S&P Hits 7,800 as Intel, Nvidia Deals Drive AI Trade
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- S&P 500 crossed 7,800 during Thursday's session for the first time ever, closing at a record, while the Dow bucked the trend with a 0.6% weekly decline.
- July CPI rose 0.1% monthly with annual inflation easing to 3.4% (in line with estimates); July PPI came in unchanged versus the 0.2% increase economists expected, with annual headline PPI at 4.7%.
- Markets priced a 67% probability of the Federal Reserve holding rates steady at its September meeting, up from 55% a week earlier, per the CME Fed Watch tool.
- Intel expanded its common stock offering from $15B to $20B after strong demand; CEO Lip-Bu Tan and a family member committed $12M to the offering.
- Nvidia announced a $500B financing partnership with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, KKR, and Goldman Sachs to make AI compute an investable asset class.
- Goldman Sachs served as facilitator for both the Nvidia consortium and Intel's stock sale, ending the week flat.
- The Charitable Trust initiated a small 25-share position in Micron; Intel and Micron ended the week up roughly 1% and 11% respectively.
Why it matters: Tamer inflation pushed September Fed rate-hike odds to 33% from 45%, giving risk assets room to run. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan's $12M personal commitment into the company's $20B raise shows insider conviction in AI demand, while Nvidia's $500B consortium with six asset managers reframes GPUs as long-lived infrastructure rather than depreciating chips — a thesis CoreWeave's earnings this week reinforced.
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