To The Moon

Speaker: @Ross_Macro_Trading (Founder of Gongxing Academy, Partner at Morning Cloud Asset Management, B.S. Applied Mathematics, Columbia University)

Live Date: August 27, 2026 (Review Live >>)

In this livestream, Ross Dong mapped out where US equities, semiconductors, Treasuries and gold are headed into year-end — covering a Fed entering a less transparent era under new Chair Kevin Warsh, a Treasury Department stepping directly into the bond market, the forced hedge-fund unwind that rattled AI-adjacent stocks in July, and $NVIDIA(NVDA)$'s earnings released the same day.

Want a deeper dive? We broke this session down into 4 full recap articles, each covering a different piece of the puzzle>

• Live Recap 1: A Less Transparent Fed, a Treasury "Twist," and a 30-Year Yield Last Seen in 2007

• Live Recap 2: US Equities Are Expensive — But Are They Priced for Perfection?

• Live Recap 3: Inside the Situational Awareness Unwind — And Why Nvidia's Multiple Just Got Cheaper

• Live Recap 4: Gold's Crowded Bull Case, Portfolio Construction, and Q&A Highlights

Prefer to watch the highlights? Catch these key moments from the live session in short clip form>

• 【Livestream Clip 1｜Ross Dong: Why Treasury Buybacks Are Quietly Capping Long-End Yields】

• 【Livestream Clip 2｜Ross Dong: What Markets Really Fear About the New Fed Chair】

• 【Livestream Clip 3｜Ross Dong: Nvidia's PE Fell, But the AI Story Isn't Broken】

• 【Livestream Clip 4｜Ross Dong: Ross Pairs AI Winners With Gold to Cut Volatility】

🐯💬 Join the discussion: Share your market view or questions below. Every useful and thoughtful comment will receive Tiger Coins!

🎯 5 Key Takeaways

• The Treasury unexpectedly doubled long-end buyback sizes (from $2bn to at least $4bn per operation) — Ross reads this as a deliberate "Treasury twist" aimed at capping the 30-year yield, which recently hit 5.3%, its highest level since 2007.

• US equities trade at the richest valuation of any major region (~21x forward P/E) but also carry the strongest expected earnings growth (~19-20%) — a premium Ross calls "partly justified," with further upside needing to come from earnings delivery rather than multiple expansion.

• A concentrated, leveraged hedge fund (Situational Awareness, founded by ex-OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner) was forced to liquidate in July after a 67% portfolio decline, dragging AI-adjacent chip and memory names down together before Citadel stepped in and unwound the position within three weeks.

• $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ and $Broadcom(AVGO)$'s forward P/E ratios have compressed sharply ( $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ from ~30x to ~20x, $Broadcom(AVGO)$ from above 40x to ~20x) — largely because earnings estimates rose faster than share prices, not because the AI thesis weakened. $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ reported the same day: $108bn next-quarter revenue guidance, ahead of expectations.

• Gold's bullish options positioning has surged to nearly 3x its 2021-2024 average, and the Treasury buyback announcement triggered one of the largest "debasement trade" (gold/Bitcoin/CHF) moves of 2026 — a sign of real demand, but also a crowded trade.

🏦 The Treasury Isn't Watching From the Sidelines Anymore

Ross opened with what he called the standout development of the week: the Treasury's August 19 announcement that it would at least double the size of its long-end buyback operations, from $2bn to $4bn per operation.

The original buyback program existed for cash management and market liquidity — buying up older, less-liquid Treasuries. Ross argues what's happening now is structurally different: issuing short-term bills to fund purchases of long-dated bonds, reducing the duration private investors have to absorb. Markets have started calling it a "Treasury twist."

Discussion: Do you read this as the Treasury actively trying to cap long yields, or just liquidity management getting misread as something bigger?

📉 A 30-Year Yield Last Seen in 2007

The 30-year Treasury yield has been trading near 5.3% — a level last reached in 2007. Ross was clear this isn't a purely American phenomenon: long yields are rising across Germany, Japan, the UK, Italy and France at the same time, tied to Iran-conflict-driven energy prices, fading confidence in a sustained return to the Fed's inflation target, and AI hyperscaler debt issuance competing with government bonds for capital.

His personal view: the Treasury doesn't want a 5.3% 30-year yield, and if the Iran conflict eases, he could see it fall back below 5%.

🧮 Core Inflation Is Cooling Beneath the Surface

Shelter, used vehicles and other core services are moderating even as headline inflation stays elevated, with softer market rents still working through official data with a lag. Ross sees this giving the Fed room to ease gradually, without needing a sharp labor-market deterioration first — a more constructive read than markets may be pricing.

🔇 A Less Transparent Fed Under Kevin Warsh

With new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh heading into Jackson Hole this week, Ross drew a distinction between "transparency" — which he called a genuine 30-year success story for markets — and "forward guidance," which a chair can choose to scale back. His concern: less transparency about the Fed's reaction function risks delaying how fast monetary policy actually transmits into financial conditions.

📈 US Equities: Expensive, But Growing Into It

US equities trade at roughly 21x forward earnings — the richest of any major region — but also carry the strongest expected forward earnings growth (~19–20%). Ross's take: the premium isn't pure optimism, it's partly backed by superior growth. With valuations already near the top of their historical range, though, he sees further upside needing to come from earnings delivery rather than further multiple expansion.

Institutional 13F data adds a wrinkle: mega-cap tech remains modestly under-owned relative to index weight, which Ross reads as room for institutions to add rather than chase.

💥 A Hedge Fund, Not the AI Thesis, Broke in July

Situational Awareness built a highly concentrated, leveraged long/short book around AI infrastructure suppliers (chipmakers, memory, power, cloud) and returned huge gains before a margin-call-driven liquidation forced it to sell roughly $16bn of holdings to Citadel. Citadel then aggressively de-risked — offloading over 80% of the acquired position across nearly 100 block trades worth $4bn+ within three weeks. Ross's read: this wasn't a fundamentals problem, it was concentration and leverage — and once the forced-selling supply clears, AI-adjacent names should trade on fundamentals again.

🪙 Gold: Strong Demand, Increasingly Crowded

Bullish options positioning on gold has climbed to roughly 2.4–2.5 million contracts, nearly three times the 2021–2024 average, coinciding with renewed JPY-intervention concerns. Ross flagged the Treasury buyback announcement as triggering one of the largest single-day moves of 2026 across the "debasement trade" — gold, Bitcoin and the Swiss franc together.

His read: the setup is structurally supportive for gold, but positioning is getting crowded enough that short-term volatility could pick up even within an intact uptrend.

⚖️ On Portfolio Construction

Asked how he thinks about building a portfolio in this environment, Ross described his own split as roughly balanced between tech/AI and traditional value, with commodities layered on top as a smaller allocation — weighted more toward gold than Bitcoin or Treasuries. He was clear this reflects his own framework, not a one-size-fits-all recommendation, and that the mix should scale with each investor's own risk tolerance.

💬 Words from Ross Dong

"The Treasury doesn't want the 30-year yield at 5.3% — that's unsustainable."

"It wasn't a fundamentals problem, it was concentration and leverage."

"Don't build a 100% AI portfolio — otherwise you'd experience a very sharp decline like in July."

"The question is not the capex, the question is ROIC."

Closing Takeaway

Nothing Ross discussed points to a broken thesis — not in Treasuries, not in AI, not in gold. What he described instead was a market working through positioning and leverage, not fundamentals: a Treasury actively managing long yields, an AI trade that got over-levered in one fund rather than over-valued across the board, and a gold rally that's real but increasingly crowded.

The through-line across all four topics: price and positioning matter as much as the underlying story. A good thesis can still produce a bad trade if too much leverage or too much crowding builds up around it.

Post-Event Resources

Viewers can follow @Ross_Macro_Trading on the Tiger Community, his YouTube channel TMI Partner, or his X account, Ross Dong. More of his market views and research are also available through his official website, tmipartner.com.

🐯 Your Turn: Join the Discussion

Share your view on one of these questions:

• Do you think the Treasury's buyback expansion will actually succeed in capping long yields?

• Was the July AI selloff mainly a forced-liquidation event, or a genuine repricing that had been overdue?

• With gold positioning already stretched, would you still be adding here, or waiting for a pullback?

🎁 Every useful, thoughtful, and well-explained comment will receive Tiger Coins.

Let's compare different views and learn from one another.

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