> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.sharespective.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Permission to Wait - URL: https://www.sharespective.com/sharespective-2026-09-04/ - Published: 2026-09-03T21:00:03.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-03T21:00:03.000Z - Description: Broadcom sold US$16.7 billion of AI chips in three months and the shares fell anyway. - Author: Shaun Botha - Tags: Daily | ![Sharespective](https://storage.ghost.io/c/02/71/0271df32-cec6-421f-9f13-b06ab90e54c1/content/images/2026/08/mark-light-3.png) | SharespectiveWall Street, before morning tea | Daily newsletterFri 4 Sep 2026 | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------ | | ![Today's edition](https://storage.ghost.io/c/02/71/0271df32-cec6-421f-9f13-b06ab90e54c1/content/images/2026/08/kicker-1.png)Permission to WaitPlus: Broadcom sold US$16.7 billion of AI chips in three months and the shares fell anyway. | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | **Good morning, and welcome to Friday.** Fed governor Christopher Waller gave an interview in Washington on Thursday and said that if the inflation data due over the next fortnight behaves itself, he would be inclined to leave interest rates where they are. That is one official, describing one vote, with a condition attached. The S&P 500 rose 1.06%, the Nasdaq Composite 1.40% and the Dow 1.18% — the best day for all three since 4 August. Bonds moved too, the US 10-year Treasury yield easing to about 4.76% from 4.80%. On Wednesday futures put the odds of a September rate rise at roughly 63%; by Thursday's close it was a coin toss. The Fed has not actually done anything. It just turns out to have one member who would rather wait. ### Market snapshot | S&P 5007,747.59▲ 1.06% | ​ | NASDAQ26,584.06▲ 1.40% | ​ | NZX 5013,846.18▼ 0.61% | | ---------------------- | - | ---------------------- | - | ---------------------- | | ​ | | | | | | ASX 2009,020.10▲ 0.46% | ​ | USD/NZD1.6993▼ 0.59% | ​ | USD/AUD1.3878▼ 0.49% | US levels are the official 4​pm New York close on Thursday 3 September. The NZX 50 and ASX 200 are Thursday's local closes, and currencies were taken at the end of Thursday's New York session. | ​ | ECONOMY | | - | ------- | ## A single Fed governor said he could wait, and the market had its best day in a month Speaking at a Reuters event in Washington, Waller said that "if this continues in the data due over the next two weeks, I would be inclined to support holding the target for the federal funds rate at its current setting." The "this" is disinflation. He pointed out that three-month inflation has fallen steadily from 4.76% in February, called the speed of that decline encouraging, and said the labour market was in satisfactory shape with unemployment at 4.1% in July. **Why one voice carried so far.** The Fed is in an unusual spot. It has held the federal funds rate at 3.50% to 3.75% since July, and the argument on the committee is not about when to cut but about whether to raise — inflation is still meaningfully above the 2% target and oil has jumped on the fighting around Iran. Fed chair Kevin Warsh spent Jackson Hole sounding worried about exactly that. A sitting governor saying the Fed can afford to wait one meeting told traders something they had no other way of knowing. The awkward part arrived the same morning. The ISM services index rose to 55.4 in August, its strongest reading in six months, with new orders accelerating to 60.9, and weekly jobless claims came in at 206,000 — an economy still expanding, not one falling over. Waller's own caveat is that he could change his mind if the numbers between now and the meeting surprise him. | What to watchthe August payrolls report, out 8.30​am Friday in New York, which is 12.30​am Saturday here and 10.30​pm Friday in Sydney. Economists expect about 53,000 new jobs and unemployment holding at 4.1%. Then August consumer prices on 11 September. Waller has told everyone precisely which two numbers will change his vote, which makes the next week unusually easy to score at home. | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ​ | SEMICONDUCTORS | | - | -------------- | ## Broadcom sold US$16.7 billion of AI chips in a quarter and the shares still fell Broadcom's third-quarter revenue came in at US$29.59 billion, up 86% on a year ago, with adjusted earnings of US$3.32 a share. The AI semiconductor line did US$16.70 billion, up 221% year on year and 54% on the previous quarter, and now accounts for 56% of everything the company sells. The shares fell 2.7% to US$357.16, having been down almost 5% at one point during Thursday's session. **Where the problem sits.** Two places, neither of them demand. Broadcom guided fourth-quarter revenue to about US$34.80 billion against the roughly US$35.05 billion analysts had pencilled in — a miss of less than 1%, but a miss. More importantly, gross margin fell 210 basis points during the quarter and is guided to around 73% in the fourth, down from 78% a year earlier. That is what happens as custom AI accelerators and high-bandwidth memory take up more of the mix: Broadcom buys in more of the content it ships, so each extra dollar of sales drops less to the bottom line. Chief executive Hock Tan gave the number everyone wanted anyway, describing US$350 billion of AI chip orders from six large cloud customers over two years — about US$115 billion in the 2027 financial year and US$230 billion in 2028\. Investors were not in a mood to punish AI generally on Thursday: Snowflake, which reported strong quarterly results the evening before, closed 16.6% higher. | The catchgrowing this fast while margins slide means the profit line stops keeping up with the revenue line, and revenue is the number everyone quotes. Broadcom has beaten estimates nine quarters running and the beats keep getting narrower — which is what happens to a business already priced for perfection. | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ​ | CURRENCIES | | - | ---------- | ## The yen had its best day in a month and pulled global bond yields down with it The Japanese yen jumped roughly 2.8% on Thursday to about 155.7 per US dollar, its strongest level since 3 August and a move of more than four yen in a session. The cause was the Bank of Japan. Governor Kazuo Ueda has signalled that a rate rise is genuinely live at the 17–18 September meeting, and the market moved from treating that as a possibility to treating it as close to a plan. **Why Tokyo shows up in an American bond market.** Japan's policy rate is 1%, its highest since 1995 but still far below anything on offer in the United States, and for years that gap has funded a large trade: borrow cheaply in yen, buy something that yields more somewhere else. Japanese institutions are among the biggest foreign owners of US Treasuries. When the yen rallies hard and Japanese yields look like rising, some of that money has a reason to come home, and Reuters reported that Thursday's yen move helped push US Treasury yields lower alongside Waller's remarks. There is history here. The United States and Japan staged a rare joint intervention to support the yen on 31 July, and it did not hold — the currency drifted weaker again through August. A central bank that actually raises rates is more durable support than buying your own currency, which is why Thursday's move had more conviction behind it. | The tellthe BOJ meets two days after the Fed. If the Fed holds and Japan hikes in the same week, the rate gap that has underwritten years of cheap global funding narrows from both ends at once — and that gap is part of what makes Australian and New Zealand dollar assets attractive to Japanese savers. | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ### Newsworthy numbers | ​ | ​ | ​ | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | - | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 9.0%how far New Zealand's terms of trade fell in the June quarter, against forecasts of a 2.2% dip. Import prices rose 13.8% in three months while export prices managed 3.5%. | ​ | A$1.92bnAustralia's July trade surplus, better than the A$1.50 billion economists expected but down from June. Exports slid 3.3%, led by a 26% drop in gold shipments. | | ​ | | | | ​ | ​ | ​ | | US$5bnthe valuation Israeli-Dutch AI outfit Wonderful reached in a US$550 million round this week, roughly eighteen months after it was founded. Salesforce invested for the first time. | ​ | US$960,000what a signed Tom Ford leather jacket worn by Nvidia's Jensen Huang fetched at a Sotheby's charity auction in July, against a top estimate of US$60,000\. Unsigned, the same jacket retails for about US$9,000. | ### Worth a read | ​ | | | -- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 01 | **[Why renting retirees might be better off saving nothing](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/personal-finance/1250869/why-renting-retirees-might-be-better-to-save-nothing-if-they-don-t-have-200-000?ref=sharespective.com)** — the accommodation supplement cuts out at $8,100 of assets, so modest savings can cost more than they earn. Shamubeel Eaqub calls it an effective tax rate of 100%. | | ​ | | | 02 | **[Australia's housing problem will take a generation to fix](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-04/housing-problems-will-take-a-generation-to-fix-nab-economist/107111144?ref=sharespective.com)** — NAB's Sally Auld expects capital city prices to fall about 7% peak to trough and says it will barely help. Construction costs are up nearly 30% in five years. | | ​ | | | 03 | **[Send your dog's poop to this startup — they won't be mad](https://thehustle.co/news/send-your-dogs-poop-to-this-startup-they-wont-be-mad?ref=sharespective.com)** — mail-in PCR panels screening pets for 50-odd pathogens at US$129 to US$299 a go. The real business may be the 5,500 kennels and daycares, not the anxious owners. | | ​ | | | 04 | **[Saturn has grown a ten-sided storm](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260903064229.htm?ref=sharespective.com)** — Hubble has found a decagon-shaped jet stream around the south pole, a counterpart to the famous northern hexagon. It appears to be strengthening, so astronomers get to watch one form. | | ​ | | | 05 | **[Going up and going in](https://longreads.com/2026/09/01/free-solo-climbing-risk-philosophy/?ref=sharespective.com)** — Brian Laidlaw on free-soloing Boulder's First Flatiron, and on the philosopher of risk who drowned rescuing children. He climbed it once and won't again, because he loved it too much. | ### Wrapping up Tonight brings the August payrolls report at 8.30​am New York time, the first of the two numbers Waller named. Next Thursday the European Central Bank decides, and this one is not in doubt: all 65 economists in Reuters' poll expect a 25 basis point rise to a 2.50% deposit rate, with euro-zone inflation at 3.3% in August. US consumer prices for August follow on Friday 11 September. Oracle is expected to report on Wednesday, and the line to find is capital spending rather than revenue — the company is building datacentres against a remaining performance obligation book of US$638 billion, and how much cash that consumes is the argument about the stock. Closer to home, Australia gets the Westpac–Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment reading on Tuesday, which crawled up to 88.9 in August from 83.9\. The Fed meets 15–16 September, the Bank of Japan 17–18, and the RBA at the end of the month. The kiwi and the Aussie both gained on a weaker US dollar, taking USD/NZD down 0.59% to 1.6993 and USD/AUD down 0.49% to 1.3878\. Falling US yields did most of that work, though New Zealand's terms of trade shock is a reminder that the kiwi has a commodity problem the Australian dollar currently does not. Have a good weekend. The jobs number lands while you're asleep. ​ General information and commentary only. This is not financial advice and does not take account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. It reflects the author's own reading of public information at the time of writing and may be wrong. Do your own research and speak to a licensed financial adviser before investing.