The VIX is approaching 14, the S&P 500 is less than 1% from a record, and Salesforce moved 25% in a straight line in a single week. Guy Adami's point is that those three facts do not belong in the same market.
Most of the commentary after Kevin Warsh's Jackson Hole speech treated it as a non-event. Adami and Dan Nathan agree it was, and spend the rest of the episode on what the calm is hiding: a consumer that retail earnings say is struggling, delinquency rates back at levels last seen in 2008 and 2009, and an AI trade in which the largest supplier is also the largest investor in its largest customer.
"But over time, you do understand that that's a strategy that does not work. It feels good at the time, but it does not work."
Adami and Nathan are both CNBC Fast Money contributors and were on the desk together the Thursday before this recording. They also present the daily Market Call, which is where most of these positions get tested in public.
I listened to the full episode so you can skip it. 37 minutes of audio, 17 minutes of reading.
Here are the 13 takeaways that matter.
🎙️ Hosts: Guy Adami and Dan Nathan, who run the RiskReversal podcast together, appear on CNBC's Fast Money, and present the daily Market Call
📰 Published: 31 August 2026 on RiskReversal Pod
🔴 YouTube | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 37 min | ✅ Time saved: 20 min
Key Takeaways
Warsh gave the market nothing, and the market took that as relief
Adami's read is that the Fed chair repeated positions he held before the job and did not go near Treasury
Single-stock volatility is at levels neither host has seen in decades while the VIX sits near 14
Salesforce moved 25% in a straight line the same week
Nathan is looking for a 5 to 10% correction into the midterms
His trigger is not the economy: it is a fight over election validity that has already started in Wyoming
Rosenberg's warning is that nine of 18 Fed officials want to tighten into 1.5% demand growth
Against supply-side potential closer to 2%, which he calls a prescription for a policy misstep
The retailers and the payment networks tell opposite stories about the same consumer
Walmart, TJX, Best Buy and Dick's read badly; Visa and Mastercard are at all-time highs because they only process transactions
Delinquencies over 90 days are back at levels last seen in 2008 and 2009
American Express and Capital One are both down about 15 to 16% from their highs
Nvidia's spending across the AI ecosystem is a bet on every number at once
It works while the numbers keep coming up, and Adami says the strategy does not survive time
There are two points of failure in the AI trade, and they are Nvidia and OpenAI
Nvidia invests in OpenAI, backstops CoreWeave's excess compute, and sells to Microsoft, which is OpenAI's largest investor
1. Warsh Held the Line
Nathan opened with the morning's Jackson Hole speech, and the expectation going in that the Fed chair would say nothing.
Adami's read is that Warsh achieved exactly that. He reiterated positions he had held before becoming chair and during his short tenure, and did not go out of his way to talk about what is happening at Treasury
"I just think, you know, he's just sort of saying more of the same. He didn't go off the rails in any way."
The market treated it as relief, which is the reaction Adami says has become automatic
What Nathan took from the coverage afterwards is that the labor market is being read as fine, with the August payrolls report due on 4 September
The index level is the thing Adami keeps coming back to. The S&P 500 is less than 1% from an all-time high, which he called really extraordinary given everything the two of them discuss daily
2. Friday's Jobs Number
The payrolls print is the next scheduled event, and Nathan does not expect it to move anything.
The recent prints have been volatile in both directions. Nathan put July at negative 23,000 and June at a positive number he did not recall
Expectations are for 58,000 jobs added and a stable 4.1% unemployment rate
His conclusion is that it will not be market-moving, which is also what he took from the Fed chair's remarks
3. Midterms and a 5% Drop
Nathan's own call for the next couple of months does not come from the economy.
The setup is complacency into a period that historically is not calm. Coming out of summer into a midterm season, with the VIX under 15 and the S&P near highs
His example of the risk is procedural, not economic. He described a report that the Justice Department sent two election observers to a primary in Cheyenne, Wyoming — a solidly Republican state with a Republican governor who pushed back
His point is the fear of disputed validity rather than any particular outcome, and he said twice that he was not being political
The call: "a 5 to 10% correction over the next couple of months", because that kind of uncertainty has to get discounted at some point
Adami agreed with the direction. Volatility around election outcomes, he said, does not dampen volatility — "If anything, it's got to be accretive to vol."
Nathan added the split-government wrinkle. Investors tend to like divided government, so a blue wave taking both chambers against a Republican White House might end as status quo, with volatility on the way there
Neither of them expects the long end to be the trigger. Nathan recalled the fever pitch around the 30-year and the deficit when it crossed 5.3% and the debt crossed $40 trillion, when every major publication led with long-term borrowing rates — and rates are lower now
4. VIX 14, Stocks Wild
The disconnect the two of them keep returning to is between index volatility and single-stock volatility.
The index is asleep. A VIX approaching 14, with oil at $80 to $83 a barrel for WTI, which Nathan called striking
Individual names are not. Adami's example was Salesforce, "not a small company", which had a 25% move in a straight line to the upside
The claim is a decades-long extreme in both directions at once. "Individual stock volatility is probably at levels we haven't seen in decades, whereas the VIX is probably at you know, at at trough levels in terms of what we seen over the last 5 years."
Adami's broader complaint is that everything is already known. All the risks the two of them discuss daily are public, and the market does not appear to price any of them
He said that if he had been told in January of this year what the year would contain, there is no way he would have forecast a VIX under 15 and an S&P near record highs
5. Canada, Iran, Moscow
Nathan's list of what could add volatility over the next couple of months is mostly diplomatic.
The trade fight with Canada is the one he thinks is off-message. With affordability the stated priority, the administration has picked a fight with its largest trading partner, and that partner is now emboldened
He cited David Rosenberg of Rosenberg Research on the inability to stay on message
Nathan referred to a survey showing that some 60% of Canadian citizens approve of Carney walking away from the trade deal, which he reads as rising nationalism
The direct number is small — he put it at $20 billion of goods, not aimed at energy — and his point is the signaling
Iran, in his reading, is waiting out the midterms
The Moscow story is the one he thinks matters most. The head of the CIA turned up in Moscow to deliver a warning not to interfere with Western Europe
If Russia moves on European companies supplying drones, starting with Poland, that tests NATO and the US commitment to it
"And if you want to see things get flared up as far as the global economy, just watch that happen."
Adami added Russian movements to the same pile and said the market's response to all of it is ambivalence
6. Rosenberg's Fed Warning
The show's producer pulled a midterm statistic during the recording, and Nathan then read out Rosenberg's note on the Fed.
The drawdown history, which Nathan said came from Gemini, is worse than the average year. "Midterm years average larger peak-to-trough drawdowns around 16 to 17 and 1/2% compared to other years in presidential cycles."
Against a roughly 10% average drawdown in other years, with strong average gains in the 12 months after the vote once the result is known
Rosenberg's point is that the hawks are not three dissenters. "It's more like nine of the 18 tightening into a 1.5% demand growth environment, that's real GDP, when supply side potential is closer to 2%. This is a prescription for a policy misstep."
Rosenberg's caveat is that the revisions to the Bureau of Economic Analysis PCE deflator and the conclusions of the Warsh task force are both still outstanding
Nathan noted that Warsh mentioned the task force several times and asked Adami whether that gave him any confidence
7. Do Nothing Until Spring
Adami's answer was to give the Fed chair the benefit of the doubt and then argue for inaction.
His reading of the hawkish tone is that it is a warning shot rather than a plan. Warsh understands the weak-growth backdrop, Adami said, and is talking hawkish to the market
The prescription he has held since June is to sit still. From June of this year to spring of next, barring something unforeseen, doing nothing is the best case for the Federal Reserve
"They can continue to sort of have a hawkish tone, they can see where things come in, and they don't have to do anything."
"sometimes the best trade you make is no trade at all."
He was explicit that he is not claiming to be right, and repeated the hedge twice in the same answer
8. The Consumer Divide
Nathan turned to last week's retail earnings, where he sees a through line that the index level hides.
The retail read was poor across price points. Nathan named Walmart's earnings and the stock's reaction as the standout, and added TJX, Best Buy and Dick's Sporting Goods
His point is that even the retailers that should benefit from consumers trading down are not doing particularly well
Adami's framing is a widening gap rather than a soft patch. "I mean, that chasm between the real economy and the stock market continues to sort of widen on a daily basis."
"So, the stock market is saying one thing and then the consumer stocks and sort of the boots on the ground people are saying something entirely different."
His view is that at some point the second signal is the one to listen to
The card names split by what they actually do. Nathan corrected himself mid-answer: it is the cohort using American Express that concerns him, and the stock is down 15 to 16% from an all-time high he placed about six months ago
Capital One is down about 16% and trading in the middle of its range
Visa and Mastercard are back at 52-week and all-time highs
Adami's explanation is that the two pairs are not comparable businesses. Visa and Mastercard process transactions, and "never underestimate that US consumers want to spend"
He treats them as transaction processors rather than consumer credit exposure
The credit signal is in the delinquency data. "And if you look at the numbers, delinquency rates over 90 days continue to rise." Adami put them at the highest levels since 2008 and 2009
"What the market is saying is we don't care."
"But, to not point it out is not doing anybody any service."
9. Inflation Isn't Falling
Adami's counter to the case for cuts is that the inflation problem has not gone away, and that the language around it is wrong.
The distinction he insists on is between the level and the rate. "Inflation is going up less fast." and "For inflation to go down, you actually have to have negative numbers."
His conclusion is that the economy is nowhere near that
The words he says have been in use for five years are "pesky and persistent", and he thinks the aftermath is still being worked through
Nathan's addition is that the cumulative effect is what bites. Wage growth is not keeping up with inflation, which is a hard problem for anyone living paycheck to paycheck
He put job-replacement fear in the same bucket. Anxiety about AI displacing blue-collar and white-collar work feeds consumer confidence numbers, and those numbers feed policy
10. Nvidia at the Roulette
On last week's earnings, Adami's problem is not the quarter, which he called extraordinary.
The numbers are not in dispute. 100% revenue growth, at what Nathan put at a $100 billion quarterly run rate
The valuation is what he cannot square. Nvidia trades at less than a market multiple while peers trade at twice the valuation, and Adami's conclusion is that the market is sniffing something out
His objection is to where the money is going. Nathan framed it as the cynicism spreading among investors about Nvidia throwing tens or hundreds of billions around the ecosystem
Nathan quoted the pre-earnings coverage: "But Nvidia has become the banker to the AI boom, putting it all in dangerous ground."
He also cited a Wall Street Journal question about whether there would be an AI investment craze at all without Nvidia's $279 billion
Adami's analogy is a roulette player covering the board. The bet always looks brilliant when a number comes up, and the market treats each hit as evidence of genius
"But over time, you do understand that that's a strategy that does not work. It feels good at the time, but it does not work."
Nathan's version of the same point is leverage in both directions. If the investments turn into orders and the orders can be monetized, "It's going to be a $10 trillion market cap company in a couple years."
"But if the whole thing fails, do you remember what happened to Nortel and Lucent and Sun Microsystems? They went to zero." Adami added Cisco
11. The Jenga Diagram
Nathan then read out the map of the relationships that he had written out for a friend.
The chain doubles back on itself at every link. OpenAI is Nvidia's largest customer and Nvidia is OpenAI's largest investor; Microsoft is OpenAI's largest investor and OpenAI is Microsoft's largest customer; Microsoft is one of Nvidia's largest customers
CoreWeave sits inside the same loop. Nvidia is its largest investor, it buys all its GPUs from Nvidia, Nvidia backstops those sales by agreeing to buy any excess compute, and its largest customer is Microsoft
His conclusion is a structural one. "There's two points of failure here. It's Nvidia and it's OpenAI. And if one of these falters, the other one is likely to falter"
He described the rest as a game of Jenga coming down
12. Everyone Builds a Chip
The other pressure Nathan sees on Nvidia is that its own customers are becoming its competitors.
Adami raised OpenAI's own chip claim. He said Sam Altman or someone at OpenAI had said the company has a chip that rivals Nvidia's at perhaps a third of the cost — with the caveat that they will not be able to get the components or the memory for it
He read the announcement as a shot across the bow given how intertwined the two companies are
Nathan's list of in-house silicon is the real point. "Google's got their TPUs that are selling to other people. AMD's got Radeon. Amazon's got Trainium."
The transmission mechanism he describes runs through price. If everyone competes on price, margins come in, sales decelerate, and the ecosystem investments start to fail
"You see some of these neo clouds, you know, they're going to be the casualties of any pullback."
13. Software, Dell and Broadcom
The last stretch was three names, two of them previews.
On Salesforce, up 25 to 26%, Adami thinks the software trade has been given room rather than a clean bill of health. "I think the quarter gave some runway for this software trade to continue."
He does not think the headwinds facing the sector are over by any stretch, and said people are behind on the trade
Nathan noted, on Adami's own reading from Market Call, that the move retraces about half the distance between the all-time high and the recent low
Adami traced part of the move to the buyback the company announced earlier in the year, whose effects he thinks are only now showing up
On Dell, the question is memory costs. Nathan expects the read-through from the memory names to be a drag on margins, and thinks Dell will have to raise prices because access to memory is expensive
Adami thinks the valuation is ahead of itself for a hardware company
He also drew a connection he flagged as non-political: Michael Dell announced a significant investment in the Trump accounts, and weeks later the administration was speaking glowingly about Dell. "So a little quid pro quo."
On Broadcom, the puzzle is why it has not worked. The stock made an all-time high close to $500 in June and has gone sideways to slightly lower since, despite revenue growth, earnings growth and a margin profile Nathan compared to Nvidia's
Nathan noted the credit facility backed by Blackstone and BlackRock, which he put at $35 billion, to fund the TPUs that compete with Nvidia's GPUs
Adami's levels: support around 355 to 360 against a price of 375, so a shot against that support is the trade. "Don't don't be surprised to see a 15 to 20% move in either direction, but 355 is your line in the sand."
Bonus Insights
The show has a fan with a Guy Adami t-shirt. At Thursday's Fast Money taping a viewer turned up in a black shirt with Adami's portrait on the front, "established in Croton-on-Hudson, New York" underneath it, and his catchphrases printed on the back
Nathan declined the offer of one for himself
Jackson Hole, at length. Nathan has hiked the Tetons in summer and thinks it is better then than in winter; Adami has watched a den of wolves through a scope from a distance
Adami claimed New Jersey is the most densely populated state and Wyoming the least, then corrected himself later: Alaska is last and Wyoming second to last
A moose on the pass in 2004. Nathan's story about driving a Ford Explorer over the pass from Idaho with Brian Merritt of YCharts, who later introduced the show to FactSet, its partner for five and a half years
The craps digression that set up the Nvidia argument. Adami plays craps because played correctly the odds are 50.3% house against 49.7% player: "So, it's almost a 50/50 thing if you play correctly, as opposed to some of these other games, which obviously the house has a huge advantage."
The Little League World Series, and how the episode nearly got its title. Adami has been watching a player on the Alabama team — the daughter of a former major leaguer, a shortstop and pitcher who wears a bow in her hair, which produced the team slogan "fear the bow"
Nathan does not watch, and explained why: an eye problem in the late 1970s meant he could not see the ball, never got a hit, and moved to lacrosse instead
The digression turned into an argument about The Bad News Bears, Tatum O'Neal, and the coach whose day job was cleaning pools while the kids did the work
The research tooling got a mention twice. Nathan referred to putting a question to the producer for a quick answer, noted that the show uses Claude, and then read the answer out from Gemini
Adami's bottom line is that a market pricing a VIX near 14 against a consumer whose delinquency rates are back at 2008 levels, and an AI complex whose largest supplier is financing its own demand, is a market that has decided not to care — and that the job is to point it out anyway.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Nvidia (100% revenue growth at a $100 billion quarterly run rate, trading below a market multiple, and spending across the ecosystem in a way Adami compares to covering every number on a roulette table)
OpenAI and Microsoft (The other two corners of the loop: Nvidia's largest customer and its investor, and the company that is both OpenAI's largest investor and its largest customer)
CoreWeave (Nvidia is its largest investor, supplies all its GPUs, backstops the sales by agreeing to buy excess compute, and its largest customer is Microsoft)
Salesforce (Up 25 to 26% in a straight line; Adami thinks the quarter bought the software trade runway rather than ending its headwinds)
Broadcom (An all-time high near $500 in June and sideways since, with support at 355 to 360 and a possible 15 to 20% move on earnings)
Dell (Reports next; the question is whether memory costs hit margins, and Adami thinks the valuation has run ahead of a hardware business)
Visa and Mastercard (At 52-week and all-time highs, which Adami reads as a transaction signal rather than a credit one)
American Express and Capital One (Both down about 15 to 16% from their highs, which is where the two hosts look for credit deterioration)
Walmart, TJX, Best Buy and Dick's Sporting Goods (The retail earnings Nathan says all point the same way on the consumer)
Google, AMD and Amazon (The in-house silicon programs — TPUs, Radeon and Trainium — that Nathan thinks compress Nvidia's pricing)
Blackstone and BlackRock (Behind the credit facility Nathan put at $35 billion to fund TPU capacity)
Nortel, Lucent, Sun Microsystems and Cisco (Nathan's and Adami's reference class for what happens to the suppliers when a capital-spending boom ends)
Claude and Gemini (The tools the show used live to pull the midterm drawdown history)
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