Nvidia eases financing fears with Wall Street deal, the UK holds an emergency meeting over heatwave, and leveraged ETFs amplify market swings.

Welcome to this week’s Market Pulse, your 5-minute update on key market news and events, with takeaways and insights from the Sidekick Investment Team.

Today, we’re looking at how Wall Street is helping Nvidia fund the AI build-out, the UK government’s response to a summer of heatwaves, and how leveraged ETFs are amplifying stock volatility.

But first, our number of the week…

1.7%

That was the growth in UK business investment in the second quarter of 2026, helping the economy outperform expectations. GDP grew 1% in the first half of the year overall.

Sidekick Takeaway: The rise in business investment, along with expansion in the technology sector, indicates that AI is beginning to lift the real economy. Whether that lift is sustainable depends on whether AI is able to meaningfully boost productivity figures.

Only have a minute to read? Here’s the TL;DR:

• Six of Wall Street’s biggest firms – including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs – are lining up over $500 billion to help fund AI infrastructure. The move eased fears about Nvidia’s financing arrangements and boosted confidence that AI economics remain sound.
• Andy Burnham held an emergency meeting as Britain entered its fifth heatwave of the summer, with most of England and all of Wales in drought. Despite the growing economic toll, the UK still lacks a single overarching heat resilience strategy.
• Leveraged ETFs are driving an increase in equity volatility. The end-of-day rebalancing flows triggered by these funds can create feedback loops that amplify market swings, a dynamic that helped cause record trading halts in South Korea earlier this summer.

It’s important to note that the content of this Market Pulse is based on current public information which we consider to be reliable and accurate. It represents Sidekick’s view only and does not represent investment advice - investors should not take decisions to trade based on this information.

Squaring the Circle: Nvidia Eases Investor Fears with Wall Street Deal

Nvidia sits at the centre of the AI infrastructure build-out – in more ways than one.

Nvidia’s chips remain the cutting edge for training AI models. The company is also a critical investment partner for the industry, recently signing $750 billion in deals.

That’s led to fears of circular financing. Investors worry that Nvidia’s investments are artificially inflating the AI boom and amplifying risk.

But this week, a fresh Wall Street deal helped ease those fears, showing that appetite for AI investment remains alive and well.

Banks signal confidence with renewed commitment

Some of the world’s largest investment firms – including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs – are lining up over $500 billion in new AI commitments:

• Nvidia will help direct the capital, but financing decisions will be left to the individual firms. Nvidia’s capital contributions will be modest.
• The structure is designed to signal Wall Street’s approval of the underlying industry economics. Investors have grown anxious about the scale of infrastructure deals.
• Following the announcement, pricing on Nvidia’s credit default swaps – a mark of the company’s investment risk – dropped noticeably.

Nvidia has always maintained that the firm’s investments are justified by economics, not self-dealing.

Bringing in outside capital from sophisticated firms lends strong credence to that argument.

Sidekick Takeaway: Underscoring the scale of the AI build-out, Alphabet recently posted negative cash flow for the first time since the firm went public, largely due to increased capital expenditures. Nonetheless, Wall Street’s mega-deal shows that investor demand for funding these investments remains robust.

Feeling the Heat: UK Government Holds Emergency Meeting Over Heatwave

On Wednesday, PM Andy Burnham held an emergency cabinet meeting to address the UK’s latest heatwave.

Britain has experienced a string of brutal heatwaves this summer. That’s left most of England and all of Wales in drought.

Yet despite Burnham’s emergency session, the UK appears to lack a coherent strategy to deal with the heat.

And the costs of inaction are growing. In addition to the human toll, estimates indicate that the UK economy has already lost £4.4 billion in output due to the heat this year.

Ideas without execution

Despite the economic costs of extreme heat, the UK hasn’t made addressing it a clear priority:

• A recent government research briefing stated the situation plainly – ‘There is no single overarching plan to adapt to heatwaves or increase resilience to extreme heat.’
• In the near term, effective changes would include improving cooling systems in the most vulnerable areas and assessing reservoir standards for drought risks.
• In the long term, meaningful solutions require significant capital investments: urban greening, retrofitting old buildings, and improving the resilience of transport infrastructure.

Ultimately, these changes require a deliberate policy focus – not a string of emergency meetings.

Sidekick Takeaway: The UK government’s own analysis found that the economic benefits of climate adaptation consistently outweigh the costs. The only question is why more isn’t being done.

Double or Nothing: Leveraged ETFs Are Amplifying Market Swings

Most investors are familiar with exchange-traded funds – baskets of stocks that trade on an exchange like ordinary shares.

But a fast-growing corner of the ETF market works differently. Leveraged ETFs use derivatives to amplify the daily performance of an underlying stock or index, often by two or three times.

That sounds simple enough. But the amount of trading these ETFs perform can disrupt markets – sometimes dramatically.

In fact, despite accounting for just 1% of the total assets held by ETFs, leveraged ETFs drive 16% of the industry’s daily trading value.

Rebalancing drives feedback loops

Because leveraged ETFs track daily performance, they must reset their positions at the end of each trading session:

• This daily reset means leveraged ETFs need to buy more exposure after their underlying stock rises and sell after it falls. That dynamic amplifies moves in both directions.
• This mechanical rebalancing concentrates large volumes of trading into the final minutes of each session, triggering outsized volatility.
• Earlier this year, South Korea’s index became highly volatile after billions of dollars flowed into leveraged ETFs tracking just two chipmakers (SK Hynix and Samsung).

Regulators have started to take notice. South Korea temporarily banned new leveraged ETF listings after a 20-minute trading halt was triggered a record four times.

Sidekick Takeaway: The concentration of leveraged exposure in these ETFs means they’re reshaping the volatility profile of entire indexes. As these funds grow in popularity, their feedback loops will increasingly matter for investors who have never bought a leveraged ETF in their lives.

Notices

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Please remember, investing should be viewed as longer term. Your capital is at risk - the value of investments can go up and down, and you may get back less than you put in.