A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY.
Here's a full recap:1. Palantir $Palantir Tech(PLTR.US) reported Q2 2026 revenue of $1.94B, up 93% YoY, with U.S. revenue surging 115% to $1.57B. U.S. commercial revenue jumped 149% to $764M, U.S. government revenue rose 90% to $809M, GAAP net income climbed 324% to $1.06B with a 55% margin, and adjusted free cash flow reached $1.22B with a 63% margin. The company posted a Rule of 40 score of 155%, $3.4B in TCV, $2.1B in U.S. commercial TCV, $6.2B in U.S. commercial RDV, ended the quarter with $9.2B in cash, and raised FY guidance to $8.15B, implying 82% YoY growth. CEO Alex Karp: “Demand for AI sovereignty has now been unleashed. And Palantir is the only company that has demonstrated it can transform tokens into actual economic value. Our customers trust us to provide them with maximal control over their operations, data, and decisions. Their competitive advantage should never become the training data for future models. This quarter was otherworldly. The sovereign AI revolution makes us very optimistic about the future."2. The stock market had one of its best days in 2026: semiconductors, software, and hyperscalers participated together. Throughout the year, one sector would go up in tech while the others go down, but with oil falling 7% and the market trying to move on from the deleveraging event of last week, markets seem to be more positively looking at the companies spending capex like $Microsoft(MSFT.US) $Alphabet(GOOGL.US) $Meta Platforms(META.US) and $Amazon(AMZN.US) which all had strong moves today, Microsoft had the largest single day increase in marketcap last week at $448B with $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) having the record of $441B in April 2025. The companies getting the capex (semis) did strongly and the companies making sense of the models in the enterprise, software companies, were also green. It's the first day in months that all 3 sectors $SPY $IGV $SMH participated together in a rally. 3. Trump said the U.S. will hold off on attacking Iran after Iran and other Middle Eastern countries asked Washington to pause once the outline of a potential deal was agreed. He said any agreement must include the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the removal of Iran’s nuclear threat. The pause appears conditional on a deal being reached quickly, while Iranian officials quoted by state-linked media denied asking for a halt. Trump said Iranian leadership is “duplicitous,” adding that while they publicly deny talks, “they know we are” negotiating toward a solution.4. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) with 4.4M contracts, $Tesla(TSLA.US) with 2.9M contracts, $Apple(AAPL.US) with 1.7M contracts, $Amazon(AMZN.US) with 1.5M contracts, $Microsoft(MSFT.US) with 1.4M contracts, $Micron Tech(MU.US) with 1.3M contracts, $Meta Platforms(META.US) with 886K contracts, $Alphabet(GOOGL.US) with 792K contracts, $SpaceX(SPCX.US) with 786K contracts, and $Intel(INTC.US) with 759K contracts.5. The semiconductor index $SOX saw intraday moves of at least 2% in all 22 trading days in July, matching the extreme volatility last seen in 2020. Before that, a stretch like this had not occurred since the 2008 Financial Crisis. The SOX fell 21% in July, its worst month since October 2008, wiping out $2.2T in market cap. The move pushed 60-day realized volatility to roughly 66%, the highest since the pandemic peak of about 85% in 2020 and not far from the 75% level seen during the 2008 crisis.6. Jeff Bezos filed a Form 144 on August 3 to sell 15M Amazon $Amazon(AMZN.US) shares, with an aggregate market value of roughly $4.07B. The filing lists an approximate sale date of August 3, 2026, and the sale is tied to a 10b5-1 trading plan adopted on November 14, 2025. The shares were originally acquired as founder stock, and the filing also notes Bezos contributed 220,200 shares to nonprofit organizations on May 4.7. Hedge funds are moving back into tech stocks aggressively. In the week ending Thursday, funds recorded their largest net purchase of U.S. technology stocks since December 2022, marking the 3rd-largest weekly buy in at least 5 years. The buying was mainly driven by new long positions, with some short covering as well. Software, semiconductors, and semiconductor equipment saw the strongest demand, followed by tech hardware. Hedge funds also bought Magnificent 7 stocks for 4 straight days through Thursday.8. Tesla $Tesla(TSLA.US) sales in Spain plunged 81.3% YoY in July to just 131 vehicles. Despite the sharp monthly decline, Tesla’s sales in Spain are still up 19.8% YoY through the first seven months of 2026, while the broader Spanish electrified vehicle market has grown 34.9% over the same period.9. Grab $Grab(GRAB.US) reported record Q2 2026 results, raised full-year guidance, and announced an additional $750M share repurchase program. Revenue grew 22% YoY to $997M, On-Demand GMV rose 21% YoY to $6.5B, profit for the period reached $235M, and adjusted EBITDA increased 54% YoY to $168M. Grab also generated $450M of trailing 12-month adjusted free cash flow. The company raised FY26 guidance to $4.10B–$4.15B in revenue and $720M–$740M in adjusted EBITDA, while bringing cumulative buyback authorization to $1.75B since 2024. Grab has been buying back stock since March 2026, and management previously said it expects revenue to grow at a 20% CAGR from 2025 to 2028, with adjusted EBITDA tripling to $1.5B by 2028.10. Leveraged and inverse ETFs tied to SK Hynix now hold roughly $5.5B in assets, the most of any single stock globally. Micron $Micron Tech(MU.US) follows at about $5.1B, while Nvidia $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) accounts for roughly $4.8B. Tesla $Tesla(TSLA.US) is the largest non-chip name on the list at around $3.7B. In total, semiconductor-related stocks now represent about $21B of leveraged and inverse ETF assets, while the 3x leveraged U.S. semiconductor ETF $SOXL took in $6.9B in July, its largest monthly inflow on record.11. Bernstein sees the global server market reaching $1T by 2028, raising its forecasts for global server shipments and GPU AI server shipments to 15% and 22% CAGRs through 2028. The firm expects 8-GPU-equivalent server shipments to grow 48% in 2026, with rack shipments reaching 61,000 this year and 88,000 in 2027. Nvidia $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) Rubin and AMD $AMD(AMD.US) Helios racks are expected to start shipping in Q4. Bernstein also says planned and under-construction data center investment now totals roughly $1.2T, while major cloud providers’ 2026 capex estimates have risen nearly 15% since March, with combined spend projected around $1.1T by 2027. Custom ASICs are expected to represent roughly 45% of CoWoS-based AI chip shipments, with Google TPU shipments projected to grow about 90% in 2026.12. Citadel’s Rubner says the early-summer excesses in the market have largely been unwound. Retail investors have reduced risk, leverage has normalized, concentration has eased, and many of the biggest technical headwinds have started to fade. As a result, he believes investors can shift more attention back to fundamentals rather than positioning. Position sizes and risk budgets are expected to rebuild gradually, supporting a lower-volatility grind higher instead of another sharp V-shaped recovery.WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.Source: amit
