Wild West Markets, the CPI Watch, and Where I'm Putting My Attention

With Kevin Warsh’s Fed deliberately staying quiet on rates, the market has the feel of the Wild West. Without clear guidance from the top, traders and investors are left to navigate using the data itself. The next major signal arrives with the CPI report on August 12. That print will help clarify whether rate cuts remain on the table, whether further tightening is still possible, or, as I currently expect, whether policy simply stays put for now. Only one thing is certain: the path forward will be data dependent.

The Fed Went Quiet. Now What?

Think of it this way: if your boss usually gives you a heads-up before anything changes, but suddenly stops doing that, you’d start paying a lot more attention to everything else going on around you. That’s basically where markets are right now.

Warsh seems to want the data to talk before the Fed does. That’s a reasonable philosophy, but it makes things noisier in the meantime. Every inflation report, jobs number, and spending figure suddenly carries more weight because there’s no central bank signal to lean on. So instead of watching what the Fed says, we’re watching what the economy actually does.

The August 12 CPI report is the next real read on that. Here’s how I’m thinking about the three ways it could land:

Inflation comes in soft: Rate cuts move back onto the table. Stocks sensitive to interest rates, things like housing, utilities, and small companies, would probably jump. Bonds would rally too.
Inflation comes in hot: Forget cuts. The conversation shifts back toward whether rates need to go higher, and a lot of the growth oriented stocks that have already priced in easier money would take a hit.
Right in the middle: This is what I’m expecting. Inflation is cooling but not fast enough to cut, and the economy is solid but not overheating. The Fed stays put. Markets might not move a ton on that read since it’s mostly already priced in, but the uncertainty doesn’t go away either.

AI and Space: Investing in the Build Out, Not the Headlines

Warsh has also been vocal about AI as a real structural shift, not just a buzzword, and that view lines up with what I’m seeing across the market and in industry.

A good example came out of the recent SpaceX earnings call. While Ship 40 was still floating in the Indian Ocean, Elon Musk announced an exclusivity deal with NVIDIA and laid out his longer-term vision for building space infrastructure using AI and robots. Some people still hear that and think science fiction. But the Terafab plans and the broader compute roadmap aren’t storytelling. They’re execution. The pieces are actually being built.

Investing vs. Trading the News

There’s a real difference between buying a stock because a headline moved it today and actually committing to what a company is building over the next five or ten years. Day traders play the news cycle and flip in and out. That’s a different game entirely.

SpaceX and NVIDIA stand out to me as genuine long term bets on next generation infrastructure. Not trades. Actual investments. If you believe the world is going to run increasingly on AI compute and that getting things into orbit cheaply is going to matter, these are the companies doing that work right now.

Energy Fuels (UUUU) and the Policy Tailwind

Another angle I’ve been paying attention to is positioning around things the government is actively pushing forward. On July 20, the President signed Executive Order 14415, “Securing America’s Defense Supply Chains and Ensuring Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials.” That’s a direct tailwind for Energy Fuels (UUUU), which runs the largest uranium mining and refining operation in the country.

I see the $10 to $11 range as a solid floor for the stock. The EO was signed a few weeks ago, but the shares have only recently started reflecting it, partly because a recent earnings report showed the company is less risky than some people feared. The losses showing up in the numbers are mostly tied to growth investments, not the business falling apart. In fact, the company posted a +500% year over year jump on one key metric. At these levels, UUUU looks constructive to me, especially if the company keeps locking in its role across uranium, rare earth elements, and other critical minerals the country needs.

Rocket Lab (RKLB) Reports August 10

If you’re watching Rocket Lab, this coming week matters. Earnings drop on August 10, and the main thing I’ll be listening for is the Neutron update, specifically how far along development actually is and whether the Q4 launch timeline is still holding. Cash flow and burn rate will also be in focus, since what investors really want to know is whether the company is staying ahead of the curve or starting to slip behind it. With multiple missions already booked for Neutron, the company clearly wants it flying sooner rather than later.

Put it all together and the picture this week looks something like this: a Fed that’s gone quiet, a CPI print that could move things in any direction, and a handful of companies that are executing on ideas the rest of the world is still catching up to. I’m watching Tuesday’s inflation number, the Rocket Lab call on Sunday night, and continued progress on the SpaceX and NVIDIA partnership as the near term things most likely to matter.