Hey Snackers,
Given the UK’s extreme heat wave this summer, scientists have resorted to some unusual experiments, including smearing yogurt on windows, which researchers at Loughborough University discovered could actually cool temperatures. Yes, it will smell like yogurt, but apparently the scent dissipates after 30 seconds.Â
Stocks opened at their highs of the day and spent the rest of the session in a slow grind lower, finishing near their lows. Markets briefly perked up when China said it had come to an agreement with the US to continue their trade truce, before the gentle slide lower resumed.
The S&P 500 ended down 0.3%, the Nasdaq 100 gave back 0.2%, and the Russell 2000 underperformed with a 0.6% decline.
The Magnificent 7 are riding into earnings season. What’s going to happen?
It’s a monster week for earnings, with over half of the Magnificent 7 reporting this week after Google and Tesla released quarterly results after the close last Wednesday. Meta and Microsoft are slated to report after the close this afternoon, with Amazon and Apple’s latest figures due after 4 p.m. ET tomorrow.
Here’s how much traders think megacap tech stocks will move after earnings this week:
Meta has tended to have the biggest post-earnings move of the bunch, averaging a swing of 7.4% over its quarterly earnings since Q2 2014. This quarter it also has the biggest range of options-implied movement of the group, with traders eyeing a 5.8% change.Â
Apple and Microsoft, on the other hand, have tended to be the most stable after earnings, with each averaging an absolute move of 3.8% over the past 10 years. This go-round, Microsoft’s expected to move within 3.9% after earnings, and Apple’s expected to remain within 3.5%.Â
In the middle is Amazon, which has an options-implied move of 5% and has averaged 6.1% over the past few years.
Nvidia, the straggler of the group, doesn’t release its quarterly results until August 27. But in a sense, the hyperscalers’ capex outlooks are a collective preview of the chip designer’s earnings.
The Takeaway
The information the market gets over the coming days is going to be incredibly useful for determining where the market goes from here. These four companies not only represent a big chunk of the value of the largest indexes in their own right, but there are also a lot of companies that sell things to them and a whole lot of companies that are their customers.Â
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The second-biggest crypto turns a double-digit age
It was 10 years ago today that the first block of ethereum was mined, also known as its “genesis” block. While some people mistakenly think ethereum was the second crypto created, it’s really just second to bitcoin in market cap: it has nearly $460 billion to bitcoin’s $2.3 trillion. In reality, there were many other cryptos that came between bitcoin’s genesis block on January 3, 2009, and ethereum’s in July 2015, but we don’t hear a lot about peercoin, namecoin, or even litecoin — though you might recognize a little pup of a token called dogecoin, which based its protocol largely on litecoin’s.Â
Ethereum wasn’t just going to be a currency: it aimed to be a censorship-resistant global computer not controlled by any single party. It introduced smart contracts to the crypto world and, for better or for worse, was the blockchain behind the NFT mania of the 2020s.Â
It’s been a big decade for ethereum, and its journey is a real catalog of crypto’s biggest moments: from the ICO boom (and bust) to DeFi Summer, to the $69 million sale of Beeple’s Everydays NFT, to ethereum’s remarkable shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (aka The Merge), to finally its entry into TradFi and ETFs, which managed to snare nearly $15 billion in their first year.Â
THE BEST THING WE READ TODAY
Smartphones are entering their “made in India” era
For the first time ever, India has officially edged out China to become the top smartphone supplier to the US — and the shift in shipments year over year is dramatic, as our chart shows. China’s share more than halved over the same period, with the electronics powerhouse now falling to third place to another Asian country.
Yesterday’s Big Daily Movers
Novo Nordisk, the drugmaker behind Ozempic and Wegovy, tumbled after cutting its annual sales and profit outlook
Spotify fell after the audio streamer swung to a loss for the second quarter and gave a lighter-than-expected Q3 outlook
SoFi Technologies surged after the personal finance company soared past Q2 expectations
Uber fell 4% after Waymo announced a fleet partnership with Avis in Dallas
UPS sank on mixed Q2 results and ongoing pressure from a US manufacturing slump and volatile trade policies
PayPal fell despite posting better-than-expected Q2 results and hiking its outlook for the year
What Else We're Snackin'
Bank of America warns that this $1 trillion source of support for stocks may be fading
Chinese demand for Nvidia processors is so strong that the chip designer is tearing up its two-week-old plans in order to sell even more AI GPUs
Boeing seems to be executing on its turnaround planÂ
Apple is closing a store in China, something it’s never done beforeÂ
On the positive side, Apple’s opening a “Manufacturing Academy” with Michigan State University next month
Snack Fact Of The Day
An estimated 19 million Americans are expected to take a cruise this year.
Events
Second-quarter GDP (first estimate)
Earnings expected from Meta, Microsoft, Altria, Kraft Heinz, Humana, Etsy, Qualcomm, Arm Holdings, Lam Research, Carvana, Allstate, Ford, MGM, and Robinhood*
*Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.