Daily Briefing — August 14, 2026 | The S&P Tops 7,800 as a Week of Falling Rate-Hike Odds Closes Out

<p>The S&amp;P 500 closes above 7,800 for the first time ever after a soft July Producer Price Index report, capping a week that saw September rate-hike odds collapse from roughly 55% to around 34%. We cover the notable split within Thursday&#39;s PPI data, where wholesale goods prices actually fell even as services costs kept climbing, and GDS Wealth Management&#39;s read on why the Fed&#39;s real path to taming inflation runs through the Middle East rather than any single data print. We also cover oil&#39;s sharp Thursday drop amid a genuine, contested dispute over how much control the US actually has over the Strait of Hormuz, a mixed batch of AI-adjacent earnings from Cerebras, Applied Materials, and Super Micro Computer, Netflix&#39;s jump on a new Bill Ackman stake, and the yen&#39;s continued slide toward 160 against the dollar. We close with a preview of today&#39;s retail sales and University of Michigan consumer sentiment data, the final pieces of one of the most data-packed weeks of the summer. This episode is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.</p>