New products are supposed to drive business. GTA VI is driving time-off requests.

Fans are booking PTO around the long-delayed game’s November launch. The trend is so prevalent that the US Army's 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion dangled a four-day pass at anyone who re-enlisted before Nov. 14.

44 of 130 eligible soldiers have taken the offer, which functionally makes the game a retention tool for the United States military.

Bearish for the broader market. Bullish for our national security. And surprisingly mixed for the game’s maker, Take-Two (TTWO). The stock is up 10% over the past 6 months, but remains down more than 6% YTD.

GTA V cleared 1 billion units within its first three days post-launch, on its way to becoming the best-selling standalone game of all time. If it comes anywhere close to that this time around, it’s hard to believe the market will just shrug…

Unless, of course, it really does incite a general strike. Then it might be one of those “good news is bad news” moments.

— Brooks & The Street Sheet Team

What: Most companies wait on their supply chain. Nvidia (NVDA) bought it. Commitments to suppliers reached $279B last quarter, more than double the $119B the quarter before.

Why: The commitments are mostly memory. High-bandwidth memory has been tight for a year, and supply is the only thing capping growth: Nvidia guided to 70% revenue growth next fiscal year and said demand runs well above that. Cornering memory costs gross margins, from a projected 74% this quarter to about 71.5% next.

What Else: Commitments protect suppliers in a bust and strand the buyer. Cisco (CSCO) found that out in 2001, eating a $2.2B inventory charge in a single quarter after dot-com demand vanished. Nvidia's other exposures stack: a $105B backstop on an OpenAI data center lease, up to $125B of residual-value support, $36B of guaranteed cloud sales.

Watch: The gross margin line next quarter. Nvidia's forward earnings multiple has been sitting near a decade low, an odd place for a company promising 70% growth.

What: Moderna (MRNA) shares rose 177% Wednesday, the largest one-day move by an S&P 500 company in over two decades, on positive late-stage data for its personalized melanoma vaccine with Merck (MRK). From a humanist perspective, it’s as promising a development as they come. From a market perspective, the math doesn’t entirely add up.

Why: Leerink Partners models low-single-digit billions in annual sales for the vaccine by 2032. Even a bull case at $10 billion in peak sales supports roughly $40 billion of added value for the partnership. However, Moderna, Merck and BioNTech (BNTX) added about $80 billion in days, and Moderna alone went from around $25 billion to near $60 billion.

What Else: As groundbreaking and potentially life-saving as the results were, melanoma was the lightest lift on the roadmap. The vaccine picks up to 34 mutations as targets, and typically only two or three produce a meaningful immune response. Melanoma has mutations to spare and responds well to immunotherapy. Kidney cancer offers fewer targets, bladder cancer a more suppressive tumor environment, and pancreatic cancer next to none of the above.

Watch: The full data at an upcoming medical conference, and the price tag that follows. Comparable therapies point to roughly $300,000 a course, with gross margins landing between 50% and 80%, rather than the 90% plus conventional drugs earn.

What: The three major off-price chains have now reported, and the scoreboard isn't close. Ross Stores (ROST) posted 10% comparable sales growth, against 4% at TJX (TJX) and 2% at Burlington (BURL). It also raised guidance for the third quarter and the full year.

Why: Ross has spent the stretch remodeling stores, improving merchandise, and building a social media presence, and it's landing with younger shoppers on TikTok still hunting value against sticky inflation. Gross margins beat expectations even excluding tariff benefits. July was its strongest comp month of the quarter, against hard comparisons.

What Else: The others are playing defense. Burlington is putting its tariff refund into lower prices, and it isn't alone, which has investors bracing for a promotional cycle that eats margin. TJX and Target (TGT) both showed apparel weakness, while more specialized brands like Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) held up.

Watch: Q3 reports in November, when TJX and Burlington have to answer where Ross’s extra customers came from. The average price target for ROST sits above $275, close to 20% above the current quote.