Good Afternoon. On this day in 1911, Yale professor Hiram Bingham III hacked his way through the Peruvian cloud forest and announced to the world that he'd "discovered" a mountaintop citadel called Machu Picchu.

The people who lived in the villages below had, of course, known about the ruins for generations. But it took Bingham's outsider stamp and the National Geographic cover story that followed to make the place matter to global markets.

That's the version of "discovery" Wall Street ran today. Intel disclosed a 25% revenue quarter — its fastest growth since 2011 — and got sold. American Express raised its full-year outlook after posting 11% EPS growth, and got sold harder. Verizon, of all names, was the day's darling.

—Rosie, Wyatt, Evan & Conor

🔥 What’s Hot: 🔥

🥶 What’s Not: 🥶

🔢 Big number: $11 billion — Intel's Q2 GAAP net loss. It's entirely a non-cash mark on treasury shares the company deposited with the US government under last year's CHIPS Act deal. Strip it out and the quarter was the strongest Intel has posted in fifteen years. Traders sold anyway.

$INTC fell 6.86% to $93.35, giving up the entire 12% after-hours pop that followed one of the best earnings reports the company has published in a decade. Q2 revenue came in at $16.1 billion, roughly 12% above consensus and up 25% year over year. Data Center and AI revenue grew 59% to $6.3 billion. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.42 doubled the $0.21 analysts had penciled in. Q3 guidance topped estimates on both revenue and profit.

The news: Then came the footnotes. Intel booked a GAAP net loss of $11.0 billion — -$2.16 per share — driven by a non-cash valuation mark on the treasury shares handed to the US government under last year's CHIPS Act agreement. Management also flagged that AI-driven capex is going up over the next two years to keep pace with data-center demand. Traders latched onto the loss and the spend.

Big picture: Intel just told the market its turnaround is working, and the market answered with a 6.86% drawdown. That's the AI-capex hangover carrying over — investors got their answer from Alphabet on Wednesday, and now they're refusing to reward anyone who says they'll spend more, regardless of the numbers underneath.
Source: Reuters

The unlikely hero. $VZ surged 4.82% to $45.93 after reporting record Q2 results and boosting its full-year outlook. Adjusted EPS of $1.30 topped consensus, wireless service revenue grew 2.9%, and management said the postpaid net-adds trend has finally turned positive after two years of subscriber leaks.

The news: Verizon raised its adjusted EBITDA growth range for 2026 to 3-4% from 2.5-3.5%, and lifted its free-cash-flow guidance. The read-across took $TMUS up 6.08% to $180.78 and $T up 4.38% to $23.97. Verizon shares are now green year to date after being down 12% at the March lows.

What's next: AT&T reports next Wednesday and TMUS the following week. If the "boring dividend telecom" trade holds through both reports, expect a real reallocation out of AI-adjacent names and into cash-flow-heavy incumbents. That rotation was already visible in Thursday's action — today it accelerated. Source: Investing.com

$AXP dropped 4.79% to $324.51 despite reporting Q2 net income of $3.1 billion, EPS of $4.53 (up 11% year over year), and revenue growth of about 10%. Management also raised its full-year revenue-growth outlook, citing continued momentum in premium-card spend.

The news: The soft spot was net card fees. Growth in the platinum-card renewal cohort slowed from 21% in Q1 to 14%, and card acquisition costs rose faster than expected as AmEx prepares to relaunch its consumer-platinum product later this year. On the call, CFO Christophe Le Caillec confirmed that marketing spend will step up in Q3-Q4, muddying the near-term margin trajectory.

Bottom line: AmEx trades at 20x forward earnings — a premium to the payment-network cohort — and the market wants clean beat-and-raise quarters to justify it. A beat-and-raise-with-caveats gets sold. It's the same script the market ran on Alphabet Wednesday and Intel Thursday: numbers alone aren't enough anymore.
Source: Bloomberg

At midnight, the White House imposed a fresh round of duties on 60 US trading partners. The construction is deliberately different from earlier rounds — rates were framed as "forced-labor" and Section-301 duties designed to survive expected court challenges. Canada faces a 10% blanket rate, with USMCA-compliant goods exempted. Most Chinese goods land at roughly 12.5%, and the European Union gets tagged at rates ranging from 10% to 20%.

The news: Big exemption categories include oil, natural gas, fertilizer, autos, steel, aluminum, and copper — all already subject to Section-232 national-security tariffs. That takes the sting out of the headline for energy and heavy-industry names. Bloomberg Economics estimates the effective new-tariff burden on the average US import basket lands close to 6-8% once exemptions are netted.

What's next: Watch retailer reactions next week. Walmart, Costco, and Target are already midway through fall-buying decisions. Any pass-through into pricing shows up in September CPI — the last CPI report before the FOMC's September meeting.
Source: Reuters

The semi group that led Thursday's action gave a lot of it back. $MU dropped 7.99% to $911.07, $AMAT fell 4.93%, and $SMH closed -3.42%. $AVGO, $TSM, and $AMD all lost between 2% and 3%.

The news: The proximate trigger was Intel's guidance for another capex ramp — historically an ominous signal for the tools makers when it's Intel doing the spending — and the AI-capex hangover from Alphabet still working through the group. STMicro's -18% miss overnight added European pressure. Micron's move is the most notable: it had rallied hard on the AI-memory upgrade cycle, and today's giveback reset positioning.

Bottom line: The AI-infrastructure trade is being reworked in real time. Winners are getting reclassified into "spenders" and "beneficiaries," and the market is currently paying up only for the beneficiaries. The next Nvidia report in late August will decide whether that pattern holds or breaks.
Source: Yahoo Finance

Japan's Nikkei fell 3.0% and South Korea's Kospi dropped 3.7% as the Alphabet-Intel one-two spilled into Asia. Advantest declined 6.33% and Tokyo Electron fell 5.43% — the tools makers with heaviest exposure to hyperscaler capex flows. The MSCI Asia-ex-Japan index dropped 1% on the day.

The news: The move came on top of a 3% Nikkei retreat overnight Thursday. Bank of Japan Governor Ueda faces a rate decision on July 31 with the yen still near 158 to the dollar. If AI-driven US tech weakness continues to pressure Asian exporters, the BOJ's inflation calculus gets more complicated.

Big picture: Asia is now trading as a pure derivative of US mega-cap tech. That correlation has tightened every quarter for two years, and it means the September FOMC and BOJ meetings will trade off each other in real time.
Source: n-tv

Oil gave a bit back after Thursday's spike. Brent traded near $97, down about 3% on the session, but was still on track for a weekly gain of roughly 10%. WTI slipped to $92. $USO fell 2.43%, $XOM closed roughly flat, and $CVX added 0.34%.

The news: The pullback was mostly profit-taking, plus reports that Chinese refiners are trimming August cargoes as domestic demand softens. Kazakhstan temporarily cut Caspian pipeline output after a rail-transit incident, which prevented a sharper drop. Red Sea tanker attacks continued.

What's next: The action is still upward-biased as long as the Iran-strike cadence and Houthi maritime attacks continue. A move back over $100 on any Hormuz-related headline is what strategists across desks are still watching for.
Source: Reuters

Trading partners lined up to condemn the White House's overnight tariff moves. Canadian PM Mark Carney called the levies "unjustified" and pledged retaliatory measures within days. The EU published a formal statement flagging WTO violations and warned that reciprocal tariffs on US agricultural goods were "under active consideration." Brazil, India, and Mexico all filed initial trade-remedy petitions before their local markets closed.

The news: The most notable response came from Beijing, which held off on official condemnation but let the state-affiliated Global Times publish a lengthy editorial suggesting that a formal Chinese response is being calibrated for maximum effect. Chinese equities were closed for the session but the offshore yuan weakened 0.4% against the dollar.

Bottom line: The 2018-2019 tariff experience took roughly six months to fully move through capex plans and equity multiples. The 2026 cycle has the advantage of being expected — companies have contingency plans — but the disadvantage of being layered on top of an AI-capex debate that's already reshaping every mega-cap valuation. The overlap is what makes this cycle unique.
Source: WSJ

Q: Why did the melon jump into the lake?

A: It wanted to be a watermelon.

A rapid, violent price reversal that damages traders on both sides of a position — long AND short. The term comes from the two-handled saw used by nineteenth-century lumberjacks, where the blade flexed back and forth between two men. In markets, a whipsaw shows up when a stock spikes on news and then reverses within hours or days, wiping out both the early buyers and the eventual short-sellers who thought the pop was overdone.

Intel's Thursday-into-Friday move is a textbook example.

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