Ringside · Pre-Bell · August 7
- July payrolls at 8:30 ET: consensus 83,000 after June's 57,000 and ADP's 44,000.
- The Trade Desk quoted at $12.69, down 28.2%, on guidance 19.4% under consensus.
- Silver up 4.9% to $64.64 and gold up 1.8% to $4,376.20 before the number lands.
Indexes
Everything before 8:30 ET is a placeholder. Futures carry a small bid across all four contracts, wider in the Nasdaq 100 than elsewhere, and the exchange-traded proxies agree to within two hundredths of a percentage point, so this is a modest but real lean rather than one thin contract wandering. Thursday left the Dow Jones Industrial Average 464.02 points lower at 53,885.10 and the S&P 500 down 0.18% at 7,709.96, which puts this morning's recovery at a fraction of what Thursday cost.
| Future | Level | % Chg | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| ES (S&P 500) | 7,749.00 | +0.18% | |
| NQ (Nasdaq 100) | 29,622.75 | +0.46% | Software bid returns |
| YM (Dow) | 54,055 | +0.08% | Recovers 42 of 464 points |
| RTY (Russell 2000) | 3,018.00 | +0.30% |
Overseas the direction is uniform and the magnitude is small. Four rows carry the whole picture, Asia on closing levels and Europe still mid-session; the Nikkei 225 finished within a tenth of a percent of Thursday, and the CAC 40 has added 0.16%.
| Index | Level | % Chg | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| DAX | 26,341.13 | +0.68% | Mid-session |
| FTSE 100 | 10,929.55 | +0.52% | Mid-session |
| Hang Seng | 25,668.03 | +0.54% | |
| Kospi | 6,258.77 | -0.60% | Second down day after -4.58% |
In the News
Rates, FX, Commodities
Cash Treasuries have not traded materially since Thursday's close, so the yields below are that afternoon's marks. Thursday moved them all up together, and the two-year at 4.21% against the ten-year at 4.670% leaves 46 basis points between them.
| Treasury | Yield | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2-Year | 4.21% | |
| 5-Year | 4.389% | |
| 10-Year | 4.670% | Up 5.3bp Thursday |
| 30-Year | 5.213% |
The metals are where money moved overnight. Silver has added 4.92% and gold 1.78%, and for once the smaller metal is leading rather than following the larger one.
| Commodity | Level | % Chg | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silver | $64.64 | +4.92% | September contract |
| Gold | $4,376.20 | +1.78% | December contract |
| WTI crude | $76.87 | -0.54% | Gives back a fifth of Thursday |
| Brent crude | $81.84 | -0.79% | |
| Natural gas | $2.638 | -0.08% |
Neither metal is anywhere near a record; gold sits roughly a fifth below where it traded in late January and silver about 47% below its own peak from the same week, so what is happening here is a partial retracing of a very large unwind. The dollar index is unchanged at 99.93, the euro at 1.1531 and the yen at 158.32, which is a currency market declining to take a position before a data release.
Technicals
The Nasdaq 100 finished Thursday at 29,373.33, one point below its fifty-day average of 29,374.33. That is close enough that the opening bell settles the question if this morning's futures bid holds. The twenty-day sits 579 points lower at 28,794.17, and the index is still 4.2% under the 30,660.60 it reached on 2 June.
The S&P 500 has room in both directions. At 7,709.96 it sits 0.34% under its own high-water mark for the trailing year, set on 4 August, and 665 points clear of a two-hundred-day average at 7,044.92.
The ten-year gave back a third of five weeks' work in Thursday afternoon alone. It now sits 4 basis points above a twenty-day average of 4.63% and 13 above the fifty-day at 4.54%, having spent most of July beneath both.
Breakouts & Breakdowns
Breakouts
Cloudflare (NET). An indicated $330.43 clears the $305.00 that had stood as the twelve-month high, with the fifty-day average far below at $253.92 and the two-hundred-day at $214.44. No prior chart sits above this level.
Airbnb (ABNB). $163.09 before the bell takes out a $156.50 high set earlier this summer. The fifty-day sits at $142.21 and the two-hundred-day at $132.96, a stack rising since spring.
Breakdowns
Alphabet (GOOGL). Thursday's $357.75 close landed seven cents under a fifty-day average of $357.82, the first finish beneath that line since June. The two-hundred-day is $29.65 lower at $328.10.
Goldman Sachs (GS). A 2.62% decline to $1,032.58 put the shares $20.27 under a fifty-day average of $1,052.85. The bank alone supplied 171 of the Dow's 464-point loss on Thursday.
Top Movers
Gainers
Doximity (DOCS) +94.8% to $40.25. Fiscal first-quarter revenue of $156.6 million grew 7% and beat the $151.7 million the street carried, while earnings of 29 cents came a penny short. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation were $74.8 million on a 48% margin, and management lifted the full year to $671 million to $681 million. The clinical artificial-intelligence product now has 165 signed health-system customers, and the doubling reprices that pipeline rather than the quarter itself.
Cloudflare (NET) +16.2% to $330.43. Revenue of $696.1 million grew 36% and earnings of 29 cents both cleared estimates. The company raised its full-year revenue range to $2.864 billion to $2.870 billion and adjusted earnings to $1.25 to $1.26 against $1.21 modelled, with third-quarter revenue guided to $736 million to $737 million. Large customers and developer products supplied the acceleration.
Airbnb (ABNB) +7.6% to $163.09. Revenue of $3.6 billion grew 17%, gross booking value 16% to $27.2 billion, and nights and seats booked 10% to 148.3 million, faster than the first quarter. Net income was $816 million, first-time bookers grew 11%, and the full-year margin floor moved to 35.5% from 35%.
Expedia (EXPE) +2.8% to $315.00. The travel read-across, on no news of its own.
Losers
The Trade Desk (TTD) -28.2% to $12.69. Second-quarter revenue of $715 million missed the $752.6 million estimate and grew 3%, against 19% in the same quarter a year earlier. The third-quarter guide of $650 million sits 19.4% under what analysts carried and implies a 12% decline from a year ago, which is the number that broke the stock. Management noted it retained more than 95% of clients, and that is the uncomfortable part: if customers are staying while revenue shrinks, the trouble is what they are willing to spend or what the company can charge them. Downgrades followed overnight.
Sweetgreen (SG) -16.0% to $4.93. Analysts had modelled a 10-cent loss on roughly $194 million of revenue. The shares had rallied 6.4% into the report Thursday afternoon.
ResMed (RMD) -7.7% to $206.15. Fourth-quarter revenue rose 9% to a record $1.5 billion, adjusted earnings of $2.95 beat the $2.88 expected, gross margin widened 90 basis points to 62.3%, and the dividend went up 10% to 66 cents. None of that is the argument. Philips returns to the American market in 2027, and Morgan Stanley already models fiscal 2027 gross margin flat at 62.4%. Buyers are discounting a competitor that has not arrived yet.
Key Macro Data Today
| Release | Time ET | Consensus | Prior |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nonfarm payrolls (July) | 8:30 | 83K | 57K |
| Unemployment rate | 8:30 | 4.2% | 4.2% |
| Average hourly earnings, m/m | 8:30 | +0.3% | +0.3% |
| Wholesale inventories (June) | 10:00 | ||
| Consumer credit (June) | 15:00 |
The wage line deserves as much attention as the headline. Average hourly earnings running at 3.5% year over year is the pace economists generally call compatible with 2% inflation, so a hot wage figure alongside a soft hiring figure would hand both camps on the committee something to quote. Revisions matter too: May was cut by 43,000 in an earlier report and April by 31,000.
Notable Earnings This Session
Pre-Open
Vistra (VST) is the one to watch, reporting before the open with a 10:00 ET call. Analysts model $2.43 a share against $1.01 a year earlier, and options pricing compiled by Bloomberg implies a 6.4% move in either direction. The stock has spent recent weeks near a twelve-month low, which puts the power-demand story that carried the sector through 2025 under a real test.
Post-Close
Nothing of note reports after the bell on a summer Friday.
Drivers
- The 8:30 ET employment report is the only item on today's schedule that can move an index. Estimates run from Vanguard's 18,000 to the 83,000 the Dow Jones survey carries, which leaves the distribution of outcomes unusually fat on the low side. Rate futures have already trimmed September tightening odds through the week, so a soft figure largely confirms what is priced, while anything above 120,000 forces a rethink on a bond market that just surrendered five weeks of rally in one afternoon.
- Software is being marked on the guide alone, and this week ran both ways. Cloudflare raised and gained 16%; The Trade Desk cut and lost 28%. Two clean beats drew opposite reactions on Wednesday as well. The reported quarter is buying almost nothing.
- Silver at $64.64 after a 4.92% overnight move is the print to reconcile. It has run ahead of gold, which is more typical of industrial demand or a positioning squeeze than of a hedge against a weak economy. The metal sits far under its January high, so this is retracement rather than breakout, and the 8:30 release settles which explanation survives the morning.