Good morning, investors. Nvidia is teaming up with six of the biggest names on Wall Street for a $500 billion financing package for AI infrastructure.

Goldman Sachs and Blackstone are in on it, and it’s the latest sign that AI players are turning to private capital for financing.

More on that later — today we’re diving into decades past.

The S&P 500 is up 117% since the current bull market started in October 2022.

The bears betting on that momentum ending are fighting history.

With the rally 3.8 years old, investors looking to diversify into defensive positioning shouldn’t do so solely on account of its fast-approaching birthday.

Since 1957, seven of the 10 major bull markets have survived beyond three years, and each of those were positive in the 12 months after its third birthday with a median return of 13.2%, according to an analysis by ProCap Insights.

History is clear that the calendar alone is not what kills a bull market.

It’s almost always the central bank tightening into a slowing economy.

The two shortest-lived bull markets that cleared three years — 1957 and 1962 — both ended because of rising Fed interest rates.

Now, given that headline PCE inflation is running at 3.7% and core hovers near 3.3%, a handful of Fed officials have already signaled their willingness to raise rates. Meanwhile, payrolls fell 23,000 last month and more than 100,000 other jobs were revised away from prior months.

CME data puts the odds of a rate hike in September near a coin flip.

And yet the market’s fundamentals remain steady.

All that runs bullish and counter to a potentially dicey monetary policy outlook.

But whichever way you lean, don’t ditch stocks merely because you think the bull market has run its course.

History says there’s still runway.

📊 Chip stocks rallied after Taiwan Semiconductor posted a 45% jump in revenue. Shares of Applied Materials, Lam Research, and ASML climbed as investors treated the TSMC print as another green light on AI capex. (Yahoo Finance)

🏦 Intel is selling $15 billion of common stock in one of the largest secondary offerings ever. The proceeds will fund the company's foundry buildout as Washington and Wall Street lean harder on domestic chip manufacturing capacity. (Bloomberg)

🤖 The memory chip supply crunch will last another 2 years, according to JPMorgan. The bank pointed to soaring AI server demand outpacing HBM and DRAM capacity expansions and said prices for Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron will stay elevated into 2028. (Yahoo Finance)

🛢 US Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpiles fell below 300 million barrels for the first time since 1983. That reflects nearly 90 million barrels released since March to offset supply disruptions from Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz. (CNBC)

🗓 August 11, 1971: Britain requested that $3 billion in gold be moved from Fort Knox to the New York Fed, a run on the US gold window that helped force President Nixon to suspend dollar-to-gold convertibility four days later and end the Bretton Woods system.

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