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U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily
Tuesday, August 11, 2026 — Pre-Market Briefing | Data as of ~7:23 AM ET · window: prior cash close 4:00 PM ET Mon 10 Aug → 7:23 AM ET Tue 11 Aug
Prepared for Institutional Investors. Not Personalized Investment Advice; Verify Independently before Acting. | Source Links and Data Notes & Conflicts provided in the companion text file (US_CrossAsset_Opening_2026-08-11_DataNotes.txt). |
1 · Pre-Open Dashboard |
| Equity futures — September 2026 contracts (CNBC pre-markets board, 7:22 AM ET) |
| Contract | Future | Chg (pts) | %Chg | Fair value | Implied cash open | At 6:55 AM | | S&P 500 (ES) | 7,788.50 | +11.75 | +0.15% | 7.36 | +4.39 pts → 7,757.50 | 7,785 | | Nasdaq-100 (NQ) | 29,840.75 | +103.75 | +0.35% | 19.80 | +83.95 pts | 29,816.75 | | Dow (YM) | 54,087 | +24 | +0.04% | 52.98 | −28.98 pts | 54,061 | | Russell 2000 (RTY) | 3,030.8 | +5.8 | +0.19% | 5.40 | +0.40 pts | 3,026.6 |
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| Arithmetic check, and the tell inside it. ES +11.75 pts on a 7,776.75 prior settle = +0.151%; NQ +103.75 on 29,737.00 = +0.349%. The ranking is NQ > RTY > ES > YM — the exact inverse of Monday's cash tape. The more important number is the change since the earlier pull: in twenty-seven minutes all four contracts went higher — ES +3.5, NQ +24, YM +26, RTY +4.2 — and they did it while WTI fell $1.41 (§10). Equities bid into a crude fade is the cleanest confirmation that this tape treats the barrel as a tax, not as a growth signal. CNBC's implied open still differs in sign from the raw futures change for the Dow: the contract is +24 and the indicated open is −28.98 — the fair-value adjustment doing its job. |
| Prior U.S. cash closes — Monday 10 August (the anchor for every delta below) |
| Index | Close | Chg | %Chg | Index | Close | Chg | %Chg | | S&P 500 | 7,753.11 | −4.53 | −0.06% | Russell 2000 | 3,017.40 | −17.09 | −0.56% | | Nasdaq Composite | 26,605.36 | −85.26 | −0.32% | PHLX Semis (SOX) | 11,993.9 | −362.9 | −2.94% | | Dow Industrials | 53,975.98 | −60.95 | −0.11% | VIX | 15.46 | +0.56 | +3.76% | | Nasdaq 100 | 29,621.80 | −100.50 | −0.34% | | | | |
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| The shape being carried in: the S&P printed a fresh all-time intraday high at 7,773.76 on Monday and closed 0.27% below it, in the red. ES at 7,785 trades above that record on the futures basis, but the fair-value-adjusted implied cash open of 7,754.00 is still 19.76 points below it. |
| Volatility, rates, FX, commodities and crypto (7:22–7:23 AM ET) |
| Volatility | Level | Chg | UST (live 7:22 AM) | Yield | vs 3:30 PM par close | | VIX | 15.49 | +0.03 (+0.19%) | 2-Yr | 4.239% | −1.1 bp | | VXN (NDX vol) | 23.04 | unchanged | 5-Yr | 4.417% | +0.7 bp | | OVX (crude vol) | 56.06 | unchanged — through a 1.7% round trip in WTI | 10-Yr | 4.713% | −0.7 bp | | | | 30-Yr | 5.263% | +1.3 bp |
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| FX | Level | 24h Chg | Commodity (front month) | Price | Chg vs settle | | DXY | 99.810 | ~0.00% | WTI (Sep) | $82.08 | −$0.05 / −0.06% (was $83.49, +1.66% at 7:00) | | EUR/USD | 1.154 | −0.043% | Brent (Oct) | $87.62 | −$0.10 / −0.11% (was $88.88, +1.32%) | | USD/JPY | 159.17 | −0.082% | Gold (Comex Dec) | $4,445.50 | +$25.80 / +0.58% | | GBP/USD | 1.350 | −0.052% | Gold spot (XAU) | $4,389.09 | +0.04% (7:05) | | AUD/USD | 0.70634 | +0.13% (7:08) | Silver (Sep) | $65.36 | +$0.088 / +0.13% | | USD/CHF | 0.810 | +0.025% | Copper (Sep) | $6.6775/lb | +$0.0615 / +0.93% | | USD/CAD | 1.393 | −0.057% | NatGas (Sep) | $2.751 | −$0.043 / −1.54% | | USD/KRW | 1,413.05 | vendor sign conflict — §9 | RBOB (Sep) | $3.122 | −$0.013 / −0.41% | | USD/CNY | 6.74544 | −0.01% | Bitcoin | $64,328.64 | +$392.28 / +0.61% (7:11) |
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| The single most important line on this page: WTI was $83.49 and +1.66% at 7:00 AM ET and is $82.08 and −0.06% at 7:22 — a $1.41 round trip in twenty-two minutes that erased the entire overnight rally, with Brent at $87.62 now BELOW Monday's $87.72 settle. No headline explains it in any reviewed source, and the equity futures went up while it happened. |
| Global equities overnight |
| Asia | Level | %Chg | Europe (live) | Level | %Chg | | Nikkei 225 | 66,970.22 | CLOSED — holiday | Stoxx 600 | 661.39 | +0.10% (07:17 GMT) | | Kospi | 6,345.53 | +0.73% | Euro Stoxx 50 | 5,556.98 | +0.29% | | Hang Seng | 25,652.82 | −1.10% | DAX | 26,355.04 | +0.12% | | Shanghai Composite | 3,934.09 | −0.82% | FTSE 100 | 10,861.79 | −0.01% | | ASX 200 | 9,250.60 | +0.19% | CAC 40 | 8,720.83 | −0.06% | | Straits Times | 5,754.17 | +0.98% | AEX | 1,116.98 | +0.33% |
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| Sources: CNBC pre-markets board and individual CNBC futures/index quote pages (6:55–7:11 AM ET); Bloomberg US Edition /markets, /markets/rates-bonds, /markets/currencies, /markets/commodities (7:02–7:06 AM ET); WSJ Markets & Finance, Economy, World, Business, U.S. and Tech; Yahoo Finance live blog (6:28 AM ET); Investing.com pre-market, economic-calendar and earnings boards (7:06–7:08 AM ET); TradingEconomics currencies board; stockanalysis.com premarket board; U.S. Treasury official par curve, 10 Aug. |
| The overnight in one paragraph. This session has been handed a financing story, an oil story and an empty data calendar, and the futures ranking tells you which one the market chose: NQ +0.27% > ES +0.11% > RTY +0.05% > YM −0.00%, the exact inverse of Monday's cash tape. The dominant driver is Nvidia's announcement, with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, of a coalition to source $500 billion of financing for AI infrastructure — dedicated capital pools using compute power as collateral, raised through private offerings and special-purpose-entity bonds — with Jensen Huang telling CNBC he approached only those six firms, none refused, and calling AI data centres an “investable asset.” NVDA is +1.11% at $219.97 and AMD +1.08% at $474.63, a partial repair of Monday's 2.86% falls but nowhere near a reversal of a SOX that closed one tenth of a point off its low. The second driver was the Hormuz standoff, which hardened again overnight — Trump told Axios “We are only semi-negotiating with them,” Iran's Abbas Araghchi said there is “no possibility of restarting negotiations” until Washington compensates Iran — and until 7:00 AM ET it was doing what it did on Monday, with WTI +1.66% at $83.49 and Brent $88.88 under a Bloomberg wrap headlined “Bonds Retreat, Stocks Churn as Oil Heads for $90.” Then, between 7:00 and 7:22 AM ET it stopped: WTI is $82.08 and −0.06%, Brent $87.62 and −0.11% — below Monday's settle — and the entire fifth consecutive advance was erased in twenty-two minutes with no headline in any reviewed source to explain it. All four equity futures rose over the identical window, which is the cleanest confirmation available that this tape treats the barrel as a tax rather than as a growth signal. What is striking is that the bond market declined to extend Monday's 7 bp selloff: the 2-year is 1.7 bp lower, the 10-year 1.1 bp lower, and Bunds, BTPs, Bonos and OATs are all within a basis point of unchanged — a crude rally that does not move the curve is one the rates market has stopped treating as an inflation event, at least until 8:30 tomorrow. Asia was the weak link and it was China-specific: Hang Seng −1.10% and Shanghai −0.82% against a Kospi +0.73% and a Straits Times +0.98%, with Japan shut for a holiday, so there is no JGB or Topix price discovery. Europe is flat-to-firm with Alcon +5.7% on a raised full-year forecast. The corporate tape is thin but pointed: Cardinal Health beat badly on the bottom line and missed on the top, Amentum raised EBITDA and EPS guidance while trimming revenue and is −7.1%, and Boeing is folding its Wisk flying-taxi venture into rival Archer Aviation. What this hands the 9:30 open: a gap-up concentrated in semiconductors and AI infrastructure, financed by a headline about financing rather than about demand; a Dow still indicated 29 points lower on fair value even with its contract up 24; an energy complex that has just given back a fifth straight advance and will open as a source of funds rather than a destination for them; a metals complex that held while the barrel fell, which decouples the reflation trade from the war trade; a bond market refusing to confirm the inflation story; and a tape marking time, because July CPI lands in twenty-five hours and nothing today can pre-empt it. |
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2 · Overnight Hot Spots — ranked by tradability at today's open |
| 1. Nvidia turned the AI capex bottleneck into a credit product, and the whole infrastructure complex should open bid on it. [Equities / Credit] Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR will source $500 billion of financing for AI infrastructure, structured to “create dedicated pools of capital at significant scale at attractive rates for Nvidia customers.” The structure is the story: financing collateralised on compute power, distributed through private offerings and SPE bonds capable of raising tens of billions at a time. Huang told CNBC he approached only those six firms and none turned him down. Long side: it removes the balance-sheet constraint that has been the bear case on second-tier buildout — CoreWeave, Nebius, Vertiv and the power names become financeable at a spread rather than at an equity cost of capital. Short side: it is exactly the “circular financing” concern BofA called overblown on Monday, now concrete and far larger, landing the same morning WSJ runs “Private Credit Is Under Growing Strain.” Pre-market NVDA +1.11% at $219.97, AMD +1.08%, MU +0.83%. The fade to watch: Nvidia fell 2.86% Monday and is +1.11% now — the announcement has repaired 39% of one session's loss, which is tepid for a half-trillion-dollar number. Hook: confirming level NVDA reclaiming $223.95; failure to hold $220 turns this into a sell-the-news and drags the SOX back toward 11,992.9. | | 2. Crude round-tripped its entire overnight rally in twenty-two minutes, unheadlined — and the equity futures went up while it happened. [Commodities / Equities / Rates] This is the live fade of the morning and it is the item to trade. At 7:00 AM ET WTI September was $83.49, +1.66%, and Brent October $88.88, +1.32%, extending Monday's +5.05% and +4.99% settles into a fifth consecutive advance, on a Hormuz standoff that had hardened overnight (Trump: “We are only semi-negotiating with them”). At 7:22 AM ET WTI is $82.08, −$0.05 and −0.06% on the day, and Brent is $87.62, −$0.10 — below Monday's $87.72 settle. A $1.41 move in WTI in twenty-two minutes, and no reviewed source carries a headline for it. Three internals corroborate. RBOB is −0.41% at $3.122 having been +0.84% at 7:00, so the crack narrowed and then the whole barrel went with it. Copper held +0.93% and gold went further up to +0.58%, so this was not a broad commodity liquidation. And all four U.S. equity futures rose over the identical window (ES +3.5, NQ +24, YM +26, RTY +4.2). A tape that buys equities as crude falls prices the barrel as a cost, not as a demand signal — the exact opposite of Monday, when a 5% crude rally and a 3.60% energy-sector gain still left the index red. Equity translation: Monday's winners are today's funding source. The refiners are doubly exposed — MPC +7.42%, PSX +5.69% and VLO +5.58% rallied on a widening crack that has now closed — while the producers (APA +9.01%, FANG +5.81%, EOG +5.55%) merely give back beta. The mirror image is the consumer-travel complex, five of whose names were among Monday's fifteen worst S&P performers. Hook: the confirming level is WTI below Monday's $82.13 settle at the bell, which turns energy from Monday's +3.60% leader into today's laggard; the invalidation is a re-break above $83.50. OVX unchanged at 56.06 through the entire move is a mild vote for the thin-book reading and the best argument against pressing the short. | | 3. The bond market declined to confirm the oil move, and that divergence is the most important thing on the board. [Rates / Equities] Monday was a synchronised global repricing — U.S. +7 bp, Canada +7, UK +7, France/Italy/Spain/Greece +6, Germany +5, Brazil +9. Overnight, none of it extended: Bloomberg's 7:06 AM board shows the U.S. 10-year 4.71% (0 bp), Germany 3.18% (−0), UK 4.99% (+1), France 3.99% (+1), Italy 3.96% (−0), Spain 3.61% (−0), Greece 3.85% (−1). The U.S. front end actually rallied: the 2-year is 4.233%, 1.7 bp below Monday's par close. Crude added 1.66% and the curve did not budge — that says Monday's move was a one-off risk-premium adjustment ahead of CPI, not the start of a trend. The only material moves are domestic: Australia +4 bp to 5.03% and South Korea +5 bp to 4.29%. BTP–Bund sits at 78 bp with periphery marginally outperforming core — the risk-appetite proxy is mildly constructive, not defensive. Hook: the 1:00 PM 3-year auction is the day's only supply event and the cleanest way for the afternoon to break lower. | | 4. Cardinal Health beat by 20% on the bottom line and missed by $1.5 billion on the top — and the beat is one-off. [Equities] Fiscal Q4 revenue $63.7bn (+6%) vs $65.22bn consensus — a $1.52bn, 2.3% miss. Non-GAAP EPS $2.91 (+40%) vs ~$2.41–2.42 — a 20% beat, but the release credits “a one-time IEEPA tariff refund benefit” alongside higher segment profits. GAAP EPS $1.70 (+70%); FY26 revenue $254.2bn (+14%). FY27 guidance: non-GAAP EPS $12.40–$12.60, implying 13–15% growth. New $5.0bn buyback authorisation, $6.4bn total. Read-through: a distributor missing revenue while beating on margin is a pricing-and-mix quarter and reads across to McKesson and Cencora — the tariff refund does not. Hook: whether the stock holds a gain once the one-time item is stripped is the tell for the whole distributor group. | | 5. Amentum raised earnings guidance, cut the revenue outlook, and is being marked down 7% for it. [Equities] Fiscal Q3 revenue $3,490m (−2% y/y) on JV transitions and divestitures; EPS $0.67 vs $0.40 forecast — a 68% beat; free cash flow +35% to $135m. FY26 adjusted EBITDA guidance raised to $1,115–$1,140m and adjusted EPS to $2.40–$2.50; backlog $48.2bn from $44.6bn; LTM book-to-bill 1.3x. The stock is −7.12% at $22.70. The company's own language explains it: “near-term dynamics have impacted their revenue outlook.” Raising EBITDA and EPS while trimming revenue says the margin came from mix and cost, not volume — and a 1.3x book-to-bill with a falling revenue line means conversion is being pushed right. Reads across to Leidos, Booz Allen, CACI and Parsons. Hook: a same-day full recovery would say this group is now paid for cash conversion over growth. | | 6. Boeing is folding its flying-taxi venture into Archer Aviation — a competitor consolidation that re-rates the eVTOL complex. [Equities] WSJ reports Boeing will fold Wisk Aero into rival Archer. Archer closed Monday at $6.26, +11.99%; Boeing at $232.79, −0.70%. For Archer this converts the best-capitalised competitor in the category into a shareholder and partner — the single largest de-risking event available to a pre-revenue certification story. For Boeing it is a capital-allocation signal that management is narrowing to core commercial and defence. Joby is the read-across short: it is now the only large independent eVTOL developer without an incumbent aerospace partner. Hook: the disclosed equity stake and any cash component matter more than the headline. | | 7. The administration is moving to scale back childhood vaccine recommendations by executive order. [Equities] WSJ's U.S. section carries “Trump Pushes to Scale Back Childhood Vaccines in New Executive Order,” alongside the release of Fauci texts on vaccine risk. The U.S. childhood immunisation schedule is the revenue base for Merck's ProQuad/Gardasil, Pfizer's Prevnar and Sanofi's paediatric portfolio, and a recommendation change flows through the CDC schedule into state mandates and into the Vaccines for Children program, which purchases roughly half of all U.S. paediatric doses. This lands on a Healthcare group that was Monday's second-best sector at +1.30%, with Merck +1.82% at $130.92. Hook: headline risk until an actual order text exists; whether Merck gives back Monday's 1.82% in the first hour is the tell. | | 8. Apple is testing Chinese memory chips as the supply squeeze bites — the second Apple supply-chain headline in two sessions, and this one is a cost story. [Equities] WSJ Tech: “Apple Tests Chinese Memory Chips as Supply Squeeze Bites.” This follows Monday's Jefferies downgrade to Underperform on checks concluding the all-glass iPhone was cancelled (AAPL −1.62% to $308.26). They are the same story: Jefferies' thesis was that Apple needs a hardware lever to offset rising memory cost; today's headline is Apple hunting the cheapest memory. AAPL +0.39% at $309.45, recovering a quarter of Monday's fall. Negative on the margin for memory pricing power — WDC and STX were the two names that did not participate in Monday's SOX liquidation. Hook: watch Micron; a memory name that cannot hold a gain on a bullish AI-financing day is the group telling you Apple's sourcing shift is the larger fact. |
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3 · Global Markets Overnight — Asia & Europe |
| Asia closes and the specific catalyst for each bloc |
| Index | Level | %Chg | Catalyst | | Nikkei 225 | 66,970.22 | market closed | Public holiday — no cash equity or JGB price discovery; the level is Monday's close | | Hang Seng | 25,652.82 | −1.10% | The region's worst, and a domestic de-rating — U.S. futures were higher all session | | Shanghai Composite | 3,934.09 | −0.82% | Same driver — the 9 Aug July CPI at +0.5% y/y (cons. +0.8%) and PPI +3.5% (cons. +3.8%) | | Kospi | 6,345.53 | +0.73% | Korea's 10-year +5 bp to 4.29% — rates and equities up together says growth, not risk-off | | ASX 200 | 9,250.60 | +0.19% | 10-year +4 bp to 5.03%; resources carried by copper +0.93% | | Straits Times | 5,754.17 | +0.98% | The region's best — a Singapore data-centre operator has confidentially filed for a $5bn U.S. IPO |
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| Europe live, mid-session |
| Index | Level | %Chg | Index | Level | %Chg | | Stoxx 600 | 661.39 | +0.10% (07:17 GMT) | FTSE 100 | 10,861.79 | −0.01% | | Euro Stoxx 50 | 5,556.98 | +0.29% | CAC 40 | 8,720.83 | −0.06% | | DAX | 26,355.04 | +0.12% | AEX | 1,116.98 | +0.33% |
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| Leadership was energy on elevated crude for most of the session — and the crude leg has just been removed from under it (§2 item 2). Note the shape at 7:22 AM ET: the DAX and the Euro Stoxx 50 improved while the FTSE 100, the most energy-weighted major, went from +0.07% to −0.01%. That is the crude reversal already showing in European index composition. The best large-cap move on the continent is Alcon +5.7% after raising its full-year earnings forecast; Bloomberg's movers reel names Bellway, IWG and Alcon. Two structural stories run underneath: “Europe's Faltering Defense Stocks Rally Is Tipped to Reignite” and “Resilient Europe Turns Into a Winning Bet for Money Managers” — the consensus overweight and its consensus expression are being re-underwritten rather than abandoned. |
| Global 10-year sovereigns (Bloomberg, 7:06 AM ET unless noted) — yields inverted: up = red |
| Country | Yield | 1-Day | Country | Yield | 1-Day | Country | Yield | 1-Day | | United States | 4.71% | 0 bp | Netherlands | 3.27% | −0 bp | Japan* | 2.79% | −0 bp | | Germany | 3.18% | −0 bp | Portugal | 3.51% | −0 bp | Australia | 5.03% | +4 bp | | United Kingdom | 4.99% | +1 bp | Greece | 3.85% | −1 bp | New Zealand | 4.67% | +1 bp | | France | 3.99% | +1 bp | Switzerland | 0.40% | +2 bp | South Korea | 4.29% | +5 bp | | Italy | 3.96% | −0 bp | Canada | 3.72% | +1 bp | India | 6.79% | +2 bp | | Spain | 3.61% | −0 bp | Brazil | 14.63% | +1 bp | | | |
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| *Japan indicative, 4:30 AM ET — cash market closed. BTP–Bund spread: 78 bp (3.96% − 3.18%), unchanged to marginally tighter. Periphery-vs-core is the risk-appetite proxy and it is mildly constructive: Greece −1 bp and Italy, Spain and Portugal flat against a Bund that did not move, on a morning crude added 1.66%. If the market believed the oil move was an inflation event, the periphery would be underperforming the core. It is not. |
| What this hands the U.S. open. A European session that is flat and energy-led rather than directional; a Chinese complex that is the only material decliner and is falling for domestic reasons, which is a specific negative for U.S.-listed China ADRs, Macau gaming and the China-revenue cohort of semis; a sovereign board that has refused to extend Monday's global selloff, which removes the duration headwind from Real Estate, Utilities and the homebuilders that were Monday's worst performers; a Japanese holiday that thins global liquidity and leaves USD/JPY 159 untested by any domestic bid; and an energy complex that opens bid for a fifth session with Brent $1.12 from $90. |
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4 · Pre-Market Movers & Single-Name Catalysts |
| All quotes Investing.com pre-market board, 7:06 AM ET, unless stated. Pre-market liquidity is thin. Several S&P 500 names on the vendor's gainers list show 7–16% moves on size that cannot support them and with no identifiable catalyst; those are listed separately at the foot of this section with an explicit warning rather than presented as fact. |
UP | Riot Platforms (RIOT) +19.6% to $23.20 (not S&P 500; stockanalysis.com premarket, $7.34bn cap) — a complete reversal of Monday's −5.46%. Q2 results plus the ~$9bn Anthropic compute deal and the 20-year, 191-MW Rockdale lease, re-read as positive once Nvidia's coalition made the counterparty credit financeable. The drift is the story: +12% after hours, −5.46% on the cash close, +19.6% now. | | Sea Limited (SE) +6.1% (not S&P 500) — quarterly results; the cleanest liquid proxy for the Southeast Asian consumer and for the regional outperformance overnight. | | NVIDIA (NVDA) +1.11% to $219.97 — the $500bn financing coalition. Repairs 39% of Monday's −2.86%. AMD +1.08% to $474.63 repairs ~38% of the same. | | Micron (MU) +0.83% to $868.15 — the most-active name on the board by dollar volume. Cross-current: WSJ reports Apple testing Chinese memory chips, a negative for memory pricing power that cuts against the AI-financing tailwind. | | Tesla (TSLA) +0.60% to $332.88; Apple (AAPL) +0.39% to $309.45 (recovering a quarter of Monday's Jefferies-driven fall, into a fresh supply-chain headline); Meta (META) +0.40% to $597.32 — Zuckerberg published a 6,500-word AI manifesto overnight, which re-frames Meta's capex narrative the same morning Nvidia industrialised AI financing. | | Microsoft (MSFT) +0.09% to $506.51; Alphabet C (GOOG) +0.02% to $355.90 — the mega-cap complex is barely participating, which is why NQ is +0.27% and not +0.6%. | | First Solar (FSLR) +3.83% to $248.50, Citizens Financial (CFG) +3.59% to $75.28 — no fresh catalyst; thin-size bounces, not information. | | Archer Aviation (ACHR) (not S&P 500) — Boeing to fold its Wisk flying-taxi venture into Archer (WSJ). ACHR closed Monday +11.99% at $6.26; a separate pre-market print was not independently verified this session. |
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DOWN | Amentum (AMTM) −7.12% to $22.70 — the largest verified decline on the board. FY26 EBITDA and EPS guidance raised, revenue outlook trimmed, backlog $48.2bn, book-to-bill 1.3x (§2, §5). | | Elbit Systems (ESLT) −6.1% (not S&P 500) — results disappointment, against a European defence complex being talked higher. | | Intel (INTC) −1.25% to $96.30 — extending Monday's −4.06%. The $15bn common stock offering has not yet priced, so the overhang is live. Two consecutive down sessions on a capital raise framed as a demand story is the market rejecting the framing. | | Palantir (PLTR) −0.57% to $174.24 — the only mega-cap-adjacent AI name red on a morning the AI financing headline is bullish. That is the divergence worth noting. | | Textron (TXT) −3.67%, AutoZone (AZO) −2.77%, IQVIA (IQV) −2.48%, Sherwin-Williams (SHW) −2.37%, ADP −2.32%, Nucor (NUE) −1.84%, Mettler-Toledo (MTD) −1.72%, AppLovin (APP) −1.70%, Progressive (PGR) −1.61% — a broad, shallow, catalyst-free set on thin size; none carries a reviewed headline. |
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ANALYST ACTIONS, M&A AND CORPORATE ITEMS CARRIED INTO THE OPEN | Jefferies on Apple: Underperform from Hold (Monday), on checks concluding the all-glass iPhone was cancelled — still the live rating change into today's supply-chain headline. Morgan Stanley on HPE: Overweight from Equal-weight — and the fade is instructive: HPE was +5% pre-market Monday and closed +2.74%. | | CoreWeave (CRWV): consensus Moderate Buy — 13 Buy, 4 Hold, 1 Sell — average target $127.76, implying ~49.7% upside, into tonight's print. Cardinal Health: new $5.0bn repurchase authorisation, $6.4bn total. | | M&A and corporate: Boeing–Archer (above); TPG buys South Korea's Lotte Rental for $925m; Adani lands an $800m data-centre loan as U.S. charges are dropped; a Singapore data-centre operator has confidentially filed for a $5bn U.S. IPO; Strategy is selling bitcoin and stock to bolster cash; Anthropic is shoring up investor confidence ahead of its IPO (WSJ Tech). |
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| Vendor-board moves this report declines to certify. Investing.com's 7:06 AM “Pre Market Top Gainers” list carries eight S&P 500 names with implausibly large moves and no identifiable catalyst: A.O. Smith +16.42%, Bunge +14.58%, Ameren +10.85%, Ametek +9.00%, Aflac +8.08%, C.H. Robinson +7.57%, J.M. Smucker +7.53% and Cincinnati Financial +7.31%. Eight unrelated mid-caps do not all rise 7–16% before the bell on a quiet pre-CPI Tuesday, none appears in Bloomberg's or WSJ's reviewed coverage, all three names checked reported Q2 in late July, and the identical figures re-printed unchanged on a 7:22 AM re-pull. Assessment: a reference-price error on that vendor's board — excluded rather than laundered into the report. Verify against a second venue before acting on any of them. |
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5 · Overnight Earnings Scorecard |
REPORTED SINCE MONDAY'S 4:00 PM ET CLOSE | Cardinal Health (CAH) — S&P 500 — BMO ~6:45 AM ET. Revenue $63.7bn, +6% y/y, vs $65.22bn consensus — a $1.52bn (2.3%) MISS. Non-GAAP EPS $2.91, +40%, vs ~$2.41–2.42 — a 20% BEAT, credited in the release to higher segment profits and a one-time IEEPA tariff refund benefit. GAAP EPS $1.70 (+70%); FY26 revenue $254.2bn (+14%), GAAP EPS $7.23. Guidance: FY27 non-GAAP EPS $12.40–$12.60, implying 13–15% growth. $1.4bn repurchased in FY26 plus a new $5.0bn authorisation ($6.4bn total). Pre-market reaction not independently verified — the print landed ~6:45 AM and the reviewed boards were stamped 7:06 AM without a CAH line. Read-through: a revenue miss with a margin beat is a mix-and-pricing quarter and reads across to McKesson and Cencora; the tariff refund does not read across at all and should be stripped before any peer comparison. The $12.50 midpoint is the first hard 2027 datapoint from a large healthcare distributor this season. | | Amentum (AMTM) — reported Monday after the close. Revenue $3,490m, −2% y/y; EPS $0.67 vs $0.40 forecast (68% beat); free cash flow +35% to $135m; FY26 adjusted EBITDA guidance raised to $1,115–$1,140m and adjusted EPS to $2.40–$2.50; backlog $48.2bn from $44.6bn; LTM book-to-bill 1.3x; revenue outlook trimmed on “near-term dynamics.” Pre-market −7.12% to $22.70. Read-through: the market is paying for revenue conversion, not EPS quality, in federal services — Leidos, Booz Allen, CACI, Parsons and Jacobs trade the same question. Calendar correction: the prior edition carried AMTM as Tuesday 8:00 AM BMO; it reported Monday AMC. | | Simon Property Group (SPG) — S&P 500 — reported Monday 4:05 PM ET. Real Estate FFO $1.25bn, or $3.29 per share, +7.9% y/y. Revenue $1.66bn, +20.3% y/y — 2.9% above the $1.61bn Street estimate; headline EPS missed. Occupancy 96.0%, unchanged y/y; base minimum rent $62.42/sq ft, +6.3%; reported retailer sales $838/sq ft on a trailing twelve months, +13.9%. Guidance raised: FY26 Real Estate FFO to $13.20–$13.30 per share, +8 cents at the midpoint. Q3 dividend raised to $2.25, +4.7% y/y. The stock closed −1.06% at $220.55 into the print; the pre-market reaction is unverified. Read-through: 13.9% growth in tenant sales per square foot with occupancy flat at 96% and a raised FFO guide is a demand datapoint, not a rent-roll datapoint — the most constructive U.S. consumer read on this morning's tape, three sessions ahead of Friday's retail sales, and it landed on the same afternoon Real Estate was the worst group at −1.33%. | | Rocket Lab (RKLB) (not S&P 500) — reported Monday; Bloomberg's follow-up is “Rocket Lab Cautions of Fresh Risks to Key Neutron Rocket Debut.” Consensus had been −$0.08 EPS on $234.06m. The schedule-risk disclosure is what trades, not the quarter. Riot Platforms (RIOT), Sea (SE) +6.1% and Elbit Systems (ESLT) −6.1% also reported; none is an S&P 500 constituent. |
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| Aggregate scorecard. No FactSet or LSEG blended scorecard was retrievable inside this run's sweep and none is invented here. What the reviewed tape supports: WSJ is running “Blockbuster Earnings Bolster Stocks' Record Run” and “Turbulent Month Leaves Stock Funds Up 10.6% So Far in 2026” — the season has been good enough to carry the index to a record intraday high on 10 August. The counter-example is the one that matters for positioning: Datadog on 6 August beat on Q2, raised full-year guidance, and still fell 19% — a record single-day drop — because its largest customer, a nine-figure AI account using 17 products, is cutting usage from Q3. That is the template the market has applied since: beats are not being paid for when the forward driver is concentrated in a single AI counterparty. Tonight's CoreWeave print is the purest possible test of it. |
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| Tonight (AMC) — the read that sets tomorrow's open |
| Name | Consensus EPS | Consensus revenue | Implied move | | CoreWeave (CRWV) | vendor conflict: +$0.03 vs −$1.21 | ~$2.55–2.56bn (+111% y/y) | ±15.5% | | Super Micro (SMCI) | $0.7089 | $11.73bn | not retrievable | | Lumentum (LITE) | $2.97 | $987.67m | not retrievable | | Bio-Techne (TECH) | $0.5194 | $314.7m | not retrievable |
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| CoreWeave's two EPS consensus figures are different bases — do not trade the line; the $99bn backlog and the ±15.5% implied move are the test of §2 item 1. Super Micro is a hardware assembler that benefits from volume, not from cheaper customer financing. Lumentum fell more than 6% on Monday into its own print, which is positioning rather than fundamentals and makes the reaction asymmetric. |
6 · U.S. Treasury Par Curve & Rates |
| Official par curve — Treasury.gov, 3:30 PM ET close of Monday 10 August (yields inverted: up = red) |
| Tenor | 10 Aug | 7 Aug | Δ 1-day | 3 Aug | Δ 1-week | | 1 Mo | 3.79% | 3.79% | 0 bp | 3.79% | 0 bp | | 1.5 Mo | 3.80% | 3.79% | +1 bp | 3.82% | −2 bp | | 2 Mo | 3.84% | 3.83% | +1 bp | 3.87% | −3 bp | | 3 Mo | 3.89% | 3.87% | +2 bp | 3.91% | −2 bp | | 4 Mo | 3.91% | 3.89% | +2 bp | 3.94% | −3 bp | | 6 Mo | 4.00% | 3.96% | +4 bp | 4.02% | −2 bp | | 1 Yr | 4.04% | 4.01% | +3 bp | 4.07% | −3 bp | | 2 Yr | 4.25% | 4.19% | +6 bp | 4.25% | 0 bp | | 3 Yr | 4.31% | 4.25% | +6 bp | 4.32% | −1 bp | | 5 Yr | 4.41% | 4.35% | +6 bp | 4.40% | +1 bp | | 7 Yr | 4.56% | 4.49% | +7 bp | 4.54% | +2 bp | | 10 Yr | 4.72% | 4.65% | +7 bp | 4.70% | +2 bp | | 20 Yr | 5.25% | 5.20% | +5 bp | 5.23% | +2 bp | | 30 Yr | 5.25% | 5.19% | +6 bp | 5.23% | +2 bp |
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| Live pre-open block (CNBC, 7:22 AM ET) — the overnight move, and curve spreads |
| Tenor | Live | vs par close | Move | At 6:55 | Spread | Live | 10 Aug | Δ 1-day | Δ 1-week | | 2 Yr | 4.239% | 4.25% | −1.1 bp | 4.233% | 2s10s | 47.4 bp | 47 bp | +1 bp | +2 bp | | 5 Yr | 4.417% | 4.41% | +0.7 bp | 4.410% | 3M10Y | — | 83 bp | +5 bp | +4 bp | | 10 Yr | 4.713% | 4.72% | −0.7 bp | 4.709% | 2s30s | 102.4 bp | 100 bp | 0 bp | +2 bp | | 30 Yr | 5.263% | 5.25% | +1.3 bp | 5.257% | | | | | | | 3 Mo | 3.820% | 3.89% | basis artefact | 3.823% | | | | | |
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| The 3-month gap is a quotation basis, not a move — CNBC quotes the bill on a discount basis against Treasury's coupon-equivalent par yield. Bloomberg marked the 10-year at 4.71%, 0 bp, at 7:06 AM ET, corroborating the CNBC print to 0.1 bp. Note the direction of travel between the two CNBC pulls: every tenor from 2 years out is 0.6 bp higher at 7:22 than at 6:55, and the 30-year moved most. The curve bear-steepened marginally over the same twenty-seven minutes in which crude fell $1.41 — the opposite of what an inflation-driven bond market would do, and instead consistent with duration being sold to fund the equity gap. |
| The read — a very mild bull-flattener at the front and a bear-steepener at the tail, superimposed on Monday's inflation-premium repricing, and the diagnosis is “not confirmed.” Monday was a belly-and-long-led bear-steepener driven by crude, and it was global. Overnight, crude added another 1.66% and the curve did not follow: the 2-year is 1.7 bp lower, the 10-year 1.1 bp lower, and 2s30s widened 2.4 bp purely because the 30-year is 0.7 bp higher while the 2-year fell. Front end rallying, long end static, crude up is neither an inflation repricing nor a Fed-path repricing — it is position-squaring ahead of a data release. Imported is ruled out by the Bloomberg board (Bunds, BTPs, Bonos flat; Gilts +1 bp; JGBs flat on a holiday), with the only material moves domestic — Australia +4 bp, Korea +5 bp. Supply-driven is ruled out because today's 3-year auction has not happened yet and the 3-year sector is precisely where the rally is concentrated. Data-driven is ruled out by an empty overnight U.S. calendar. What is left is pre-CPI risk reduction — and the single sentence of Fed-path context that matters is Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack's remark on Monday that it may take more than one rate hike to bring inflation down, a hawkish comment the front end has notably declined to price. |
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TODAY'S SUPPLY AND FED OPERATIONS | 1:00 PM ET — 3-Year Note auction. Prior award 4.179%. The 3-year sits at 4.31% on the official curve, 13 bp above the last award, so the auction comes materially cheaper than the previous one — a supportive setup, and a tail here would be a genuine surprise. A 1:00 PM auction is a mid-session equity risk event: a tail steepens the curve into the afternoon and pressures the long-duration equity complex that was Monday's worst performer. | | 12:00 PM ET — EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook. Not a rates event directly, but the only scheduled crude-supply input before tomorrow's CPI, and therefore a live second-order input to the inflation trade. 4:30 PM ET — API weekly crude stocks (prior +2.69m barrels). | | Fed speakers: none appears on the Investing.com U.S. economic calendar for today. The Benzinga calendar cross-check was not completed within this run's time budget, so treat “no speakers” as unconfirmed rather than established. |
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7 · U.S. Macroeconomic Calendar |
| ★ TODAY — Tuesday, August 11 — all times ET |
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| Time | Release | Consensus | Prior | Sensitivity | What a beat/miss does | | 8:15 AM | ADP Weekly Employment Change | — | +15.0K | Medium | The only pre-open release, and therefore the whole of today's gap risk. A negative print pulls the 2-year lower and bids Real Estate, Utilities and the homebuilders — Monday's three worst cohorts; a strong print reinforces Hammack's hawkish framing and hits them again | | 8:55 AM | Redbook (YoY) | — | +8.70% | Low-to-Medium | Weekly chain-store sales; matters this week only as a pre-read on Friday's retail sales | | 10:00 AM | NAR Existing Home Sales (Jul) | 4.05M | 4.09M | Medium | A −1.0% consensus decline. With the mortgage near 6.76% and the 10-year at 4.71%, this is a rate-transmission read. Below 4.00M is the level that moves the homebuilders — DHI and LEN both fell 2.93% Monday | | 10:00 AM | Existing Home Sales (MoM, Jul) | — | −2.40% | Medium | Same release | | 12:00 PM | EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook | — | — | Medium-to-High today | Elevated from its usual Low by the Hormuz tape — the first official U.S. government view on a market that has moved five sessions in one direction | | 1:00 PM | 3-Year Note auction | — | award 4.179% | Medium | A mid-session equity risk event: a tail steepens the curve and pressures long-duration equity into the afternoon | | 4:30 PM | API Weekly Crude Oil Stock | — | +2.69M | Low-to-Medium | After the close; sets up tomorrow's EIA weekly |
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| There is no “Very high” sensitivity release today. There is one in twenty-four hours: July CPI, Wednesday 8:30 AM ET. That single fact governs the entire session — nothing on today's calendar can pre-empt tomorrow's core month-on-month print, which is why the front end is squaring rather than trending and why the VIX is 15.44 on a morning crude is up 1.66%. |
| Overnight global data already released |
| Release | Actual | Consensus | Reaction | | China CPI (July, released 9 Aug) | +0.5% y/y — six-month low; −0.1% m/m; core +0.9%; food −1.5% | +0.8% | MISS. Reinforces the weak-domestic-demand read — Shanghai −0.82%, Hang Seng −1.10% overnight | | China PPI (July, released 9 Aug) | +3.5% y/y, from +4.1% in June — three-month low | +3.8% | MISS. Factory-gate deflation pressure returning as oil's earlier pullback washes through | | Japan | No data — public holiday, cash markets shut | — | No JGB or Topix price discovery | | Europe | No first-tier release in the overnight window | — | Bunds, BTPs, Bonos and OATs all within 1 bp of unchanged |
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| Both Chinese prints landed on Sunday 9 August, i.e. before this report's window opens at Monday's 4:00 PM ET close. They are included because they are the operative explanation for the overnight Chinese equity underperformance, and are labelled with their true release date rather than presented as overnight news. |
| Rest of this week, and next week |
| This week | Release | Sensitivity | Next week | Release | Sensitivity | | Wed 8/12 08:30 | Consumer Price Index (July) | VERY HIGH | Mon 8/17 08:30 | Empire State Manufacturing (Aug) | Medium | | Thu 8/13 08:30 | Initial Jobless Claims (w/e 8/8) | High | Mon 8/17 11:00 | NY Fed SCE Labor Market Survey | Medium | | Thu 8/13 08:30 | Producer Price Index (July) | High | Tue 8/18 08:30 | Import & Export Prices | Medium | | Thu 8/13 11:30 | NY Fed Weekly Economic Index | Low | Tue 8/18 08:30 | Housing Starts & Permits (Jul) | Medium-to-High | | Fri 8/14 08:30 | Advance Retail Sales (July) | High | Tue 8/18 09:15 | Industrial Production (Jul) | Medium | | Fri 8/14 10:00 | Michigan Consumer Survey (Prelim, Aug) | Medium-to-High | Thu 8/20 08:30 | Initial Jobless Claims | High | | Fri 8/14 10:00 | Business Inventories / SPF (Q3) | Low | Thu 8/20 08:30 | Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing (Aug) | Medium | | Fri 8/14 12:45 | NY Fed Staff Nowcast | Low | Thu 8/20 10:00 | Reserve Demand Elasticity | Medium |
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| Look-ahead. The week's information is back-loaded into three consecutive 8:30 releases — CPI tomorrow, claims and PPI on Thursday, retail sales on Friday — and the sequencing is what makes it dangerous. The market enters CPI with a front end that has stopped selling off: the 2-year is 4.233%, 1.7 bp below Monday's par close and 1.7 bp below where it closed on 3 August, having given back the entire post-payroll rally and then stabilised. That is a market with no directional conviction rather than one that is short duration, which changes Monday's asymmetry: a hot core print now hits a flat book, so the selloff would be larger; a soft print hits a book with nothing to cover, so the rally would be smaller. The unhedgeable complication is unchanged: July CPI predates the crude move entirely — WTI settled $78.18 on 7 August — so a benign July print says nothing about August, and the market knows it. The second-order item to watch is today's noon EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, the only official forward view on the barrel that will exist before the inflation print lands. |
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9 · FX Market |
| Spot; USD per unit for EUR/GBP/AUD, units per USD for JPY/CHF/CAD/KRW/CNY/MXN. CNBC's signed board 7:22 AM ET and TradingEconomics 7:08 AM ET, cross-checked against Bloomberg BGN. Changes are against Monday's 4:00 PM level. |
| Pair | Level | 24h Chg | Driver | | DXY | 99.810 | ~0.00% | A dollar index that did not move while crude rose 1.66% and then gave all of it back is the cleanest evidence that FX declined to trade the barrel in either direction | | EUR/USD | 1.154 | −0.043% | Bunds unchanged, no first-tier euro-area data — the euro is a spectator | | USD/JPY | 159.17 | −0.082% | Yen marginally firmer, but the level is the story. Tokyo is shut, so there is no domestic bid and no JGB anchor. Bloomberg: “Yen Slides Toward 160 per Dollar, Raising Intervention Concerns” | | GBP/USD | 1.350 | −0.052% | Gilts +1 bp, the largest G10 sovereign move in Europe, and sterling still soft — a mild negative on the UK fiscal tape | | AUD/USD | 0.70634 (7:08) | +0.13% | The best G10 performer, and the mechanism is clean: Australia's 10-year +4 bp and copper +0.93%. Australia is trading the metal, not the barrel — which is why the Aussie held its gain through the crude reversal | | USD/CHF | 0.810 | +0.025% | The haven cross did nothing. On a morning of escalating Hormuz rhetoric, a static franc says the market has fully normalised the Iran tape as a commodity story | | USD/CAD | 1.393 | −0.057% | Canada's 10-year +1 bp. The loonie captured almost none of the crude rally and has now lost almost none of it back — the CAD/crude correlation is simply not running this morning | | USD/KRW | 1,413.05 | vendors disagree on sign | Korea's 10-year +5 bp, the largest sovereign move in Asia, and the Kospi +0.73% — both consistent with a domestic growth impulse. TradingEconomics shows the won ~0.34% firmer, Bloomberg's board implies ~0.31% weaker; trade the level, not the change | | USD/CNY | 6.74544 | −0.01% | A fixed-in-place yuan while the Hang Seng fell 1.10% — the equity market took the weak CPI, the currency did not | | USD/MXN | 17.1189 | −0.12% | The strongest EM major on the board, on crude |
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| The take — the contrarian cross is USD/CHF, and the second-order read is that FX has decoupled from the geopolitical tape entirely. The Swiss franc is the market's purest Hormuz hedge and it did not move by a single basis point on a night in which the U.S. President said he is “only semi-negotiating” with Tehran and Iran's foreign minister ruled out restarting talks. Meanwhile the Australian dollar — the highest-beta commodity currency in G10 — was the best performer. FX is trading the barrel as an industrial input, not as a war. Three equity consequences at 9:30. First, a flat DXY removes the translation headwind from the S&P's foreign-revenue cohort — roughly 40% of index revenue earned abroad neither helps nor hurts today, so this is a pure domestic-earnings tape. Second, USD/JPY at 159 with Tokyo shut is an unhedged tail: a disorderly break of 160 into a liquidity vacuum forces a second intervention and unwinds the yen carry that funds a non-trivial share of U.S. equity length. It is the single largest unmanaged risk in this section and has been for two weeks. Third, a static CNY against a falling Chinese equity market means the China-revenue cohort of U.S. semis and industrials gets the demand signal without the currency offset — the wrong half of the pair. The practical expression: if you are long the AI-infrastructure complex on Nvidia's financing headline, the yen is your cheapest hedge, not the VIX. |
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10 · Commodities |
| Contract (front month) | Price 7:22–7:23 | Chg | % | At 7:00–7:05 | | WTI (Sep '26) | $82.08 | −$0.05 | −0.06% | $83.49, +1.66% | | Brent (Oct '26) | $87.62 | −$0.10 | −0.11% | $88.88, +1.32% | | RBOB (Sep) | $3.122 | −$0.013 | −0.41% | $3.162, +0.84% | | NatGas (Sep) | $2.751 | −$0.043 | −1.54% | $2.756, −1.36% | | Gold (Comex Dec) | $4,445.50 | +$25.80 | +0.58% | $4,438.70, +0.43% | | Gold spot (XAU) | $4,389.09 | — | +0.04% | 7:05 stamp | | Silver (Sep) | $65.36 | +$0.088 | +0.13% | $65.26, −0.02% | | Copper (Sep) | $6.6775/lb | +$0.0615 | +0.93% | $6.6825, +1.01% | | Cocoa (front) | $5,859/MT | — | +1.23% | 7:05 stamp | | Bloomberg Commodity Index | 347.16 | +0.32 | +0.09% | 7:05 stamp; range 346.73–349.94 |
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| WTI's fifth consecutive advance was erased in twenty-two minutes, unheadlined (§2 item 2); Brent is now below Monday's $87.72 settle; product led the barrel down as it had led it up; gold went UP through the reversal; and the Bloomberg Commodity Index line is stamped BEFORE it, so the aggregate is stale relative to the energy lines above and is shown for range only. |
| The take — the energy complex round-tripped and the metals did not, and that separation is the whole message. Between 7:00 and 7:22 AM ET WTI gave back $1.41, Brent $1.26 and RBOB four tenths of a percent, while gold added fifteen basis points, silver went from −0.02% to +0.13% and copper held 0.93% of a 1.01% gain. A liquidation would have taken all ten lines down together; this took energy alone. Two readings survive that test: a large seller hitting a thin pre-market book in the energy contracts specifically — supported by OVX unchanged at 56.06 through the entire move, which is not what crude vol does when the Strait is genuinely re-priced — or something in the Hormuz negotiation improving without yet reaching the wires. This report cannot distinguish between them and does not pretend to. What it can say is that the internals rule out a macro-driven commodity selloff. Monday's move was product-led — RBOB +5.89% and heating oil +7.28% against crude +5.05%, the crack widening on a transit disruption that hits refined-product logistics harder than crude availability. The reversal has been product-led too, and that is doubly painful for the refiners: MPC +7.42%, PSX +5.69% and VLO +5.58% rallied Monday on a spread that has now closed and a barrel that has now fallen. Contract-month and basis caveats, stated explicitly: WTI is September and Brent October, so the 5.54-point differential embeds a one-month calendar spread and is not a clean quality/location spread; gold futures are December and sit $56.41 above spot on contango, so any “gold at $4,445” headline is a futures number, not what a physical buyer pays; copper is September Comex in USD per pound and is not comparable to an LME three-month tonne price. Equity read-through in order of directness: the whole energy sector, which rose 3.60% Monday and was 2.30 points clear of the next-best group, opens as a source of funds rather than a destination — negative XOM/CVX/COP/APA/FANG/EOG on beta and doubly negative MPC/PSX/VLO on the crack; copper +0.93% for a third session is positive FCX and the miners, and it is now the cleanest long in the complex because it survived the reversal; the consumer-travel complex — LUV −4.57%, UAL −4.48%, CCL −4.28%, RCL −3.75%, NCLH −3.64% on Monday — is the mirror-image long today and the highest-beta expression of a falling barrel; and NatGas −1.54% is negative EQT and a small negative for CF Industries, which rose 6.24% Monday on Henry Hub. |
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12 · Trading Views |
| Desk-style ideas for today's session. Not personalized investment advice. Verify every level independently before acting. |
| 1. Long the AI-infrastructure financing beneficiaries against short the second-derivative names, into tonight's CoreWeave print. Expression: long NVDA / VRT / the power-and-cooling names against short SMCI, beta-neutral. Rationale: Nvidia's $500bn coalition monetises the financing bottleneck for the buyers of compute; Super Micro is a thin-margin hardware assembler that does not benefit from cheaper customer financing — it benefits from volume it was already getting — and it reports tonight against $0.7089 / $11.73bn. Catalyst: the 9:30 open, then SMCI and CRWV after the close, then CPI at 8:30 tomorrow. Invalidation: NVDA failing to hold $220 in the first hour (it is $219.97 pre-market). Sizing: small into the print — CRWV's implied move is ±15.5%, and that is the volatility the whole complex carries tonight. | | 2. Sell the energy sector's Monday gain into the crude round trip — and own the refiners' downside twice. Expression: short an equal-weight MPC / PSX / VLO basket against a smaller short XOM / CVX leg, or simply short XLE for the opening hour. Rationale: §2 item 2 and §10 — Energy rose 3.60% Monday, 2.30 points clear of the next-best group, on a barrel that has now given the entire overnight extension back: WTI $82.08 (−0.06%) and Brent $87.62, below Monday's settle. The refiners rallied on a crack that has since closed — RBOB was +5.89% Monday and is −0.41% now. Catalyst: the 9:30 auction, then 12:00 PM EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook and 4:30 PM API crude stocks (prior +2.69m). Invalidation: WTI re-breaking $83.50, which would confirm the 7:00–7:22 collapse was a thin-book air pocket rather than a repricing — and OVX unchanged at 56.06 through the whole move is a real argument for that reading. Sizing: modest gross, short duration. This is a fade of a one-day move inside 2026's best sector (+33.23% YTD), not a view on the war. | | 3. Buy duration-sensitive equity for the gap, not the trend. Expression: long the homebuilders (DHI, LEN, BLDR) and Utilities into the 9:30 auction, flat by the 1:00 PM auction. Rationale: Monday's worst cohorts were the rate-sensitive ones — Real Estate −1.33%, Utilities −1.29%, DHI and LEN −2.93% each, BLDR −3.63% — on a 7 bp rise in the 10-year. The 10-year is now 0.7 bp below Monday's par close and no European sovereign moved: the duration headwind is off for a few hours. Catalyst: 8:15 AM ADP weekly; 10:00 AM existing home sales (cons. 4.05M vs 4.09M). Invalidation: the 10-year back above 4.75%, or existing home sales below 4.00M. Sizing: intraday only — the 1:00 PM auction is the exit, not a hold-through event. | | 4. Buy the consumer-travel complex as the highest-beta long expression of the crude round trip. (Direction reversed from the 7:00 AM draft of this note — see the invalidation.) Expression: long LUV / UAL / CCL / RCL, no offsetting short. Rationale: five of Monday's fifteen worst S&P performers were airlines or cruise lines on a day the index fell 0.06% and crude settled +5.05%. Jet fuel and bunker are the direct pass-through and the group has no revenue leg that offsets it — which makes it symmetric. Brent has gone from $1.12 below $90 to below Monday's settle in twenty-two minutes and the group has not yet marked it. Catalyst: the opening auction; 12:00 PM EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook. Invalidation: WTI back above $83.50, or any Hormuz escalation headline — this is the highest-beta crude proxy on the board and it cuts both ways at 4–5% a session. The honest caveat: the crude move that justifies this trade has no identified cause, which is the weakest possible foundation for a directional position. Sizing: small, and this is the idea on the page to size down rather than up. Stopped on a headline, not a level. | | 5. Buy the Amentum gap-down if it holds through the first thirty minutes. Expression: long AMTM outright, small. Rationale: EPS beat 68% ($0.67 vs $0.40), FY26 EBITDA and EPS guidance raised, backlog $48.2bn from $44.6bn, book-to-bill 1.3x, free cash flow +35%. The −7.12% is a reaction to a trimmed revenue line in a business whose backlog grew $3.6bn. Catalyst: the opening auction, then the read-across into Leidos, Booz Allen and CACI. Invalidation: a close below the pre-market low — a gap that widens through the first hour on a guidance raise means the market is pricing contract-conversion risk, and that is a thesis change, not noise. Sizing: small; a $5.97bn name whose pre-market print is on thin size. |
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| Vol note. VIX 15.49 (+0.19%), VXN 23.04 (unchanged), OVX 56.06 (unchanged), all at 7:22 AM ET. The most informative vol observation of the morning is a non-move: OVX did not budge while WTI fell $1.41 and Brent $1.26 in twenty-two minutes. Crude implied vol ignoring a 1.7% round trip in the underlying is the option market saying it does not believe the print — the strongest single argument that the collapse was a thin pre-market book rather than a repricing of Hormuz risk. Treat every crude-linked idea above accordingly. The term-structure signal is the VIX/VXN spread at 7.55 points: the index is priced calm and the Nasdaq-100 is not, which is the correct price of a session with CoreWeave and Super Micro after the close and a SOX that closed one tenth of a point off its low. OVX at 3.6x the VIX makes crude vol the expensive asset and equity vol the cheap one, which argues for expressing the Hormuz view in equities (idea 4) rather than in oil options. A VIX of 15.49 implies a daily S&P move of roughly ±0.98% (15.49 ÷ √252) — a specific option-implied straddle for today's expiry was not retrievable inside this run's sweep and none is invented; the figure is a derivation from the index level, not a quote. 0DTE and dealer-gamma positioning were likewise not sourceable. Key levels for the S&P 500: prior cash close 7,753.11; fair-value implied open 7,757.50; Monday's record intraday high 7,773.76 (already failed once); Monday's low 7,743.11; 7,700 as the round number below. ES futures at 7,788.50 are above the record cash high, but the fair-value-adjusted implied open of 7,757.50 is 16.26 points below it — a 31-point wedge between the futures screen and the implied cash open, and anyone reading the screen without adjusting will mis-anchor the auction by exactly that much. |
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13 · S&P 500 Earnings Calendar |
| ★ TODAY — Tuesday, August 11 |
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| BMO: Cardinal Health (CAH) 6:45 AM — consensus ~$2.41–2.42 EPS on $65.22bn revenue. REPORTED: non-GAAP EPS $2.91 (beat), revenue $63.7bn (miss), FY27 guide $12.40–$12.60. See §5. |
| AMC: Lumentum (LITE) 4:00 ($2.97 / $987.67m) · Super Micro Computer (SMCI) 4:05 ($0.7089 / $11.73bn) · CoreWeave (CRWV) after close (~$2.55–2.56bn revenue, ±15.5% implied; EPS consensus conflicts by vendor) · Bio-Techne (TECH) after close ($0.5194 / $314.7m). CRWV and TECH are not carried by this report's S&P 500 screening board. |
| Current week — August 10–14 (S&P 500 components only; times ET) |
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| Mon 8/10 — completed. BMO: Berkshire Hathaway B (BRK.B) 8:00 — closed +1.46% at $529.42. AMC: Simon Property Group (SPG) 4:05 — closed −1.06% at $220.55 into the print; Amentum (AMTM) — reported after the close, not Tuesday BMO as the prior calendar carried; −7.12% pre-market. |
| Tue 8/11 — TODAY. BMO: Cardinal Health (CAH) 6:45 — reported. AMC: Lumentum (LITE) 4:00, Super Micro Computer (SMCI) 4:05. |
| Wed 8/12. BMO: Amcor (AMCR) 6:00, Trimble (TRMB) 6:55. AMC: Cisco (CSCO) 4:05, Coherent (COHR) 4:05. |
| Thu 8/13. BMO: Tapestry (TPR) 6:45. AMC: Applied Materials (AMAT) 4:00. |
| Fri 8/14. No S&P 500 reporter on either page. |
| Next week — August 17–21 (thirteen S&P 500 reporters across four sessions) |
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| Mon 8/17. No S&P 500 reporter. |
| Tue 8/18. BMO: Home Depot (HD) 6:00. AMC: Keysight Technologies (KEYS) 4:05, Jack Henry & Associates (JKHY) 4:15. |
| Wed 8/19. BMO: Lowe's (LOW) 6:00, Estée Lauder (EL) 6:00, Target (TGT) 6:30, Analog Devices (ADI) 7:00, TJX Companies (TJX) 7:30. AMC: Nordson (NDSN) 4:30. |
| Thu 8/20. BMO: Deere & Company (DE) 6:20, Walmart (WMT) 7:00. AMC: Ross Stores (ROST) 4:00. |
| Fri 8/21. No S&P 500 reporter. |
| Changes vs the prior calendar (10 August Closing Daily) |
| One correction, not an addition: Amentum (AMTM) was carried as Tuesday 8/11 BMO 8:00 and in fact reported Monday 8/10 after the close. The company release and the Investing.com earnings board both place it on Monday. Moved above; the 8/11 BMO slot is now Cardinal Health alone. | | No other additions or removals for the current week — LITE 4:00, SMCI 4:05, AMCR 6:00, TRMB 6:55, CSCO 4:05, COHR 4:05, TPR 6:45 and AMAT 4:00 all re-appear unchanged. Next week is unchanged from the prior edition's first full pull: thirteen reporters, and the composition is the U.S. consumer — Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, TJX, Walmart and Ross inside four sessions. | | Membership caveats carried forward: the screening board does not carry Lumentum (LITE) or Coherent (COHR) — both retained for continuity but the two least certain names; confirm with company IR. CoreWeave (CRWV), Bio-Techne (TECH), Rocket Lab (RKLB) and Riot Platforms (RIOT) are excluded from the roster and appear in §5 and §2 as read-through drivers only. Toll Brothers (8/18), Coty (8/19), Flowers Foods (8/20), Advance Auto Parts (8/20) and BJ's Wholesale (8/21) remain conservatively excluded. | | The forward hook is unchanged and it is tonight. Applied Materials on 8/13 is the week's most important scheduled semiconductor event, Cisco on 8/12 is the infrastructure read-across, and Coherent on 8/12 follows a −12% Monday. But CoreWeave tonight, at a ±15.5% implied move against a $99bn backlog and on the same day Nvidia industrialised AI-infrastructure financing, is the print that decides whether §2 item 1 is a re-rating or a one-day headline. |
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14 · Risk Map — Today's Session |
| ★ TODAY — Event clock — Tuesday, August 11, all times ET |
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| Time | Event | | 8:15 AM | ADP Weekly Employment Change (prior +15.0K) — the only pre-open release and the whole of the morning's gap risk | | 8:55 AM | Redbook chain-store sales (prior +8.70% y/y) | | 9:30 AM | U.S. cash open. Implied S&P open 7,757.50 (+4.39 pts); Dow indicated −28.98; Nasdaq-100 indicated +83.95 | | 10:00 AM | NAR Existing Home Sales, July (cons. 4.05M vs 4.09M prior) — the first post-open air pocket | | 11:30 AM | Europe's cash close (Stoxx 600 was +0.10% at 07:17 GMT) | | 12:00 PM | EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook — the only official forward view on crude before tomorrow's CPI | | 1:00 PM | 3-Year Note auction (prior award 4.179%) — a mid-session equity risk event | | 4:00 PM | Cash close, then Lumentum 4:00, Super Micro 4:05 and CoreWeave after the close (±15.5% implied) | | 4:30 PM | API weekly crude stocks (prior +2.69M) | | 8:30 AM tomorrow | July CPI — the only “Very high” release of the fortnight |
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CROWDED CONSENSUSES, AND THE NUMBER THAT BREAKS EACH | “The AI capex cycle is now financeable.” The number that breaks it: CoreWeave's Q3 revenue guide tonight. A guide implying deceleration below ~90% y/y growth against a $99bn backlog says the constraint was never financing — it was demand — and the whole §2 item 1 thesis inverts. | | “The oil move is a supply story, not an inflation story.” The global bond board refused to extend Monday's selloff on a 1.66% crude gain — and then crude gave the gain back entirely. The number that breaks it: a July core CPI at or above +0.4% month-on-month tomorrow, landing on a barrel that has just proved it can move 1.7% in twenty-two minutes without a headline. | | “Energy is the trade of 2026.” The sector is +33.23% YTD and rose 3.60% on Monday alone. The number that breaks it: WTI holding below Monday's $82.13 settle at the 9:30 bell. The whole of Monday's energy leadership was built on a barrel that has already round-tripped this morning, and the sector is 2.30 points clear of the next-best group with nothing underneath it. | | “European equity is the resilient overweight.” The number that breaks it: the FTSE 100, the most energy-weighted major, went from +0.07% to −0.01% between 7:00 and 7:22 AM ET while the DAX improved. Europe's index-level resilience is more energy-weighting than resilience, and that support has just been removed. | | “The yen intervention worked.” The number that breaks it: USD/JPY 160, on a day Tokyo is shut. Ten sessions after a coordinated action the pair has retraced from 155 to 159.12 and there is no domestic bid to defend it. |
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THE TWO-SIDED GEOPOLITICAL TAPE, AND STRUCTURAL WATCH ITEMS | Bearish: further escalation in the Hormuz standoff — Trump's “economic pressure” framing implies more blockade, and CENTCOM has already redirected 55 commercial vessels; a formal Iranian rejection of the compensation framework; crude re-breaking $83.50 and reversing the 7:22 AM collapse; the childhood-vaccine executive order landing with actual text; and the U.S.–China technology tape against an Apple now sourcing Chinese memory. | | Bullish: any Iranian SNSC statement reopening negotiations, which reverses crude and the whole energy complex violently in a single print; a soft 8:15 ADP that hands the front end a reason to rally into CPI; a strong CoreWeave guide validating the Nvidia financing structure; and Beijing accelerating the fiscal package it signalled in July. | | Structural watch items: Intel's $15bn offering has not priced — two down sessions and no pricing means the overhang is live. Private credit strain (WSJ) landing in the same week as a $500bn compute-collateralised financing structure — the two stories are about the same balance sheet. Anthropic's pre-IPO investor confidence (WSJ Tech), the largest private AI counterparty in the complex and Riot's counterparty on a ~$9bn deal. ON RRP printed $0.975bn on 10 August, a series low, with reserves at $2.993tn — the 8/20 Reserve Demand Elasticity release is the scheduled read. And Japan's holiday thins global liquidity all session. |
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| What the VIX and today's implied move are and are not pricing. A VIX of 15.49 implies roughly ±0.98% on the S&P today — about 76 points — and that is a fair price for a session whose only pre-open datapoint is a weekly ADP number. What it is pricing: an empty calendar, a flat curve, a dollar that has not moved, and a gap higher led by semiconductors. What it demonstrably is not pricing, on the evidence of the last half hour: OVX sat unchanged at 56.06 while WTI moved $1.41 and Brent $1.26, so the option market did not re-price crude risk at all during a 1.7% round trip in the underlying — either implied vol is asleep or the futures print was not real, and both are reasons to trade this morning's energy dislocation in small size. What it is not pricing, in order of how badly it is mispriced. First, tonight's after-close block: CoreWeave at a ±15.5% implied move, Super Micro and Lumentum alongside it, with the SOX having closed one tenth of a point off its low — VXN at 23.04 is carrying that risk and the VIX is not, which is why the 7.6-point spread between them is the most honest number on the board this morning. Second, the 1:00 PM 3-year auction into a front end that has just rallied 1.7 bp for no visible reason — the auction comes 13 bp cheap to the last award, so the setup is supportive, but a tail into a squared book is exactly how an afternoon breaks. Third, and largest, tomorrow's CPI: a 15.44 VIX covering today's session says nothing about a market whose entire fortnight resolves at 8:30 tomorrow, and the front end has spent overnight refusing to take a position on it. The market is not calm. It is waiting — and it has chosen to wait in cash rather than in options, which is why the cheapest hedge on the board this morning is not the VIX at all, but a yen call struck through 160. |
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| Source Links and the full Data Notes & Conflicts section are in the companion file US_CrossAsset_Opening_2026-08-11_DataNotes.txt. |
| U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily — Tuesday, August 11, 2026. Prepared for institutional investors. Not personalized investment advice; verify independently before acting. Sections 8 and 11 are retired; their numbers are intentionally unused. |
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