Vital Dawn Podcast for Monday July 20

Welcome to the Vital Dome Podcast for Monday, July 20th. U.S. equity futures are seeing gains of about 20 to 30 basis points. So S&P futures are up about 15 points. Dow futures are up 85 points. Nasdaq futures are up 100 points. And the Russell futures are up about 8 points. In Europe, the major indices are flat to up about 15 basis points. You are seeing outperformance in financials, media, energy. you're seeing underperformance and basic resources chemicals staples healthcare telecom luxury and utilities and then turning to asia the price action was mixed the heng sang jumped 2.3 percent shangai comp rose 85 basis points taiwan fell 50 basis points korea fell about four and a half percent and japan was closed so in terms of increment incremental news for this morning um you know the middle of these kind of dominated everything over the weekend you saw further escalation of violence. You saw additional U.S. servicemen fatalities. Oil had spiked overnight and earlier this morning up towards about 91. It's since pulled back. It's about flat on the day versus Friday And I think kind of the debate or the conversation is the same as before You know if the U does not plan on material escalating militarily meaning troops then, you know, the current posture of airstrikes and escalating airstrikes does not seem to be kind of altering the dynamics on the ground, in which case then, you know, there has to be a return to diplomacy at some point. And I think that's kind of the assumption investors are making this morning. You had a couple of remarks. So Rubio last night talked about how the U.S. is still open to diplomacy. You had the U.S. Energy Secretary speaking on Sunday news shows yesterday morning about how there's still a significant amount of oil coming out of warm-waves despite the escalation in fighting. He said about two-thirds, oil outflows are about two-thirds from where they were before the war, which is relatively significant. The Iranian currency is at record lows versus US dollars. So Iran is facing a lot of pressure economically and militarily to kind of dial back from the recent escalation. So I think that's the mindset of investors. It's why equities have been relatively stable or relatively resilient despite what taken place over the last couple of weeks uh so though that is the main theme for this morning It all geopolitics You know still a lot of moving pieces in tech So you know the moonshot model launch Thursday night, Friday morning, you know, received a lot of attention. You did see the narrative around the implications of that turn more nuanced. So Thursday, night, Friday morning was considered to be kind of a broad negative for U.S. tech over the course of the day on Friday and then over the weekend, you know, again, it was kind of a much more nuanced interpretation whereby certainly the risk of open source Chinese competition is significant for U.S. model companies. But in terms of compute, regardless of what model is being used, there's still going to be significant demand for, you know, increased capex, you know, memory servers, data centers, et cetera. And so a lot of the pick and shovel stocks, sentiment around pick and shovel stocks is still relatively sanguine, and you kind of saw that Friday where a lot of those names rebounded in the afternoon. On the calendar for today, it is very quiet as far as scheduled news is concerned. You have a handful of earnings. None of them are really all that important. Domino's Pizza before the open, and then a few after the close. Again, really not all that critical. For this week, there are a bunch of big earnings reports the most significant of which come Wednesday specifically after the close Wednesday So Google IBM ServiceNow Tesla Texas Instruments are all after the close on Wednesday. And then Intel and SAP are after the close on Thursday. I think the hyperscaler CapEx commentary is going to be probably the single most important theme for this earnings season. That will dictate how tech trades and tech is dominating the market. so google Wednesday night for obvious reasons will be very important service now Wednesday night also is going to be crucial because investors are are really waiting to hear whether or not IBM is suffering primarily from company specific problems or if IBM you know it's kind of the cannery in the coal mine with regards to IT budgets across the board has there been an aggressive pivot towards AI infrastructure and cyber security away from you know more legacy products like IBM suggested or is It's kind of, again, IBM specific. So the Wednesday tech reports are going to be very important. Definitely a lot of other news out over the weekend and this morning. So take a look at the full piece. And there are a few other catalysts on the calendar for this week. But it really will be those Wednesday tech reports that will dominate everything. And that is everything for today, Monday, July 20th. Thank you, everyone, for listening.