GS Duttenhoefer Daily

GS Johannes Duttenhoefer - Duttenhoefer´s Daily (17.08.2026) Johannes Duttenhoefer · Goldman Sachs · Executive Director, Global Banking & Markets Mon 17 Aug 2026, 1:25am ET

S&P −17bps @7786 (+14% ytd) ended a solid week (+40bps on good earnings, benign inflation and returned AI optimism); Asian equities starting higher (Nikkei/Hang Seng +31bps/+161bps); Brent $89, Gold $4395 and Bitcoin $63.5k; rates unchanged with US 10yr at 4.66%; the US x Iran 60 days MoU ends today; FOMC minutes this week; Nvidia on 26th Aug is the next big market event.

Drones: Trump imposed tariffs of up to 100% on imported drones and their components, with EU manufacturers facing a preferential rate of 15% and British firms 10%. Our GS Global Drones baskets with 36 companies can be found under GSXGDRON Index on Bloomberg.

AI spending: the top 1% of US businesses spent a record median of $7,400 per employee per month on AI in July; this compares to a record $650 per employee for the top 10% and $11.95 per employee for the median firm.

Copper shortage: LME’s front-month copper spread surged to a $370 per ton premium on Friday, the widest one-month spread since the 2021 supply squeeze.

Interesting: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei with an interesting post on AI which has been reposted a lot over the weekend; despite his cautious tone, the underlying worldview is actually extremely bullish on AI capabilities; his AI disagreement is about how concentrated that power becomes, how risks are governed, and how the industry earns legitimacy while getting there.

Alibaba’s Qwen: has become the world’s most-downloaded open AI model with >3bn global downloads underscoring the growing reach of Chinese open-source AI among developers worldwide.

Jan Hatzius: our chief economist with a few thoughts on global macro and the FED; “after 2 months of materially softer jobs and inflation data, it’s hard to see any of the doves shifting toward hikes. Therefore, a hike at the September meeting has become very unlikely, barring a dramatic shift in the tone of the August data due in early September (which we don’t expect).”

US consumer: fiscal support helped consumer spending accelerate despite elevated oil prices but we expect a slowdown ahead; we expect below-consensus real consumer spending growth of just 1–1.5% in 2H26 reflecting the poor starting point for consumer cashflow (the personal saving rate is low and real disposable income has increased only 0.5% over the last year), the fading boost from strong tax refunds, and a continued headwind from elevated oil prices.

Futures on compute costs: CME and Silicon Data have announced plans to launch two new futures contracts tied to the cost of AI computing power in October; goal is to give companies a way to manage the rising and often unpredictable cost of “compute”; the new products, called Silicon Data H100 Rental Index Futures and Silicon Data B200 Rental Index Futures, will track indexes that measure hourly GPU rental costs. (thx Soeren S.)

Ferrari: first ever all-electric car has fetched $40m in a charity sale, setting a record for a new car sold at auction.

Interesting on Software: we launched a software pair trade (GSPUSFTX) which consists of going long software that AI cannot realistically displace because they require physical execution, regulatory entrenchment, integration complexity, or human accountability, and businesses that benefit directly from increased AI usage – compute, data infra, observability, security, hyperscale cloud, AI development platforms (GSTMTSOL) vs going short software-tilted workflows that AI could increasingly automate or rebuild internally, potentially reducing need for outsourcing (GSTMTSOS).

2Q earnings: S&P EPS growth is tracking at +31% yoy excluding the “other income” related to some private investment stakes; we estimate that AI infrastructure stocks have accounted for 50% of that EPS growth; earnings growth for the rest of the market has also been strong and accelerating; the median S&P 500 company grew EPS by 14% year/year during Q2.

Stat of the Day: hedge funds net bought US equities every day this week and at the second fastest pace in the past year.

Chart of the Day: Company spending on AI has…