Wall Street closes lower after Jackson Hole, gold loses 3.4%
The afternoon development compared with the morning is the close of the August 28 session: the Nasdaq in the red despite Nvidia's $96.22 billion in quarterly revenue, and a broad sell-off in gold and bitcoin.
This morning this newspaper had placed Kevin Warsh’s remarks in the energy context, as a factor shifting rate expectations. The new element this afternoon is the markets’ reaction at the close of August 28, and its direction is not the one suggested by the only earnings report the market was waiting for.
In his first address as Federal Reserve chair at the Jackson Hole symposium organized by the Kansas City Fed, Warsh indicated that inflation remains too high and that restoring price stability is the central bank’s priority. After the speech, market-implied odds of a rate hike in September rose to around 57% and short-term Treasury yields increased (Alain Guillot).
The session
The Nasdaq, up as much as half a percentage point during the day, closed down 0.5% (Alain Guillot). However, all three major indexes closed the week higher: the minus sign applies to the day, not the five days. On the behavior of the other two indexes in the single session, the available material provides no closing data, and this newspaper does not publish them.
| Indicator | August 28, 2026 session |
|---|---|
| Nasdaq | close −0.5% (up to +0.5% intraday) |
| Gold | $4,504.80 (−3.41%) |
| Bitcoin | −3.14% |
| US 10-year yield | around 4.70% |
Data are drawn from Yahoo Finance / Zacks, from The Motley Fool and from the Trading Economics database.
Nvidia beats estimates, indexes fall anyway
The most anticipated earnings report did not change the direction of the day. For the quarter ended July 2026, Nvidia reported revenue of $96.22 billion and earnings of $2.22 per share, above consensus estimates tracked by Zacks. The company also guided for 70% revenue growth for fiscal year 2028 (Yahoo Finance / Zacks).
The fact that a result of this magnitude coexists with a declining Nasdaq is the session’s useful piece of information: when the expected cost of money rises, the price investors are willing to pay for future earnings falls, and this weighs on technology stocks even when current results are good. The same logic accompanies the move in gold and bitcoin, both down more than three percentage points on a day when bond yields were rising.
Two reading caveats
The first concerns implied probabilities: 57% is not a Fed forecast, it is the price that rate contracts assign to a scenario. It changes daily, and in the week leading up to the September meeting it will continue to move with incoming macroeconomic data.
The second concerns gold. A 3.41% drop in a single session is a large move, but the material consulted reports only the day’s figure, without historical series or prior weeks’ quotes: there are therefore no grounds to call it a trend reversal, and this newspaper draws no operational conclusions from it.
It is not known, from the sources consulted, the full text of Warsh’s remarks, nor whether it contains quantitative indications on the size of a possible rate hike. The monetary policy committee’s September meeting remains the point at which the question will be settled.
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