Indexes

American futures are steadier than the news behind them. Seoul halted trading for a second consecutive day, Iran fired ballistic missiles at US bases in the Middle East, and the Federal Reserve rules this afternoon on what 30% of the market thinks could be a rate increase. Against all of that, three of the four US contracts sit up roughly a fifth of a percent.

Overseas the split was severe. Korea absorbed the selling and Hong Kong took the other side of it, while Europe opened with no clear direction.

The rest of Europe moved very little: the FTSE 100 added 0.13%, the DAX gave up 0.25% and the CAC 40 lost 0.54%, with miners and energy carrying the bid.

In the News

Rates, FX, Commodities

Government bonds are declining to take a position before the afternoon.

Nothing physical changed for oil supply overnight. No tanker, terminal or export facility was struck and the missiles never reached their targets, which is why a barrel is up 4.64% and not 15%. West Texas Intermediate has recovered $3.68 of the $10.05 it surrendered on Monday and Tuesday. Bullion is the more revealing reading: an act of war arrived and gold went slightly lower anyway, because for one afternoon 2:00 pm outranks the Gulf.

Technicals

Five sessions have passed without the S&P 500 reclaiming either of its short-term averages. It closed at 7,428.78, under a 20-day of 7,492.27 and a 50-day of 7,469.94, with the 200-day far beneath at 7,012.60 — nothing structural has been threatened. The Nasdaq Composite at 24,876.91 is 4.4% below a 50-day of 26,013.38, with the 200-day at 23,962.98 another 3.7% lower. The Russell 2000 at 2,953.80 holds above its 50-day of 2,934.13, the only major US index still doing so.

The 10-year at 4.604% sits nearer the top of its May-to-July band than the bottom, and the 2-year's most recent published close, Monday's, was 4.31%. KLA's hourly chart below carries the sharpest reaction of the pre-market.

KLA (KLAC), hourly: $174.55 in the pre-market, an 8.5% gap lower on a record quarter and an above-consensus September guide.

Breakouts & Breakdowns

Breakouts

General Dynamics (GD) — $397.00 in the pre-market clears a 52-week high of $395.43, with nothing from the past twelve months overhead. First support is the 50-day at $357.17, 10% lower.

ConocoPhillips (COP) — $116.71 puts the shares back over a 50-day of $113.90 on the crude move. If the barrel gives the gain back, the 200-day at $107.29 is the floor that matters.

Breakdowns

Lam Research (LRCX) — $261.98 sits 22.4% under a 50-day of $337.78, a gap opened in four sessions. The 200-day at $238.91 is the next structural reference, 8.8% below here, and the company reports tonight.

McDonald's (MCD) — $273.50 keeps the shares under a 50-day of $275.46 and 9.1% below the 200-day at $300.90, with the 52-week low of $260.96 the next mark down. It is the largest US restaurant chain trading like Tuesday's drop in consumer confidence was about something.

General Dynamics (GD), daily: the pre-market print sits above every close of the past twelve months.

Lam Research (LRCX), daily: four sessions have opened a wide gap between price and the 50-day average.

Top Movers

Gainers

Seagate Technology (STX), +5.71% to $790.00. Fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $3.63 billion beat the $3.49 billion consensus and grew 48.5% from a year earlier, with non-GAAP earnings of $5.71 a share and a non-GAAP gross margin of 52.7%. Management guided the September quarter to $4.1 billion in revenue and $7.30 a share, and said its HAMR-based Mozaic drives now account for 40% of the high-capacity data-center storage it ships. What the market is paying for is pricing, not units. The timing is the oddity: a storage business reporting accelerating cloud demand on the morning Seoul is dumping memory over the opposite fear. Even after the bounce, the shares would open 11% under a 50-day average of $886.31.

Bloom Energy (BE), +7.94% to $180.08. The first billion-dollar quarter in company history: revenue of $1.065 billion rose 165.5%, non-GAAP earnings of $0.78 a share nearly doubled the $0.41 consensus, and gross margin widened 668 basis points to 33.4%. Full-year revenue guidance went to $3.9 billion to $4.2 billion. Note what the stock did into it: down 11.26% on Tuesday and still 49% under a 52-week high of $351.28, after a July 8 short-seller report questioned the company's account of its supply chain. The quarter answers the growth question and none of the sourcing one.

Ford Motor (F), +4.95% to $15.70, on second-quarter adjusted earnings of 42 cents a share against 35 cents expected and a raised full-year operating profit forecast built on firmer US vehicle pricing.

Losers

KLA (KLAC), -8.52% to $174.55. Record fourth-quarter revenue of $3.66 billion came in above the guidance midpoint, with GAAP earnings of $1.04 a share and non-GAAP earnings of $1.05, both at the upper end of the company's own range. September-quarter guidance went to $4.0 billion give or take $200 million, and chief executive Rick Wallace told shareholders momentum is "accelerating in the second half of calendar 2026 and continuing through 2027." The shares are down 8.5% anyway, because a guide that merely edges past estimates is a disappointment in a group priced for large beats. That gap between what the company said and what the stock did is a harder condition to fix than a bad quarter. KLA split its stock ten-for-one on June 11, so today's price is not comparable to the older chart.

NXP Semiconductors (NXPI), -2.36% to $253.00. Second-quarter revenue of $3.5 billion rose 19% from a year ago with growth in every end market and region, and the September guide of $3.75 billion at the midpoint arrived 1.1% above consensus. The shares are lower anyway — the same pattern KLA is living through, one rung down the supply chain.

Applied Materials (AMAT), -3.40% to $460.28, with no news of its own. It is the largest American name in the equipment group, and it trades on whatever KLA said.

Seagate Technology (STX), daily: a beat and a raised guide arriving well inside a drawdown that began in late June.

Macro Calendar

The 10:30 am inventory report normally goes unread. Today it lands on a barrel that has moved 4.64% on a military headline, which makes it the one number capable of saying whether the move has anything behind it. Then the afternoon. Thirty percent of the market is positioned for a move to 3.75-4.00%, high enough that a hold is not fully in the price and low enough that a hike would genuinely hurt. That is why the VIX has held above 18 through two sessions in which the S&P 500 has gone nowhere.

Earnings Today

Ahead of the bell the slate is thin and consumer-facing: Procter & Gamble, with consensus at $1.41 a share on $21.4 billion of revenue, and Humana, where the street is at $6.22 on $40.65 billion.

The evening carries the weight — Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Qualcomm, Arm Holdings, Lam Research, Starbucks and Chipotle Mexican Grill. Microsoft is modeled at $4.21 a share, with Azure guided to 39-40% constant-currency growth against a StreetAccount consensus near 37%, and a calendar-2026 capital-spending plan of $190 billion that includes some $25 billion of higher component costs. Microsoft has topped consensus earnings for eight straight quarters. Meta is at $7.23 a share on revenue of $60.26 billion, up 26.8%, with 2026 capital spending consensus at $136.7 billion against company guidance of $125 billion to $145 billion.

Drivers

1. A rate increase this afternoon would be the first in three years, and about 30% of the market is carrying it. The likelier outcome is a hold with hawkish statement language, which does less to today's index level and more to September pricing, where a move is already the leaning case. Warsh's tighter communication regime is the wrinkle: with fewer speeches and less pre-meeting signalling, the statement itself has to carry information that used to leak out over three weeks. The inflation sentence matters more than the rate line.
2. Two of the largest capital-spending budgets in the market report after the close, into a group that has spent four sessions punishing spending instead of rewarding it. Alphabet's guidance last week is why this pair matters more than a normal megacap night: bigger numbers have stopped reading as bigger opportunities. Azure's growth rate and Meta's 2026 spending line will set the semiconductor complex on Thursday.
3. Whether Seoul's selling crosses the ocean is still open. It has not yet. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF is off 0.39% at $527.56 in the pre-market after four down sessions, against a Kospi that has fallen 6% and 10% on consecutive days. American chip investors have treated the Chinese equipment reports as a Korean problem all week. KLA gave them a domestic version of the same argument last night, and the market's answer arrives at 9:30 am ET.

SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), daily: five sessions of failing to reclaim the short-term averages.

Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), daily: the same four weeks with a steeper slope.