Nikkei 225
66,300 (+3.66%)
The public back-and-forth continues on essentially the same script as the past several editions: Trump told reporters more details on an Iran agreement would be announced within 48 hours and said he wants a Hormuz deal "agreed immediately," while Tehran continues to insist it is only in talks with Oman over shipping-corridor mechanics, not negotiating directly with Washington. CNN separately reported "US signals optimism" on the same day Trump was publicly pushing for urgency — the gap between the two governments' characterizations of the same conversation remains the tell.
— Bloomberg, CNN, 2026-08-04
Abdul El-Sayed defeated Rep. Haley Stevens roughly 49% to 47% (state Sen. Mallory McMorrow took about 4%) in what both outlets describe as the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in US history, after outside groups poured close to $65M into the race trying to boost Stevens against a late El-Sayed surge fueled partly by the race's sharp divide over Israel policy. He now faces Republican Mike Rogers in November in a race expected to help decide Senate control.
— NBC News, Washington Post, 2026-08-04
A Russian guided-aerial-bomb attack on Sumy killed several people including a child and injured more than 40, part of a night in which long-range strikes between the two sides killed at least nine people combined, per regional and Ukrainian officials. Zelensky said Monday he intends to press Putin toward ending the war before winter but cautioned that goal may not be achievable, accusing Moscow of trying to drag the conflict out. No sign either side is easing the drone-and-missile exchange even as bigger diplomatic stories dominate elsewhere.
— Kyiv Independent, Al Jazeera, 2026-08-04
Aaron Farinacci, 37, was arrested and booked on suspicion of first-degree arson in connection with the Old Trails Fire — the largest of three blazes that together have destroyed at least 700 buildings and forced roughly 67,000 people to evacuate around Spokane, Washington's second-largest city. A community tip about a "nervous-looking man" near roadside grass led investigators to him; he was carrying waterproof matches and a butane lighter, and has a prior manslaughter conviction from Arizona. Bond was set at $1M.
— NPR, ABC News, 2026-08-04
The eastern Congo outbreak has reached 3,802 confirmed cases and 1,707 deaths, making it both the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak ever recorded and now the largest ever reported inside the DRC — surpassing the toll it hit two weeks ago (1,000+ deaths by July 22). Ituri province accounts for roughly 90% of cases, though the virus has spread into five other provinces. No market angle — you should just know this is unfolding.
— The Hill, Al Jazeera, 2026-08-04
Alibaba ships Qwen3.8-Max — a 2.4-trillion-parameter model built for multi-day autonomous coding. Released with open weights, Alibaba says it can sustain 10+ days of autonomous coding work; a smaller Qwen3.8-27B variant is slated to follow within the week. Another marker of Chinese labs racing to own the open-weight developer stack rather than compete purely on closed frontier benchmarks.
— llm-stats.com, 2026-08-04
The open-weight field keeps getting more crowded. Commentary from ML researcher Sebastian Raschka framed Kimi K3, GLM-5.2, and DeepSeek V4 as evidence of a genuine open-weight "explosion" this cycle — with DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731, Meta's Muse Spark 1.1, GPT-5.6 Luna, and Thinking Machines' Inkling all landing within days of each other. The evaluation question has shifted from "which model is smartest" to task-fit, switching cost, and how much control a given deployment needs.
— Sebastian Raschka commentary; llm-stats.com round-up, 2026-08-04
▲ AMD beats across the board, falls 8% anyway. Record $11.54B quarterly revenue (Data Center +107% y/y to $6.7B on EPYC and Instinct), EPS $1.66 vs. $1.55 expected, adjusted operating margin 27% vs. 26.9% forecast, and Q3 guidance near $13B — a genuinely strong print by any normal measure. The stock still dropped 8% after hours because it had already run 140% in 2026 and large holders had rotated in expecting a raise, not just a beat. Micron fell alongside it in sympathy (-1.4% premarket) as the read-through hit semis broadly.
— CNBC, BeInCrypto, Yahoo Finance, 2026-08-04/05
▲ SanDisk and Western Digital both report after today's close. Direct universe read: SNDK carries the memory/storage side of the AI-capex trade that AMD just tested on the compute side — a similarly high bar given the group's 2026 run.
Premarket earnings crowded the tape this morning: Eli Lilly, Uber, Novo Nordisk, Disney, Circle, and Shopify all reported before the open, with Eli Lilly drawing the most attention on continued metabolic/weight-loss drug growth. Afternoon docket beyond SNDK/WDC includes eBay, Axon, AppLovin, MercadoLibre, Realty Income, and Honeywell.
AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb remain silent on the reported ~$400B merger talks first surfaced over the weekend — no confirmation or denial from either company as of this morning; treat it as still speculative, not a done deal.
Japan and Europe both closed at or near session highs — Nikkei's 3.66% jump tracked Wall Street's record closes Tuesday, and the Stoxx 600 hit a fresh all-time high on earnings strength and Hormuz-talk optimism, per CNBC. Hang Seng was the one laggard, snapping a six-session win streak on China-recovery jitters. QQQ and SPY both closed strong Tuesday (before AMD's after-hours drop), so this morning's real test is whether semis drag the Nasdaq lower at the open — Micron already sympathy-trading down with AMD. WTI's push toward $77 is the one line item worth watching against the Iran/Hormuz theme: a genuine deal announcement would likely cap it, while another breakdown in talks has more room to run given the strait's chokepoint status. Treasury yields shown lag to Monday's print; DXY wasn't retrievable this morning.
Nothing resolved, just re-timed: Trump now says fuller deal details land within 48 hours, while Iran continues denying direct talks with the US at all. Same dispute as yesterday's edition, just with a fresh deadline attached.
USD/JPY sits at ~157.6-158, still inside the post-intervention band but pressing its upper edge. Today's ADP (8:15 ET) and ISM Services (10:00 ET) are the next real data points ahead of Friday's payrolls and the Sept. 16 FOMC — desks remain split on September hike odds by a wide margin, which is itself the signal.
Yesterday's flagged test resolved negatively on price, not fundamentals: AMD beat every metric and still fell 8% after hours, the clearest evidence yet that "priced company-by-company" now cuts both ways once a stock has run too far ahead of its own guide. SanDisk and Western Digital face the same dynamic on the storage side after today's close, with Nvidia still ~15% off its highs.
The flagged 40°C heatwave has arrived; the Castellón fire has grown past 10,000 hectares with a ~75km perimeter and remains out of control, and roughly 10,000 people remain under evacuation orders. This is the worse-not-better outcome the last two editions were watching for.
Risk tone opens mixed rather than clean: Asia and Europe both closed strong on yesterday's US record close, but AMD's after-hours reversal is the more immediate mechanical signal for a tech-heavy tape — it's a reminder that this market is now punishing "great but not perfect" prints across the AI-capex complex, and SanDisk/Western Digital face the identical test tonight. The macro data (ADP, ISM Services) matters more today than most Wednesdays given how split desks are on September Fed odds, and WTI's grind toward $77 keeps a live line to the Iran/Hormuz theme — a real deal announcement would likely cap crude, while another public breakdown has more room to run. Fastest way this morning's calm reverses: a hot ISM print reopening the hike debate, or Iran's 48-hour window lapsing without the details Trump promised.
Hours after SpaceX successfully launched three AST SpaceMobile BlueBird satellites from Cape Canaveral (clean booster landing on the droneship), a much older piece of SpaceX hardware — an 8,800-pound Falcon 9 upper stage left over from a 2025 commercial lunar mission — slammed into the Moon at roughly 5,400 mph, hitting with the force of about three tons of TNT. It's an uncontrolled impact, not a mission, but it's also a fairly clean illustration of how much junk is quietly accumulating in cislunar space as commercial lunar traffic ramps up.
— Spaceflight Now, 19FortyFive, 2026-08-05
Crews have begun hauling thousands of gallons of decades-old, slowly fermenting fish sauce out of a long-shuttered processing plant in Newfoundland — a cleanup job that reportedly required specialized odor-control gear before workers could even get through the door. Twenty-plus years of undisturbed fish sauce is exactly the kind of problem nobody budgets for until someone finally has to solve it.
— per wire reports, 2026-08-04