U.S. stocks closed lower for a second straight session as investors waited for July CPI data, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.34%, the S&P 500 off 0.32%, and the Nasdaq falling 0.6%. The market tone turned cautious as a standoff around the Strait of Hormuz kept oil elevated and Federal Reserve officials delivered fresh hawkish comments, leaving traders roughly split on whether the Fed could raise rates in September or stay on hold. At the same time, leadership inside technology stocks continued to fracture. Mega-cap names broadly weighed on indexes, while semiconductors, storage, optical networking, AI cloud infrastructure, and alternative asset managers outperformed. Strong earnings and guidance from CoreWeave, Lumentum, and Super Micro Computer fueled gains across AI infrastructure names, while Nvidia steadied after Jensen Huang addressed concerns tied to a newly announced $500 billion compute financing platform. The session also highlighted rising overlap between AI infrastructure and financial markets. CME plans to launch H100 and B200 GPU compute futures on Oct. 5, while lawmakers in Washington stepped up pressure on OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta over AI development. Investors are now watching CPI, energy reports from EIA, OPEC, and IEA, earnings from Cisco, Coherent, and Cerebras, and Google’s upcoming product event for the next move across rates, oil, and AI-linked equities.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is set to release July CPI data at 20:30 Taipei time, with markets treating the report as a key test for the Federal Reserve’s next move after last week’s weak nonfarm payrolls reading. Traders are watching four figures in particular: headline monthly CPI, core monthly CPI, headline annual CPI, and core annual CPI. Consensus estimates cited in the report place headline CPI at 3.4% year over year and core CPI at 2.5%, both 0.1 percentage point below June, while core CPI on a monthly basis is expected at 0.2%. That 0.2% figure is especially important because Bank of America has framed it as the middle ground for a possible September rate hike. In its framework, an average monthly inflation reading above 0.25% over the next two months would make a September hike almost certain, while a reading below 0.2% would push tightening back. RSM chief economist Joseph Brusuelas said an in-line report would give the Federal Open Market Committee more time to wait, while Goldman Sachs estimated core CPI at 0.19% but warned that oil has climbed back to $87 a barrel. Bitcoin was trading around $63,750 at the time of writing, with Ethereum near $1,884.

Bitcoin is stuck in a narrow summer trading range, and market participants interviewed in the source material said the next decisive move is more likely to come from macro data and policy developments than from crypto-native signals. According to Coinbase and TradingView data cited in the report, Bitcoin fell to about $63,700, down roughly 2.4% from $65,341.83 a day earlier. STS Digital managing director Jeff Anderson said Bitcoin has traded sideways for five straight weeks in an unusually tight $62,000 to $66,000 band, with implied volatility falling to the 1st historical percentile. He pointed to two pending catalysts: the Federal Reserve’s next policy move and the fate of the Clarity Act in Congress. Cap founder and CEO Benjamin Sarquis Peillard said traders should focus on Wednesday’s CPI print and whether Bitcoin can close above $66,000. He also highlighted the strongest inflows into U.S. Bitcoin ETFs since April, led by BlackRock’s IBIT, calling continued institutional demand a key source of support in a thinner summer market. Wincent senior director Paul Howard said steady ETF inflows have been offset by over-the-counter selling from miners and Strategy, helping keep BTC range-bound while global crypto trading volume has fallen to a three-year low. Howard expects the consolidation to last another three to four weeks unless there is clearer progress on the Clarity Act. Ault Blockchain founder Todd Ault took a longer-term bullish view, arguing that liquidity, adoption, institutional demand, and supply dynamics matter more than any single Fed meeting.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is set to release July consumer price index data at 8:30 p.m. Beijing time on August 12, a report that markets are treating as a key input for the Federal Reserve’s September decision. According to the Dow Jones consensus cited by BlockBeats, headline CPI is expected to rise 0.1% month over month and core CPI 0.2%, with annual readings seen at 3.4% and 2.5%. Both would be 0.1 percentage point lower than in June, but still above the Fed’s 2% target. Traders are currently pricing the odds of a September rate hike at around 50%, leaving the upcoming print in a position to shift expectations in either direction. RSM chief economist Brusuelas said an in-line reading would give the Federal Open Market Committee more time to watch incoming data, while Bank of America outlined separate paths depending on how the Fed’s main inflation gauges perform over the next two months. The report also comes after three FOMC members backed an immediate 25-basis-point hike at the July meeting.

TechFlow’s Aug. 11 roundup put two developments at the center of the day’s tech narrative. OpenAI reportedly locked down its next-generation model, GPT-6 Astra, after internal alarms were triggered by the system’s cyberattack capabilities, marking what the report described as the first such warning tied to network security performance. At the same time, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang responded to criticism around a proposed $500 billion AI infrastructure financing effort, saying AI factories have become investment-grade assets and that the demand behind the buildout is real. The broader update also covered a string of moves across AI, crypto, hardware and macro markets. Anthropic said it raised the known lower bound related to the Riemann hypothesis from 41.6% to 67.2%, while Claude now embeds invisible watermarks in all generated text. In crypto, Upbit listed DApp operating system token DOS across KRW, BTC and USDT markets. TSMC posted July revenue of NT$467.58 billion, and Intel was reported to be planning a $15 billion common stock issuance. The report also tracked Meta’s return to open source, Google DeepMind’s launch of Lyria 3.5, rising oil and gold prices tied to the Strait of Hormuz, and market focus on upcoming U.S. CPI data.

A Senate procedural vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, better known as the CLARITY Act, is expected around Sept. 15, nearly the same time the Federal Open Market Committee begins its two-day policy meeting. That overlap has put two policy catalysts — U.S. crypto regulation and interest-rate direction — on the market's calendar at once. Citing analysis from the EX.IO Research Institute, the report says the Senate math remains difficult. Republicans hold 53 seats, while a cloture motion would require 60 votes, leaving the bill dependent on Democratic support and vulnerable to defections inside the GOP. The biggest sticking point remains ethics language tied to crypto holdings and issuance restrictions for senior officials. EX.IO's base case is that the motion fails while the Fed leaves rates unchanged. Under that scenario, the firm expects crypto markets to stay range-bound in the short term, absent fresh shocks such as developments in the Middle East or moves in major commodities. The report also points to weaker but stabilizing fund flows, steady long-term positioning in spot Bitcoin ETFs, growing corporate crypto treasuries, and continued pressure from security incidents. The institute argues that even if the bill is delayed, the longer-term trend toward more formal digital-asset regulation and broader on-chain use remains intact.

TechFlowPost’s latest roundup tracked a wide set of developments across AI, crypto, chips, big tech and macro markets. In AI, Claude Code has made its autonomous mode the default setting, shifting the tool from a coding assistant toward a system that can execute commands on its own. At the same time, SemiAnalysis was cited in community discussion claiming Google’s Gemini 3.5 Pro was quietly shelved internally before launch, while another rumored model, Hark Handoff, spread through social channels on unverified benchmark screenshots. Meta was also said to be preparing an open release of its 30B model Muse Glimmer, with 4-bit quantization allowing it to run on a single 24GB GPU. On the crypto side, Upbit listed six tokens including CYS, ICNT and XAN, opening BTC and USDT pairs and putting fresh focus on smaller-cap sectors such as DePIN, chain-wide operating systems and AI networks. Community debate also turned toward the value of on-chain AI agents, with one popular post arguing that many projects simply route AI output into smart contracts without creating new trust assumptions. Elsewhere, traders cut the perceived odds of a September Fed hike ahead of CPI data, a setup that Cointelegraph said could matter for Bitcoin and other risk assets.

Markets are heading into a busy week after weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs data last week cooled rate-hike expectations. The main focus now shifts to Wednesday’s release of July CPI and core CPI data, followed by July PPI, both of which are expected to offer fresh signals on the Federal Reserve’s next steps. Corporate earnings are also in focus, with optical module names Lumentum and Coherent, AI infrastructure company CoreWeave, Cisco, and Applied Materials all set to report or host earnings calls as the semiconductor earnings season nears its end. Beyond inflation and earnings, investors are also watching the Bank of Japan’s July policy meeting summary, weekly ADP employment data, EIA crude inventories, U.S. jobless claims, retail sales, and preliminary August University of Michigan consumer sentiment and one-year inflation expectations. The week’s calendar combines macro data, central bank communication, and earnings from companies tied to AI computing infrastructure and semiconductors.