Welcome to closing bell. I'm Scott Wobner, live from Post 9 here at the New York Stock Exchange.

This make-a-breakout begins with major questions on two critical fronts today.

The fate of Fed Independence and the future of the AI trade.

It's been a big week for both.

And over this final stretch, we'll ask our experts what's at stake in both areas.

In the meantime, here's the scorecard.

The final trading day of August

is read across the board. NASDAQ is the worst of it today. That follows the latest read on

inflation core PCE rising in July. It has investors considering the implications for a rate cut

next month. It is the Fed's favorite measure of inflation. So we'll follow it.

Now, there's the NASDAQ, down more than 1%. Why? Invidia shares are lower again. And so are

a number of other semi-names today. Advanced Micro. There's Broadcom, AMD. Micron is down,

and so many of the other names, too. The Wall Street Journal is reporting

that Alibaba is making its own chip to fill the void from the lack of invidio ones there.

That's interesting news. It takes us to our talk of the tape. Stock's heading into the fall on a

record run, but one not without its issues. We'll start there with one of them, the future of the Fed and one of its leaders.

Amon Javvers is in Washington with the very latest on that court proceeding today. What do we know?

Well, Scott, what we know is that the court adjourned for the day without any resolution of whether or not the court is going to intervene in this case and stop the president from moving forward with his attempt to fire Lisa Cook from the Fed.

The court said it wants to hear more information on Tuesday, so we'll go through the long weekend with this big question mark still hanging over the Fed.

And one of the issues raised, and one of the big questions going into this, Scott, was whether or not Lisa Cook's team would argue that because the alleged

mortgage fraud here happened in 2021 before she was confirmed to the Fed in 22, therefore it's

not relevant here. Abby Loll, her attorney, did make an important concession here. He conceded

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