Thursday Watch

Around X:

• @Business

• The US and Saudi Arabia finalized a long-sought nuclear technology-sharing deal that could allow American companies to build reactors in the kingdom, but cracks the door open for the country to enrich its own nuclear reactor fuel. 
• Images of US service members in caskets are a reminder that Trump — as he repeatedly vowed not to do — has started a new war in the Middle East. 
• Wall Street banks are buying and selling an initial piece of a $35 billion financing package for Broadcom and Anthropic's AI infrastructure expansion, with the biggest private credit deal ever being offered to a wide pool of investors.  
• Here’s the latest news and analysis on the oil market. 
• Here’s what you need to know to start your day. 
• Get up to speed on what's moving global markets. 

• @ZeroHedge

• House Narrowly Passes $1.15 Trillion Defense Bill That Integrates US Military Tech & Supply Chains With Israel.  
• Deutsche Bank: Humanoid Robot Market Accelerates Globally As China Ramps Production.   
• AI Is Quietly Transforming Healthcare And Might Just Save Your Life.
• House Passes Congressional Stock Trading Ban.
• Poo-Demic: As Cases Spread To 41 States, FDA Suddenly Can't Find Parasite In Recalled Lettuce. 
• Has Wall Street become too bearish on America's biggest cash machines? Hedge funds have cut exposure aggressively, dealers are short gamma, and expectations have been reset just as earnings season begins. Here's why the pain trade may be higher.
• *MUSK SEES MORE OVERLAP BETWEEN TESLA, SPACEX. *MUSK SAYS CAN'T COMMENT ON POTENTIAL MERGER ON EARNINGS CALL.
• 7 of the 10 most shorted bonds in the IG market are hyperscalers, with 6+% AA GOOGL 56s being the most shorted bond.
• That didn't last long: Clarity Act odds tumble right back down after Republicans release new draft crypto bill.
• Secret Service Official Sounds Alarm: "Threat Environment Highest Ever" As Assassination Attempts Explode.
• DARPA's 'ECHO' Project: A Computer System That Declares You A Bio Threat - With No Physical Evidence.
• *FIVE BELOW SAYS DETECTED CYBERSECURITY INCIDENT ON JULY 15.
• *ALPHABET CEO: NEXT GEN FRONTIER MODELS WILL BE MUCH LARGER.
• Power is the new semiconductor. The market spent two years pricing compute scarcity. It may spend the next several years pricing energy scarcity instead.
• *US, SAUDI ARABIA SIGNED NUCLEAR COOPERATION AGREEMENT.
• IRGC To Trump: Strike Iran's Infrastructure, We'll Shut Off The Gulf's Power.
• Jim Quinn Warns "We've Already Entered This Fourth Turning's Global War..."
• "He Was Very Close To Being Arrested": Epstein's Paris Model Scout Found Dead At Home, Weeks After CNN Appearance. 
• MegaCaps Dump Into Earnings, Bullion & Bond Yields Jump As Oil Puts July Rate-Hike Back On Table.          

• @CNBC 

• Stocks making the biggest moves after hours: Alphabet, Tesla, IBM, Las Vegas Sands, ServiceNow & more. 
• Alphabet posts $44.9 billion in capital spending during Q2, above expectations. 
• Oil extends gains as Trump threatens strikes on critical Iranian infrastructure. 
• CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey for the second quarter of 2026, which polled 1,000 registered voters across the country, found the cost of housing is a salient issue, particularly among the kinds of young voters that both parties are hoping to court heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
• Thursday's big stock stories: What’s likely to move the market in the next trading session.
• ServiceNow CEO defends the company's relevancy, touting a kill switch for rogue AI agents.   
• Stock futures slip as investors eye more earnings; Alphabet falls on higher capex outlook: Live updates. 

• @TheTranscript

• $GOOGL Alphabet CFO and CFO say they remain supply-constrained despite rapidly expanding AI infrastructure: CEO: “Demand for our models is translating to strong token usage across developers and enterprise customers, and we continue to be supply-constrained—a sign of momentum and rapid adoption." CFO: "we're still in a supply-constrained environment. I think we’ve said this now for multiple quarters in a row, and we are seeing very strong demand both from external cloud customers, as well as across the busines".
• $GOOGL Alphabet CFO expects CapEx to increase significantly again in 2027. "We continue to expect our CapEx to increase significantly in 2027 and will provide more details at a later date.”
• $GOOGL Alphabet CEO: Gemini API throughput was up 38% QoQ to 22B tokens per minute: “Our model APIs are now processing approximately 22 billion tokens per minute. That's up from 16 billion just a quarter ago.”.
• $GOOGL Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi: Cloud revenue surged 82% to $24.8B, with underlying growth accelerating even excluding first-time TPU system sales. “Cloud revenues were up 82% to $24.8 billion, driven primarily by GCP, which grew faster than cloud overall. Core GCP AI solutions and AI infrastructure were all important drivers of growth. We also began to recognize revenues from TPU system sales, which we delivered to customer data centers for the first time in Q2. Cloud revenue growth accelerated meaningfully, even after excluding the impact of TPU system sales.”  
• United Rentals CEO: "Our growth accelerated in the quarter, customers remain optimistic, particularly around large projects, and we continue to demonstrate strong cost discipline."
  $URI: +10% AH. 
• ServiceNow CFO: "Once again, we beat the high end of our guidance range across every topline and profitability metric." $NOW: +5% AH.
• IBM lowers FY26 revenue growth outlook. CEO: "...we faced revenue headwinds late in the second quarter..." $IBM: +3% AH. 
• Tesla: "Q2 was a strong quarter for our core vehicle, energy and services businesses as well as our manufacturing, infrastructure and AI initiatives" $TSLA: -3% AH. 

• @GenXGirl1994

• Here are the 6 Democrats who voted YES along with 209 Republicans in the House to merge Israel’s military with the U.S. @RepCuellar - Indicted in 2024 for bribery, Pardoned by Trump. @RepDonDavis. @RepGolden not running for reelection. @RepGonzalez. @RepAdamGrayCA. @RepMGP.

• @TruthierT

• "Lindsay Graham would like to stay in the middle east for the next thousand years, with thousands of soldiers, fighting other people's wars. I want to get out of the middle east." -Trump 10/16/2019. I remember voting very hard for this.

• @EvanAKilgore

• Here is a list of the 7 Republicans who voted AGAINST the NDAA, merging the United States military with Israel. -​Josh Brecheen (OK). -​Tim Burchett (TN). -​Eli Crane (AZ). -​Harriet Hageman (WY). -​Anna Paulina Luna (FL). -​Thomas Massie (KY). -​Chip Roy (TX). 

• @toobaffled

• 50 years later, the CDC admits the polio vaccine was tainted with SV40, a cancer-causing virus from monkey cells. Up to 30 million Americans received it. ‘Coincidentally,’ cancer rates exploded in the following decades. But today’s vaccines? Totally safe, they promise. The pattern is clear …

• @pelositracker

• Breaking: The House just passed a Congressional Stock Trading Ban. • 217 Republicans voted in support. • 198 Democrats voted against. The bill now goes to the Senate.

• @DerrickEvans4WV

• Remember that time we thought Trump was going to actually arrest the deep state. Good times.

• @newsinvesting

• Palo Alto Networks $PANW CEO calls OpenAI-Hugging Face hack 'next level'.

• @MelvinInvests

• Nvidia's next generation chips are about to make a handful of companies impossible to ignore and here is how you can benefit from this (Save this). Goldman projects networking content per AI compute system could rise from $315,000 today to $9.4 million in Nvidia's next generation, a 29x increase in what companies spend just wiring their chips together. Morgan Stanley, Citi and Goldman all agree on the same direction, projecting the total addressable market for AI networking to grow from around $11 to $15 billion today to $154 billion by 2028, roughly a 9x jump in just a few years.

• @OneBadDude_

• Just remember, it only takes 5 Senators to bring forth a vote to replace John Thune. It then only takes 27 votes of the 53 Republican Senators to replace him. This entire time. That’s all it’s taken. And we cannot get a measly 5 to step up and do the right thing.

• @ScottPresler

• If our Republican Senate does NOT pass the SAVE America Act, I’m going scorched earth. I will dedicate my time to help defeat ANY Republican Senator that does not support this legislation. I won’t stop there: If you’re a Republican Senator that hasn’t been doing everything in your power to deliver this win, then Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, & Wyoming will also make that list. Give us what we want or lose your seats.

• @Asklivermore

• The next trillion dollar opportunity in stocks isn't building AI. It's FIXING it. McKinsey just surveyed 496 companies. These companies are spending billions on. • Fixing AI inaccuracy. Up 14 points from last year. • Fighting AI cybersecurity threats. Up 6 points. AI is being deployed everywhere. But it hallucinates, it gets hacked, and it makes mistakes that cost real money. The companies solving this will print. (graph) 

• @Charliebilello

• Price increases since start of the Iran war... Sulfur: +142%. European Natural Gas: +97%. Heating Oil: +62%. Jet Fuel: +44%. Diesel: +38%. Gasoline: +36%. Rice: +36%. WTI Crude Oil: +30%. Brent Crude Oil: +29%. Diammonium Phosphate: +25%. Cotton: +23%. Wheat: +18%. Palm Oil: +14%. (graph)

• @WarrenPies

• GPU availability tightening back up... B200 availability was already at 0%. Post-Kimi K3, GH200 tightening aggressively. The @3F_Research "Fast" Availability Index heading back below 10%. (graph)

• @MikeNellis

• I don’t know how you argue that Saudi Arabia can have a nuclear program, but Iran can’t. The majority of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. This is insane to me.

• @WeWillBeFree24

• The NDAA Section 219 isn't just an agreement, it's codifying policy bill. To repeal 219, it would require a stand alone repeal bill, and amendment to strike the section of the NDAA, or a new NDAA. It is not a reconciliation bill, so the 60 vote threshold must be passed to overcome the filibuster to get to floor vote. The NDAA is a must pass bill, and it usually passes quickly with bipartisan support. This is not normal or customary.

• @Hustlebitch_

• JAPAN IS BANNING AMERICAN CEREALS BECAUSE THEY CAUSE CANCER — AND KIDS IN THE U.S. ARE STILL EATING THEM. Japan is considering banning popular American cereals like Frosted Flakes, Rice Krispies, Honey Bunches of Oats, and snacks like Wheat Thins. Why? Because they contain BHT (Butylated Hydroxytoluene), a chemical used as a preservative and flavor enhancer that Japan considers too dangerous. While other countries are rejecting these products over cancer concerns, they’re still widely sold in American stores. If Japan doesn’t want it in their country… why are we still feeding it to our kids? (video)

• @KobeissiLetter

• Bearish bets on US stocks are surging: Short interest in the S&P 500 is up to ~3.7% of its free float, near the highest in data going back to 2010. Short interest in the Russell 3000 is up to ~6.1%, also near an all-time high. Both metrics have steadily increased since the start of 2025. Furthermore, short interest across all NYSE-listed stocks rose to a record 9.0% of shares outstanding in late June. By comparison, this metric peaked at ~5.0% during the 2008 Financial Crisis and ~6.0% during the 2020 pandemic. Conditions for a short-squeeze are rising. (graph)

Night Trading 

• Asian equity indices are -.25% to +.75% on average. 
• Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 70.5 +.75 basis point. 
• China Sovereign CDS 37.75 +.5 basis point..
• China Iron Ore Spot 98.5 USD/Metric Tonne +1.4%. 
• Crude Oil 88.20/bbl. +1.6% 
• Gold 4,118.80 USD/t oz. -.8%. 
• Swiss Franc/Offshore Chinese Renminbi Cross 8.32 -.8%.
• Bloomberg Emerging Markets Currency Index 34.57 +.02%.
• Bloomberg Global Risk-On/Risk Off Index 127.8 +1.1%.
• US 10-Year Yield 4.66% unch.
• Japan 30-Year Yield 3.91% +1.0 basis point.
• Volatility Index(VIX) futures 18.6 +.3%.
• Euro Stoxx 50 futures -.17%. 
• S&P 500 futures -.11%.
• NASDAQ 100 futures -.23%.

Morning Preview Links

BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly higher, boosted by technology and industrial shares in the region. I expect US stocks to open modestly lower and to rally into the afternoon, finishing mixed.  The Portfolio is 50% net long heading into the day.