Stocks ended the week in negative territory as a combination of Treasury bond buybacks, rising oil prices, and a cautious earnings report from Walmart (NASDAQ: WMT) rattled investor confidence across major indexes.
The selloff intensified on Thursday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the U.S. Treasury Department would double its bond buybacks beginning in September, a move that spooked markets already dealing with elevated energy costs.
Rising oil prices added further pressure on equities throughout the week, compounding the uncertainty created by Walmart’s earnings report, which struck a cautious tone on the consumer outlook.
While stocks struggled, Bitcoin emerged as a standout performer, rallying on news of a White House meeting with crypto industry leaders aimed at advancing the Clarity Act within the coming weeks.
Investors also interpreted the increased Treasury liquidity as a bullish signal for risk-on assets, helping to sustain Bitcoin’s upward momentum even as broader markets declined.
The week’s most dramatic single-stock move came from Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), whose shares surged 177% in a single session after the company announced its melanoma vaccine, developed in partnership with Merck (NYSE: MRK), significantly outperformed expectations.
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) also drew significant analyst attention this week, with MarketBeat contributor Thomas Hughes breaking down the chipmaker’s strategy of turning GPU capacity into a financeable asset, a move Hughes described as changing the conversation around circular financing.
Hughes also outlined five reasons to believe the S&P 500 will continue to rally through the end of 2026, anchoring the case in the fact that the index is already up 12% before the historically bullish fourth quarter.
The Metals Company (NASDAQ: TMC), a speculative play on rare earth metals, was also covered this week, with Hughes explaining why investors largely anticipated a delay in the company’s key deep-sea mining license, a dynamic that has helped put a floor under the stock.
Looking ahead, investors will receive a fresh inflation reading when the Personal Consumption Expenditures index is released on August 26, with markets broadly expecting a continuation of the recent cooling trend and watching closely for any deviation.
