Warsh Turns Hawkish, PayPal Deal Collapses: Weekly Market Recap — August 29, 2026

Weekly Market Recap: August 29, 2026

Markets are closed for the weekend, but Friday's session set up a loaded week ahead: new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh delivered a hawkish Jackson Hole keynote that pushed September rate-hike odds toward 50%, chip stocks whipsawed on Nvidia and Marvell earnings, and a $53 billion PayPal buyout fell apart in premarket trading. From here, the tape hinges on a run of ISM and labor-market data culminating in Friday's August jobs report, plus a fresh batch of AI-adjacent earnings led by Broadcom.

Friday's Close

Market Setup

Key Levels (Dealer Gamma)

SPY (spot ~769): call wall 772 (then 775), put wall 768 (then 766). QQQ (spot ~716): call wall 717 (then 718), put wall 716 (then 714). Call walls mark strikes where dealer positioning may slow rallies, and put walls mark strikes where hedging flows may cushion dips — these are positioning estimates, not guarantees. QQQ's gamma flip sits almost exactly on spot, a setup that can produce low-realized-vol, pinning-style trade early in the week.

Five Things That Matter

1. Fed turns hawkish at Jackson Hole. Kevin Warsh said inflation has not meaningfully slowed and financial conditions aren't currently restrictive, pushing September rate-hike odds to near 50%.
2. Small caps took the worst of it. The Russell 2000 fell 1.39% Friday, the weakest of the four majors, with biotech names down even harder.
3. Chip-sector whiplash on earnings. Nvidia's blockbuster Wednesday outlook gave way to a broad Friday semis selloff (-4.45%), and Marvell fell 10.3% despite beating and raising guidance.
4. PayPal's $53B buyout collapses. Advent and Stripe abandoned their pursuit, sending shares down as much as 16% in premarket trading Friday.
5. August jobs report is the week's main event. Consensus calls for +50,000 payrolls versus July's shocking -23,000, with unemployment seen holding at 4.1%.

Notable Options Flow

Index options skewed toward long-dated positioning on both sides: an $8,200 SPX call expiring January 2027 saw roughly $15.3 million in bid-side premium, while a $7,000 SPX put of the same expiry saw about $13.5 million — a barbell that suggests institutions are hedging both a melt-up and a deeper drawdown well into next year. Shorter-dated flow included a $7,715 SPXW call sweep into next week's jobs report and repeated-hit accumulation in both SPX calls and puts around the 7,500-7,900 range for October expiry.

What to Watch

The week's data calendar is dense: ISM Manufacturing (Tuesday), ADP payrolls and the Fed's Beige Book (Wednesday), ISM Services and several Fed speakers (Thursday), and the August jobs report (Friday), where consensus of +50,000 stands in sharp contrast to July's negative print. On earnings, Broadcom's Wednesday report is the marquee AI-capex read-through following the Nvidia/Marvell whipsaw, alongside Dell, Palo Alto Networks, Snowflake, HPE, Lululemon and Zscaler. Retail attention has swung hard toward PayPal after its buyout collapsed, while chip names remain in heavy rotation as traders debate whether Wednesday's AI strength or Friday's reversal is the better guide into Broadcom.

Sign-Off

It's a data-heavy, earnings-heavy week bookended by a hawkish Fed and a jobs report that could move the rate-hike needle in either direction. Stay nimble into Friday.