Here are two trades to make ahead of a critical week for markets as Nvidia results and Jackson Hole loom

Jamie Chisholm

Mon, August 24, 2026 at 4:31 PM GMT+3 6 min read

Expect volatility. - Getty Images/iStockphoto

So much for the dog days of summer. The penultimate week of August started with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's so-far forlorn attempt to suppress long-term bond yields, which rattled traders.

News of a fresh trade war with Canada and a sharply negative reaction to Walmart's WMT earnings is adding to the noise, according to Evercore ISI strategist Julian Emanuel.

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In a note published over the weekend, he said the new week is also replete with market-moving factors, including Bessent's plan for an "economic D-Day" for Iran, Nvidia's NVDA second-quarter earnings and guidance on Wednesday, and Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's speech in Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Friday.

"A lot of things could happen — and with 10-year yields near the very sensitive 4.75% level, the one thing this week won't be is silent or boring," Emanuel said.

It is a sensitive time for stocks. Emanuel described the tech-stock-intensive Nasdaq-100 NDX as the market's "sore spot," having moved from bull-market leader to current laggard.

It's being weighed down by reverberations from a shift among hyperscalers to negative free cash flow, which is causing information-technology credit spreads — a gauge of perceived risk, in the chart below — to widen.

Emanuel said the coming sessions could affect the market in two main ways.

His base case was still that the Fed chair's challenges on inflation and bond yields, the upcoming midterm elections and the end of earnings-season catalysts will prolong the near-term choppiness. This will be accentuated by small-cap stocks' particular sensitivity to moves in bond yields as well as Nasdaq-100 weakness.

However, it's possible that the "bondfire" subsides under the direction of Bessent and Warsh, Emanuel said. More realistically, a positive share-price reaction to Nvidia earnings reinforces investors' faith in the robustness of the artificial-intelligence trade.

Under those latter conditions, investors' fear of missing out "could begin early," he said, which would result in both rising stocks and rising bond yields — which ended both the dot-com bubble and Japan's 1989 bull market.

He said that short-term investors should consider buying put options on the iShares Russell 2000 exchange-traded fund IWM of small-cap stocks. Put options give the buyer the right to sell the ETF at a particular price within a given time period, a negative bet, and Emanuel suggested buying the November 275 puts.

In the medium term, Emanuel expressed more optimism about technology, favoring call options on the Invesco QQQ Trust Series I QQQ, a proxy for the Nasdaq 100. Emanuel suggested buying March 850 calls.

Those QQQ calls will exploit the "runaway upside we expect before the 'Checkered Flag' is waved to end the 'AI Revolution' Bull Market race," Emanuel said.

And for those who don't trade options, and who have what Emanuel called "an AI-tilted portfolio," some stocks with negative beta could be added so that "you and your portfolio will sleep better at night."

Negative beta stocks are those that tend to move in the opposite direction to the overall market. Emanuel has previously suggested including ExxonMobil XOM, Johnson & Johnson JNJ, AbbVie ABBV, Costco Wholesale COST, Coca-Cola KO, Philip Morris PM, T-Mobile TMUS, McDonald's MCD, Lockheed Martin LMT and Progressive PGR.

The markets

U.S. stock indices SPX DJIA COMP are lower at the opening bell even as Treasury yields BX:TMUBMUSD10Y dip. The dollar index DXY is higher as oil futures CL.1 slip and gold futures GC00 trade around $4,730 an ounce.

Asset

Last

YTD

S&P 500

-1.43%

3.54%

12.11%

18.67%

Nasdaq Composite

-2.05%

4.82%

12.64%

21.79%

10-year Treasury

-1.30

Gold

4.99%

15.15%

8.41%

37.70%

Oil

0.16%

3.88%

48.21%

31.43%

Data: MarketWatch. Treasury yields change expressed in basis points

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The buzz

The U.S. and Canada are in a fresh trade war after Ottawa rejected new demands from Washington and said it would retaliate against newly imposed levies. U.S. steel stocks Nucor NUE, Steel Dynamics STLD and Cleveland-Cliffs CLF are higher.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration has launched an "economic D-Day" against Iran.

Alibaba shares HK:9988 BABA are lower after China's e-commerce and cloud group said it planned to raise HK$80 billion ($10.2 billion) from a share placement to pay for AI investment.

Samsung shares KR:005930 had their worst day in three weeks, dragging other memory plays lower, as investors reacted to the chip maker's $65 billion shareholder return plan.

Softbank JP:9984 said it plans to issue 1 trillion yen, or $6.3 billion, in yen-denominated retail bonds as it deepens multibillion-dollar commitments to OpenAI and related projects.

The corporate highlight this week is expected to be AI chip maker Nvidia's NVDA earnings, due after the market close on Wednesday.

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The chart

There's worry for the sweet-toothed among us: Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo, noted that traders' positioning in sugar futures SB00 has seen a "dramatic reversal" of late. In just three weeks, funds have moved from a 112,000-contract net short to a 151,000 net long, a swing of more than 260,000 contracts, Olsen said. "The turnaround has been driven by El Niño–related weather concerns, rising price volatility, uncertainty over demand and supply prospects in India, as well as expectations that Brazilian mills may direct a larger share of cane towards sugar production," he added.

Top tickers

Here were the most active stock-market ticker symbols on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern.

Ticker symbol

Security name

NVDA

Nvidia

TSLA

Tesla

SPCX

SpaceX

Micron Technology

MRNA

Moderna

AMD

Advanced Micro Devices

AAPL

Apple

TSM

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

Here are two trades to make ahead of a critical week for markets as Nvidia results and Jackson Hole loom

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