China and Iran Push Back on Bessent: 8 Key Items Shaping the Stock Market Tuesday

These are the early headlines and other items poised to influence the market at the start of the trading day. As we share this collection of market drivers, U.S. equity futures point to a positive market open later this morning.

1. Beijing has warned the US that it will retaliate if Chinese companies are included in any significant expansion of the Trump administration’s new secondary sanctions relating to Iran. The measures unveiled on Monday by US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent targeted companies based in Hong Kong and mainland China but stopped short of listing large Chinese financial institutions. (FT)

Iran pledged to fight back against expanded U.S. sanctions aimed at isolating its economy, expressing confidence that major trading partners would resist Washington’s pressure campaign. (Reuters)

Following Bessent’s big reveal on Monday, the market arguably shrugged it off as it waited to see what countries might fall under these sanctions. The elephant in the room of course was China, as it it buys about 90% of Iran’s oil. Last year, China showed it could bring American manufacturing to a standstill through its control of critical minerals essential to high-tech production, and now we will want to see how far the White House is willing to go ahead of the slated meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping next month in Washington.

2. Nvidia’s results on Wednesday will test whether the company’s latest Rubin chips can drive another period of explosive growth, with some investors questioning the sustainability of the ‌AI spending boom… On average, analysts expect its second-quarter revenue to nearly double from a year earlier to $92.18 billion — the quickest pace of growth in seven quarters — driven by an over twofold increase in data center sales, according to data compiled by LSEG. Investors, however, are increasingly focused on how quickly Nvidia can transition customers from its Blackwell chips to its next-generation Vera Rubin processors, with shipments expected to begin this autumn. (Reuters)

The fact that Nvidia’s (NVDA) share prices has been moving lower ahead of Wednesday night’s July 2026 quarter earnings report likely helps remove the sky-high expectations the market tends to have for company and CEO Jensen Huang. However, we have noticed that consensus EPS forecasts for the 2026 have creeped up over the last month to $9.00 from $8.95 a month ago. But a larger move has occurred for what the market expects in 2027 — EPS of $13.09 compared to $12.81 a month ago.

Here’s the thing, on price to earnings growth (PEG) ratio, NVDA shares are currently trading at 0.32x expected 2027 EPS when viewed against the 49% EPS CAGR for 2025 to 2028. That suggests that if Nvidia’s reaffirms the consensus view but the shares comes under pressure for missing the extreme Wall Street highs, we’re likely to see NVDA shares get snapped up. The closer they fall to the 200-day moving average near $195, the more aggressive that activity could be. Now to see when Jensen has to say on Wednesday night.

3. Boeing received a contract worth up to $131.23 billion from the U.S. Air Force. The indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract covers production and support work on F-15 Eagle Weapon System capabilities for the Air Force and other military customers… The contract has an initial order period through Aug. 24, 2031, with a five-year extension option. Work on the contract is expected to be complete by August 2037. (MarketWatch)

At the end of Q2 2026, Boeing’s (BA) total company backlog stood at $715.3 billion, which means the above program win is a sizable one for the company. Our view has been the company’s Defense, Space & Security segment is one that provides a solid, multi-year base while management strives to lift production levels at the Commercial Airplane segment. This win extends that runway and it also should provide some added wiggle room for Boeing to revisit union negotiations to head off a potential October 6 strike.

4. Amazon has raised prices for several of its first-party devices, including its Echo smart speakers and Fire TV line, making it the latest big tech company to increase consumer costs as memory chip shortages pressure several industries… Microsoft also said recently it will increase the price of its Xbox game consoles by $100 to $150, depending on the version, and that it would no longer sell Xbox consoles with 2 terabytes of memory, its highest-end configuration. Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Asus have also raised prices or reduced the amount of memory in their products. (Fortune)

Tesla has raised the price of two Cybertruck configurations in the US, quietly updating its configurator on the night of August 24 without changing a single spec. The Dual Motor AWD now starts at $74,990, up from $69,990, and the Premium AWD climbs to $84,990 from $79,990. (Motor1)

We continue to see the impact of tight memory capacity in the form of higher connected device prices as memory companies like Micron (MU) seek to address AI and data center demand. This keeps us bullish on the shares of Applied Materials (AMAT) but those higher device prices raise questions about potential volumes in the coming quarters. We’ll look to see if more of those device vendors look to mimic Apple’s (AAPL) recent tie up with Klarna (KLAR) to help ease the price point pain, or at least spread it out.

5. The final weeks of summer are typically quiet on Wall Street. This year, a parade of initial public offerings expected after Labor Day is making a lot of noise… Smart-ring maker Oura — whose fitness-tracking devices are favorites of the finance set — is now weighing a September or October offering after having filed its paperwork in May, people familiar with the matter said. The company is expected to fetch a valuation well above the $11 billion valuation from a funding round last year, the people said. Switch, which operates data centers, and SB Energy, which is backed by SoftBank and develops data centers as well as supplies power to them, are both meeting with investors in anticipation of offerings later this year… (WSJ)

To that short list we can add Anthropic which could IPO in September or October and a return of Dunkin’ Brands, perhaps the third time may be the charm for that company. Granted, the market is focused on recent performance of SpaceX (SPCX) and Cerebras (CBRS), but data from Dealogic finds companies that went public in 2026 are trading up 21% on average from their IPO prices. A rebound in IPO activity would be a positive for investment banking stocks, including the shares of Morgan Stanley (MS) and Bank of America (BAC) in the Portfolio.

With regard to Oura, we will want to dig into the eventual S-1 filing as well as comments made during the eventual roadshow that will shape how the IPO offering is priced. Our interest lies in what that could mean for the eventual IPO of Whoop, the largest holdings in the Neostellar (NSLR) portfolio. With NSLR shares once again below $10, we see that risk-to-reward as very favorable.

6. Red-hot demand for high-risk leveraged and inverse single-stock ETFs may be starting to cool. The increasingly volatile bull market has fueled investor interest in finding ways to double the hoped-for gains in the market’s most popular and volatile stocks. As these speculative plays have multiplied — ‌accounting for as much as half of all new launches in June alone — market analysts are questioning the trend’s durability. (Reuters)

We’ve talked about how single-stock ETFs have stepped up market volatility, but it seems over saturation is taking its toll on the product category. The rule of thumb in the ETF industry is a new fund needs to attract between $50 million and $100 million in assets over the first year, and the breakeven market is around $50 million. Data from Morningstar indicated that around half of the average leveraged ETF, each of which aims to deliver a multiple of the underlying stock’s return in a single trading session, has less $7 million. That sounds like potential reckoning ahead for us, and one that could help tamp down market volatility in the process.

When it comes to ETFs, our preference here at the Portfolio is to use them as a tool to bring diverse exposure to a pronounced, multi-year tailwind into the fold. That strategy has served us well given the more than 74% gain in the First Trust Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) we have. From time to time, we may tactically use inverse market ETFs to hedge the Portfolio during potentially turbulent times.

7. Economic data today per TipRanks: FHFA Housing Price Index (July), S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index (July), Consumer Confidence (August), New Home Sales (August).

8. Companies reporting today per TipRanks: AM – Bank of Montreal (BMO), Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS). PM – Box (BOX), Heico (HEI), Intuit (INTU), Zoom Communications (ZM).

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AAPL, AMAT, BA, BAC, CIBR, MS, MU, NSLR and NVDA.