If last week’s events in and around Taiwan illustrate Asia’s growing geopolitical importance, today’s announcement by SoftBank that it lost $23 billion in the second quarter also make it the home to “the world’s largest dumb retail investor,” as Weston Nakamura put it. Weston joins Maggie Lake at the top of today’s Daily Briefing to talk about SoftBank and to preview Wednesday’s release of the U.S. Consumer Price Index. With the New York Federal Reserve’s monthly survey of consumer expectations showing substantial declines in short-, medium-, and long -term inflation expectations, Maggie welcomes Dave Floyd, the president of Aspen Trading Group, for an update on financial markets from a technical analyst’s perspective. Where are key levels of support and resistance for the major equity indexes? What are forex markets telling us? And is this merely a bear market rally?