JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s trading desk has shifted to a “tactically cautious” stance on US stocks for the next few weeks, following hawkish comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh that strengthened expectations for interest-rate hikes this year, according to a Bloomberg report.

Traders led by Andrew Tyler, head of US market intelligence, moved away from their bullish view ahead of the Fed’s Sept. 16 policy decision, citing uncertainty over the interest-rate outlook.

Despite near-term risks, JPMorgan expects the broader market backdrop to remain supportive, helped by economic data and corporate earnings.

“We are moving to a tactically cautious / neutral view, which is to say that equity-market fundamentals remain strong, but that near-term variables are likely to cause markets to chop sideways,” Tyler wrote.

The US 10-year Treasury yield rose above 4.75% on Monday for the first time since January 2025. Swaps now imply nearly a 70% probability of a quarter-point Fed rate hike next month.

Tyler cited rate uncertainty, seasonal weakness and a potential unwind in high-flying AI stocks as key near-term risks, while noting that overall equity positioning remains largely neutral.
September is historically the weakest month for US stocks, adding to investor concerns over the sustainability of the AI rally and persistent inflation.The August jobs report due Friday will be important, while consumer-price data due Sept. 11 could have greater significance for the Fed’s decision.

Tyler said a recession is currently unlikely over the next few quarters, but added that the Fed’s Sept. 16 meeting is a “live meeting” given the latest inflation concerns.

“Equity bull markets tend to end with either a hiking cycle or a recession,” Tyler said. “Currently, a recession is highly unlikely to manifest over the next few quarters,”

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a bipartisan group of 22 states has filed a lawsuit alleging Amazon secretly overcharged more than a million advertising customers by manipulating online auctions it uses to set ad prices.

The FTC and states say in their lawsuit filed Monday that the alleged scheme has likely netted the company $20bn from advertising customers since 2019.

“Amazon overrides and replaces the actual auction results with higher prices set by Amazon to increase its profits,” says a complaint filed in the company’s home state of Washington.

In a statement to the BBC, Amazon “strongly disagrees” with the premise that it misled advertisers and called the suit “misguided.”

In addition to advertisers, the FTC, a US consumer watchdog, and the states say Amazon customers have also been harmed as extra costs are passed onto shoppers.

“Consumers are suffering, have suffered, and will continue to suffer substantial injury as a result,” the complaint states, prompting swift pushback from Amazon.

“The FTC wants the public to believe this case is about higher prices for consumers. It is not,” Amazon said in its statement.

The company’s shares fell following the announcement of the lawsuit, closing 2.5% lower on Monday.

Many brands and sellers compete on Amazon to place Sponsored Product ads and Sponsored Brands ads when consumer search for products using keywords on Amazon’s e-commerce platform.

Those placements are then auctioned off to the highest bidder.

The complaint accuses Amazon of secretly charging advertisers more in so-called “second price” auctions, whereby prospective advertisers expect to pay one cent more than the next highest bidder for each bid they win.

But in practice, the complaint alleges, Amazon has charged its Sponsored Products advertisers their own winning bid close to 80% of the time.

The lawsuit states that Amazon’s methods were spurred because “it was unhappy about how much revenue its advertising auctions were generating”.

Amazon responded by saying the FTC “fundamentally misunderstands how advertisers operate”.

“Advertisers adjust bids based on real-world performance, not descriptions of auction mechanics,” Amazon said in its statement.

“Average winning bids fell 50% from 2019 to 2025 on Sponsored Products search ads, and roughly 92% of placed ads are not given to the highest bid,” the company added.

Amazon has tangled with the consumer watchdog in the past.

Last year, it settled a case with the FTC that alleged that it enrolled millions of consumers in its Prime subscription offering without their consent, and knowingly made it difficult for consumers to cancel.

Amazon settled the case for $2.5bn, including civil penalties and consumer refunds.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell Monday, dragging major U.S. stock indexes lower to close out August, after the United States and Iran exchanged fire for the first time in roughly a month, reviving concerns about rising oil prices and their potential impact on inflation.

The Dow traded at 53,181.62 as of 10:37 a.m. Eastern time, down 378.37 points, or 0.71%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite also opened lower, tracking similar declines earlier in the session, according to CNBC. The pullback came even as all three major indexes remained on pace to finish August with monthly gains, with the S&P 500 up roughly 2.5%, the Nasdaq 100 up about 3.8%, and the Dow ahead approximately 1.4% for the month heading into Monday’s session, according to Trading Economics.

The renewed selling followed confirmation from U.S. Central Command that American forces struck two Iranian rocket launchers on Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday, an operation officials said was aimed at rocket launchers preparing to deploy mines into the Strait of Hormuz. The strike marked the first publicly acknowledged U.S. military action against Iran in roughly a month, following a stretch of relative calm in the broader conflict between the two countries. Global benchmark crude prices rose about 2% at Monday’s market open in response, according to Bloomberg, as traders weighed the potential for renewed disruption to oil shipments through the strait, a waterway that has carried a significantly reduced share of global energy trade since fighting between the U.S., Israel and Iran began in late February.

Monday’s market reaction also built on hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve delivered at the end of last week. New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh struck a more hawkish tone than some investors had anticipated during his remarks at the central bank’s Jackson Hole symposium Friday, according to Yahoo Finance, contributing to a 0.3% decline in the S&P 500 that day even before Monday’s renewed Iran-related selling began. TheStreet Pro contributor James “Rev Shark” DePorre summed up the shifting mood among traders in a research note Monday. “The seasonal pattern is unfavorable, the Fed just leaned hawkish, and the momentum trade that carried this market has stopped working,” DePorre wrote, though he added that a more clearly bearish stance remained premature given the broader earnings picture and the calendar heading into the fourth quarter. “What keeps me from being outright bearish is the earnings picture and the calendar beyond September,” DePorre wrote, noting that October has historically served as what he called “the bear killer” given its tendency to mark seasonal market lows.

Weak domestic economic data added to Monday’s downbeat tone. The Chicago Purchasing Managers’ Index for the manufacturing sector came in at 47.1 for August, sharply below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 58 and down from a reading of 57.6 in July, signaling a notable contraction in regional manufacturing activity. A reading below 50 generally indicates contracting activity in the sector.

Investors are now looking ahead to two closely watched pieces of economic data over the next two weeks that could further shape expectations for the Fed’s policy path: the monthly U.S. jobs report due Friday and consumer price index inflation figures scheduled for release next week. Those reports arrive at a moment when market volatility has begun ticking up from unusually low levels; the CBOE Volatility Index, known as the VIX, closed at 14.13 Friday, its lowest reading of 2026, according to Yahoo Finance’s analysis of AlphaSpace data, though the index has historically tended to climb through September and into October as markets move further from the summer’s typically quieter trading conditions.

Individual stock moves also factored into Monday’s broader market action. PayPal Holdings shares tumbled sharply after Bloomberg News reported that a consortium involving buyout firm Advent and payment processor Stripe had decided against pursuing an acquisition of the fintech company, according to Zacks Investment Research. Elsewhere, shares of India’s Adani Group dropped significantly amid a routine MSCI index rebalancing combined with volatility tied to a new trading mechanism introduced on Indian exchanges, according to Bloomberg, though that development had limited direct impact on U.S. markets.

Monday’s session marks the final trading day of August, and while the pullback tied to renewed Middle East tensions has weighed on sentiment to close out the month, all three major U.S. indexes remained positioned to post gains for August overall as of Monday morning, extending a broader upward trend that has persisted through much of the summer despite periodic bouts of volatility tied to geopolitical developments and shifting Federal Reserve policy expectations.

Shares of Amazon.com Inc. fell more than 2% Monday, tracking a broader decline across major U.S. stock indexes after American forces struck Iranian rocket launchers near the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, reigniting fears of renewed conflict in a region critical to global energy supplies.

Amazon stock traded at 260.05 dollars, down 6.38 dollars, or 2.39%, as of 10:51 a.m. Eastern time on the Nasdaq. The decline came as part of a broader market pullback Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite all trading lower to close out the final session of August.

The renewed selling followed confirmation from U.S. Central Command that American forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday, the first publicly acknowledged U.S. military action in the region in roughly a month. U.S. Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces had been preparing to launch rockets and deploy sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz before the strike. “US forces are monitoring the area closely and remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce through this essential waterway,” Hawkins said, according to TheStreet. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said Sunday that it had targeted U.S. military bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in retaliation for the American strikes, further escalating the exchange between the two countries.

Oil prices surged in response to the renewed hostilities, with global benchmark crude gaining roughly 2% at Monday’s market open, according to Bloomberg. Higher energy costs have weighed on Amazon’s stock at multiple points throughout the broader six-month conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran, given the company’s heavy reliance on fuel-intensive logistics and delivery operations. Amazon previously implemented a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge on third-party sellers using its fulfillment network in April, citing rising energy costs tied directly to the ongoing war.

Monday’s decline adds to a difficult stretch for Amazon shares that has unfolded over recent months even amid otherwise solid underlying business performance. The stock has fallen roughly 16% from its 52-week high of 278.56 dollars, reached in early May, according to analysis from Investing.com, with the pullback driven by a combination of factors extending well beyond Monday’s geopolitical developments. Investors have expressed ongoing concern over Amazon’s aggressive capital spending plans tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure, with the company forecasting roughly 200 billion dollars in capital expenditures for 2026, a figure that significantly exceeds its trailing 12-month operating cash flow. Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy has defended the spending as necessary to capture surging demand for the company’s AI offerings, saying he expects Amazon to generate “strong long-term returns on invested capital” as a result.

Despite the recent share price weakness, Wall Street’s broader outlook on Amazon has remained largely positive. Jefferies analyst Brent Thill has maintained a buy rating on the stock with a 300 dollar price target, arguing that the market has been pricing Amazon more like a mature retailer than a company with substantial upside tied to its cloud computing and AI businesses. The overall Wall Street consensus rating on Amazon currently sits at Strong Buy, with an average price target of 284.30 dollars across 44 analysts, according to data compiled by financial news outlet MEXC, implying meaningful upside from current trading levels even after accounting for Monday’s decline.

Amazon has also drawn recent attention on other fronts. The company disclosed last month that its livestreaming platform, Twitch, had enabled a data-sharing option by default across creator accounts, allowing livestream video and chat material to be used in developing Amazon’s artificial intelligence systems, a move that drew scrutiny from some content creators over privacy concerns. Separately, evercore analyst Mark Mahaney raised his price target on Amazon to 355 dollars last week, citing strong retail signals and survey data showing early evidence that the company’s investment in AI-powered shopping tools is beginning to translate into incremental sales.

As markets closed out August, investors remained focused on how the renewed U.S.-Iran conflict might further affect oil prices and broader consumer spending patterns in the weeks ahead, with Amazon’s stock performance likely to remain closely tied to both the geopolitical situation and the company’s own substantial AI-related capital investments heading into the fall.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has taken a step ​toward eliminating its requirements for shareholder ​proposals at public companies and giving new powers to states, ​a shift that would diminish the influence of investor activists.

In aregulatory notice dated Friday, the SEC said it would consider changes to the rule known as 14a-8. It establishes requirements for shareholder ‌proposals in ⁠public companies’ annual ⁠proxy statements including minimum ownership.

Via e-mail, a spokesman for SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said ​he has “highlighted concerns that the SEC’s Rule 14a-8 on shareholder proposals exceeds the Commission’s authority and infringes upon ​state laws. To that end, the Commission is expected to consider a proposal to rescind the rule and return the role of regulating shareholder proposals to ​the states.”

Investor resolutions focused on topics like carbon emissions ⁠and executive ‌roles have been the focal point of many corporate annual ​meetings, though ​support for them has fallen in recent years.

Tim Smith, senior policy ⁠adviser at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, whose members ​often file shareholder resolutions, said the move would create confusion ​because regulations are not uniform among states, such as how many shares are needed to bring a matter to a vote.

Under a new law in Republican-controlled Texas, for instance investors could need as much as $1 million worth of shares to file a resolution, compared with just $2,000 under a current SEC requirement.
“Across the investor ‌community there will be a response to the questionable legal arguments he (Atkins) is making about the authority of the SEC,” Smith said.Cooley ​law firm ​strategist Broc Romanek said ⁠the change could lead to more votes against corporate board members as shareholders’ options for expressing disapproval narrow.

“Votes against directors will be used more and more as ​other avenues are shut down,” Romanek said in a telephone interview.

In a separate regulatory notice, the SEC said it would “modernize” the proxy solicitation process, which governs shareholder communications. The agency spokesman said it aims “to reflect advancement in technology and current realities of shareholder communications.”

Activists say such changes could unfairly restrict speech by small investors.