The inflation gauge Warsh actually watches… Bitcoin’s 200-day reclaim… don’t forget silver… Nvidia’s earnings?

The July Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index report dropped this morning, coming in a touch hotter than Wall Street wanted.

Headline PCE rose 0.2% in July, holding the 12-month rate at 3.7% – unchanged from June and a tenth above the 3.6% economists were expecting. Core PCE, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, also rose 0.2% on the month, but it held at 3.3% annually, landing right on forecast.

Both readings still sit well above the Fed’s 2% target, where core PCE has now camped for about five years. But regular Digest readers know headline and core aren’t the numbers that matter most to Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.

As we’ve covered here in the Digest, Warsh sees the standard PCE gauge as a rough approximation of real price pressure, since a single energy shock – say, oil spiking on the Iran conflict – can ripple through the data and get mistaken for broad, sticky inflation.

His preferred measure is the Dallas Fed’s “trimmed mean PCE,” which each month tosses out the biggest price movers at both ends and averages the rest. It’s built to show the inflation that’s actually persistent, not the one-off noise.

So, what did the trimmed mean PCE show today?

It came in at 2.3%.

Set that beside this morning’s headline (3.7%) and core (3.3%) readings, and Warsh’s whole argument snaps into focus. The gauge he trusts is running a full point below core – and just a hair above the Fed’s 2% target.

Even better, from where Warsh sits, it has barely moved.

Over the past six months, the 12-month trimmed mean PCE has held in a razor-thin band – July 2.3%, June 2.3%, May 2.4%, April 2.4%, March 2.4%, Feb 2.3% – while headline PCE lurched from 2.9% up to 4.1% and back to 3.7%.

That’s the whole point. Strip out the extreme movers – the energy spikes rippling in from the Iran conflict – and the inflation that’s sticking has hardly budged in half a year.

So, while this morning’s report has the financial media chattering about a “hotter” number, the gauge Warsh watches is sitting right about where he wants it.

What will this mean for rate policy in September?

Three regional Fed presidents already voted for a hike at the July meeting, the first three-way hawkish split since 2016.

So, did this morning’s data turn more doves into hawks?

According to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool, no. While a hike is certainly on the table – current odds clock in at 40.1% – that expectation is nearly identical to yesterday’s rate-hike probability of 39.6%. In other words, futures traders aren’t interpreting this morning’s data as a game-changer.

Ordinarily, we would pivot here, recommending you listen for clues during Warsh’s first Jackson Hole keynote this Friday. But Warsh has made it clear he won’t be providing clues.

That leaves us with about two weeks of quiet before the next inflation report – the August CPI – drops on September 11. For a jittery Wall Street, that’s a lot of silence – but I expect Warsh won’t be bothered. When the inflation gauge you trust has held near 2.3% for six months, silence isn’t nerve-wracking – it’s reassuring.

Has Bitcoin’s reawakening finally arrived?

For the better part of a year, our crypto expert Luke Lango, editor of Innovation Investor, has had one word for Bitcoin investors…

Wait.

We’re deep in what he calls the “interhalving dead zone” – that stretch between Bitcoin’s four-year halving cycles when a crypto winter returns and patience is the only real option.

Luke’s guidance to readers during this time has been simple: wait for evidence of a real bullish turn. For the first time since the dead zone began, evidence is finally showing back up.

As I write on Wednesday, Bitcoin trades near $78,200 – up nearly 25% since August 15. Why?

The first catalyst is political. Last Wednesday, President Donald Trump hosted crypto executives at the White House and said his administration is “considering” sizable purchases of Bitcoin, once again pressing Congress to pass the CLARITY Act – a bill to establish a clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. Bitcoin tore through $69,000 on the headline.

The second catalyst was quieter but more important. As we’ve covered here in the Digest, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doubled the size of long-term bond buybacks from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. This surprise injection of global liquidity caught heavily leveraged crypto bears completely off guard, triggering roughly $3 billion in Bitcoin short liquidations.

So, is it finally time to buy back in?

According to Luke, yes – but cautiously.

Before explaining the “yes,” let’s cover the rationale for “cautiously.”

As for Trump’s comments, Luke points out that “considering sizable purchases” is the same mechanism-free language the administration has used before. Translation – believe it only when you see it.

Meanwhile, the CLARITY Act is also unchanged: the Senate’s cloture vote is still set for Sept. 15, still needs 60 votes, and is still reported as roughly six Democratic votes short.

Turning to the “yes,” there’s one major achievement that has Luke excited – Bitcoin’s recapture of its 200-day moving average (MA).

Last Wednesday, Bitcoin closed back above this key technical level for the first time since November 2025.

Luke went back through Bitcoin’s entire trading history and found exactly three prior instances of this specific setup: 6-plus months spent below a still-declining 200-day MA, followed by a reclaim. 

Here he is with the respective outcomes:

All three — 2015, 2019, and 2023 — went on to mark major, multi-year cycle lows. Not short-lived bounces. Genuine trend reversals.

Luke notes this isn’t a huge sample size, and there was plenty of whipsawing before the eventual real move started. Still, it’s bullish.

This brings us to his thinking on buying in today:

We’ve talked in past issues about opportunistic buying in the $55,000–$58,000 range as valuation got attractive. That was always a side observation, not the core thesis.

The core thesis has always been: stay on the sidelines until the market gives us real evidence the dead zone is ending. [Last] week, for the first time, it did.

So we’re starting to scale back into Bitcoin.

To be clear, Luke recommends a smaller tranche. He’s keeping the bulk of his crypto powder dry for additional technical confirmations: a successful retest of the 200-day MA, the retaking of Bitcoin’s 50-week MA, then the reclaim of $85,000. But this is big – wading back into crypto represents a massive shift.

Here’s Luke’s bottom line:

We’re not popping champagne. There’s a long ladder of confirmation still ahead… But for the first time in months, this newsletter isn’t just telling you to wait. We’re moving — carefully, in size that matches our conviction.

We’ll report back. If you’d like to join Luke in Innovation Investor to catch all his crypto analysis in real time, click here to learn about joining him.

Bullish on gold? Don’t forget silver

In our Monday Digest, we profiled the recent move higher in gold. We put the yellow metal on your radar back on June 15. It’s up about 9% since then, handily beating both the S&P (up 3%) and the wider AI complex (the popular AI ETF, AIQ is down almost 2%).  

But veteran trader Jonathan Rose of Masters in Trading: Live has a message for anyone still toasting that gold call: don’t forget silver.

In Tuesday’s free episode, Jonathan walked through how the U.S. dollar is cracking – and how to take advantage. One of the trades he likes most right now is going bullish on silver.

His tell is the gold/silver ratio – the number of silver ounces needed to buy a single ounce of gold. When that ratio stretches too far, it flags one metal as cheap relative to the other. And right now, Jonathan says it’s stretched.

Gold’s latest surge has carried it to roughly $4,670 an ounce as I write, while silver has lagged around $68. This has stretched the gold/silver ratio to about 67.5 – up from the mid-50s earlier this year. That gap, Jonathan says, could turn into a profitable silver trade.

Here’s Jonathan:

Silver – it will move, it will catch up. But she’s stubborn, and she’s going to do it in her own time.

I would not be surprised if we see [a parabolic move] for silver.

The full episode is well worth your time. Jonathan digs into the cracking dollar, ballooning U.S. debt, the yen, and how to trade the whole macro picture with gold, silver, and copper – he even covers the crack spread for all you oil fans.

Best of all, he doesn’t just hand you the trades. He teaches you to read these setups for yourself, so you can spot the next one on your own. You can watch the free episode right here.

By the way, Jonathan publishes these free MIT Live videos every day that the market is open at 11 a.m. ET. He profiles market trends, explains entries and exits, discusses the opportunities he’s watching in real time, and offers plenty of tickers along the way. You can sign up right here.

For a sneak preview on tomorrow’s episode, Jonathan will be doing a deep dive into Nvidia’s (NVDA) earnings that come out today after the closing bell. They’ll likely be out by the time you read this. He’ll also be digging into what to look for from Friday’s Jackson Hole Symposium.

Click here to catch it live.

One more reason to consider silver today

The AI trade has been treading water for months, and plenty of investors believe in it but are nervous about chasing it here. Silver offers a side door.

The electronics behind the AI and data-center buildout rely on silver’s conductivity, so if that demand continues, silver wins directly. And if the AI trade stumbles? Well, silver still has its monetary and safe-haven buyers to fall back on – demand that has nothing to do with chips or data centers. Two engines, one metal.

Now, this very issue – how to ride AI without betting the farm on a single name – is what three of our experts just tackled head-on.

Last week, Luke, – alongside Louis Navellier, editor of Growth Investor, and Eric Fry, editor of Fry’s Investment Report – held their AI Revolution Portfolio event. After a months-long deep dive into today’s AI landscape, they distilled their takeaways into a small, handpicked basket of their highest-conviction ideas – each with a recommended allocation.

It’s not only “what to buy,” it’s “exactly how to build it,” spread deliberately across every rung of the AI infrastructure ladder.

They highlighted this rebuilt AI Revolution Portfolio last week. We’ve made the replay available since then, but we’re taking it down tomorrow night. If watching it has been on your “to do” list, please make time today. You can catch it right here.

We’ll keep you updated on all these stories here in the Digest.

Have a good evening,

Jeff Remsburg

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