Stock Market Today: 12 Things That Mattered - August 25, 2026

Admin User·August 26, 2026·6 min read

$AMD$DKS$INTU$NKE$NVDA

🚨 BULLSMEET MARKET CLOSE — AUGUST 25

A LOT happened in markets today.

Oil collapsed. Yields fell. Tech bounced. Nvidia earnings are tomorrow. AI infrastructure news was everywhere.

Here are the 12 stories that actually mattered today 👇

1. IRAN / HORMUZ JUST CHANGED THE ENTIRE MACRO SETUP

Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly told foreign counterparts that the U.S. is shifting its Iran strategy from military strikes toward sanctions for now, while President Trump said the U.S. Navy has cleared mines from international waters in the Strait of Hormuz.

Markets liked the de-escalation.

Brent crude fell about 3.6% to $87.27, while the 10Y Treasury yield dropped toward 4.63% after recently trading around 4.74%.

Lower oil → lower inflation pressure → lower yields → better environment for growth stocks.

This may have been the biggest macro story of the day.

2. TECH BOUNCED HARD AHEAD OF $NVDA

The S&P 500 finished roughly +0.3%, Dow +0.3% and Nasdaq +0.7%.

$NVDA gained about 2.2%, helping lead the semiconductor rebound.

The interesting part is that stocks weren't rallying because earnings suddenly changed today — they were getting relief from falling oil + falling Treasury yields.

Now everything turns toward Nvidia tomorrow.

3. TOMORROW = $NVDA DAY 👀

Nvidia reports after the bell tomorrow and this could set the tone for the entire AI trade.

Wall Street expects roughly $92B+ in quarterly revenue, nearly double YoY.

Options are pricing roughly a 5.4% move, one of the smallest implied Nvidia earnings moves in years.

That means expectations are still enormous — but traders aren't pricing the kind of volatility we used to see around Nvidia earnings.

Rubin ramp, margins, hyperscaler spending and AI infrastructure demand will probably matter more than the headline EPS number.

4. OPENAI JUST FIRED ANOTHER SHOT AT $NVDA

OpenAI says its new Broadcom-built Jalapeño inference chip outperformed Nvidia's GB300 in internal testing on metrics including throughput per watt and response latency.

Important distinction:

This chip is designed primarily for inference, not training.

And OpenAI compared Jalapeño with GB300 — not Nvidia's newer Vera Rubin generation.

So this isn't an “Nvidia is dead” story.

But hyperscalers building their own silicon continues to be one of the most important long-term risks to watch around Nvidia.

5. $AMD +4.9% — AND THE BULL CASE IS CHANGING

Raymond James upgraded AMD to Strong Buy and raised its target from $565 → $641.

The interesting part wasn't GPUs.

It's CPUs.

Raymond James believes agentic AI will massively increase server CPU demand and estimates the server-CPU market could reach $201B by 2030.

They even see AMD potentially overtaking Intel in server CPUs.

$AMD finished roughly +4.9% today.

AI infrastructure is slowly becoming much more than just GPUs.

6. $DKS GOT DESTROYED — DOWN ~31%

Dick's Sporting Goods had one of its worst days ever.

Shares fell roughly 31% after weak earnings and a reduced outlook as promotional pressure and weak footwear trends hurt the business.

And the weakness spread.

$NKE and other athletic/apparel names traded lower as investors questioned whether this is a Dick's-specific problem or evidence of a softer consumer.

This is one of those earnings reports worth watching beyond just the ticker.

7. $INTU BEAT EARNINGS… AND STILL GOT HIT

Intuit reported Q4 revenue around $4.35B, up 14% YoY and ahead of roughly $4.27B expected.

Adjusted EPS came in at $4.03 vs $3.58 expected.

Sounds great.

Then guidance arrived.

FY27 revenue guidance of roughly $23.3B–$23.5B came in below Wall Street expectations around $23.7B.

Shares fell more than 7% after hours.

Another reminder that the market trades the future — not the quarter that already happened.

8. ANTHROPIC IS ABOUT TO TEST AI VALUATIONS

Anthropic is reportedly preparing to tell potential IPO investors that its total addressable market could exceed $30 TRILLION.

Yes… trillion.

The company could reportedly seek to raise as much as $100B at a valuation around $2T.

The $30T number isn't a revenue forecast — it's Anthropic's estimate of the economic value of work AI could eventually perform.

Still, if this IPO happens anywhere near those numbers, public-market investors will have another massive data point for valuing the AI ecosystem.

9. CANADA ↔ U.S. TRADE WAR ESCALATES

Canada announced retaliatory tariffs covering roughly $20B of U.S. goods.

Around 700 products will face tariffs of 15%, 25% or 50%, with the measures scheduled to begin September 8.

Steel, aluminum, machinery, consumer goods and other categories are included.

Markets mostly shrugged it off today.

But if trade tensions keep expanding, tariffs become another inflation variable the Fed has to deal with.

10. THE U.S. CONSUMER IS GETTING NERVOUS

Consumer confidence slipped to 89.4 in August, the lowest level in seven months.

More interesting was the Expectations Index, which dropped to 68.2 as consumers became more pessimistic about future business and labor-market conditions.

Housing wasn't much better.

New-home sales plunged 10.5% in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 607,000.

Mortgage rates near 6.7% are still doing damage.

Lower yields today help — but the consumer data deserves attention.

11. AI AGENTS ARE CREATING ANOTHER INFRASTRUCTURE BOOM

ClickHouse has reportedly surpassed $350M ARR, up roughly 40% since May.

Even crazier:

OpenAI's ClickHouse usage reportedly increased about 10X over the past year, reaching more than 30 petabytes of data per day.

Why?

AI agents don't just need GPUs.

They generate enormous amounts of logs, events, database queries and monitoring data.

Databases + observability may become another major second-order AI trade investors should be watching.

12. GOLD ETF MONEY IS POURING BACK IN 🥇

Global physically backed gold ETFs attracted roughly $6.38B of net inflows last week.

North America accounted for about $4.37B, with Europe adding roughly $1.70B.

Global gold ETF holdings increased by nearly 47 tonnes in a single week.

Gold continues to attract capital even while stocks remain near highs — probably telling us investors still want protection against geopolitical risk, inflation and currency uncertainty.