Episode Description

This week’s Financial Hour covers a lot of ground — and nearly all of it matters if you’re managing retirement income right now. Tom Dupree, Mike Johnson, and Michael Dawahare start with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s interview with Jim Cramer, (https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/08/26/watch-jim-cramers-full-interview-with-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang.html ) which Huang argued that AI chips are becoming a revenue-generating financial asset rather than a depreciating one — and why that shift is already showing up in the bond market. From there, the conversation turns to Dick’s Sporting Goods, which slashed its earnings forecast just 90 days after raising it, wiping out two-thirds of its shareholder base in a single trading day. The hour closes with Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole remarks, where he laid the blame for “65 months of elevated inflation” squarely on his predecessors and signaled what that means for interest rates heading into September.

AI Infrastructure Investing: Are Chips Becoming the New Barrel of Oil?

Nvidia just turned in another blowout quarter — by Tom’s count, the 15th straight quarter the company has beaten expectations. But the more interesting story, in Tom and Mike’s view, is what Jensen Huang said afterward: AI compute is starting to behave like a financial instrument with a real return on capital, not just an expense. That’s the logic behind the $500 billion GPU financing and securitization discussion involving BlackRock and Blackstone that the show covered a few weeks ago — essentially the same slice-and-dice structure used in auto loan securitization, applied to data center hardware. Even more surprising: chips built back in 2023 are holding their value instead of depreciating, partly because Nvidia keeps improving the software and firmware that runs on them. Tom’s analogy: picture Hopper and Blackwell chips coming down the conveyor belt the same way a barrel of oil became a globally monetized commodity in the 1970s. He also shared a personal note on Jensen Huang’s Kentucky roots — Huang spent time as a teenager at Oneida Baptist Institute in Clay County, a detail Tom knows firsthand from doing energy infrastructure work in the area. On the energy side, the team also discussed Emerald AI, a private company using software to shift data center power loads in real time — throttling usage in one location (say, Phoenix during a heat spike) while ramping it up elsewhere, which can actually improve grid reliability rather than strain it.

The Dick’s Sporting Goods and Nike Earnings Shock: A Lesson for Long-Term Investors

Dick’s Sporting Goods just had, in Tom’s words, the biggest one-day stock drop in company history — despite decent core earnings. The culprit was its newly acquired Foot Locker division. In late May, Dick’s raised guidance on Foot Locker, projecting roughly $50 million in profit. By late June, Nike’s business had also weakened everywhere except at the newly relaunched Foot Locker stores. Then, just 60 days later, Dick’s reversed course entirely — that projected $50 million profit is now expected to be a $50 million loss. Mike and Michael’s read: a flood of casual sneakers shipped ahead of the World Cup created a sales spike followed by an inventory hangover, compounded by a new Nike CFO (recently hired from Pfizer) who had every incentive to reset expectations low before his first earnings call. Nearly 40 million Dick’s shares traded in one day — roughly two-thirds of the entire shareholder base turned over — on a stock that had hit an all-time high just 90 days earlier. The Dick’s family, which owns about 25% of the company, took a $250 million hit in the selloff, which the team sees as strong motivation to fix the Foot Locker integration quickly. [COMPLIANCE REVIEW — Hudson: this segment discusses DFG adding to client positions in Dick’s Sporting Goods after the selloff, and references the stock’s current dividend yield and free cash flow. Please confirm these figures and the trade description are appropriate for publication.] As stated on air, this discussion is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security — please consult a financial professional before making investment decisions.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole Speech: “A Discipline, Not a Decision”

New Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech didn’t move markets much on its own — Mike Johnson called it “a nothing burger” — but it confirmed a generally hawkish read: the market-implied odds of a September rate hike moved to roughly 55–60%, up from where they’d been previously. Two lines stood out to Tom and Mike. First, Warsh directly criticized his predecessors for “65 months of elevated inflation,” making clear that responsibility sits with the central bank, not external events. Second, his framing that the Fed is “committed to a discipline, not a decision” signals a move away from forward guidance and toward data-dependent policy. The team also walked through household debt trends: delinquencies on mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards remain fairly stable, while student loan delinquencies have risen now that pandemic-era forbearance has ended. Oil prices remain a major swing factor — Tom estimates roughly half the cost of goods in daily life traces back to the price of a barrel — so a calmer oil market could reduce the pressure on Warsh to raise rates at all.

“Markets do not always go up. Prices don’t always go up. So when you have weakness in prices for some esoteric reason, that is when you get an opportunity to buy — and add.” — Tom Dupree