Ringside · Pre-Bell · August 10
- Brent crude $84.84, up 1.5%, after Tehran attached conditions to any Hormuz reopening.
- Chip-equipment shares bid before the open: ASML up 2.3%, KLA and Applied Materials near 2%.
- July consumer prices land Wednesday 8:30 ET; September hold odds finished Friday at 60%.
Indexes
Weekend headlines moved oil and Asian equities; they have barely touched US futures. Only the Nasdaq 100 contract carries a bid worth the name. Each of the four matches its exchange-traded proxy to within 0.06 of a point, which rules out one thin contract wandering. That matters because Friday's session ended with the S&P 500 at 7,757.64 and every remaining question about the rate path pushed forward to Wednesday.
| Future | Level | % Chg | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| ES (S&P 500) | 7,785.75 | +0.08% | |
| NQ (Nasdaq 100) | 29,918.75 | +0.28% | Semiconductor bid |
| YM (Dow) | 54,105.00 | -0.09% | |
| RTY (Russell 2000) | 3,034.30 | -0.24% | Gives back a fifth of Friday |
Asia did the overnight work. Tokyo added more than 2% and Seoul and Hong Kong both closed higher, while Europe has split into small moves in both directions — the FTSE 100 is down 0.34% at mid-session and the CAC 40 has shed 0.08%, so the four rows below carry the picture.
| Index | Level | % Chg | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nikkei 225 | 66,970.22 | +2.08% | Best of the majors |
| Hang Seng | 25,937.49 | +1.05% | |
| Kospi | 6,299.66 | +0.65% | Third gain in four |
| DAX | 26,433.39 | +0.30% | Mid-session |
In the News
Rates, FX, Commodities
Nothing has repriced cash Treasuries since the closing bell on Friday, so the four levels below are that afternoon's marks, carried for reference rather than as a fresh signal. The gap between two-year and ten-year notes stands at 45 basis points.
| Treasury | Yield | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2-Year | 4.199% | Low end of its July range |
| 5-Year | 4.362% | |
| 10-Year | 4.649% | |
| 30-Year | 5.211% |
Energy is the one market that traded the weekend properly. Both crude benchmarks have added about 1.5% on the Iranian conditions, and Tim Waterer of KCM Trade told Al Jazeera that "each day that passes without a breakthrough is making traders a little more cautious." Natural gas has moved further in percentage terms than either barrel.
| Commodity | Level | % Chg | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brent crude | $84.84 | +1.54% | October contract |
| WTI crude | $79.38 | +1.53% | |
| Natural gas | $2.764 | +3.83% | Largest overnight move |
| Gold | $4,396.80 | +0.21% | December contract |
Bullion has stalled after Friday's 2.35% advance and remains roughly 22% below the January 28 peak of $5,602.22, which is worth stating plainly given how often the metal gets described as making records this year. The dollar index at 99.70 has not moved, the euro sits at $1.1559, and the yen has weakened to 158.75 per dollar. The volatility index is quoted at 15.45, inside the range it has held all summer.
Technicals
Friday's record close of 7,757.64 cleared the prior high of 7,736.52 set on Tuesday, verified against the index's own closing history, and leaves the S&P 500 with 263.40 points of cushion above its fifty-day average at 7,494.24. First support on any pullback is the twenty-day at 7,525.41.
The Nasdaq 100 has more work in front of it. At 29,722.30 it has cleared both near averages but still sits 938.30 points, or 3.06%, under the June 2 closing peak of 30,660.60.
Ten-year notes at 4.649% have spent three weeks between roughly 4.60% and 4.75%. Wednesday's inflation reading decides which end of that band gets tested; nothing between now and then plausibly does.
Apple sits three-tenths of a percent from its fifty-day average on the pre-market indication, which is the tightest technical question on the board this morning.
Breakouts & Breakdowns
Breakouts
PubMatic (PUBM) closed Friday at $17.78, its highest finish in twelve months, after a 31.9% session. The stock spent the spring under $10, and the twelve-month low is $6.28.
ASML (ASML) at an indicated $1,781.21 reclaims the $1,758.69 fifty-day average it lost during the July drawdown. Friday's close sits 12.4% below its twelve-month closing high of $1,986.87.
Lumentum (LITE) at $890.17 already trades $72.20 above its fifty-day average, and the indicated $920.00 extends that. The optical-components maker finished Friday 15.5% under its own twelve-month closing high of $1,053.09.
Breakdowns
Apple (AAPL) loses the fifty-day at $309.79 on the indicated price, having already spent a fortnight beneath the twenty-day at $323.43. The two-hundred-day near $279 is the next line that matters.
KLA (KLAC) at $198.11 is the laggard of the equipment group, below both its twenty-day at $203.41 and its fifty-day at $221.43 even after Friday's 2.53% gain.
GlobalFoundries (GFS) closed at $53.93, under a twenty-day average of $54.73 and a long way beneath the fifty-day at $69.16, with the two-hundred-day at $51.90 as the floor underneath.
Top Movers
Gainers
Plug Power (PLUG), +5.5% to $2.30. The hydrogen fuel-cell company reports second-quarter results this evening, with the call at 4:30 ET, and analysts carry a loss of eight cents a share on revenue of $167.74 million. The shares rose 5.31% on Friday as well, which puts two consecutive advances into a name that has spent the year drifting lower.
ASML (ASML), +2.3% to $1,781.21. The chip-equipment group is bid as a block on Taiwan Semiconductor's July revenue: KLA is up 2.0%, Applied Materials 2.0%, Lam Research 1.5% and the foundry GlobalFoundries 0.9%. Applied Materials reports Thursday after the close, so the read-across arrives three days before that company answers for itself.
Super Micro Computer (SMCI), +3.5% to $32.21. The server maker reports Tuesday, and the indication would put it back above a fifty-day average of $31.86 it has been trading beneath.
Lumentum (LITE), +3.4% to $920.00. Another 6.22% came in on Friday ahead of results due this week.
Losers
Apple (AAPL), -1.4% to $308.91. The stock trades ex-dividend today for a quarterly payment of 27 cents, which accounts for a small part of the decline and no more. The rest is the drift that has run since the July 30 results, when record June-quarter revenue of $109.4 billion was overshadowed by services revenue of $30.7 billion against the $31.22 billion analysts carried, and a September-quarter growth range of 9% to 11% where 12% was wanted.
Palantir Technologies (PLTR), -1.1% to $170.07. Friday brought a 10.32% advance to $172.01, so this is a modest giveback rather than a change of direction. The shares still trade about 30% above their fifty-day average.
Macro Calendar
Today is a placeholder in the data schedule. The Conference Board publishes its Employment Trends Index this morning, a composite of eight labour indicators that almost never moves a market, and the Treasury sells three- and six-month bills.
| Release | Time | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Employment Trends Index | Morning | Conference Board composite |
| 3- and 6-month bill auctions | Late morning | Front-end demand check |
| July CPI | Wed 8:30 ET | The week's decision point |
Earnings Today
Seven companies report before the open and eight after the close, and only one of them is worth naming: Plug Power, covered above. The week fills out from Tuesday with Super Micro Computer and CoreWeave, Cisco Systems on Wednesday, then Applied Materials and JD.com on Thursday. Applied Materials guided to revenue of about $8.95 billion give or take $500 million, and the street carries adjusted earnings of $3.36 a share against $2.48 a year ago.
Drivers
- Whether crude holds its weekend gains into the New York session. Brent above $84 with the strait still shut is a different input to Wednesday's inflation reading than Brent in the seventies, and the market has spent three weeks trading each Hormuz headline in both directions within a session. Al Jazeera cites MarineTraffic counting between eight and fifteen transits a day in early August, a fraction of the pre-war run rate. The conditions Tehran set out over the weekend do not read like the work of a government in a hurry.
- Whether the semiconductor bid survives the opening hour. Pre-market strength built on someone else's monthly revenue release has a habit of thinning once US institutions are actually at their desks, and the equipment names are not uniformly healthy underneath — on Friday's closes KLA sat 34.3% below its twelve-month high while ASML was 12.4% below its own. Watch whether the group finishes with the gains it currently shows.
- The front end of the curve, which has done nothing since Friday. Two-year notes at 4.199% already price a meaningful probability that September passes without a move, so a hot July inflation reading has more room to hurt than a soft one has to help. That asymmetry is why a quiet Monday matters: positioning set today gets marked against a number that lands Wednesday at 8:30 ET.