Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce continue to move the stock market. Not only did Signet Jewelers continue to rise in the afterglow of their engagement announcement, but American Eagle popped after revealing a collaboration with the Chiefs tight end’s Tru Kolors brand, which will include vintage-inspired tees and other streetwear for a limited time.

The S&P 500 finished with a record close on Wednesday, up 0.2%. The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.2% and the Russell 2000 outperformed with a 0.6% advance. Energy was the best-performing S&P 500 sector ETF, up more than 1%, while healthcare and industrials were the only (very modest) groups to finish in the red. 

Nvidia’s second-quarter results are out, and it was a top- and bottom-line beat, with revenue of $46.74 billion surpassing expectations of $46.23 billion. 

However, the sales beat is not due to any positive surprise in its all-important data center business, the one responsible for the overwhelming majority of that revenue and which modestly missed expectations. The knee-jerk reaction: the stock is sliding, down 4% immediately afterward.

The chip designer’s fiscal second quarter was a tumultuous and momentous period. Export curbs introduced in mid-April effectively locked the company out of China’s AI market. Nvidia’s public and private pressure campaign to regain access to this market ultimately bore fruit, but the company did not receive any export licenses for the H20s until the quarter was over.

Despite this, Nvidia managed to become the first $4 trillion company by market cap during its fiscal Q2, as receding recession fears and hyperscalers’ renewed commitment to their AI capex binges buoyed the chip designer to never-before-seen heights. Guidance for the current quarter is a little ahead of estimates.

Over 10,000 people have already invested in Pacaso. The same firm that has backed large-cap S&P 500 companies has invested too. And now everyday investors like you have the chance to invest before the opportunity ends on Sept. 18.

Created by a former Zillow exec who sold his first venture for $120M, Pacaso brings co-ownership to the $1.3T vacation home industry.¹

They’ve generated $1B+ worth of gross real estate transactions and service fees since inception across 2,000+ owners. That’s good for more than $100M in gross profit since 2021, including 41% YoY growth last year alone.²

They’ve even reserved their Nasdaq ticker.³

But time’s running out and the investment opportunity closes on 9/18.⁴

Become a Pacaso shareholder before this offering ends.

Because of the cardboard box’s ubiquity in shipping, the humble brown box often serves as something of a bellwether for large swaths of the US economy. And the writing on the tape ain’t great: cardboard box makers in the US have announced plans to shutter, in aggregate, about 9% of their production capacity this year.

“The industry has not made such dramatic capacity moves since the GFC,” wrote analysts at Citi, using the shorthand for the global financial crisis of 2008 that set off a sharp recession. “We count seven mill closure announcements in total this year.” Here’s a timeline of those closures.

The capacity reductions offer a glimpse how tariffs continue to ripple through the US economy, even in industries — such as corrugated containers — that face little foreign competition. While you might think that’s because of a slowdown in consumer spending and therefore fewer of those Amazon Prime boxes being delivered to doors, that’s not the whole story. The bigger issue is that a whole lot more boxes than you might expect are used to send US exports abroad. That’s the “biggest risk” for the industry, per Barclays analysts. 

Even though the cardboard industry is hurting, there’s a potentially interesting opportunity for investors within the broken-down pile of paper: Wall Street analysts following box makers suggest that the sharp cuts to the industry’s US capacity could push the utilization rate, which measures how much a factory produces compared to its max potential output, back to the low 90% area from the 87.5% it’s at now. Higher utilization can produce bigger profits, which could be a good thing for certain company’s stocks.

Sherwood News sat down for an in-depth talk with Frank Holmes, who started his career in gold before launching crypto mining firm HIVE Digital Technologies, which now has a not-too-shabby $627 million market cap. He shared how the experience of his first bitcoin halving set the foundation for the firm to jump into the AI space…

…and how bitcoin mining was essential to the AI boom of today.

What is Americans’ most disliked food?

Answer here.