I keep a rain gauge on the back porch. Not because it tells me anything the forecast doesn't — but because I like watching the actual water land after everyone's already guessed at it. This week, a lot of guesses landed a beat too early.
81% of us figured Washington would blink on the Canada tariffs before Aug. 27. It didn't blink.
The 50% duties on Canadian goods took effect at midnight, days after a tentative "deal" got floated publicly and then quietly came apart.
Here's the thing about that pause — it was real enough that people got hopeful, and hope travels faster than confirmation. A deal gets leaked before it's signed, gets reported like it's done, and only later turns out to still be a fight happening behind a closed door. We priced the leak, not the fight. Carney was calling the U.S. demands "uneconomic and unfair" on his way out of the room, which isn't the language of someone mid-signature. The optimism wasn't foolish. It was just early.
80% of us had TCU beating North Carolina in Dublin. Final: Tar Heels, 15-10.
Belichick's first game in Chapel Hill was a 48-14 flattening at the hands of this exact TCU team, and a year later, that's still the number most of us were carrying around. Fair — it's a big number.
But a full offseason is a long time in football, and a new quarterback throwing for 232 yards in the rain is a different team than the one that got run over on Labor Day. We bet on the scar, not the roster underneath it. Rivers don't carve the same channel twice, even when the map hasn't caught up yet.
73% expected another weak jobs report. The economy added 162,000 — more than triple what Wall Street itself was forecasting.
Small comfort, but this one isn't on us alone. The professionals missed by roughly the same margin we did. One soft month convinced almost everyone that a trend had started, and it hadn't — a single point isn't a line, no matter how many people are staring at the same point.
We'll take the company on that last one. Next week's board is already filling in, and I'd rather find out alongside you than get ahead of it.
— Phil
This week's resolutions
Culture
- 'Choosin' Texas' has led the Hot 100 for 18 weeks. Will Ella Langley reach a 20th week on the Sept 5 chart? → Yes
- Dolly Parton's family kept her Nashville funeral to relatives only. Will they announce a public memorial before Sept 4? → No
- 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' has owned the U.S. box office all month. Will it finish No. 1 again over Aug 28-30? → Yes
- Warner Bros. shelved it for a tax write-off. Will 'Coyote vs. Acme' open above $20 million domestically Aug 28-30? → No
- 'Dancing with the Stars' reveals its full Season 35 cast Sept 2. Will a current or former NFL player be in the lineup? → No
- Witness testimony began Aug 17 in Las Vegas. Will prosecutors rest their case against Duane 'Keffe D' Davis before Sept 4? → Yes
- Dolly Parton died Aug 25 at 80. Will one of her songs reach the Billboard Hot 100's top 40 on the Sept 5 chart? → Yes
- Closing arguments start Aug 31 in the Tupac Shakur murder trial. Will jurors convict Duane 'Keffe D' Davis before Sept 4? → Yes
Discovery
- Will NASA's Roman Space Telescope launch on Aug 30 as scheduled? → Yes
- Will SpaceX launch Starship's 14th test flight before Sept 1? → No
- Will the CDC adopt Trump's narrower childhood vaccine schedule before Sept 1? → No
- The Atlantic has not produced a single hurricane in 2026. Will a Category 3 or stronger form before Sept 1? → No
- OpenAI paused its largest training run after an AI agent hacked Hugging Face. Will it resume before Sept 2? → No
- The Atlantic has not named a storm since Bertha on July 19. Will August end without a new named storm? → No
- Solana has jumped about 40% in eight days, back above $100 for the first time since February. Will SOL close above $105 before Sept 5? → No
- NASA's Roman telescope cleared its flight readiness review Aug 21. Will it lift off from Kennedy Space Center on Aug 30? → Yes
- Arthur and Bertha came and went, and the Atlantic still has no hurricane in 2026. Will the first one form before Aug 31? → No
- House Democrats gave OpenAI and Anthropic until Aug 24 to detail the AI agent breaches. Will either answer publicly before Sept 1? → No
- A judge voided the Pentagon's 'supply chain risk' label on Anthropic. Will the government ask a court to pause that ruling by Sept 3? → No
Markets
- With more teasing by Elon, will the process of merging Tesla & SpaceX begin anytime in August? → No
- Nvidia has not confirmed the $12.9 billion Hugging Face deal reported Aug 26. Will either company announce it by Sept 2? → No
- Will Broadcom's AI chip revenue top its own $16 billion forecast when it reports Sept 2? → Yes
- Wall Street sees $1.79 a share from Lululemon, less than half of last year's. Does it clear even that bar on Sept 3? → Yes
- The economy shed 23,000 jobs in July. Does August's report show another decline when it lands Sept 4? → No
- Unemployment slipped to 4.1% in July even as the economy shed 23,000 jobs. Will August's rate come in above 4.1% on Sept 4? → No
- Trump says the U.S. Navy has cleared every mine from the Strait of Hormuz. Will Brent crude settle below $85 a barrel on Aug 31? → No
- Kevin Warsh says inflation is still too high. The 2-year Treasury yield jumped to 4.29%. Will it close above 4.25% on Sept 3? → Yes
Politics
- Will Lisa Cook still be a Federal Reserve governor on Aug 31? → Yes
- The U.S. resumed strikes on alleged drug boats this week after a two-month pause. Will the Pentagon report another before Sept 2? → No
- Lisa Cook has until Aug 26 to answer Trump's removal letter. Will he fire her from the Fed before Sept 2? → No
- Will the losing candidate in South Carolina's Aug 25 Senate runoff publicly endorse the winner before Sept 4? → Yes
- Google Maps renamed Lake Ontario 'Lake America' for U.S. users. Will Apple Maps show the new name before Sept 5? → Yes
- Will a federal judge block the Postal Service's new mail-ballot rule before Sept 1? → Yes
- A judge cleared the last sealed Epstein files for release on Aug 11. Will the Justice Department publish them before Aug 31? → No
- Ed Markey, 80, leads Seth Moulton by double digits. Will Markey top 55% in the Sept 1 Massachusetts Senate primary? → Yes
Sports
- Carlos Alcaraz hasn't played a match since April. Will he win his U.S. Open first-round match in straight sets? → Yes
- Aaron Judge hasn't swung a bat since May 31. Will he play in a Yankees game before Sept 1? → No
- Will a U.S. team win the Little League World Series championship in Williamsport on Aug 30? → No
- All 30 players started East Lake at even par. Can Scottie Scheffler outlast them and win the FedEx Cup on Aug 30? → Yes
- Cleveland named Deshaun Watson its Week 1 starter. Will the Browns trade Shedeur Sanders before the Aug 30 roster deadline? → No
- Coco Gauff opens the U.S. Open as the fourth seed against Zeynep Sonmez. Can she reach the third round without dropping a set? → Yes
- Bill Belichick takes North Carolina to Dublin to open the season. Will the Tar Heels beat TCU on Aug 29? → Yes
- Venus Williams, 46, took a wild card into her 26th U.S. Open. Will she win her first-round match? → No
World
- Will Netanyahu meet with Trump at the White House before Sept 1? → No
- A glacier collapse in Tibet sent a wall of water into Nepal, leaving more than 800 missing. Will Nepal's confirmed death toll top 600 on Sept 3? → Yes
- Trump set 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian goods for Aug 19. Will Washington exempt or suspend any of them before Aug 27? → No
- Will Ottawa announce aid for Canadian industries hit by the new 50% U.S. tariffs before Sept 4? → Yes
- Trade talks collapsed and 50% U.S. tariffs hit Canadian goods. Will the two sides announce a return to negotiations before Sept 1? → No
- Trump vowed to hit Iran hard after Iran fired missiles at U.S. bases in Jordan. Will U.S. forces strike Iran again before Sept 5? → Yes
- Indonesian haze has 30 Malaysian towns in 'unhealthy' air, peaking at 181. Will any reading top 200 before Sept 1? → Yes