Microsoft and Meta reported minutes apart last night and the market split them right down the middle: MSFT ripped about 8% after hours as Azure grew 43%, while Meta's free cash flow collapsed to $784 million and the stock cracked roughly 10%. Before any of that, the Fed held rates and the Dow had its worst day since April 2025. Let's dig in 👇

💬 Does Microsoft's 8% pop mean the AI trade is fine, or is Meta's $784 million the real signal?

📊 Quick Recap — What Moved & Why

🇺🇸 US — Fed Holds, Big Tech Splits

🔑 Key Event: $Microsoft(MSFT.US) and $Meta Platforms(META.US) both reported after the bell and Wall Street read them as opposite answers to the same question. Microsoft posted $90.01B in revenue, up 18%, with adjusted EPS of $4.74 against $4.24 expected, Azure growing 43%, and full-year Azure revenue clearing $100B for the first time. The line that mattered most was capex: calendar-2026 spending plans stayed unchanged while the cloud accelerated, which is exactly the proof of return the market has been demanding, and the stock rose about 8% after hours. Meta went the other way. Revenue beat at $60.80B, up 28%, but EPS came in at $6.18 against $7.22 expected, Q3 guidance of $61B to $64B landed under the $63.15B consensus, and capex of $31.08B swallowed almost all of the $31.9B in operating cash flow, leaving free cash flow of just $784 million. Shares cracked roughly 10%. None of that saved the regular session: the Fed held at 3.50% to 3.75% on a 9 to 3 vote with three officials dissenting in favour of a hike, the bond market decided the Fed is behind on inflation, and the Dow closed down 1,153.18 points or 2.19% at 51,594.14 for its worst day since April 2025. The S&P 500 fell 1.52% to 7,316.15 and the Nasdaq lost 1.74% to 24,442.94, now more than 10% below its intraday record.

👀 Other to Watch

• 30-year Treasury → yield jumped 12bp to 5.21%, the highest since 2007, while the 2-year fell 4bp to 4.24%. The curve steepened because traders think the Fed is late, not early.
• $Starbucks(SBUX.US) → adjusted EPS of $0.85 beat the $0.67 expected and full-year guidance went up to $2.55 to $2.65 on a fourth straight quarter of same-store sales growth. Shares rose as much as 9% after hours.
• $Qualcomm(QCOM.US) → results landed in line but current-quarter guidance came in light, with management blaming the memory supply crunch and flagging across-the-board price rises from 1 September. Shares fell after hours.
• $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) , $AMD(AMD.US) and $Micron Tech(MU.US) → all slid again as SK Hynix's earnings miss rippled through the AI-memory complex for a third session.
• US futures → Dow futures added about 0.3%, S&P 500 futures 0.4% and Nasdaq 100 futures 0.7% overnight as the Microsoft relief set in.

🇸🇬 Singapore — Oil Bites the National Carrier

🔑 Key Event: $SIA(C6L.SG) posted its first quarterly loss since the pandemic, and the cause sits right on top of this week's oil story. Group revenue hit a record S$5.71B, up 19.3%, and SIA plus Scoot carried a record 10.9 million passengers. But net fuel costs jumped 78.5% to S$2.25B after the Middle East conflict lifted jet fuel, operating profit collapsed 73.8% to S$106M, and the group swung to a S$76M net loss. With Brent adding almost 8% overnight, that fuel line is not fixing itself this quarter.

👀 Other to Watch

• $FTSE Straits Times Index(STI.SG) → Singapore is on track for its best month since November 2020, up roughly 8.6% in July, led by $DBS(D05.SG) and $OCBC Bank(O39.SG) . While Korea and the chip complex came apart, the local market quietly became the region's safe haven.
• $DBS(D05.SG) → reports Q2 2026 before the open on Thursday 6 August, the first of the big three and the real test of whether fee income keeps offsetting margin compression.
• Asia this morning → regional markets leaned higher after Microsoft's numbers, a clean reversal of the Wall Street close.

🇭🇰 HK/China — The Year's Biggest IPO Breaks Issue

🔑 Key Event: $ZJ INNOLIGHT(03308.HK) listed in Hong Kong this morning and broke issue almost immediately. The optical-module maker priced 54.5 million H shares at HK$980 to raise HK$53.41B, making this Hong Kong's largest share sale since $BABA-W(09988.HK) in 2019 and Asia's second largest of 2026. It opened at HK$971 and slid to around HK$895 to HK$902 in mid-morning trade, down roughly 8% from the offer price, while the $Zhongji Innolight(300308.SZ) fell about 12%. The Hong Kong tranche had been covered 16.84 times, so this is not a demand problem, it is the AI trade repricing in real time. Innolight topped the Hong Kong turnover table this morning, ahead of $TENCENT(00700.HK) and $XIAOMI-W(01810.HK) .

👀 Other to Watch

• $Hang Seng Index(00HSI.HK) → around flat this morning with the Hang Seng Tech Index off about 1%, holding up far better than Wall Street did overnight.
• $STANCHART(02888.HK) → first-half pretax profit rose 9% and the bank announced a US$1B buyback on Wednesday, sending the shares more than 10% higher in Hong Kong trade.
• Innolight's customers → $Alphabet(GOOGL.US) , $Amazon(AMZN.US) and $Meta Platforms(META.US) together account for roughly 40% of revenue, which is exactly why last night's Meta capex print landed on a Hong Kong listing.

🌍 Other

• Korea → the Kospi closed down 5.98% at 5,663.23 after falling as low as 5,262.77, triggering a circuit breaker for a second consecutive session. That has never happened before in the index's history. $SK Hynix(SKHY.US) ended down 9.61% and Samsung Electronics fell 5.23%, taking the two-day drop to about 16%.
• Oil → Brent settled up 7.9% at $90.74 and WTI rose 6.6% to $84.46 after Trump told Fox News that Iran would be hit hard in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack on US forces in Jordan.
• Gold → held near $4,050 an ounce, caught between higher oil feeding inflation risk and geopolitics feeding haven demand.
• Bitcoin → steady at around $64,000, notably calm through a Fed day, a chip rout and fresh strikes on Iran.

📅 Key Events Tonight / This Week

• 🇺🇸 Thursday 30 July, 8:30pm SGT → Q2 GDP advance estimate, June core PCE and weekly initial jobless claims all land together.
• 🇺🇸 Thursday 30 July, after the close → Big Tech Q2 earnings continue: $Apple(AAPL.US) and $Amazon(AMZN.US) close out the mega-cap week.
• 🇺🇸 Friday 31 July → $ExxonMobil(XOM.US) , $Chevron(CVX.US) and $Abbvie(ABBV.US) report; Employment Cost Index and Chicago PMI.
• 🇸🇬 Thursday 6 August → $DBS(D05.SG) reports Q2 2026 before the open, starting the local bank season.
• 🌍 Ongoing → US and Iran exchanges keep driving Brent and the Strait of Hormuz risk premium.

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🚫 No duplicates · ⏰ Deadline: 30 July 2026, 11:59 PM SGT
Not investment advice, just market talk 🙏