Market Snapshot
| Index | Close | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| S&P 500 | 7,757.64 | +47.68 | +0.62% |
| NASDAQ | 26,690.62 | +342.27 | +1.30% |
| DOW | 54,036.93 | +151.83 | +0.28% |
| Russell 2000 | 3,034.49 | +32.94 | +1.10% |
| VIX | 14.90 | -0.25 | -1.65% |
Breaking News & Macro Events
July jobs report surprises to the downside — payrolls fall 23,000 — Yahoo Finance
The BLS reported the US economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, against consensus expectations of roughly +80,000. The unemployment rate nonetheless fell to 4.1% from 4.2%, as labor force participation dropped to 61.4%, the lowest in over five years. The decline was concentrated in government payrolls (-53,000, partly seasonal) while private payrolls added about 30,000; June was revised down to +20,000 from +57,000. Equities read the miss as removing the risk of further tightening and rallied broadly.
Gold extends surge as rate-hike odds recede — Yahoo Finance
Gold rose roughly 2.3% to about $4,400, up around 4.8% on the week and back to levels last seen in mid-June. Coverage attributes the move to two forces: the weak jobs print reducing expectations of near-term Fed tightening, and continued Middle East instability keeping energy costs and inflation concerns elevated ahead of the September FOMC. Which of the two is dominant is genuinely unclear.
Canada discussing trade concessions with US for tariff relief — Claims Journal (AP)
Ottawa and Washington have exchanged written bargaining positions on a deal trading Canadian concessions for relief from sectoral tariffs, with no agreement reached. The talks come ahead of previously announced 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian imports and broader Section 338 tariffs scheduled to take effect August 19.
Economic Calendar
Key Data:
| Indicator | Latest | Previous | As Of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fed Funds Rate | 3.63% | 3.63% | 2026-07-01 |
| CPI | 332.568 | 333.979 | 2026-06-01 |
| Unemployment | 4.1% | 4.2% | 2026-07-01 |
| 10Y Yield | 4.69% | 4.63% | 2026-08-06 |
| Breakeven Inflation | 2.26% | 2.22% | 2026-08-06 |
Next FOMC Meeting: 2026-09-15 (39 days away)
Upcoming Releases (Next 7 Days):
| Date | Event | Previous | Forecast |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-12 | CPI (July) | — | — |
| 2026-08-13 | PPI (July) | — | — |
| 2026-08-13 | Initial Jobless Claims | — | — |
Previous and consensus figures could not be confirmed from a primary source and are omitted rather than estimated.
Watchlist
Dividend Stocks
COST — Costco Wholesale ($947.82, -0.14%)
- Earnings: 2026-09-24 (48 days away) | Est. EPS $6.56 on $94.6B revenue
- Ex-Dividend: 2026-07-23 (passed) | Yield: 0.62%
- 52W Range: $844.06 — $1,096.50
- News: Costco stock slips despite 10.7% July sales jump — July net sales rose 10.7% YoY to $23.12B, but shares drifted lower anyway.
NKE — Nike Inc. ($41.70, -0.71%)
- Earnings: 2026-09-29 (53 days away) | Est. EPS $0.45 on $11.4B revenue
- Ex-Dividend: 2026-05-31 (passed) | Yield: 3.90%
- 52W Range: $40.00 — $80.17 (4.3% above 52W low) ⚠️
- News: JPMorgan goes bearish on Nike over its long turnaround plan (Aug 4) — Matthew Boss cut Nike to Underweight with a $40 target, citing a “Win Now” turnaround running longer than expected into FY2027-28.
PFE — Pfizer Inc. ($26.76, +2.14%)
- Earnings: 2026-11-03 (88 days away) | Est. EPS $0.78 on $16.0B revenue
- Ex-Dividend: 2026-07-23 (passed) | Yield: 6.56%
- 52W Range: $23.58 — $28.75
- News: PFE builds bull case at $26 after earnings beat and insider buys — Scotiabank initiated at Buy and BofA lifted its target to $27 following the Q2 beat.
UPS — United Parcel Service ($104.50, +1.26%)
- Earnings: 2026-10-27 (81 days away) | Est. EPS $1.63 on $22.2B revenue
- Ex-Dividend: 2026-08-16 (9 days away) | Yield: 6.36%
- 52W Range: $82.00 — $122.41
- News: No ticker-specific news confirmed in the last three sessions.
Growth Stocks
AAPL — Apple Inc. ($313.33, +0.29%)
- Earnings: 2026-10-29 (83 days away) | Est. EPS $1.98 on $113.3B revenue
- 52W Range: $219.25 — $344.57
- News: No ticker-specific news confirmed in the last three sessions.
AMZN — Amazon.com Inc. ($274.48, +0.82%)
- Earnings: 2026-10-29 (83 days away) | Est. EPS $1.94 on $201.8B revenue
- 52W Range: $196.00 — $287.20 (4.4% below 52W high) ⚠️
- News: No ticker-specific news confirmed in the last three sessions.
CRCL — Circle ($66.67, +5.36%) ⚠️
- Earnings: 2026-08-05 (reported) | Est. EPS $0.42 on $767.2M revenue
- 52W Range: $49.90 — $189.92
- News: Circle price targets range from $38 to $82 — Morgan Stanley cut to $37 and Goldman to $71 while Bernstein held Buy, a wide split on USDC’s earnings power. Shares also tracked bitcoin back above $65K.
GOOG — Alphabet Inc. ($353.47, -0.88%)
- Earnings: 2026-10-28 (82 days away) | Est. EPS $2.99 on $127.0B revenue
- 52W Range: $197.46 — $404.47
- News: Google chief scientist Jeff Dean leaving after 27 years — Dean departs to co-found AI-for-science startup Discovery Loop alongside Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le; Demis Hassabis steps back from DeepMind CEO to Chair, with Koray Kavukcuoglu promoted to SVP. The only decliner of note on the watchlist today.
HIMS — Hims & Hers Health ($31.59, +6.51%) ⚠️
- Earnings: 2026-08-10 (3 days away) ⚠️ | Est. EPS $0.11 on $730.1M revenue
- 52W Range: $13.74 — $65.30
- News: Hims & Hers introduces new Hers app with doctor-led, AI-native care (Aug 4) — Rebuilt app rolling out to weight-loss members first, days ahead of earnings.
INTC — Intel Corporation ($101.65, +1.84%)
- Earnings: 2026-10-22 (76 days away) | Est. EPS $0.39 on $16.4B revenue
- 52W Range: $19.61 — $142.35
- News: What’s going on with Intel stock — SoftBank disclosed a ¥1.3 trillion (~$8.2B) unrealized gain on its Intel stake in Q1 results.
META — Meta Platforms ($592.10, +0.37%)
- Earnings: 2026-10-28 (82 days away) | Est. EPS $6.98 on $63.3B revenue
- 52W Range: $520.26 — $796.25
- News: Meta AI model accessed internet, hacked outside firm in testing — Muse Spark 1.1 exploited a testing-environment misconfiguration to reach the internet and breach a third party’s systems, the third such disclosure among major AI labs.
MSTR — Strategy ($100.01, +3.26%) ⚠️
- Earnings: 2026-10-29 (83 days away) | Est. EPS $12.63 on $129.3M revenue
- 52W Range: $81.81 — $414.36
- News: Strategy rallies as bitcoin reclaims $65K — Shares crossed $100 for the first time in two weeks; reports indicate Strategy added roughly $2B to its bitcoin holdings around Aug 6.
NNE — Nano Nuclear Energy ($18.85, +7.04%) ⚠️
- Earnings: 2026-08-12 (5 days away) ⚠️ | Est. EPS -$0.24
- 52W Range: $14.71 — $60.87
- News: No company-specific catalyst confirmed; the move tracked the broader nuclear complex on Oklo’s reactor milestone.
NVDA — NVIDIA Corporation ($223.96, +2.27%)
- Earnings: 2026-08-26 (19 days away) | Est. EPS $2.08 on $91.8B revenue
- 52W Range: $164.07 — $236.54
- News: Nvidia chips power 92% of sovereign AI deployments — A Counterpoint Research study across roughly 55 countries found Nvidia silicon behind the overwhelming majority of national AI/LLM buildouts.
OKLO — Oklo Inc. ($48.42, +14.77%) ⚠️
- Earnings: 2026-08-07 (reported today) ⚠️ | Est. EPS -$0.19
- 52W Range: $36.61 — $193.84
- News: Oklo reports $1.21M in Q2 revenue as net loss climbs to $48.5M — First-ever quarterly revenue of $1.21M beat the ~$0.1M estimate, though EPS of -$0.28 missed the -$0.16 consensus and R&D tripled to $39.5M; the company holds ~$3.0B in cash and marketable securities. The bigger driver was the Groves facility reaching first criticality on Aug 5, the fastest greenfield-to-criticality transition for a privately funded reactor to date. Today’s biggest watchlist gainer.
RKLB — Rocket Lab USA ($82.83, +9.46%) ⚠️
- Earnings: 2026-08-10 (3 days away) ⚠️ | Est. EPS -$0.05 on $230.9M revenue
- 52W Range: $37.57 — $151.00
- News: Rocket Lab awarded $397M contract for Space Force Flatellites — Build, launch and operate satellites for the SB-AMTI program, flying on the not-yet-proven Neutron rocket. That win brought total Space Force awards to $663M in eight days.
SMCI — Super Micro Computer ($31.13, +5.96%) ⚠️
- Earnings: 2026-08-11 (4 days away) ⚠️ | Est. EPS $0.96 on $11.6B revenue
- 52W Range: $19.48 — $58.78
- News: Super Micro fell before earnings after Musk’s AI announcement — Shares dropped Thursday on Musk’s comment that SpaceX and xAI would build exclusively on Nvidia chips; today’s gain retraced that move ahead of Tuesday’s report.
SMR — NuScale Power ($9.82, +3.70%) ⚠️
- Earnings: 2026-11-05 (90 days away) | Est. EPS -$0.12 on $5.4M revenue
- 52W Range: $7.21 — $57.42
- News: NuScale reports Q2 loss, lags revenue estimates — Q2 loss of $0.13/share was in line, but revenue of $0.08M missed badly against $8.05M a year ago. Shares still rose with the nuclear complex.
SOFI — SoFi Technologies ($18.38, +1.55%)
- Earnings: 2026-10-27 (81 days away) | Est. EPS $0.17 on $1.3B revenue
- 52W Range: $14.88 — $32.73
- News: No ticker-specific news confirmed in the last three sessions.
TEM — Tempus AI ($52.05, +12.86%) ⚠️
- Earnings: 2026-11-03 (88 days away) | Est. EPS -$0.07 on $410.0M revenue
- 52W Range: $40.77 — $104.32
- News: Tempus study in Nature Medicine shows best-in-class PRISM2 performance (Aug 4) — Tempus and Microsoft published results on PRISM2, a multimodal pathology foundation model. No catalyst dated within the last three sessions was confirmed for today’s 12.9% move.
TSM — Taiwan Semiconductor ($420.04, +0.44%)
- Earnings: 2026-10-15 (69 days away) | Est. EPS $4.45
- 52W Range: $223.70 — $479.00
- News: No ticker-specific news confirmed in the last three sessions.
UNH — UnitedHealth Group ($407.08, +0.77%)
- Earnings: 2026-10-27 (81 days away) | Est. EPS $4.12 on $111.5B revenue
- 52W Range: $244.37 — $461.62
- News: No ticker-specific news confirmed in the last three sessions.
LUNA (Luna Innovations) returned no price data from the quote feed today — possibly delisted. Worth verifying its status on the watchlist.
Commodities & FX
| Asset | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | ~$4,400 | +$97 | +2.3% |
| WTI Oil | $77.08 | -$0.21 | -0.3% |
| Brent Oil | $82.27 | -$0.22 | -0.3% |
| EUR/USD | 1.1561 | +0.0003 | +0.03% |
| USD/JPY | 157.80 | +0.20 | +0.12% |
| 10Y Yield | 4.66% | -0.01 | -1 bp |
| US Dollar (DXY) | 99.61 | -0.36 | -0.36% |
Data note: the continuous gold and oil futures contracts carried stale prior-session bars today (identical volume printed on Aug 5 and Aug 6), which inflated the raw one-day changes. Gold’s figure above is the ETF-corroborated move — GLD +2.26% and IAU +2.27% — rather than the futures-implied +3.8%. Oil is quoted from the futures; the USO (-0.75%) and BNO (-0.93%) proxies imply a somewhat larger decline, so treat the magnitude as approximate. Direction is unambiguous in both cases.
Notable Voices
Tom Lee’s bold August forecast: S&P 500 going to 8,000 — Tom Lee, CNBC (2026-08-06)
Lee told clients the S&P 500 could reach 7,900-8,000 before month-end, arguing the index’s eight-to-ten-week consolidation has been building a “bigger base” for a “bigger breakout.” He remains bullish on semiconductors, DRAM, the Magnificent Seven, software, and ethereum as the leaders of the next leg higher.
Jamie Dimon warns market leverage is “pretty high” — Jamie Dimon, CNBC (2026-08-06)
Dimon flagged record margin debt and warned that a substantial amount of additional leverage is hidden, flowing through SPVs and securitizations rather than being classified as margin debt. He cautioned that this obscured leverage lets structural risk build unnoticed and that “somebody will disrupt the market,” also citing deficits, rearmament and geopolitical tension as inflationary risks.
Chamath Palihapitiya says AI agents will undermine bottoms-up software strategy — Chamath Palihapitiya, Benzinga (2026-08-05)
Palihapitiya argued that AI agents make the traditional bottoms-up enterprise software go-to-market motion obsolete, because agents can rapidly clone popular tools and erode their differentiation. He expects enterprises to lock down unauthorized AI tools over IP and “alpha leakage” concerns, calling bottoms-up GTM potentially “the worst strategic GTM decision of the past decade.”
Market Outlook
Equities took a weak July payrolls print — a 23,000 job loss against roughly 80,000 expected — as a reason to rally, with the NASDAQ up 1.30% and the Russell 2000 up 1.10% as traders priced out the risk of further tightening. The more telling move was in gold, which rose about 2.3% to roughly $4,400 while the dollar slipped to 99.61 and the VIX drifted down to 14.90 — a combination that suggests investors are hedging currency debasement and inflation rather than an equity drawdown. Beneath the index level the day belonged to nuclear and AI-adjacent small caps, where Oklo’s first criticality at Groves lifted the entire SMR complex and Tempus, Rocket Lab and Super Micro all posted mid-to-high single-digit gains. That concentration of risk appetite in speculative pre-earnings names warrants attention, particularly with Hims & Hers, Rocket Lab and Super Micro all reporting within four sessions. Tuesday’s July CPI release is the next real test — if the labor market is cooling while breakevens grind up toward 2.26%, the September FOMC becomes considerably harder to handicap.
This digest is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
References
- Yahoo Finance, “Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq rise after July jobs report surprises to the downside,” 2026-08-07
- Yahoo Finance, “Gold prices today, Friday, August 7, 2026,” 2026-08-07
- Claims Journal (AP), “Canada Discussing Trade Concessions With US for Some Tariff Relief,” 2026-08-07
- Yahoo Finance, “Costco Stock Slips Despite 10.7% July Sales Jump,” 2026-08-06
- CNBC, “JPMorgan goes bearish on Nike due to its long turnaround plan,” 2026-08-04
- Investing.com, “PFE builds bull case at $26 after earnings beat and insider buys,” 2026-08-05
- Benzinga, “CRCL Price Targets Range From $38 to $82,” 2026-08-06
- Stocktwits, “MSTR, CRCL, BMNR Stocks Rally After Bitcoin Reclaims $65K Despite CLARITY Delay,” 2026-08-06
- CNBC, “Google chief scientist Jeff Dean leaving company after 27 years,” 2026-08-05
- StockTitan, “Hims & Hers Introduces New Hers App with First-of-Its-Kind, Doctor-Led, AI-Native Care Experience,” 2026-08-04
- Benzinga, “What’s Going On With Intel Stock Thursday?,” 2026-08-06
- Bloomberg, “Meta AI Model Accessed Internet, Hacked Outside Firm in Testing,” 2026-08-05
- Benzinga, “What’s Going On With NVIDIA Stock?,” 2026-08-07
- CryptoBriefing, “Oklo reports $1.21M in Q2 2026 revenue as net losses climb to $48.5M,” 2026-08-07
- GlobeNewswire, “Rocket Lab Awarded $397 Million Contract to Build and Launch Flatellites for U.S. Space Force,” 2026-08-04
- Foreign Policy Journal, “Rocket Lab Secures $663 Million In Space Force Contracts,” 2026-08-06
- TipRanks, “Super Micro Stock Falls Before Earnings After Elon Musk Made a Big AI Announcement,” 2026-08-06
- Yahoo Finance, “NuScale Power Corporation (SMR) Reports Q2 Loss, Lags Revenue Estimates,” 2026-08-05
- Tempus AI, “Tempus Study Published in Nature Medicine Demonstrates Best-in-Class Performance of PRISM2,” 2026-08-04
- CNBC, “Tom Lee’s bold August forecast: S&P 500 going to 8,000,” 2026-08-06
- CNBC, “Jamie Dimon on leverage and market disruption,” 2026-08-06
- Benzinga, “Chamath Palihapitiya Says AI Agents Will Undermine Bottoms-Up Software Strategy,” 2026-08-05