It’s been 84 years… but Wendy’s finally printed a green candle. 

Wendy’s caught a rather hot-n-juicy bid (+14%) and gained more in a day than it has in the last 5 years alone… which isn’t saying much considering shares are quite literally down 63% since August of 2021.

So what happened?

Three words: Nelson (freakin) Peltz.

According to reports, the Snapple turnaround king by way of Trian Fund Management is assembling an investor consortium to take Wendy’s private and rescue the freckled redhead from her ongoing public-market humiliation.

The group could reportedly include Flynn Group, one of Wendy’s largest franchisees, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm BlueFive.

Weirdly enough, the billionaire has been obsessed with the redhead since launching an activist campaign in 2005 and even served as chairman of the company at one point. 

This comes after Trian disclosed in February that it was exploring “strategic alternatives,” including gaining full control of the burger chain. 

So after spending two decades trying to fix Wendy’s from the passenger seat, Peltz may finally grab the wheel, lock the doors, and drive Dave Thomas’s baby straight off the public markets. 

The possible rescue comes as Wendy’s battles declining sales, pissed-off franchisees, hundreds of planned restaurant closures, and the all-time embarrassment of Burger King reclaiming its spot as America’s second-largest burger chain.

But that’s in the past…

Today, investors heard “take-private bid” and immediately yeeted shares 14% higher.

Outside the square-patty bailout, stocks barely moved higher as investors celebrated an inflation report that was boring enough to keep the Fed away from the rate-hike button.

The Nasdaq climbed 0.6%, the S&P 500 gained 0.3%, and the Dow wandered around the flatline like a senior citizen who forgot where he parked.

Consumer prices rose 3.4% from a year earlier in July… cooling slightly from June’s 3.5% increase. Prices rose just 0.1% month over month.

That was enough to push traders toward expecting the Fed to hold rates steady in September after the odds had been sitting 50-50 a day earlier. 

Of course, inflation is still well above the Fed’s 2% target, so our buddy, Kevin Warsh isn’t saying any magic words and hanging a “Mission Accomplished” banner over the newly remodeled headquarter building just yet.

But investors will gladly celebrate any report that reduces the odds of another rate hike by more than zero,

Speaking of zero, there’s absolutely zero chance anyone is having a worse August than our favorite doomer boomer, Michael Burry.

Just days after telling his fellow apocalypse enthusiasts he was shorting the hell out of Nebius, the company pulled an Inverse Cramer Burry and exploded 20% after AI cloud revenue surged 514% year over year to $575 million.

I truly don’t understand why the man keeps shorting businesses producing so much cash… but hey, it’s definitely providing entertainment.

Then CoreWeave arrived with receipts of its own and used them to bludgeon the remaining AI bears. 

Shares popped 18% after revenue doubled from a year ago, while CEO Michael Intrator said the company had reached an “important inflection point” as its ungodly scale began producing better operating leverage.

That matters because AI cloud companies have been asking investors to swallow breathtaking spending plans on the promise that demand will eventually catch up.

Nebius and CoreWeave just suggested “eventually” may already be arriving.

And finally, the upper-middle-class’s favorite destination for spending steakhouse money on chickpeas had itself a day. 

Cava cooked up a 12% rally after comparable sales climbed 9%, restaurant traffic increased 5.3%, and the company beat both earnings and revenue estimates.

Most importantly, those gains weren’t created entirely by mugging existing customers at the register. Actual foot traffic increased, meaning more Americans willingly paid $17 to watch someone tuck hummus underneath a pile of pickled onions.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

Market Gossip

>Harvard Tops Global Ranking of Colleges Producing the Most Billionaires (Citybiz): Must be something in the water over in Boston. 

>Uber Working on Offering ‘Tween’ Rides Option for Kids 10 to 12 (Bloomberg): Where’s the “hide your kids, hide your wife” guy when you need him?

>Trump sued over Truth Social advance access sale (CNBC): “Boss, I’m tired…” -Donnie’s lawyers, probably

>Wendy's has a billionaire circling its ailing business (Yahoo Finance): The ole freckled redhead has finally found herself a sugar daddy. (Personally, I’ll always be indebted to the 4 for $4.)

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Uber as mentioned in the article.