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ONE BIG THING
Exclusive: Goldman CEO David Solomon on how his dad taught him to think
David Solomon’s father never told him what to do. When he was running down the road to turn left, his dad had a way of making him stop and think about why left was better than right—not by arguing for right, but by forcing his son to genuinely consider it first.
Forty-some years later, Solomon is running Goldman Sachs, and this is the story he’s telling Goldman’s 2026 intern class on how to approach everything from career decisions to AI. Solomon shared the habit—along with a candid assessment of where AI helps and where it doesn’t—during a recent town hall with the firm’s summer intern class, according to remarks shared exclusively with Fortune’s Nick Lichtenberg.
THE MARKETS
Incoming jobs number may shift the Fed in September
We’ll get a new U.S. jobs number today (“nonfarm payrolls” in the official lingo). The consensus estimate is for 80,000 new jobs. Unemployment is currently 4.2%. A “beat” on the jobs number will be closely watched, as the potential inflationary effect might push the Fed to change policy.
The CME FedWatch index, which tracks Fed funds futures (and is thus a good predictor of upcoming changes in the Fed’s base interest rate), did a weird thing this week. On Monday, traders placed the chance of the Fed raising interest rates by 0.25% at 67%. Today, however, the index is down to 55%. That’s weird because yesterday the Financial Times reported that Fed chair Kevin Warsh would be willing to raise rates in September.
Buried in paragraph 11: “Warsh would be prepared to raise interest rates at September’s meeting if inflation readings released in coming weeks are hot, and markets ratchet up their expectations for increases in borrowing costs, the people familiar with his thinking said,” the FT reported.
S&P 500 futures were up 0.16% this morning. The index fell 0.18% yesterday.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 was up 0.24% in early trading, beating its all-time high of 658.19 yesterday. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.29% before lunch, and looks to be making another attempt to beat its all-time high set at the end of February.
Asia: South Korea’s KOSPI was down 0.6%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.12%. India’s Nifty 50 was down 0.37%. China’s CSI 300 was up 0.93%.
Brent crude was $82 per barrel this morning, up from a low of $79 yesterday.
Bitcoin was $64.6K.
MORE FROM FORTUNE
‘Don’t apply to OpenAI’: This hiring platform CEO sees 2,539 applicants for every 10 jobs – Orianna Rosa Royle
The godfather of Israeli cybersecurity: The Hugging Face incident exposes the wrong AI security debate – Shlomo Kramer
Asia needs deeper energy markets if it’s going to achieve its AI ambitions – Guy Wolf
We’re ‘me-maxxing’ so much, we’re saying 30% fewer words a day than we did 20 years ago – Catherina Gioino
Qatar’s Ooredoo, Nvidia, and Nokia unveil multi-billion-dollar AI compute platform—and Southeast Asia is their target – Melissa Hancock
Boards are calling retired CEOs back as succession pipelines run dry – Phil Wahba
AI
OpenAI’s next device is a $300 donut that watches you
We’re getting more details about what OpenAI’s new device will look like, as designed by Jony Ive’s LoveFrom studio, courtesy of Bloomberg: Portable. Moving parts. Donut-shaped. Flashing lights. No screen. Smart speaker. A camera to watch what you are doing. $300 price tag. And, crucially, not violative of Apple’s patents.
Lots of headlines in AI today:
LET HER COOK
The squealing ‘pigs’ of Wall Street think Lisa Cook will fix Warsh’s ‘credibility’ problem
J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon came to the defense of Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh on Wednesday, saying that Wall Street analysts should quit “squealing like stuck pigs” over the fact that Warsh is going to dial down the forward guidance. The squealers are still squealing, however.
“The bigger issue for markets is Warsh’s credibility,” EY Chief Economist Gregory Daco said in a toughly worded email to Fortune. “It’s a paradox to consistently talk about a ‘resolute commitment’ to the 2% target and then deliver ‘watchful thinking’ when asked what that resolute commitment means.”
At Macquarie, Thierry Wizman and Gareth Berry are equally convinced that Warsh will cave and deliver a base interest rate increase. The FOMC’s Lisa Cook is the bellwether in the Fed, they believe. She’s not a hawk but is talking like one, they said in a note.
“The Board’s Lisa Cook, who is not a ‘hawk’, said yesterday: ‘If I do not see signs of continued disinflation soon, I am prepared to act’. And, ‘with five years of above-target inflation, the risk grows that higher inflation may become entrenched in price- and wage-setting behavior, leading to persistence that would be much harder for us to attack.’ We still believe that the median FOMC voter will drag Kevin Warsh to accept a rate hike, likely in October,” they told clients.
IRAN
Iran’s Hormuz plan: no U.S. or Israeli ships, and a 7% toll for everyone else
U.S. and Israeli ships will be banned from the Strait of Hormuz under a draft of the agreement to control the seaway that was published by Iran’s official FARS news agency. In addition, ships would be required to pay a toll to enter the strait of 5-7% of their cargo value. Ships belonging to nations that have damaged Iran would face a 20% compensation charge, Reuters reported.
Understatement of the day: “That’s clearly not going to go down well in Washington,” said Thomas Warrick, a former State Department official who is now at the Atlantic Council.
Iran is feeling bold enough to escalate the situation because of persistent reports that U.S. missile stocks are running low, sources for Al Jazeera speculated. The Tehran regime knows that every day brings Trump closer to the midterm elections, and that the war is unpopular with American voters.
President Trump said yesterday he expects the war to end “pretty soon” and that it can’t “go on much longer.”
The Houthis in Yemen continued to strike Saudi targets over the last 24 hours.
Qatar’s LNG is blocked—and winter is coming
The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz needs to happen before winter, when Europe will begin to use more liquefied natural gas for heating, according to Goldman Sachs’ Samantha Dart. These charts show how low the supplies are and how little remains in storage.
CHART OF THE DAY
Google’s dominance of search is crumbling in the face of AI
For years, Google has dominated search with a market share of 90% or more of users. That has been a fact of life for so long that many thought Google was an unassailable monopoly. But the monopoly is rapidly crumbling as users transfer to AI chatbots for their answers, according to new information published by Bank of America’s Wamsi Mohan. Using data from Sensor Tower, which monitors app store revenue, Mohan believes that Google’s share of search is now down to 73% of daily average users. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has taken a 21% share; the rest are also-rans.
NUMBER OF THE DAY: Cybersecurity quitters
50%
The percentage of 1,000 cybersecurity leaders surveyed by Absolute Security who say that AI has become so dangerous and difficult to defend against in terms of hacking that they have considered quitting. “50% of security leaders agreed that the introduction of Anthropic Mythos and similar tools has caused them to consider leaving the profession. A quarter (25%) disagreed, and roughly a quarter were neutral—but a workforce evenly split between staying and leaving isn’t a foundation for durable resilience,” the report says.
THE FRONT PAGES TODAY
The Argentine ranch where tech CEOs plan to ride out the apocalypse – FT
McConnell discharged from rehab center, Senate return still unclear – Axios
U.S. Intel Finds Putin Could Test NATO’s Resolve With Limited Incursion – WSJ
Meta fined $567m in largest child safety ruling against social media giant – BBC
ONE MORE THING
They’re going to need a bigger boat
Nate Rouette and his brother Nelson went fishing on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and were shocked when they reeled in a tropical species of shark with a reputation for eating everything it can swallow, the AP reports.
The brothers released a juvenile tiger shark in late July after catching it from a beach. (This, of course, is in the vicinity of the fictional Amity Island, the setting of the movie Jaws.)
The five-foot shark is far more common in warmer southern waters such as the Caribbean Sea, but is moving northward due to climate change. “I saw those horizontal lines, indicating it was a tiger shark, which was super cool,” said Nate. “Immediately I started yelling to my brother, ‘It’s a tiger, it’s a tiger shark!’ And he was in disbelief.”
Tiger sharks can grow to more than 15 feet and 1,400 pounds. They are famous for sometimes eating man-made items such as old license plates and shoes that are later found in their stomachs. The adults are also more dangerous to humans than most shark species, including the great white that terrorized Roy Scheider back in 1975.
