CNBC65%
Tim Cook's last dance, oil majors earnings, IPO avoidance and more in Morning Squawk 21%
By Luke Fountain41%
7/31/2026, 5:37:32 AM
Keywords: Investment Strategy, Economy, Markets, Business, Nasdaq Composite, Nasdaq 100 Fut Sep25, Nvidia Corp, Sk Hynix Inc, Warner Bros Discovery Inc, Centene Corp, Procter And Gamble Co, Humana Inc, Carvana Co, Cigna Group, Yum Brands Inc, Amazon Com Inc, Chevron Corp, Exxon Mobil Corp, Dow Jones Fut Sep25, S And P 500 Fut Sep25, Ice Brent Crude Oct25, Wti Crude Sep25, Palantir Technologies Inc, Jersey Mikes Subs Inc, Reformation Inc, Donald J Trump, David Faber, Donald Trump, Mike Waltz, Imax Corp, United States, Washington D C, Richard Gelfond, Lco26u, Invesco Qqq Trust, United States Oil Fund Lp, Cl26u, Ishares Semiconductor Etf, Cinemark Holdings Inc, Technology Select Sector Spdr Fund, Lco26z, Spdr S And P 500 Etf Trust, Ford Motor Co, Energy Select Sector Spdr Fund, United Parcel Service Inc, Boeing Co, Jetblue Airways Corp, Coca Cola Co, Qualcomm Inc, Microsoft Corp, Arm Holdings Plc, Meta Platforms Inc, Robinhood Markets Inc, Starbucks Corp, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc, Apple Inc, Reddit Inc, Roblox Corp, Rivian Automotive Inc, Coinbase Global, Raymond James Financial Inc, China, Iran, Russia
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Unattributed Quote, Availability Heuristic, and Optimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 23.2% saturation with 180 hits. Analysis detected 791 faulty-reasoning hits from 777 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 30.1% and a BS Rank of 21% (20,323 of 25,459 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 79.80% of the article peer group.
Happy Friday.
Microsoft added nearly $450 billion to its market cap yesterday as the stock climbed 15% — its best day since 2008.
Stock futures are rising before the bell following Thursday's rally on Wall Street.
Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
1.
Big Tech finale
Amazon and Apple closed out a packed week of mega-cap technology earnings, and investors are having starkly different reactions to the two reports.
Here's what to know:
Shares of Amazon are up more than 10% this morning after the company topped revenue estimates and reported booming cloud growth.
AWS sales jumped 37% in the quarter, the cloud division's fastest growth since 2021.
Amazon also hiked its 2026 capital expenditures forecast to $220 billion, up $20 billion from its last projection.
Meanwhile, Apple shares are more than 7% lower premarket after supply constraints led the iPhone maker to give weak guidance for the current quarter.
The disappointing forecast overshadowed a revenue beat and a 22% jump in iPhone sales.
On his last earning call as Apple's CEO , Tim Cook told analysts that the company has "enormous opportunities" in AI.
Current hardware chief John Ternus will become CEO on Sept.
1.
The two reports followed a positive day on Wall Street.
The Nasdaq Composite climbed 2.8%, rebounding from a six-day losing streak as semiconductor stocks rallied .
Follow live market updates here.
2.
Situational Awareness
One of the AI trade's most closely watched investors is unwinding his public stock portfolio .
Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund, Situational Awareness, suffered steep losses as AI infrastructure stocks fell and short positions in software names moved against it, people familiar with the matter told CNBC's David Faber .
The fund was left scrambling to raise cash to meet margin requirements, and Citadel agreed to buy the fund's publicly traded assets, according to people familiar with the deal.
The fund founded by Aschenbrenner — a 25-year-old former OpenAI researcher — had grown to as much as $45 billion before the losses hit.
3.
Crude results
Rising crude prices led to surging second-quarter profits for ExxonMobil and Chevron , which both reported earnings this morning.
Chevron's net income for the period jumped nearly 400% from the same time last year to $12 billion, while Exxon's profits nearly doubled.
As CNBC's Spencer Kimball reports, the average closing price of U.S. crude futures from April through June was 27% higher than the previous quarter, as the Iran war caused major supply disruptions.
"We're kind of firing on all cylinders, which is good, because the world needs it," Chevron CEO Mike Wirth told CNBC's Becky Quick.
4.
Tariff reflex
President Donald Trump wants to add tariffs on Iran to a bipartisan sanctions bill targeting Tehran and Russia — even though the U.S. imports almost nothing from Iran .
The U.S. imported just $1.4 million in Iranian goods last year, making the president's proposal "entirely symbolic," Villanova School of Business professor Jonathan Doh told CNBC.
Existing sanctions already restrict nearly all trade with Iran.
But as CNBC's Kevin Breuninger writes, Trump's demand could complicate the bipartisan bill, which on Tuesday advanced in the Senate in an 86-12 procedural vote.
5.
IP-No?
Five years after the 2021 IPO boom, more companies are choosing to stay private .
As Laya Neelakandan reports, the rise of secondary markets is giving founders access to capital and liquidity without the scrutiny and reporting burden of being public.
"The secondaries market is acting as this pressure release valve to this artificial clock of having to go public," said Sunaina Sinha Haldea, the global head of Private Capital Advisory at Raymond James.
Thursday's debuts showed why some may hesitate.
Reformation finished roughly flat in its first day of trading , while Jersey Mike's opened below its IPO price and closed nearly 6% lower.
The Daily Dividend
Here are some articles to bookmark for the weekend:
Logistics giants are racing to keep up with the GLP-1 boom
Trump promised a 'golden age' for agriculture.
Farmers in Iowa say they're still waiting
FIFA is embroiled in a $20 billion World Cup controversy
Does the 4% retirement rule still work?
NYSE CEO Sprecher, SBA head Loeffler's husband, has ties to Trump Jr.-backed private club
Why Europe's hot summers are becoming an expensive challenge
— CNBC's Arjun Kharpal, Annie Palmer, Jordan Novet, Kif Leswing, Samantha Subin, Hugh Leask, Lee Ying Shan, Yun Li, David Faber, Spencer Kimball, Kevin Breuninger, Laya Neelakandan and Amelia Lucas contributed to this report.
Josephine Rozzelle assisted in the production of this newsletter and edited this edition.
Analysis
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