and kept the shadow of Arthur Burns at bay. 

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Markets are scaling a wall of worry built from tariffs, politicized data, swelling deficits, and attacks on the Fed. Behind the noise, liquidity flows are dictating asset prices — rewarding investors who hedge, diversify, and stay nimble.

Gold Tariff Whiplash

President Trump jolted metals markets with a post floating a 39% tariff on Swiss gold bars. Spot gold spiked above $3,500/oz in a record rally; central banks bought ~120 tons in a week; hedge funds scrambled. Days later, Trump reversed course, sparking a partial pullback but leaving volatility elevated.
Investor takeaway: Policy-by-tweet can reprice global assets in hours. Portfolios need allocations to policy hedges — gold, TIPS, commodity producers, and increasingly, Bitcoin.

BLS Under Scrutiny

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Tariffs vs. Deficits

Tariff revenues hit a record $28B in July, on pace for $300B annually. But with a $291B monthly deficit (+10% YoY), Medicare, Social Security, and interest costs overwhelm gains. Less than 10% of federal revenue comes from tariffs, and corporate tax cuts offset half the inflows. Markets are largely pricing out tariff volatility — at least for now.

Pressure on the Fed

Populist rhetoric about taking control of rate-setting — or abolishing the Fed — is gaining traction at the political fringes. While a shutdown is unlikely, political harassment could lift term premiums, dent reserve currency trust, and inject volatility into FOMC events. Read our related article here. 

Equities at Records

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 have logged 15 all-time highs in 2025. Nearly 80% of S&P firms posted record profits, but gains are concentrated in tech, semis, and mega-caps. Small caps and cyclicals lag. The result: shallow pullbacks, a steady grind higher, and FOMO-driven capital rotation.

Bitcoin Treasuries Go Mainstream

More companies are raising capital to buy and hold Bitcoin, often trading above their BTC net asset value. GAAP accounting allows paper gains to flow into earnings. Strategy ($MSTR) holds >214,000 BTC; roughly 160 public/private firms hold ~4% of total supply. The thesis: hedge against fiat risk and maintain liquidity outside traditional banks.

Summer 2025 Playbook

Policy volatility, fiscal strain, politicized data, and concentrated market leadership define the current climb. The winners are those with:

• Exposure to both real and digital assets
  
• Agile rebalancing strategies
  
• Hedges in place before shocks hit
  
  

In The Markets 

Closing Thoughts

Fragility is structural. Adaptability is alpha. In 2025, the wall of worry isn’t a metaphor — it’s the market’s foundation.

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