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Welcome to your new week.
Two AI bellwethers report back-to-back, nearly a billion SpaceX shares come unlocked, and Friday's payrolls print decides the September Fed fight.
Let’s dive in.
Key Earnings Announcements:
Roughly 1,000 companies report this week — 236 names on Tuesday, 295 on Wednesday, and 420 on Thursday.
Monday (8/3): Clorox, CNH Industrial, Marriott International, ON Semiconductor, Palantir Technologies, SBA Communications, Snap, TKO Group, Tyson Foods, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Tuesday (8/4): Advanced Micro Devices, Amgen, Apollo Global Management, Arista Networks, Booking Holdings, Caterpillar, Coupang, Duke Energy, Gilead Sciences, Lucid Group, Match Group, McDonald's, Merck, Pfizer, Pinterest, Progressive, SpaceX, Spotify, Wynn Resorts
Wednesday (8/5): AppLovin, Axon Enterprise, Circle Internet Group, DoorDash, Eli Lilly, MercadoLibre, Novo Nordisk, SanDisk, Shopify, Uber, Walt Disney, Western Digital
Thursday (8/6): Airbnb, Celsius Holdings, ConocoPhillips, Datadog, DraftKings, D-Wave Quantum, Fiserv, Lyft, MP Materials, Occidental Petroleum, The Trade Desk, Warner Bros. Discovery
Friday (8/7): Aflac, Canopy Growth, Oklo, PPL, Take-Two Interactive, Under Armour, Vistra, Wendy's
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What We’re Watching:
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
AMD (+122% YTD) reports Q2 2026 earnings Tuesday after the close, and it enters the print as the best-performing large-cap semiconductor of the year — a $776 billion company that has more than doubled in seven months. Options are pricing an 8.4% move, and AMD has averaged an 11.2% swing on its last several reports, including an 18.6% single-day gain in May and a 17.3% drop in February.
Last quarter, AMD delivered $10.25 billion in revenue, up 38% year over year, with data center revenue of $5.8 billion, up 57%, and record free cash flow of $2.6 billion. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $1.37, GAAP EPS at $0.84. Management guided Q2 to roughly $11.2 billion give or take $300 million and told investors server CPU revenue would grow more than 70% year over year.
This quarter, the focus will be on the MI450 and Helios ramp. AMD has said initial Helios volume arrives in the third quarter with the real ramp in the fourth, and the six-gigawatt Instinct deal with Meta is the single biggest proof point on the roadmap. Management has also flagged two honest headwinds: higher memory and component costs pressuring second-half PC and gaming revenue, and MI450 ramping below corporate-average gross margin. AMD reports three weeks before Nvidia, which makes Tuesday night the market's first real read on whether the AI CapEx cycle is still widening or starting to concentrate.
"Customer engagement around MI450 Series and Helios is strengthening, with leading customer forecasts exceeding our initial expectations and a growing pipeline of large-scale deployments providing us with increasing visibility into our growth trajectory."
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Stock Performance, 5-Year Chart, Seeking Alpha
Palantir Technologies (PLTR)
Palantir (-31% YTD) reports Q2 2026 earnings Monday after the close, with investors focused on whether the fastest revenue growth in the company's public history is enough to justify a multiple that has already been cut by nearly a third this year. This is the rare setup where the business is accelerating and the stock is falling — shares closed Friday at $123.06 against a 52-week high of $207.52, and the market is pricing a 9.7% move on the print, the widest expected swing of any large-cap reporting this week.
Last quarter, Palantir delivered $1.633 billion in revenue, up 85% year over year, and $0.34 in GAAP EPS, beating consensus on both lines while raising full-year guidance by ten points to 71% growth. U.S. revenue grew 104%, U.S. commercial grew 133%, net dollar retention hit 150%, and free cash flow came in at $925 million. The stock fell 6.9% the next day anyway.
This quarter, the focus will be on whether U.S. commercial reaccelerates and whether management raises the full-year number again. Oppenheimer models roughly 85% revenue growth against Palantir's own 79% guidance midpoint and expects the full-year outlook to move above 75%. Citi and Oppenheimer both carry $200 price targets; D.A. Davidson upgraded to Buy at $175 on July 2. The bear case is unchanged and unresolved: at roughly 129 times trailing earnings, Palantir has to keep printing acceleration indefinitely or the multiple does the work in the other direction.
"Palantir's Rule of 40 score has soared to 145%. We have shattered the metric, a feat matched only by other fellow AI infrastructure companies: NVIDIA, Micron and SK hynix."
Palantir Technologies (PLTR) Stock Performance, 5-Year Chart, Seeking Alpha
Investor Events / Global Affairs:
Jersey Mike’s first full week as a public company, OPEC+ adding barrels nobody can ship, and nearly a billion SpaceX shares coming unlocked.
Jersey Mike's First Full Trading Week
A Jersey Mike's Subs location at Union Station, Washington, D.C. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Jersey Mike's Subs priced its IPO at $23 a share on July 29 and began trading on the NYSE on July 30, which makes this week its first full five-day session as a public company — the stretch where post-IPO volatility either fades or compounds. The debut was rough. Shares opened at $21, roughly 8.7% below the offering price, and closed the first day at $21.63, valuing the chain near $6.7 billion. By Sunday the stock had recovered to roughly $22.30 to $22.95, still below where it priced.
The company sold 43.5 million Class A shares to raise about $1 billion, with Morgan Stanley, Jefferies, and J.P. Morgan leading and proceeds earmarked for debt repayment. Blackstone has held the majority since an $8 billion buyout in November 2024. The underlying business is genuinely good: roughly 3,300 locations across the U.S. and Canada, $724 million in 2025 revenue, up 11%, more than $4.2 billion in systemwide sales, and net income that jumped to $55 million from $5 million the prior year.
The bull case comes from the only sell-side note on the stock so far. Melius Research initiated on debut day with a Buy and a $30 target, arguing Jersey Mike's already produces more than 40% of Subway's U.S. sales with 15% as many stores while Subway closes roughly 700 restaurants a year. Management is guiding toward a long-term global footprint near 15,000 restaurants, more than four times the current base, with over 1,600 domestic sites already in the pipeline. For readers, this is a cleaner proxy for IPO market health than the mega-cap listings — if a profitable, franchised, cash-generative brand can't hold its offering price, the fall pipeline has a problem.
"Jersey Mike's is the only scaled premium operator in a category whose dominant incumbent is closing roughly 700 restaurants a year… This IPO is the first chance to buy a decade of unit-driven compounding."
OPEC+ Adds Another 188,000 Barrels Per Day
A tanker exits the Strait of Hormuz. Source: Euronews
Seven core OPEC+ producers — Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and Oman — met virtually Sunday and agreed to raise their collective September production cap by 188,000 barrels a day. It is the sixth straight monthly increase and the ninth consecutive month unwinding the 1.65 million barrel-a-day voluntary cut first announced in April 2023, which is now nearly fully phased out. The next meeting, where October levels get set, is already scheduled for September 6.
The math tells you this is defense, not offense. OPEC+ output fell from almost 43 million barrels a day in February, before the Iran war began, to 36.28 million in June as fighting disrupted Gulf exports. This "increase" is an attempt to claw back share lost to the conflict rather than genuine spare capacity arriving. Brent's round trip has been extraordinary: above $100 in early July when the ceasefire collapsed and Iran attacked tankers in the Strait, then back under $90 — settling around $86.52 on July 28 — after Washington and Tehran agreed to a conditional pause on July 26 and 27.
The pause has not restored actual shipping. Over the weekend the truce began, fewer than 10 commodity vessels a day transited Hormuz, against the roughly 20 million barrels of daily flow the waterway normally carries. Owners are not willing to send empty ships back into a warzone on a truce Iran will not even call a ceasefire. That gap — barrels added on paper while physical traffic stays frozen — is the tension to watch. A flare-up puts Brent back toward triple digits overnight. A durable calm accelerates the slide toward $80 as the added supply actually shows up.
"Any rebound in flows through the Strait of Hormuz is likely to prove slow and partial, as many shippers remain wary and will want greater confidence in their safety before they bring more empty ships into the Strait."
SpaceX Earnings & Shares Unlock
A Falcon 9 lifts off. Source: Space.com
SpaceX reports its first-ever quarterly results as a public company Tuesday, and the report itself is the trigger for the company's first major insider unlock. Under the staggered lockup structure, 20% of eligible locked stock — roughly 911.5 million shares — becomes sellable on the second full trading day after the print, which lands Thursday, August 6. A further 10% tranche would have unlocked had shares closed 30% above the IPO price on five of the ten sessions into the report, a bar the stock never came close to clearing.
The June 12 listing was the largest in history by a wide margin, raising $85.7 billion at $135 a share. Four days later the stock hit an all-time closing high of $211.39 and Elon Musk's net worth briefly crossed $1 trillion. It has been downhill since — shares now sit roughly 43% below that high, and short interest has reportedly reached about one-third of the public float. The explanation is mechanical as much as fundamental: only about 5% of shares were freely tradable at listing, so retail demand hit a razor-thin float and the price went vertical before the fundamentals of an unprofitable company at the largest IPO valuation ever caught up.
That is what makes this week unusual. Nearly a billion newly tradable shares arrive in the same 72-hour window as the first look at real financials — Starlink subscriber growth, Starship program costs, launch cadence, and any commentary on the path to profitability. A strong print could absorb the supply. A weak one could accelerate the slide into a crowded short base that cuts either way. Watch Wednesday for pre-positioning and Thursday and Friday for the unlock itself.
"The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low."
Major Economic Events:
ISM services PMI & Friday's jobs report is the last full labor print before the September FOMC.
Monday (8/3): S&P Global final U.S. manufacturing PMI, ISM manufacturing PMI, Construction spending, Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, 3-month and 6-month Treasury bill auctions
Tuesday (8/4): Trade balance, JOLTS job openings, Job quits, Factory orders, RCM/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, Total vehicle sales, 52-week and 6-week bill auctions
Wednesday (8/5): MBA mortgage applications, ADP private employment, Treasury quarterly refunding announcement, S&P Global final U.S. services PMI, ISM services PMI, EIA petroleum inventories, Fed Governor Lisa Cook speaks
Thursday (8/6): Initial jobless claims, Continuing claims, Challenger job-cut announcements, Q2 nonfarm productivity (preliminary), Unit labor costs, Wholesale inventories, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem speaks
Friday (8/7): July jobs report, Consumer credit, NY Fed consumer inflation expectations, Baker Hughes rig count, Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin speaks
What We’re Watching:
ISM Services PMI (Wednesday, 10:00 a.m. ET)
There is no CPI this week — June's print already landed on July 14 at 3.5% headline and 2.6% core, and the July report doesn't arrive until mid-August. That makes ISM Services the second most important release on the calendar, and it matters more than usual: services employ more than 80% of American workers, and this lands two days before payrolls, which gives the market an early tell on labor demand.
June's reading came in at 54.0, down from 54.5 in May and right in line with expectations. Underneath the headline, business activity slowed to 55.4 from 57.7 and new orders eased to 55.1 from 57.3, but the employment index jumped to 51.2 from 47.9 — its first expansion since February and its largest single-month increase since 2024. Prices paid fell to 67.7 from 71.3, a four-month low, though still deeply elevated. Survey respondents tied cost pressure directly to the Persian Gulf conflict, specifically diesel fuel and resin-based packaging. July flash data from S&P Global then showed services accelerating to an eight-month high of 53.6, though economists cautioned the boost came from World Cup spending and the July 4 holiday and may not repeat.
With core PCE still running a full point and a half above the Fed's target, a hot prices-paid reading strengthens the dissenters' case for September. Renewed softness in the employment sub-index does the opposite and echoes June's weak payrolls. Chair Kevin Warsh has been explicit that incoming data, not forward guidance, drives the next move, which gives this report more weight than it would normally carry.
Economists expect the following this week:
ISM Services PMI: 54.5 expected vs. 54.0 prior
Business Activity index: 55.4 prior
New Orders index: 55.1 prior
Employment index: 51.2 prior
Prices Paid index: 67.7 prior
"There is no soft inflation target, there is no soft implicit target — not on this Committee's watch. There is only a target, and it is 2 percent."
July Jobs Report (Friday, 8:30 a.m. ET)
June's report was a shock. Nonfarm payrolls rose just 57,000, less than half the roughly 115,000 economists expected, and the print carried 74,000 in downward revisions to April and May that erased what had looked like a stabilizing labor market. Unemployment held at 4.2%, but that stability masked falling participation and a 61,000 drop in leisure and hospitality employment that blindsided forecasters expecting a World Cup hiring boost.
The backdrop since has gotten more complicated, not less. The July 29 FOMC held at 3.50% to 3.75% in a 9-3 vote, with Cleveland's Beth Hammack, Minneapolis's Neel Kashkari, and Dallas's Lorie Logan all dissenting in favor of an immediate 25-basis-point hike — the first three-way unified dissent since September 2016. A day later, core PCE eased to 3.3% year over year from 3.4%, headline PCE fell to 3.7%, and Q2 GDP grew just 1.5%, badly missing consensus and decelerating from 2.1% in Q1. The 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.23%, a 19-year high. CME FedWatch now puts the odds of a September hike near 64%.
Friday is the single most consequential data point before September 16, because it decides whether the 9-3 majority holds or erodes toward the hawks. A soft print — meaningfully below consensus, especially with unemployment climbing to 4.3% or higher — validates the argument that the labor market is cooling in a way the inflation data can't see, and undercuts the case for hiking now. A strong rebound emboldens the dissenters and raises the odds of a hike into slowing growth, which is the stagflation scenario markets still haven't priced.
Economists expect the following this week:
Nonfarm payrolls: +85,000 expected vs. +57,000 prior
Private payrolls: +93,000 expected vs. +49,000 prior
Unemployment rate: 4.3% expected vs. 4.2% prior
Average hourly earnings: +0.3% MoM expected, in line with prior
Labor force participation: 61.7% expected vs. 61.5% prior
"Without any policy restraint, inflation will likely continue to trend above target until there's an unanticipated shock. The FOMC cannot count on unanticipated shocks to achieve its goals and can always adjust policy if unanticipated shocks occur."
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Cover Image Source: WCCF Tech
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