A daily market update from FS Insight — what you need to know ahead of opening bell

“Never mistake activity for achievement.” — John Wooden 

Overnight

Large Greek-owned oil tanker ablaze and drifting after Red Sea attack FT

Canada’s 2 largest railroads formally locked out 9,000+ workers last night, grinding freight rail to a halt,  as labor talks with the Teamsters reached an impasse Axios

U.S. economy added 818,000 fewer jobs than previously reported TH

Fed minutes showed officials ready to cut rates in September Barron’s

Global central bankers are opening a highly anticipated meeting today amid growing expectations that the U.S. Fed will cut rates soon Semafor

Gold hits record highs as investors bet on rate cuts FT

A growing chorus of Chinese economists is pressing for Beijing to roll out fiscal stimulus to bolster the country’s flagging economy Semafor

India surpasses China to become Russia’s top oil buyer in July RT

Ghana began construction of a $12 billion refinery that Accra hopes will boost the country’s flagging economy and turn it into West Africa’s oil hub Semafor

Target hails ‘remarkable’ consumer resilience as sales turn positive FT

Whatever happened to the wisdom of the bond market? FT

As Charles Schwab tries to fix its struggling bank, investors show skepticism WSJ

The US-backed railway sparking a battle for African copper FT

Arch, Consol to combine into $5.2 billion coal giant WSJ

China sends a permitting wake-up call WSJ

Walmart sells stake in Chinese ecommerce giant JD.com for $3.6bn FT

Sephora cuts jobs in China in further sign of softness in beauty sector FT

Ford delays new EV plant, cancels 3-row electric SUV amid strategy shift CNBC

VW’s long-awaited minibus revival is low on range, features, value Sherwood

Walmart dumps shares of Chinese company while calling it a ‘precious partner’ Sherwood

Google, California strike $250 million deal to fund news organizations TI

YouTube is now more popular on smart TVs than Netflix and Disney+ TR

An ‘AI scientist’ is inventing and running its own experiments Wired

Startup using blockchain to prevent copyright theft by AI is valued over $2 billion after fresh funding CNBC

The U.S. government wants you – yes, you – to hunt down generative AI flaws Wired

Senator Schumer optimistic about passing federal AI regulation this year WSJ

As Generation X approaches retirement, reality – the non-artificial kind – still bites WSJ

As strength training gets more popular, Peloton and Planet Fitness shift focus CNBC

Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler resolves claims by Binance investors BLN

Touchdown: Linebacker turned lawyer realizes dream of making NFL’s Vikings BLN

BlackRock’s support for ESG measures falls to new low FT

Turkey’s unorthodox nuclear-power deal with Russia could create a security backdoor into NATO FT

Tourists scaling the Great Wall of China can get food delivered by drone CNN

The U.S. State Department maintains a Level 4: Do Not Travel advisory for Afghanistan, which yet actively encourages foreign tourism CNN

Everyone’s talking about Ohio; it has nothing to do with Ohio WSJ

A diamond weighing 2492 carats was unearthed in a Botswana mine Semafor

Chart of the Day

MARKET LEVELS

MORNING INSIGHT

Good morning!

The persistent strength since 8/5 should continue as we see 5 catalysts into Labor Day.

More in today’s Macro Minute Video linked HERE.

TECHNICAL

The U.S. Equity rally over the last nine of 10 days has been constructive enough to think a move back to new all-time highs should happen into September ahead of any seasonal Fall correction. The Equal-weighted SPX has already pushed to new highs, coinciding with the big breakdown in the U.S. Dollar and Treasury yields and market breadth remains constructive with insufficient signs of optimism to expect an immediate selloff. Cycles show strength into September, and sectors like Financials, and Consumer Discretionary have shown admirable strength in recent weeks. Overall, until/unless Technology starts to roll over in bigger fashion, or the economy starts to weaken at a much faster rate, it looks right to stay bullish and just buy dips, which likely start in September from new all-time highs.

Click HERE for more.

CRYPTO

Stablecoin inflows remain robust, with the aggregate market cap increasing by nearly $2 billion over the past week and $375 million just since yesterday. Excluding algorithmic stablecoins, the total stablecoin market cap is now only $800 million away from reaching a new all-time high. Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETFs have quietly posted their fourth consecutive day of inflows, pushing the 5-day moving average back into positive territory. BlackRock’s IBIT has led the BTC ETF surge, with $93 million in inflows on Monday and another $55 million yesterday. In contrast, ETH ETFs continue to see little movement, with a slight outflow of $7 million yesterday.

Bitfarms (BITF) has agreed to acquire rival Stronghold Digital (SDIG) for $175 million in stock and assumed debt as part of its strategy to diversify revenue streams beyond crypto mining. The offer values Stronghold at $6.02 per share, significantly higher than its recent closing price of $2.93, and represents a 71% premium to Stronghold’s 90-day volume-weighted average price. This acquisition is seen as a pivotal move for Bitfarms as it seeks to integrate power generation and expand into high-performance computing (HPC) and AI processing. Meanwhile, Bitfarms is fending off unwanted attention from Riot Platforms $(RIOT), which now owns nearly 19% of the company after abandoning a previous takeover bid.

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First News

Is Does Hydrogen Matter? Scientists have unearthed the heaviest antimatter nucleus ever detected lurking in a particle accelerator. Known as antihyperhydrogen-4, the antimatter heavyweight is made up of an antiproton, two antineutrons and one antihyperon, i.e a baryon that contains a strange quark. Physicists were able to detect traces of this antimatter among particle tracks from 6 billion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

Does this seem a bit heavy for a morning newsletter? Bear with us.

By studying the strange particle, physicists hope to discover some key differences between matter and antimatter, which may help explain why our universe is now filled with matter, given that antimatter was created in equal amounts at the beginning of time. The researchers published their findings Aug. 21 in the journal Nature.

We know that, apart from having opposite electric charges, antimatter has the same properties as matter: the same mass, same lifetime before decaying, same interactions. Why our universe is dominated by matter is still a question to which we don’t have the full answer. At the same time, hyperhydrogen is an isotope of hydrogen, which is, metaphorically speaking, an isotope of fuel for electric cars.

Per the standard model of cosmology, after the Big Bang, the juvenile cosmos was a plasma broth of matter and antimatter particles at a rolling boil, with the two types of matter popping into existence and destroying each other on contact. The matter and antimatter inside this plasma soup should have annihilated each other entirely, but some unknown imbalance allowed more matter than antimatter to be produced, saving the universe from self-destruction.

In the same way, early on in the narrative of alternative fuels, hydrogen-powered cars were meant to be the antithesis and antagonist of fossil-fuel-powered autos, doing away with their supremacy while still preserving, and even expanding, the universe of vehicles. Despite atmosphere-high ambitions and initial hopes for the technology’s adoption early on, when it comes to hydrogen-fueling for fuel-cell-powered cars, California seems to be the only state with anything resembling a serious attempt at infrastructure.

Exacerbating this is a nearly yearlong shortage in hydrogen supply now tormenting Southern California. As a result, thirteen stations in the Los Angeles area have been offline since last September. Just under 12,000 hydrogen-fuel-cell electric vehicles were on the road in California in 2022. Last year, American drivers bought just under 3,000 of the cars. The whole hydrogen-fueled-car proposition seems to be deteriorating, as just 322 fuel-cell vehicles were sold in H12024, down 82% Y-o-Y. And yet, although the station closure has been a headache for drivers, the dream of hydrogen is far from dead in California. For now, it persists in the form of hydrogen-powered marine vessels and aircraft. Stay tuned. The Verge, LiveScience, Wired, HFCP