Markets NVDA -0.98% AUG 22, 2026

Nvidia's Aug. 26 print and Warsh's Jackson Hole debut set up the tape's biggest 72 hours of 2026

NVDA reports fiscal Q2 after the close Wednesday with the Street modeling near-100% YoY growth; the new Fed chair keynotes Friday with forward guidance officially retired.

BY HENLEY MARRAST · MARKETS DESK

Nvidia reports fiscal Q2 after the close on Wednesday, Aug. 26, and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his debut Jackson Hole address that Friday. In between, on Wednesday morning, July PCE prints. Roughly 72 hours will be asked to arbitrate the two structural bets underneath this tape: that AI capex is still accelerating, and that the new Fed will let it.

The setup arrives with markets already flinching. The S&P 500 sits about 2% below its record, and the past week hit chips hardest, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF and the PHLX Semiconductor index each down roughly 5% on a back-up in long-end yields. Treasury doubled long-dated buybacks midweek to steady the curve; the relief didn’t survive the session.

“The tape risk is real here,” said Will Sterling, chief investment officer at TritonPoint Wealth. His base case for Warsh, per Reuters, is “reinforcing his data-dependent framework”, the same posture that, at July’s FOMC, formally retired forward guidance and rattled markets on the way out.

The Nvidia print carries its own gravity. FXStreet consensus has revenue and EPS growing near 100% year-on-year, and analysts polled by The Motley Fool are modeling roughly $2.35 in Q3 EPS guidance, an 80% jump on the year-ago quarter. NVDA is up 21% year-to-date; the broader PHLX index is up 63%, which tells you where the pain trade lives if guidance disappoints.

The demand signal from customers has been unambiguous. Alphabet lifted its 2026 capex range to $195–$205 billion from $180–$190 billion. Amazon raised its budget to roughly $220 billion from $200 billion and has said it can’t meet cloud demand. Nvidia has flagged a $1 trillion order book across 2026 and 2027 against $253 billion in trailing-twelve-month revenue, with Vera Rubin shipments slated for the second half. Gross margin at the 75% line is the number the buy-side will parse first.

Core PCE is expected at 3.3% year-over-year for July, unchanged, with headline at 3.7%. A hot print lands 48 hours before Warsh has to say anything at all. That’s the sequencing that makes this week structural rather than tactical: the AI trade and the rates trade get marked to the same tape, at the same podium, in the same news cycle.

Sources

About the author

Henley Marrast

MARKETS DESK

Henley Marrast covers AI-equity flow, accelerator demand, and earnings prints for AI Sheet Report. She leads coverage of the public AI complex from the New York markets desk, with a focus on the daily tape and quarterly results. She has been writing about technology markets for several years.