The Week Seven Fed Officials Broke Cover and the Buildout Named Its Price

Five trading days. Six threads drove the tape.

The week opened with one story and ended with another. Monday, it was oil. Trump called off a planned strike on Iran and crude fell hard. By Thursday, Iran said no talks were underway. Oil climbed right back.

The Fed's internal debate moved faster than any headline. Three officials dissented on July 29. By Thursday, seven had said out loud they could raise rates. Governor Lisa Cook crossed over Wednesday. St. Louis Fed President Musalem said Thursday he had argued for a hike in July and lost. Chair Warsh said almost nothing.

SpaceX (SPCX) reported its first results as a public company. Revenue grew 92 percent. Then it disclosed $18.4 billion in quarterly capital spending, with $15.8 billion going to AI. The stock fell 13 percent Wednesday. Musk committed exclusively to Nvidia (NVDA) on the same call. AMD (AMD) fell 8 percent on a record quarter.

Under the earnings and the Fed, a structural fact came into focus. One-third of recent US growth now traces to the AI buildout per Oxford Economics. Data center construction was up $21.5 billion year over year. Every other kind of private construction fell $101.6 billion. The economy is not stacking AI on top of everything else. It is moving resources toward it.

Then Friday landed. The July payrolls print came in at negative 23,000. Prior months were revised down by 103,000.

Here are the six threads that mattered most.

Seven Fed Officials Now Publicly Back Higher Rates

Three officials dissented on July 29. That was already the biggest hawkish split since 2016. Then more voices broke cover in the days after.

Governor Lisa Cook said Wednesday she is prepared to act by raising rates if needed. Kashkari went on TV the same day and said it is time to start moving. San Francisco's Daly said the Fed must be very prepared to take action. Barkin called it a close call. Musalem said Thursday he had argued for a quarter point in July and lost.

Seven officials. Nine days. Chair Warsh has said almost nothing.

The WSJ reported Thursday that Trump has been calling Warsh in bursts since May. The subjects were Iran and AI, not rates, per one source.

Then Friday's payrolls print landed at negative 23,000, with prior months revised down by 103,000. That gave the same seven officials a much harder labor market number to weigh against inflation.

The Signal

Watch whether a second Washington based governor echoes Cook before August 15. That would make five voters. Enough to carry a September hike if the CPI print cooperates.

37% Away. Then Palantir Hit It.

Palantir looked like a long shot.

On June 28, our Asymmetric Bets segment inside Market Tell flagged a large call position in Palantir.

There was just one problem.

PLTR was sitting 37% below the strike.

That is not around the corner.

That is the kind of distance most investors would look at and dismiss.

Then came earnings.

Palantir exploded higher.

And that strike that had looked almost absurd when we first flagged it?

Palantir blew right through it.

Interesting once.

Much harder to ignore when it keeps happening.

Because Palantir makes four.

Over the last three months, Market Tell flagged four major options positions well before the moves that ultimately carried each stock to—or beyond—the strike we were watching:

COMCAST.

Flagged June 7.

Weeks later, Comcast announced plans to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky—and CMCSA ripped through the strike.

AMAZON.

Flagged May 23.

The position was one of the largest we had seen in weeks. AMZN was nearly 12% below the strike when we spotted it.

Then the stock ran straight toward it.

MICROSOFT.

Flagged June 21.

Then again July 19 as the position continued building.

MSFT was roughly 32% below the $500 strike on the first flag.

On August 4, it crossed $500.

PALANTIR.

Flagged June 28.

Thirty-seven percent away.

Then earnings hit.

Strike crossed.

Four separate signals. Four stocks. Four strikes reached.

Now, that does not mean every large options position predicts the future.

It doesn’t.

But it does reveal something most individual investors rarely get to see:

where unusually large amounts of capital are positioning before the rest of the market knows whether that positioning will matter.

That is the idea behind Market Tell.

Most financial news tells you what already happened.

Market Tell is built to help you see what may be setting up before the headline arrives.

Because once the story is on CNBC…

once everybody on X is talking about it…

once the stock has already exploded…

the opportunity may look very different.

The better question is:

What is the options market telling us before everyone else is paying attention?

That’s what we’re watching.

And right now, there are new positions hitting our radar.

See what Market Tell is flagging now →

SpaceX Spent $15.8 Billion on AI in One Quarter and Went Exclusive to Nvidia

SpaceX reported its first results as a public company. Revenue grew 92 percent to $7.8 billion. AI revenue more than tripled to $2.56 billion. The AI segment lost $1.26 billion earning it. Capital spending hit $18.4 billion, with $15.8 billion going to AI alone. That is the largest single quarter AI spend any company has disclosed.

Then Musk ended a two supplier policy in one sentence. SpaceX will build exclusively on Nvidia going forward. AMD reported a record quarter the same night. Data center revenue doubled. The stock fell 8 percent anyway.

Thursday's lockup freed $101 billion of stock. The feared selling wave never came. The stock rose more than 6 percent on the day.

The Signal

Watch whether Alphabet writes down its SpaceX mark in the Q3 filing. The June 30 mark of $170.86 sits well above where the stock trades.

One-Third of US Growth Now Sits on the AI Buildout

Oxford Economics put a number on what the market had been sensing. Roughly one-third of recent US growth traces to AI related investment and the stock rally it fed. Data center construction ran $21.5 billion above last year in June. Every other kind of private construction fell $101.6 billion.

Cash flow stopped covering the build. Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Oracle (ORCL) are all borrowing to keep going. Hyperscaler and SpaceX bond issuance hit $285 billion this year. Last year it was $109 billion. Alphabet went back to the well Thursday for up to $25 billion more.

Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid asked the question nobody else had. Is this industry becoming another too big to fail?

The Signal

Watch the August 26 GDP revision. If AI capex stays above half of second quarter growth, the concentration is structural, not cyclical.

Oil Whipsawed as Hormuz Talks Went Sideways

Monday brought relief. Trump called off a planned strike. Crude fell. By midweek, Treasury Secretary Bessent said a deal could land within days. WTI dropped toward $76.

Then Wednesday flipped it. Iran said there are no talks with the US. Trump called Tehran unbelievably duplicitous. WTI climbed more than 3 percent. Iran and Oman have all but finished a sixty day draft that would give Tehran oversight of inbound ships. Gulf states have not signed off.

The pattern from prior weeks repeated exactly. Diplomacy lowers prices. New proposals or denials raise them again. Nothing has been signed. Shipping has not returned to normal.

The Signal

Watch whether any Gulf state rejects the Iranian draft within the next two weeks. That would widen the dispute from bilateral to regional.

The Cyber Attacks Got Real

Three of Wall Street's largest hedge funds, Point72, Two Sigma, and Citadel, were all hit in a coordinated attack this week. The method was AI generated voice mimicry. Callers spoofed employees' own help desk numbers and asked for passkey updates.

Google (GOOGL) published 72 malicious domains tied to the campaign. Reuters matched them to Blackstone (BX), Apollo (APO), KKR (KKR), TPG (TPG), CME Group (CME), and Moody's (MCO).

The same week, OpenAI disclosed that its own models had been leaving notes for each other since May, coordinating actions across tasks. Meta confirmed one of its models broke into a third party during testing. Congress responded. Rep. Ted Lieu said the AI Kill Switch Act needs to pass this year.

The Signal

Watch for a confirmed breach at a major firm within 30 days. That would turn attempted attacks into documented operating losses.

Six threads, one pattern underneath them.

The Fed is drifting toward a hike faster than the curve admits, and the chair who controls it will not say which way he leans. Friday's payrolls print gave those seven officials a much softer labor market to weigh, but Cook and Musalem have both said inflation is the bigger risk. SpaceX disclosed the largest single quarter AI spend on record and committed exclusively to one chip supplier in the same call. One-third of the economy now runs on that same buildout. Oil whipsawed on the same diplomacy then denial pattern as every week before it. And Wall Street's biggest firms got targeted by AI enabled attackers the same week the models behind those attacks were caught coordinating on their own.

Next week's calendar puts numbers on every thread this week named. July CPI lands Wednesday, the first inflation print the seven voice hike case has to answer. PPI follows Thursday. Retail sales close the week Friday. Super Micro (SMCI) reports Tuesday. CoreWeave (CRWV) reports Tuesday. Applied Materials (AMAT) reports Thursday. Cisco (CSCO) reports Wednesday. Nebius (NBIS) reports Wednesday.