Vital Dawn Podcast for Friday July 10

Welcome to the Vital Dawn Podcast for Friday, July 10th. U.S. equity futures are seeing mixed price action so far this morning. S&P futures are down about 9 points, that's 10 basis points. NASDAQ futures are lagging modestly off about 140 points, which is 47 basis points. Russell futures are down 6 points, that's about 20 basis points. And then Dow futures are outperforming up about 80 points, which is 15 basis points. in europe the major indices are down about 15 to 40 basis points you were seeing underperformance in industrials tech staples and energy but you're seeing outperformance in autos basic resources banks insurance media retail real estate and telecoms and then in asia price action was generally green the nikai rose 1.2 percent the hang sang rose 60 basis points korea jumped two and a half percent. Australia and India both were up. The Shanghai Comp fell 1%, and Taiwan was closed. So nothing really of note to call out. Very quiet evening. It should be a very quiet session today. Next week is much busier, which I'll touch on at the end of the podcast In terms of incremental macro developments I would say there are two headlines that are most uh notable japan finance minister overnight called on the country pension funds to shift reallocate assets back into domestic stocks so her words gave a boost to japanese equities it's helping the yen a little bit um you know there's some pushback as to whether pension funds are really going to respond to that, to those words. But nevertheless, it's certainly getting some attention. And then on the Iran situation, a number of media outlets are quoting a U.S. official, quote unquote, as saying that the U.S. is still committed to finding a resolution with Iran and is continuing technical talks. So, you know, you had this kind of outburst of violence, which was the most significant outburst of violence really in several weeks, earlier in the week. It seems to have settled down a little bit. There have not been, there were no further airstrikes overnight. And you had that kind of relatively conciliatory comment from the US official. Brent is flat to down small so far this morning. You know, we'll have to see how all this unfolds. Like, you know, my views on this are the same as before. I don think there is a viable military outcome to the conflict at least one whose risks Trump is willing to bear which means there has to be some type of negotiated settlement But obviously that a lot easier said than done It will not be a linear path to a sustained detente So we kind of have to see how it all unfolds Ukraine and Russia still, in my opinion, is a bigger wild card just as far as kind of the discrepancy of where the market is focusing right now. the energy shortages in Russia are very significant. The country has imposed a ban on diesel exports, which is going to tighten certain pockets of the global energy market. So, you know, definitely a lot of moving pieces on the geopolitical front. On the company-specific front, you know, there were no major earnings reports out overnight, you know, nothing super notable. I will say on the AI front, Meta is receiving a ton of positive commentary praise in the media about its AI initiatives, almost on par with the praise that Google received late last year when it released Gemini 3. You know, there really has kind of been a reshuffling. OpenAI and Anthropoc are still kind of the leading frontier model companies But as far as everyone else there been a pretty dramatic reshuffling And Meta now is I would say towards the top of the list behind those two which is a pretty significant shift for it. Google had to occupy that position throughout most of last year and then throughout most of the first half of this year. That seems to be changing now. So Meta, a lot of bullish commentary about its new models, It's the new API launch that I put out yesterday. So that certainly is very notable. For today's calendar, there is not a whole lot. You have Delta earnings up for the open. That is it as far as scheduled news is concerned. And then, you know, looking into next week, it's going to be very busy. A lot of big events, macro and micro. A ton of China economic data. Warsh will be testifying Tuesday and Wednesday. This is his first testimony since becoming Fed chair. A lot of U.S. inflation, the CPI and the PPI. And then for earnings, pretty much every major bank will have results out. And then two critical tech companies, ASML and Taiwan Semi, and then Netflix also has earnings. So next week is very busy. Today should be pretty quiet. And that is everything for Friday, July 10th. Thank you, everyone, for listening.