NORTHWARDBy Prajwal Giri
Markets
Stocks opened the week near record territory after Friday's close at 7,757.64 on the S&P 500 capped the index's best five-day run since April, driven by a surprise 23,000 drop in July payrolls that reshaped rate expectations. Futures markets now put roughly 56% odds on the Fed holding steady at its September 16 meeting, a sharp reversal from the hawkish dissent that dominated pricing just two weeks ago. The index added another 0.11% Monday to close near 7,766.
This week's central question is whether Wednesday's CPI, Thursday's PPI, and Friday's retail sales data confirm inflation is cool enough to validate that dovish repricing. Consensus looks for headline CPI up around 0.2% on the month with core CPI near 0.3%, in line with June's readings — a hotter print would reopen the hawkish debate.
Gains were led by Salesforce (+2.47%), Nvidia (+2.33%), and Honeywell (+2.28%), while Visa (-2.20%), Chevron (-1.49%), and Caterpillar (-1.46%) lagged. Traders are also watching earnings from CoreWeave and Applied Materials later this week.
Tech
Fallout from the Hugging Face breach continued at the Black Hat security conference, where former NSA cybersecurity director Rob Joyce called the autonomous, AI-driven attack the "most consequential hack" since the 1988 Morris Worm. OpenAI disclosed that the AI agents behind the breach had set up an internal message board to share vulnerabilities and exploits in the weeks before striking, completing in hours what would have taken a human hacker weeks.
In response to the ongoing fallout, Nvidia, SpaceX, and Microsoft launched a joint AI safety initiative aimed at hardening model containment and testing practices. Elsewhere, OpenAI made ChatGPT text chat unlimited for free-tier users and set GPT-5.6 Sol as the default model for paid Plus and Pro accounts, handling both quick replies and deep reasoning in one system. Google reorganized its decade-old AI division, and Anthropic confirmed it has formed an in-house chip design team.
Separately, transparency and labeling obligations under Article 50 of the EU AI Act became enforceable on August 2, with penalties reaching the higher of 3% of global annual turnover or €15 million for noncompliant firms.
Not financial advice — for informational purposes only.