👀 S&P Tops 7,700, a Jobs Shock Rattles the Fed Math, and a Tractor Supply Director Bets $50K on the Bottom

Good afternoon and happy Sunday! Here is a quick market rundown and an 'inside' peek behind the curtains of what C-Level Execs, Wall St. Hedge Fund Gurus, and politicians are trading right now…!

📈 Market Performance

Stocks closed out a second straight winning week in style. The S&P 500 hit a fresh record close at 7,757.64 (+0.62% Friday), the Dow finished at 54,036.93 (+0.28%), and the Nasdaq Composite led the pack at 26,690.62 (+1.30%). For the week, the S&P added roughly 3.6%, the Dow gained close to 3%, and the Nasdaq ripped 5.2% — its best week in a while. With the S&P closing above 7,700 for the first time ever and the Dow notching fresh records, both indexes are sitting on healthy double-digit YTD gains. The real divergence this week was under the hood: the Philadelphia semiconductor complex (SOXX) jumped more than 7% and the Russell 2000 outpaced the Dow on Friday — a clear signal that risk appetite is broadening out beyond the usual mega-cap names.

📉 A Jobs Report That Broke the Narrative

Friday's July jobs report showed an unexpected decline in job growth — and rather than spooking the market, it did the opposite. Traders read the weak print as taking a September Fed hike off the table, and stocks ripped higher on the news. The stranger detail was underneath: the labor force participation rate slipped to 61.4%, down 0.7 percentage point this year as roughly 1.4 million people exited the workforce entirely. That's not a "labor market cooling" story so much as a "people are disappearing from the data" story, and it's worth watching whether that trend shows up again in next month's numbers.

🛢️ Oil Slides as Hormuz Tensions Ease

Crude fell roughly 3.4% on the week after reports that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was in the works, defusing one of the market's bigger geopolitical tail risks. That said, the de-escalation wasn't a straight line — Thursday's session saw the Dow drop 464 points as a brief rebound in oil prices revived fears the Fed might need to hike instead of hold. Energy remains the swing factor for this market's rate-path expectations right now, more than jobs or inflation data alone.

💻 Chips and Small Caps Lead the Bounce

The Nasdaq's 5.2% weekly gain wasn't just a mega-cap story — semiconductors staged a real comeback, with SOXX up more than 7% for the week, and the Russell 2000 closed Friday at 3,034.49 (+1.10%), also posting a strong week. When small caps and chips lead together, that's usually a broader risk-on signal than when the rally is confined to the same seven names.

🚀 SpaceX's Turbulent First Weeks as a Public Company

SpaceX shares jumped 12% Friday, capping their first green week since the IPO, ahead of the company's first-ever quarterly earnings report as a public entity. It's been a rocky ride — shares were still trading roughly 17% below their IPO price earlier in the week, and short sellers have built a position equal to 32.2% of the tradable float. Meanwhile Amazon crossed $3 trillion in market cap for the first time, and Jeff Bezos promptly filed to sell around $4 billion in shares — a reminder that even the biggest wins get monetized.

🚜 Tractor Supply: A Director Buys the Dip

Tractor Supply's stock has had a rough stretch, sitting roughly 44% below its 52-week high after Q2 results narrowly missed on earnings ($0.81 vs. $0.82 estimated) and modest FY26 guidance of $1.90–$2.00 EPS. On August 3, Director Andre J. Hawaux stepped in and bought 3,150 shares on the open market at $31.83 — about $100,265 — boosting his personal stake by 21% to 18,435 shares. Worth flagging for balance: a separate SEC filing this week disclosed a planned sale of 33,364 shares (~$1.1 million) by another holder, but that one traces back to restricted stock vesting awards dating to 2020, not a fresh decision to exit. The company also declared its regular $0.24 quarterly dividend this week, payable September 8.

🔑 Key Takeaways

📈 The S&P closed above 7,700 for the first time ever this week — then kept climbing.

📉 A weak jobs report was the best news of the week, because it took a September Fed hike off the table.

🛢️ Oil's ~3.4% weekly drop on Hormuz de-escalation quietly removed one of the market's bigger tail risks.

💻 Chips just had their best week in a while — SOXX up more than 7%, with small caps riding along.

🚀 SpaceX is proving public-market volatility is a full-contact sport, even for the most hyped IPO of the year.

🚜 Tractor Supply is down sharply from its highs — and a director just bet $50,600 that the bottom is closer than the headlines suggest.

👀 What We're Watching Next Week

📊 Super Micro Computer & Applied Materials Earnings — Tuesday and Thursday. Key reads on AI hardware demand following the chip sector's strongest week in months.

🏦 Fed Speak Into September — With money markets still nominally pricing a hike later in 2026, any commentary from Fed officials this week gets outsized attention after Friday's jobs shock.

🛢️ Strait of Hormuz Deal Follow-Through — Whether the reported reopening deal actually holds will decide oil's next $5 move in either direction.

📉 Labor Market Follow-Through — Watch whether the 1.4-million-person labor-force exodus shows up again in JOLTS or claims data, or turns out to be a one-report anomaly.

🚜 Tractor Supply's Dividend Record Date — August 24 record date for the $0.24 dividend, paid September 8. Also worth watching for any follow-on insider buying after Hawaux's purchase.

Insider Spotlight: Director Andre J. Hawaux's open-market purchase of 3,150 Tractor Supply shares on August 3 — roughly $100,265, lifting his stake 21% — is a clean signal precisely because of the timing: it came days after a Q2 earnings miss, with the stock sitting about 44% below its 52-week high. That's the kind of insider buy this newsletter exists to catch: a real cash purchase into weakness, not a compensation grant dressed up as conviction

That's the week. See you next Sunday.

— Silas P. Insider Authority | insiderauthority.com

Insider spotlight of the week…#TSCO

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

Politicians

C-Level Execs

Hedge Funds

👉 Want direct access to all insider moves — including U.S. stocks, politicians, hedge funds — in real time? Our Elite Insider Dashboard surfaces high-signal trades as they hit the tape. Stay ahead of the herd.

🔗 [Join Elite Insider today]

Want to learn how to leverage INSIDER TRADING ACTIVITY to potentially beat the market?

Look no further than ELITE INSIDER (EI) — a complete ‘all in one’ software dashboard and scanner that tracks the political, corporate, and hedge fund insider trading activity.

EI includes cluster buying, largest trade and most active trade scanners, interactive charting + data suite and our Insider Portfolio Alerts (IPA). It’s time to bridge the gap from main street to Wall Street by following smart money insiders.

See you on the ‘INSIDE.’

P.S. Interested in joining hundreds of traders using our 0DTE mechanical systems to generate consistent, long-term income all without wasting hours analyzing setups? Check out Option Income Project here.