👀 Nvidia's Blowout Beat, Warsh's Hawkish Debut, and a $1.29 Insider Buy

Another week is in the books — and this one gave us plenty to work with.

Nvidia reminded everyone that the AI trade isn't dead, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh reminded everyone that inflation isn't dead either, bond yields moved higher, gold got smacked, crude remained volatile, and we now head directly into what has historically been the most difficult month of the year for equities.

And, as always, while everyone else was debating the Fed...

We were watching what insiders were doing with their own money.

Let's get into it.

📈 Market Performance

TThe Dow closed the week at 53,559.99, the S&P 500 at 7,711.76, and the Nasdaq Composite at 26,402.42. All three finished the week higher — the S&P and Dow each added about 0.5%, the Nasdaq gained roughly 0.9%, and it was the Dow's first winning week in three. Zoom out and the S&P is still up around 13% year-to-date after 27 record closes this year.

Here's the divergence worth sitting with: the equal-weight S&P (RSP) just crossed $100 billion in AUM for the first time, up nearly 16% this year versus the cap-weighted index's 13%. The gap comes down to tech exposure — roughly 17% in the equal-weight version versus 38% in the standard index. When seven stocks carry over a third of "the market," equal-weight isn't a niche trade anymore. It's a bet that the other 493 companies matter.

🔑 Key Drivers

🤖 Nvidia did the heavy lifting. Thursday's earnings beat sent the stock up 8.7%, with management guiding to roughly 70% revenue growth in fiscal 2028 against a Street estimate of 44%. It was the best day for tech, the S&P, and the Nasdaq since August 4th. Broadcom, SK Hynix, and Intel rode the updraft.

⚠️ But semis as a group didn't buy it. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) still slipped more than 3% on the week despite Nvidia's pop — Marvell and Applied Materials dragged it down more than 8% and 5%, respectively. One stock's blowout quarter isn't the same thing as sector conviction, and this week the tape made that distinction clear.

🏛️ Kevin Warsh's first Jackson Hole keynote as Fed Chair leaned hawkish. He acknowledged summer's PCE and CPI prints came in better than expected, but was explicit that "they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved." Markets read it as a signal the Fed isn't in a hurry to declare victory — the S&P and Nasdaq both faded into Friday's close on the comments.

🛢️ Oil gave the market a tailwind. WTI crude dropped over 3% Tuesday to $82.36 as the U.S. pivoted toward economic pressure rather than military posturing on Iran, with Iran and Oman reportedly discussing a temporary joint shipping route through Hormuz. Falling energy costs into a Fed that's still watching inflation is about as constructive a combination as this market gets.

💳 PayPal was this week's cautionary tale. Shares slumped 16% premarket after Advent and Stripe both walked away from pursuing the company — a reminder that in this tape, the stocks getting punished aren't just the ones missing numbers, they're the ones losing optionality.

💍 The insider story of the week: Brilliant Earth's entire C-suite bought the dip together. CEO Beth Gerstein, Executive Chairman Eric Grossberg, and CFO Jeffrey Kuo each purchased roughly $12,500–$13,600 of BRLT stock between August 13–19, right after a Q2 beat and just above the stock's 52-week low of $1.00. None of it was under a 10b5-1 plan — this was discretionary buying, not scheduled. More on this below.

Key Takeaways

• 📈 The S&P and Nasdaq both closed the week green, but Friday's fade shows the market is still listening hard to every Fed word.

• 🖥️ Nvidia's guide was the best argument for AI capex durability we've gotten all quarter — 70% revenue growth guidance is not a rounding error.

• 🧩 SMH lagging despite NVDA's pop is the tell: don't confuse one company's earnings beat with sector-wide strength.

• 🛢️ Falling oil on de-escalation, not demand destruction, is the kind of tailwind that doesn't show up in most macro models.

• ⚖️ Equal-weight crossing $100B in AUM is a quiet vote that this rally's foundation matters as much as its headline number.

• 💍 When three separate insiders — CEO, chairman, and CFO — write discretionary checks in the same week at a 52-week low, that's not routine compensation planning. That's conviction.

👀 What We're Watching Next Week

📅 Fed speak keeps coming. With Warsh's Jackson Hole remarks fresh, expect other regional Fed presidents to weigh in on the "sticky but not accelerating" inflation framing. Any daylight between Fed voices on rate-cut timing will move rates and, by extension, growth stocks.

🧮 The 10-year yield sits above 4.68%. It's been climbing back after two weeks of declines. A close meaningfully above that level would start to pressure the same tech multiples Nvidia just justified.

🛢️ Iran/Oman Hormuz talks. Any concrete movement toward a shipping arrangement would extend this week's oil relief; any breakdown reverses it fast, given how thin the market's margin for geopolitical surprise has been all year.

📊 Watch whether equal-weight keeps pace. If RSP's outperformance holds through a week without a Nvidia-sized tech catalyst, that's a stronger signal of genuine market broadening than one good month.

⭐ Insider Spotlight: Brilliant Earth Group (BRLT). Three of the company's top executives — CEO, Executive Chairman, and CFO — each bought roughly $12,500–$13,600 of stock in the days following Q2 earnings, at prices between $1.25 and $1.30, just above the stock's 52-week low. The Q2 print itself was solid: net sales up 5.7% year-over-year to $115.1 million, adjusted EBITDA of $5.8 million beating the high end of guidance, and full-year guidance raised on both sales and profitability. Wall Street hasn't caught up to the insiders yet — B. Riley, KeyBanc, and TD Cowen have all trimmed price targets since the print, with B. Riley moving to Neutral at a $1.50 target. That's the tension worth watching: analysts cutting targets on a stock where the people running the company just wrote personal checks near the lows.

That's the week. See you next Sunday.

— Silas P. Insider Authority | insiderauthority.com

Insider spotlight of the week…#BRLT

^{Here is a snapshot of last week’s recent insider activity…}

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