- S&P 500 +0.26% to 7,748.50; Dow -0.04% to 53,770.27; Nasdaq +0.54% to 26,588.49, on an in-line July CPI (+0.1% MoM headline, +3.4% YoY, core +2.2%).
- VIX fell more than 5% to 14.40, its lowest level of 2026, as the CPI relief unwound Tuesday's hawkish repricing.
- Dell +9.87%, HPE +8.11%, Micron +4.92% on the reported $500 billion NVIDIA-linked AI-infrastructure financing consortium (BlackRock GIP, Blackstone, Apollo, Goldman Sachs, KKR, Brookfield); Century Aluminum -7.88%, Alcoa -5.29% on unrelated production and demand pressure.
- Michael Burry disclosed new short positions in Nebius, Micron, Oracle, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), while adding to longs in Mercado Libre and Zoetis.
The Coffee Grind by Provokative AI
Wholesale Prices Get Their Turn, While Oil and the AI Tape Disagree — Thursday, August 13, 2026
Brass Rat Capital LLC (“BRC”) · Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
Premarket · marks throughout are Wednesday, August 12's settled close, two-source confirmed · commentary only, no Pair Book section
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” — widely attributed to Niels Bohr, though the physicist Yogi Berra and others have also been credited with versions of the line, and its precise origin is disputed. On a morning when yesterday's CPI relief and this morning's crude selloff point one way while the AI-infrastructure earnings calendar points several different ways at once, it captures the day's actual difficulty better than any single data point could. Attribution confidence: widely attributed to multiple sources, exact origin unverified.
Wednesday's in-line CPI did what Tuesday's oil spike undid: it pulled the VIX to its lowest level of the year and unwound most of the hawkish rate-path repricing this publication flagged yesterday morning. But today's July PPI is a different question — wholesale, not retail, prices — and it lands the same morning crude is selling off more than 2% on demand concerns even as the Strait of Hormuz situation remains unresolved. The market gets two contradictory signals about the same underlying inflation question within one session, and the AI-infrastructure earnings calendar adds a third axis entirely: strong headline numbers from Cisco and Cerebras that the market is punishing anyway, on margin compression and valuation, respectively.
I. PPI's Turn, With Oil Already Complicating the Read
Consensus for today's July Producer Price Index sits at +0.2% month-over-month headline and +0.3% core — a modestly hotter read than yesterday's tame CPI, which is itself worth noting: wholesale and retail inflation don't always move together, and a PPI beat against an in-line CPI would suggest margin compression further up the supply chain rather than genuine consumer-level relief. Complicating the picture further: Brent and WTI are both down more than 2% this morning on falling demand forecasts, even as the underlying Strait of Hormuz disruption that drove Tuesday's spike hasn't actually resolved. A soft PPI against falling oil would be the cleanest possible disinflation signal available today; a hot PPI against falling oil would suggest the pass-through from Tuesday's energy spike is still working its way through wholesale pricing even as the spot price itself reverses — two very different stories from the same data point, depending on which way it breaks.
II. The AI-Infrastructure Tape Sends Three Different Signals at Once
Cisco beat fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and guided AI orders "meaningfully higher" into fiscal 2027, and fell roughly 6% in premarket trade anyway — the market reading margin compression, not the AI-order guidance, as the operative signal. Coherent dropped on similarly solid results, for similar reasons. Cerebras Systems fell sharply despite raising full-year guidance, as traders weighed a still-present quarterly net loss against an already-expanded valuation. Nebius fell roughly 4% despite raising its FY26 contracted-capacity guidance to 5 gigawatts and management noting it could sell its entire 2027 capacity at current terms. Applied Materials reports after today's close, and will be read directly against this same tension: whether AI-infrastructure spending strength shows up as revenue growth the market rewards, or as guidance the market has already priced in and is now selling regardless of the beat.
What to Watch
- The 8:30 AM ET PPI print against yesterday's in-line CPI — a genuine divergence between wholesale and retail inflation would be a real, not just technical, signal worth tracking.
- Whether the Cisco/Coherent/Cerebras/Nebius pattern of "beat and guide higher, sell off anyway" extends to Applied Materials after today's close, which would confirm this is a valuation story across the AI-infrastructure complex rather than four unrelated company-specific reactions.
- Fed speakers Hammack (8:15am) and Barkin (8:40am) for any signal on how the committee is weighing yesterday's CPI relief against Tuesday's oil-driven hawkish repricing.