August 27, 2026

July's core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index rose 3.3% year-over-year, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis reported August 26, 2026, matching rather than exceeding the 3.3% consensus economists had projected. The reading was unchanged from June, with the core index up 0.2% on the month; the broader headline PCE index rose 3.7% annually, also flat versus June and slightly above the 3.6% Reuters-polled forecast. Services prices drove most of the stickiness, rising 0.3% on the month, led by a 1.2% jump in financial services and insurance and continued gains in housing costs. Food-at-home prices eased slightly as some large retailers applied tariff-refund rebates to cut prices on select items, a modest offset to otherwise persistent inflation. With core inflation still running well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target, policymakers held the benchmark rate at 3.50%-3.75% in August, with three officials dissenting in favor of a hike; futures markets subsequently priced roughly a 62% chance of a hold versus 38% for a rate increase. Predict Six's community had leaned toward YES at 53% ahead of the release, anticipating a reading above consensus; the question resolved NO, as the print landed exactly at the expected 3.3%.

Nvidia reported non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings of $2.22 per diluted share for its fiscal second quarter ended July 27, 2026, above the $2.20 threshold in this question and ahead of the roughly $2.08 consensus estimate Wall Street analysts had projected. GAAP earnings per share were $2.46. Both GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins came in at 75.0% for the quarter. The earnings beat was driven by the same forces lifting revenue: total sales of $96.2 billion, up 106% year over year, with data center revenue of $89.0 billion accounting for the bulk of growth as customers ramped purchases of Blackwell Ultra AI accelerators. The per-share beat extended Nvidia's streak of topping Wall Street's earnings estimates, a pattern that has persisted through the broader AI infrastructure buildout even as some investors have questioned the pace of capital spending by hyperscale cloud providers. This was the closest of three related Predict Six questions on the same earnings report, with the market assigning only a 55% pre-earnings YES probability to Nvidia's adjusted EPS clearing $2.20, a narrower margin of confidence than for the revenue and data-center questions, though the outcome ultimately proved the majority correct.

Dollar General raised its fiscal 2026 diluted EPS guidance to $7.80-$8.00 when it reported second-quarter results on August 27, 2026, up from the prior $7.20-$7.45 range. The company also lifted its net sales growth outlook to 4.0-4.3% (from 3.7-4.2%) and its same-store sales growth target to 2.5-2.9% (from 2.2-2.7%). The raise followed a stronger-than-expected quarter: diluted EPS of $2.48 beat consensus estimates near $2.00, net sales rose 5.2% to $11.29 billion, and same-store sales grew 3.5% on gains in both customer traffic and average transaction size. Gross margin expanded to 32.6% from 31.3%, with tariff refunds contributing roughly 81 basis points to that improvement and an estimated $0.25 to diluted EPS. Management cited continued momentum in its value-focused merchandise strategy and cost-control initiatives as additional factors supporting the improved outlook. The report landed amid a broader discount-retail earnings season in which investors were watching for signs that value-seeking consumer behavior was persisting; shares rose roughly 5-9% in the session following the release, contrasting with a decline for peer Dollar Tree, which reported separately. Ahead of the release, community sentiment on this market was evenly split at 50% YES, making the eventual raise essentially a coin-flip outcome relative to prior expectations.

U.S. forces did not strike targets inside Iran before Aug. 26, 2026, despite the Aug. 17 expiration of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire arrangement and heated rhetoric from President Trump. Trump instead directed threats at a third party, warning he would bomb Oman if it "got in the way" of a Strait of Hormuz arrangement with Iran, rather than announcing strikes on Iranian territory. Coverage through Aug. 25-26 described the conflict continuing via the existing naval blockade, tanker seizures and an escalating sanctions campaign targeting roughly 60 entities on Aug. 24, rather than new military action against Iran. Trump told Al Jazeera on Aug. 26 he was "not in a hurry" and had "no time schedule" on Iran, and the White House said no talks were then underway, indicating a posture of sustained economic and naval pressure rather than imminent strikes. Iran vowed retaliation over the sanctions, but no U.S. strikes on Iranian territory were reported in this window. Fifty-four percent of the community correctly predicted NO; the 46 percent predicting strikes appear to have weighed Trump's Oman threat and prior strike history more heavily than the administration's actual emphasis on sanctions and blockade enforcement.

Sen. Darline Graham defeated Rep. Ralph Norman in South Carolina's Aug. 25, 2026, Republican Senate runoff, winning about 52.5 percent of the vote to Norman's 47.5 percent, a margin of roughly five points and more than 18,000 votes out of about 369,000 cast. The win secures Graham the GOP nomination to seek a full six-year term in the seat long held by her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died in July 2026 of an aortic dissection. Gov. Henry McMaster had appointed her that month to serve out his term.

Reporting cited President Trump's endorsement, reinforced by roughly $830,000 in spending from the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. on voter calls and text messaging, as central to Graham's win over Norman, a longtime House member with his own political base. Name recognition tied to her brother's decades in the Senate, along with sympathy following his death, were also cited as factors in turnout and vote choice.

Graham advances to the November general election against Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in the heavily Republican state, with the winner serving the remainder of the six-year term.

The community's 68 percent YES estimate proved correct.

No ceasefire between the United States and Iran was announced before Aug. 26, 2026. The two sides had operated under a 60-day memorandum of understanding signed in mid-June intended to wind down hostilities and address Hormuz transit, sanctions relief and nuclear talks, but that agreement expired Aug. 17 without renewal or a follow-on accord. President Trump told Al Jazeera on Aug. 26 he was "not in a hurry" and had "no time schedule" for Iran to return to talks, while the White House said no talks with Iran were then underway. Rather than de-escalating, Washington widened economic pressure, announcing an expanded sanctions campaign against roughly 60 entities on Aug. 24; Iran vowed retaliation. Trump separately threatened to strike Oman if it interfered with a Hormuz shipping arrangement. Rolling coverage through Aug. 25-26 described a continued standoff — naval blockade, sanctions and rhetorical threats — rather than any truce. Sixty-five percent of the community correctly predicted NO; the 35 percent anticipating a ceasefire did not account for the deepening rift following the memorandum's expiration.

As of Aug. 26, 2026, no U.S.-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz had been announced, and shipping through the waterway remained a fraction of prewar levels. Iran said the United States was standing in the way of a Hormuz arrangement being negotiated between Tehran and Oman; the two countries had outlined a phased framework for a temporary shipping corridor and mine-clearing project, but Washington disputed Iran's characterization, insisting any temporary routes be free of tolls, approvals or permissions. Iran's Revolutionary Guard said the strait would stay closed until the U.S. accepted Tehran's terms. Maritime-tracking data cited in coverage of the period showed traffic still severely suppressed, with some trackers citing roughly a 95 percent drop from the pre-crisis baseline. The impasse followed a June memorandum of understanding, which lapsed Aug. 17 without a broader settlement, and an Aug. 24 U.S. sanctions campaign that further hardened positions on both sides. Twenty-six percent of the community predicted a deal (YES); the 74 percent predicting NO were correct, consistent with continued Hormuz gridlock and no joint U.S.-Iran announcement by the deadline.

Nvidia reported total revenue of $96.2 billion for its fiscal second quarter ended July 27, 2026, topping the $93 billion threshold in this question and exceeding the company's own $91 billion guidance as well as the roughly $92.2 billion Wall Street consensus. Revenue rose 18% from the prior quarter and 106% from a year earlier. The beat was driven almost entirely by the data center segment, which generated $89.0 billion, or about 92% of total sales, as hyperscalers and enterprise customers continued ramping purchases of Blackwell Ultra GPUs and related AI infrastructure. Gaming, professional visualization and automotive revenue made up the remainder. Nvidia also guided to $108 billion in revenue for the following quarter, above the $104.2 billion analysts had projected, and shares rose following the report. The results marked another quarter in Nvidia's run of outsized growth tied to the buildout of AI data centers, extending a streak in which the company has repeatedly topped both its own guidance and analyst forecasts since the AI boom accelerated demand for its chips. The market's 65% pre-earnings YES probability on this question proved correct.

Nvidia reported data center segment revenue of $89.0 billion for the fiscal second quarter ended July 27, 2026, well above the $80 billion threshold in this question and ahead of Wall Street's roughly $85.8 billion estimate. The figure was up 117% from a year earlier and represented about 92% of Nvidia's total revenue. The beat was driven by continued ramp of Blackwell Ultra AI accelerators, with hyperscale cloud providers contributing roughly $48.7 billion and Nvidia's sovereign, enterprise and cloud customers contributing about $40.3 billion. Chief Executive Jensen Huang said on the earnings call that AI infrastructure demand was accelerating, and the company forecast total revenue of $108 billion for the following quarter, again above analyst expectations. The result extended a multi-quarter streak of data center revenue beating consensus estimates, underscoring sustained enterprise and cloud spending on AI training and inference hardware even as questions persisted about the durability of the broader AI capital-spending cycle. The market's 85% pre-earnings YES probability on this question proved correct, consistent with the segment's recent pattern of exceeding both guidance and Street forecasts.

Bitcoin extended its August rally through the week, trading near $78,500 to $78,700 on Wednesday, August 26, 2026, comfortably above the $74,000 threshold in question. The advance built on a roughly 23% five-day surge earlier in the week that had carried the cryptocurrency from about $62,800 to around $77,200, with prices briefly topping $81,000 on August 25 before easing slightly into the close. The rally was sparked by a U.S. Treasury Department announcement that it would at least double its long-dated bond buyback operations, raising the per-operation cap for 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year securities from $2 billion to at least $4 billion. Analysts said the expanded buybacks injected liquidity into markets and pressured long-term yields lower, encouraging investors to move into risk assets such as bitcoin and ether. Ether and other major tokens also posted gains through the week as the broader crypto market rode the same liquidity-driven momentum, with continued exchange-traded-fund inflows cited as an additional tailwind. The 65% of forecasters who predicted BTC would hold above $74,000 at the August 26 close were borne out by the outcome.

The Associated Press called South Carolina's Republican Senate runoff for Sen. Darline Graham at approximately 9:01 p.m. ET on Aug. 25, 2026, roughly an hour before the 10 p.m. cutoff. AP's decision desk made the call once about 91 percent of precincts had reported, with Graham leading Rep. Ralph Norman by roughly five percentage points, a gap combined with the remaining vote outstanding that made the outcome mathematically decisive. Final certified returns later showed Graham winning 52.5 percent to Norman's 47.5 percent out of roughly 369,000 votes cast, a margin of more than 18,000 votes.

The runoff followed an Aug. 11 primary in which neither candidate cleared 50 percent in a multi-candidate field to succeed Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died in July 2026. His sister, appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster to serve out his term, faced Norman, a sitting U.S. House member, in the two-week runoff campaign. Rapid reporting from the state's larger counties allowed AP to project a winner well within the pre-10 p.m. window.

The community's 60 percent YES estimate, anticipating an early call, proved correct.

U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman ruled that Blake Lively's request for legal fees from Justin Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios was excessive, awarding her roughly $400,000 rather than the approximately $8 million she had sought. Liman granted $363,245.40 in attorneys' fees and $44,206.35 in costs, a total of $407,451.75, about five percent of Lively's $8,035,040.88 request. The judge found that while her counsel's billing rates were not unreasonable, the number of hours for which Lively sought reimbursement was, and held she was entitled only to fees tied to defending against Baldoni's defamation claim, not the full litigation. The award excluded time Lively's team spent on tasks such as media strategy and press-coverage review, which Liman said were not integral to the defamation defense. The ruling followed Liman's earlier dismissal of Baldoni and Wayfarer's roughly $400 million lawsuit accusing Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and others of defamation and civil extortion, itself a response to Lively's sexual harassment and retaliation allegations stemming from the production of "It Ends With Us." The community forecast on this question, at 79% YES, correctly anticipated that the judge would side with Baldoni in finding Lively's fee request excessive.

No public S-1 registration statement for OpenAI appeared on the SEC's EDGAR system before August 27, 2026; a search of EDGAR's company database for OpenAI S-1 filings returned no results. As of that date OpenAI remained privately held, with no confirmed IPO date, ticker, or public prospectus. The company had submitted a confidential draft S-1 to the SEC around May 22, 2026, disclosing the move publicly on June 8 while working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley; confidential draft submissions, a standard early step for large offerings, are not published on EDGAR and stay shielded from public view until a company is closer to actually listing. Reporting in late June said OpenAI's advisers were steering CEO Sam Altman toward waiting until 2027 to pursue a roughly $1 trillion valuation rather than accept a lower price for a faster 2026 debut, and CFO Sarah Friar reportedly told associates the company was now targeting a 2027 listing. Through late August, coverage continued to describe OpenAI as only "reportedly targeting" a future IPO, with no public filing date set. The confidential-filing process and unresolved valuation negotiations account for the absence of a public prospectus. The 61 percent of forecasters who predicted NO were borne out by this outcome.

Moderna shares surged 177% to $174.38 on August 19, 2026, after the company and partner Merck announced that their investigational personalized mRNA cancer vaccine, intismeran autogene (mRNA-4157/V940), combined with Merck's Keytruda (pembrolizumab), met its primary endpoints in the Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial. The regimen cut the risk of recurrence or death by 49% versus Keytruda alone in more than 1,100 patients with surgically resected, high-risk stage IIB-IV melanoma, marking the first positive Phase 3 result for an mRNA-based cancer therapy and for an individualized neoantigen vaccine; Merck shares also rose double digits on the news. The rally briefly pushed Moderna's market value sharply higher before a multi-day pullback, including a roughly 20-25% single-session drop, as investors reassessed the commercial and competitive outlook for the therapy. By August 25, shares had stabilized well above the pre-announcement level, trading and closing above the $150 threshold used to resolve the question. The Merck-partnered oncology program has become central to Moderna's post-pandemic pivot away from reliance on COVID-19 vaccine revenue, and the stock remained highly volatile through 2026 as investors digested the trial data. The market's 88% Yes majority proved correct: Moderna closed above $150 on August 25, 2026.

The CDC's measles surveillance update reported 2,777 confirmed cases nationwide as of August 20, 2026, exceeding the 2,700 threshold and up sharply from the 2,465 cases logged roughly two weeks earlier, per Medical Daily's mid-August reporting. The single-week jump of 211 cases — more than double the prior week's 101-case increase — marked one of the sharpest weekly rises of the year, according to CIDRAP. Ohio and Pennsylvania accounted for most of the new infections, continuing a pattern in which under-vaccinated communities drive transmission: 94% of patients nationwide were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status, with cases spanning 45 states plus New York City and Washington, D.C., across at least 36 outbreaks in 2026. The 2026 total, already well above the 2,289 cases recorded for all of 2025 (itself the highest annual count since 1991), keeps pressure on the country's measles elimination status, held since 2000. A national verification panel met in mid-August to review CDC data, forwarding its assessment toward a Pan American Health Organization determination expected in November 2026. The community majority's 69% YES prediction proved correct: the case count reported around August 26 came in above 2,700.