☕️ [Task Coins Giveaway] Daily Market Talk — A Hawkish Fed, a Split Big Tech, and Now the Jobs Test

July went out with a bang and a warning. Big Tech split the tape clean down the middle: $Microsoft(MSFT.US), $Amazon(AMZN.US) and $Alphabet(GOOGL.US) were rewarded for showing returns on AI spend, while $Meta Platforms(META.US) and $Apple(AAPL.US) were punished for not. Indices still closed the week higher, but the Nasdaq finished July in the red. Now it all funnels into Friday's July payrolls — and SpaceX's first-ever earnings call. Let's dig in 👇

💬 After a hawkish hold and a split Big Tech, are you adding into the jobs print on Friday — or waiting it out?

📊 Quick Recap — What Moved & Why

🇺🇸 US — Hawkish Hold, Big Tech Splits

🔑 Key Event: The FOMC left rates at 3.50–3.75% for a fifth straight meeting on Wednesday, but the vote was 9–3, with three officals dissenting for a quarter-point hike — the first time since September 2016 that three policymakers dissented in the same direction. Equities shrugged it off by Friday: the S&P 500 closed the week +1.0% at 7,489.72, the Nasdaq +1.6% at 25,373.85 and the Dow +1.0% at 52,485.03. The monthly scoreboard was uglier — S&P −0.1%, Nasdaq −3.2%, Dow +0.3% (a fourth straight monthly gain) . VIX ended at 15.99.

👀 Other to Watch

$Amazon(AMZN.US) ~+12% Friday → Q2 revenue $200.61B (+19.6%), AWS +37% — its fastest since 2021 — and operating income +43% to $27.5B. EPS of $5.75 includes a $53.4B non-cash Anthropic gain; capex is running near $220B a year.
$Microsoft(MSFT.US) +8.1% to $422.30 → Azure +43%, 30M Copilot seats, RPO of $678B, and FY27 capex guided to $255–260B. The market paid up for proof, not promises.
$Apple(AAPL.US) −7.4% to $308.91 → FQ3 revenue $109.42B (+16%) and EPS $2.02 (+29%) both beat, but Services ($30.74B) and Greater China ($18.8B) missed, and the Q4 guide of $111.7–113.7B landed under the ~$114.8B Street. Also Tim Cook's last earnings call as CEO.
$Meta Platforms(META.US) −9.6% to $529 → revenue $60.8B (+28%) beat, but EPS $6.18 missed by ~14%, free cash flow collapsed to $784M from $8.5B, and annual capex guidance was lifted to $130–145B.
$Alphabet(GOOGL.US) +6.7% to $356.13 Friday → DeepMind shipped Gemini Robotics 2 / ER 2 / On-Device 2, re-igniting the embodied-AI trade on top of a Q2 that showed Cloud at $24.8B with margin up to 36%.
Macro → Q2 GDP advance came in at +1.5% vs +2.1% expected, while June PCE cooled to +3.7% YoY (from 4.1%) and core to 3.3%. Soft growth, sticky-but-easing prices — exactly the mix that keeps the committee divided.

🇸🇬 Singapore — Record Run Survives a Late Wobble

🔑 Key Event: The STI opened the week +0.60% at a record 5,620.24 on banks and Seatrium, pushed to another record close of 5,713.19 on Wednesday (+1.7%), then faded two straight sessions — including Friday's −0.79% (−45.08) to 5,628.50 — as banking and industrial heavyweights dragged. From here the local calendar takes over: DBS reports Q2/1H before the open on Thu Aug 6, with OCBC and UOB on Fri Aug 7.

👀 Other to Watch

$DBS(D05.SG) · $OCBC Bank(O39.SG) · $UOB(U11.SG) → all three set record highs in July, and the valuation cushion is thin: DBS traded at roughly 18.6x P/E and 3.05x P/B as of Jul 28, versus long-run averages near 11.8x and 1.51x. NIM, wealth fees, credit costs and any shift in full-year tone will matter more than the headline profit.
$SGX(S68.SG) → FY2026 results after the close on Aug 6, same day as DBS. A busy Thursday for the index.
$Seatrium(5E2.SG) · $YZJ Shipbldg SGD(BS6.SG) → industrials were among the week's better STI performers before Friday's profit-taking; Seatrium traded around S$2.13.
Rates → with the Fed now flirting with a hike rather than a cut, where SORA settles is the swing factor for bank NIMs into 2H — the single biggest input into the STI's 50%-plus bank weighting.

🇭🇰 HK/China — Banks and Gold Lead, AI Still Wobbly

🔑 Key Event: Hong Kong quietly had the best week of the three markets. The HSI rose +3.7% to 25,884.43 — a fifth straight weekly gain, up from 24,963 the previous Friday. Leadership rotated hard into financials and materials: a possible Fed hike lifted margin expectations, sending BOC Hong Kong to a record (+10.2%) and Bank of East Asia +9.6% to a three-month high. Hang Seng TECH ended Friday +0.5% at 4,829; HSCEI −0.4% at 8,612.

👀 Other to Watch

China Mainland → Friday was a tech-led rebound (Shanghai Composite +0.72% to 3,832, Shenzhen Component +2.21% to 13,578, ChiNext +3.06% to 3,343), but July was brutal: the STAR 50 fell −25.9%, its worst month on record, and the Shanghai Composite −6.4%, its biggest drop since March.
AI names split → Zhipu rebounded +11.7% while MiniMax slid another −9.3% and now sits only ~19% above its IPO price.
Zhongji Innolight (300308.SZ) → fell on its Hong Kong debut despite raising ~HK$53.4B in one of the city's largest listings this year — a caution flag on how much AI supply-chain paper the market will absorb.
Policy → China's leadership pledged at Thursday's meeting to push for "breakthroughs in frontier technologies", with analysts reading it as a signal on market resilience and investor confidence.

🌍 Other

Oil → a violent round trip. Brent slid below $90 on Monday as the US–Iran pause appeared to hold, then jumped +7.9% on Wednesday to $90.74 after Trump threatened to hit Iran hard, and stayed jumpy into Friday when Iran claimed attacks on two tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Even after the weekly pullback, Brent finished July up roughly 24% — its strongest month since March.
Rates → 30-year Treasury at 5.21% (19-year high), 10-year at 4.67%. A hawkish Fed plus an oil-driven inflation impulse is the combination the long end likes least.
Gold → back above $4,000/oz, lifting miners across Hong Kong and the A-share market.

📅 Key Events This Week

🇺🇸 July ISM Manufacturing & June construction spending · today, Mon Aug 3
🇨🇳 China July manufacturing PMI · today, Mon Aug 3
🇺🇸 Palantir (PLTR) Q2 · today, Mon Aug 3 after close — commercial growth & AIP adoption
🇺🇸 SpaceX (SPCX) first-ever results · Tue Aug 4 after close (webcast 4:30pm ET). Street ~$6.7–6.9B revenue — and the IPO lock-up expires two days later on Thu Aug 6, releasing roughly 911.5M pre-IPO shares
🇺🇸 AMD Q2 · Tue Aug 4 after close — guided ~$11.2B revenue, Street EPS ~$1.62; watch MI400/Helios timing. Caterpillar pre-market
🇺🇸 July ADP & ISM Services · Wed Aug 5 · Earnings: SanDisk, Disney, Uber, Eli Lilly
🇸🇬 DBS (D05) Q2/1H · Thu Aug 6 pre-open · SGX (S68) FY26 after close
🇺🇸 Jobless claims & Q2 productivity · Thu Aug 6 · Earnings: Datadog, Rocket Lab (RKLB), Lyft
🇸🇬 OCBC (O39) & UOB (U11) Q2 results · Fri Aug 7
🇺🇸 July non-farm payrolls · Fri Aug 7 — the week's main event. Street ~91k, unemployment seen ticking 4.2% → 4.3%, after June's 57k
🌍 Strait of Hormuz / US–Iran headlines · ongoing — the swing factor for oil and the long end

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🚫 No duplicates ⏰ Deadline: August 3, 2026, 11:59 PM SGT

Not investment advice, just market talk 🙏