Spot palladium rose nearly 5%, trading at 1,417.75 US dollars per ounce.

U.S. stock index futures showed no clear direction in Friday's early trading session. Investors are awaiting highly anticipated remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Walsh, while tech stock investors are taking profits after Nvidia (NVDA.O) led the sector higher the previous day. Societe Generale analyst Rajapa said: "The core PCE data released this week sends a very clear message that inflation is actually more resilient than we expected." "If we look at this year's data as a whole, we must consider taking some policy action as soon as possible." Historically, speeches by Federal Reserve Chairs at the Jackson Hole Symposium have not been major catalysts for sharp stock market swings. Since 2000, without accompanying larger monetary policy shifts, the S&P 500 has posted an average weekly change of just 0.4% in the week following the Jackson Hole meeting. Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Management, expects Walsh will not provide forward-looking policy guidance on Friday, but long-term yields may move. He wrote in a report: "Whatever he says about the policy framework and the economy—especially his views on inflation, unemployment and the neutral rate—could drive changes in long-dated yields."

Fed’s Harker says the Federal Reserve should take action to raise interest rates, warning that waiting will only bring pain.

Silicon Valley-based leading venture capital firm a16z announced it has raised $1.1 billion for its latest fund, the Machine Age Fund, which will focus on investing in the full range of computing infrastructure supporting AI operations—including chips, memory, networking, storage, as well as data centers, robotics, and end-to-end systems like home AI devices. a16z noted that AI has hit a clear inflection point in growth of its application capabilities and use cases over the past year. As AI expands beyond chat and reasoning to knowledge work such as programming, demand for computing power and AI tokens is growing exponentially, with machine intelligence accelerating its deep development. The firm added that its team has deep expertise in hardware, data centers, chips, networking, and large-scale computing systems, and has built a resource network covering market expansion, talent recruitment, marketing, clients, suppliers, and U.S. manufacturing, which will further support next-generation AI hardware entrepreneurs. a16z said the industry is at a critical juncture of a computing paradigm shift, and it looks forward to partnering with entrepreneurs dedicated to reengineering AI hardware and driving the arrival of the "Machine Age."

Beating AI News: Google has begun internal testing of Gemini 3.8 Flash. Internal screenshots obtained by Business Insider show the new model, named Gemini 3.8 Flash Preview, is available to some employees and has appeared on Google’s internal programming platform Jetski. An employee who tested the model said it is “significantly better” than Gemini 3.7 Flash, but noted it is too early to give a full evaluation. Gemini 3.7 Flash launched officially on August 13, just 14 days after news of the 3.8 internal test was revealed. Notably, Gemini 3.7 itself was released only three weeks after Gemini 3.6. Google previously stated it aims to accelerate model updates to a pace of nearly once a month.

Key pre-market news for U.S. stocks on Friday is as follows: 1. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh will deliver his first Jackson Hole speech at 22:00 Beijing time tonight. Markets are closely watching whether he will signal policy moves from the September 15–16 meeting. Warsh has previously pledged to push inflation back to the 2% target, but has not yet indicated support for holding interest rates steady, hiking, or leaving room for cuts. 2. California’s "meme coin bill" AB2409 has passed both chambers of the state legislature and is pending the governor’s signature. 3. BlackRock noted that Bitcoin’s narrative as a safe haven and hedge against devaluation has returned to the forefront of market attention. 4. Following NVIDIA’s earnings report, Goldman Sachs raised NVIDIA’s price target from $285 to $300, Citigroup lifted its target from $300 to $315, and JPMorgan Chase increased its target from $280 to $320. 5. Anthropic plans to release its IPO prospectus after U.S. Labor Day, hold an investor day in mid-September, and go public as early as late September or early October.

Glassnode noted in a post that Bitcoin has rebounded sharply, approaching $80,000 again, with the options market also starting to send more positive signals. Bitcoin’s open interest (OI) in options has risen in tandem with its price, now nearing 550,000 BTC, indicating a notable recovery in derivatives market capital and participation. Meanwhile, DVOL has surged to around 41, signaling renewed market demand for volatility, though it remains well below the earlier high volatility range of 50 to over 60, meaning the overall market has not yet entered an extreme state. Looking at the options structure, the 25 Delta Skew has narrowed significantly across all maturities, with short-dated skew even turning negative, indicating that market demand for downside protection is declining and positions are gradually shifting toward a more balanced or bullish bias. After Bitcoin broke through $70,000, it has now entered a dense Gamma zone between $75,000 and $80,000, with long and short option exposures concentrated near key strike prices. As positions continue to adjust, this could further amplify the price’s sensitivity to changes in the options market. Recent options flows have been concentrated near $72,500 and $79,250, with significant call option buying at both strike prices, while put option demand remains relatively limited, showing traders are betting on further upside for Bitcoin. Overall, Bitcoin’s rebound has driven continuous repair of options market positions, with downside protection demand falling and call option flows strengthening. While volatility has rebounded, it remains at a relatively moderate level; if upward momentum persists, the options market still has room for further repricing.