Weekly Update: August 3, 2026

What we learned last week:

Market Data Center

“That wasn’t flying! That was falling with style!” Woody, Toy Story, 1995

After two weeks of declines the tech-heavy Nasdaq leads major indexes to positive returns. It was a busy week of corporate earnings, a Fed rate decision which pushed long dated Treasury bond yields higher, and concerns over peace with Iran linger as oil settled near $90 a barrel.

Four of the ‘Mag Seven’ companies reported earnings last week, giving investors insight into the direction of the AI megatrend.

The two cloud service companies came out as winners. Microsoft reported better than expected earnings, backed by strong growth in its cloud services and modest spend increase guidance. Amazon surged on 37% year-on-year growth in its cloud computing business for the second quarter. Microsoft and Amazon stock jumped 14% and 9% respectively on the news.

Shareholders of Facebook’s parent company Meta and Apple saw shares of both companies fall 9% after reporting quarterly earnings. Meta missed profit expectations and raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance by $10 billion. Apple reported stronger-than-expected earnings and revenue but the company issued slower growth guidance due to “supply constraints.”

The big news in the US economy last week centered around the Federal Reserve rate decision.

The Federal Reserve held rates at a range of 3.5% to 3.75% Wednesday. This decision was largely expected by market participants. Three policymakers dissented with the Fed’s decision, voting for a 0.25% rate hike.

In the same sort of skeptical way Woody met Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, the bond market responded to Warsh’s comments on the Fed’s commitment to price stability with a selloff.

This dramatically raised treasury interest rates and caused stocks to fall. As a result of the meeting, the 30-year Treasury yield hit its highest level since 2007, rising 10.5 basis points to 5.201%. This reaction to Warsh’s comments is being characterized by the bond market as more talk than action and rate hikes to slow inflation as unlikely to occur.

In economic growth and inflation news, the US economy increased just 1.5% during the second quarter, below economists expected growth rate of 2.1%. A decline in federal government spending was a drag on the economy during this period; key areas of the economy told a better story for growth.

A look at consumer prices from Thursday’s PCE report showed a slower rise in prices than expected, reflecting a positive sign for prices; however, this data is prior to recent energy price spikes due to the war in Iran.

Ending with the war in Iran, strikes and counterstrikes between the U.S. and Iran intensified last week – with suspected military action expands to Egypt. Brent Crude, the international benchmark for oil per barrel, finished the week close to $90.

Most recently, President Trump has called off planned attacks on Iran, setting up lower oil prices. The week ahead is packed full of earnings from S&P 500 companies and labor market reports for a check on job growth. Of course, events in Iran and Treasury interest fates will also be closely watched as we enter a seasonally slow period for markets.

What’s ahead this week:

Economic Reports

• Labor market will be in focus as several reports come out this week.
  • Job Openings, the last report showed a record high of openings
  • Weekly jobless claims, which continue to show low fire
  • Non-farm payroll, last month came in much lower than expected, and unemployment rate

Earnings

• Big week of earnings reports for stocks in the Tech and Healthcare sectors
  • Palantir
  • SpaceX debuts their earnings
  • AMD
  • ANET
  • Memory chip makers which have dominated the first half of the year
    • Sandisk
    • Western Digital
  • In health care it is the drug and vaccine makers
    • Merk
    • Amgen
    • Pfizer
    • Eli Lilly
• Other notable earnings this week include;
  • Marriot International
  • Caterpillar
  • McDonalds
  • Disney
  • Uber
  • Door Dash