Closing Bell Overtime: Markets Close Out Wild August 8/31/26

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**Mike Santoli** (0:44)
Welcome to Closing Bell Overtime live from Studio B at the NASDAQ Market site. I'm Mike Santoli. Melissa Lee is off today. Stocks lower across the board today. With the Dow down more than 300 points. S&P 500 down by about a quarter of a percent, a little more than NASDAQ can pause it off slightly. The NASDAQ 100 squeaking into the green. A bit of a spurt in Tesla helping that late in the day. Tech was one of the only two S&P sectors in the green today. And that's despite losses for most of the Mag-7 names. Amazon down 2% as the FTC sues the company for allegedly deceiving advertisers. And could the ad businesses of Meta and Google be under threat from AI? We'll discuss that. The only other sector in the green today, energy. Oil up more than 2% as fighting escalates between the US and Iran. More on that coming up. And this concludes Trading for August, another good month for the markets. 2.5% gain for the S&P 500, though basically all in the books by August 4th. More than 3.5% for the NASDAQ Composite and NASDAQ 100 heading into September. Let's begin with the G20 meeting of Finance Ministers. Megan Casella joins us now live from Asheville, North Carolina. Megan.

**Megan Casella** (1:55)
Mike, hello from the Blue Ridge Mountains. It has been a full day of programming here where Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been convening Finance Ministers, Central Bakers as well as some top CEOs for a number of meetings throughout the day today. Now, the US has said that its stated goal for this presidency of the G20 is on promoting global growth. But of course, many policy discussions dominating the topics here as well. The top of mind being the war with Iran. Treasury Secretary Bessent saying that in every meeting that he's sitting down with Foreign Finance Ministers, he's pressing them to get on board with the US and cut off all economic ties with Iran. He told us reporters earlier in the day that he thinks it could be just weeks or months before Iran's economy collapses. But he also says the US does not have to see that happen in order to achieve its goals. Here's more from Bessent.

**Scott Bessent** (2:39)
The goal here is to create the conditions that they will want to come to the table. And the president's been very clear.
They have to give up their nuclear program. They have to turn over the highly enriched uranium. And they have to stop their support of proxies. And the strait has to be open.

**Megan Casella** (3:02)
Now, Mike, the other big story here this week has, of course, been the bond market and especially this question of whether Secretary Bessent and Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh might be pulling the market in opposite directions. I'll say from being here that at least outwardly, the two men are really putting on a very unified front. They traveled together here to Asheville on the same government plane from Andrews Air Force Base. And then three times earlier today, we saw the two men sitting side by side, both of them giving opening remarks at three different sessions. Here you can see them getting down from the plane that was yesterday afternoon. So at least trying to send the message that they are unified on this. And Bessent told CNBC that they are on the same page when it comes to the bond market, that they both believe the US bond market is the most resilient in the world right now. Mike?

**Mike Santoli** (3:46)
Yes, and of course, Secretary Bessent essentially saying, look, the Treasury buyback actions are not meant or really capable of changing the equilibrium level of bond yields, but maybe we can make it more liquid and have them stay closer to fair value. Megan, is this the kind of a thing where we expect any kind of action items to be executed or communique among all these finance ministers?