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U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily
Thursday, August 13, 2026 — Pre-Open Briefing | Data as of: 8:07–8:09 AM ET | News window: Wed 4:00 PM ET → Thu 8:09 AM ET
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_2026-08-13_DataNotes.txt). |
1 · Pre-Open Dashboard |
| U.S. equity futures (Sep 2026) and the implied cash open |
| Contract | Level | Chg (pts) | %Chg | Prior settle | Implied cash open | | S&P 500 (ES) | 7,786.25 | +15.75 | +0.20% | 7,770.50 | ≈7,759.3 (+10.75 vs 7,748.50, +0.14%) | | Nasdaq 100 (NQ) | 29,882.00 | +28.75 | +0.10% | 29,853.25 | ≈29,787.0 (+44.4, +0.15%) | | Dow (YM) | 54,025 | +154 | +0.29% | 53,871 | ≈53,920.0 (+149.73, +0.28%) | | Russell 2000 (RTY) | 3,060.10 | +7.30 | +0.24% | 3,052.80 | ≈3,049.1 (+3.62, +0.12%) |
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| Futures ranking YM +0.29% > RTY +0.24% > ES +0.20% > NQ +0.10% — unchanged in order from the 7:04 AM pull but wider: the Dow has added 34 points and the Russell a point of percentage while the Nasdaq has gone nowhere. The Nasdaq is the laggard for the first time in three sessions and the reason is one name — Cisco is −5.84% pre-market. Arithmetic: ES +15.75/7,770.50 = +0.203%; YM +154/53,871 = +0.286%; NQ +28.75/29,853.25 = +0.096%; RTY +7.30/3,052.80 = +0.239%. CNBC's fair-value-adjusted implied opens are smaller than the raw futures moves for the S&P, Dow and Russell but larger for the NDX. |
| Prior cash closes — the anchor (12 August) |
| Index | 8/12 close | Chg | %Chg | Index | 8/12 close | Chg | %Chg | | S&P 500 | 7,748.50 | +20.30 | +0.26% | Russell 2000 | 3,045.48 | +18.37 | +0.61% | | Nasdaq Composite | 26,588.49 | +143.04 | +0.54% | PHLX Semis (SOX) | 12,399.4 | +300.9 | +2.49% | | Nasdaq 100 | 29,742.60 | +217.13 | +0.74% | VIX | 14.55 | −0.73 | −4.78% | | Dow Jones Inds | 53,770.27 | −21.58 | −0.04% | VIX pre-open (8:07) | 14.57 | +0.02 | +0.14% |
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| The VIX close was the lowest of the month, set on the evening before a “Very high” producer-price print. VXN 20.97; OVX (crude vol) 52.34 — both equity vol and crude vol sold off into a data-heavy 48 hours. |
| Rates, FX, commodities, crypto |
| Instrument | Level (ET stamp) | Change | Note | | UST 2Y | 4.178% (8:07) | −2.2 bp vs 4.20% par | Front end leads | | UST 5Y | 4.350% (8:07) | −3.0 bp vs 4.38% | Biggest mover on the strip | | UST 10Y | 4.672% (8:07) | −0.8 bp vs 4.68% | Bloomberg board 4.67%, −2 bp (real-time basis) | | UST 30Y | 5.237% (8:07) | −0.3 bp vs 5.24% | $25bn auction at 1:00 PM ET | | DXY | 99.912 | +0.01% | Flat; the dollar is not expressing a view pre-PPI | | EUR/USD | 1.1530 (8:07) | +0.08% | Periphery spreads tighter; euro-area capital goods −1.4% | | USD/JPY | 159.33 (8:07) | −0.05% | 10Y JGB +2 bp to 2.85%; “160 watch” persists | | WTI (Sep) | $81.61 (7:51) | −$1.66, −1.99% | Round-tripping the Red Sea premium a second time | | Brent (Oct) | $87.41 (7:51) | −$1.57, −1.76% | WTI–Brent ≈$5.80 | | Gold (Comex Dec) | $4,441.10 (7:51) | −$26.40, −0.59% | First decline in seven sessions, and it widened | | Copper (Comex Sep) | $6.5880/lb (7:50) | −$0.0275, −0.42% | Antofagasta guidance cut | | Bitcoin | ≈$63,799 (3:49 AM) | ≈−0.6% / 24h | −27% YTD, −49% from the Oct-2025 $126,080 high |
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| Overnight global equities |
| Index | Level | %Chg | Note | | Kospi | 6,808.22 | +3.48% | Bull market: +22% from the 30 July low | | Nikkei 225 | 68,308.59 | +1.16% | Japan July PPI undershot badly | | Hang Seng | 25,396.51 | −0.17% | Second consecutive decline | | Shanghai Composite | 3,959.72 / 3,926.97 | +0.33% / −0.50% | Vendor conflict | | ASX 200 | 9,148.20 / 9,188.50 | −0.66% / −0.23% | Vendor conflict | | Nifty 50 | 24,435.95 | −0.15% | Sensex −0.24% | | Stoxx 600 | 660.61 (8:09) | +0.17% | Off Tuesday's record; +11% YTD | | DAX | 26,440.33 (8:09) | +0.41% | At an all-time peak this week | | FTSE 100 | 10,803.47 (8:09) | −0.27% | The only major bourse red — Antofagasta cut |
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| Sources: CNBC Pre-Markets and Europe Markets boards; Bloomberg /markets, /markets/stocks/futures, /markets/rates-bonds, /markets/currencies, /markets/commodities, /economics (6:52–7:05 AM ET); WSJ Markets & Finance, Market Data, Economy, Tech, Business, World and U.S.; Investing.com Major Indices and Pre-Market Movers; StockAnalysis premarket board; U.S. Treasury official par curve (12 Aug); XTB economic calendar; Reuters Europe wrap. Full list in the companion Data Notes file. |
| The overnight in one paragraph. This is a quiet tape holding a loaded 8:30, and every piece of overnight information is a variation on one theme: the AI-hardware trade keeps working everywhere except in the companies that just reported. Futures are up a tenth to two tenths with the Dow leading and the Nasdaq last — YM +0.29%, RTY +0.24%, ES +0.20%, NQ +0.10% — and the ordering is not a risk statement, it is Cisco. Cisco beat on both lines, guided fiscal 2027 revenue to $72.2–73.4bn against a $68.69bn consensus and adjusted EPS to $5.05–5.11 against $4.80, raised its fiscal-2026 AI-infrastructure order forecast to $9bn from an initial $5bn — and is −5.84% at $116.65 pre-market, having closed the regular session +2.92% at $123.95. That is the third AI-adjacent name in twelve hours to beat and be sold: Coherent −5.1% after a 40.2% non-GAAP gross margin against 40.0%; Cerebras −18.07% at $214.70 on $180m of second-quarter revenue against a $194m LSEG consensus — and Cerebras closed the regular session up 12.07%. Set against that, Korea did the opposite trade with real money: the Kospi rose 3.48% to 6,808.22, entered a bull market at +22% from its 30 July low, with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each up around 5% — the same thesis, expressed in the suppliers rather than the sellers, and it is working. The macro is entirely ahead of us. July PPI lands at 8:30 AM ET, consensus +0.2% m/m and 4.9% y/y from 5.5%, core +0.3% m/m and 4.2% y/y from 4.7%, alongside initial claims at 202k against a 199k prior, and Cleveland's Beth Hammack speaks fifteen minutes before the print with Richmond's Thomas Barkin ten minutes after it. The rates market has taken a small pre-emptive view: 2s −2.2 bp, 5s −2.8 bp, 10s −0.8 bp, 30s −0.5 bp against Wednesday's official par close — a front-led bull steepener that is not imported, because Bunds and Gilts are only −0.9 bp and the JGB is +2 bp to 2.85%. Crude is the one clean directional move: WTI −1.99% to $81.61 and Brent −1.76% to $87.41, giving back the Red Sea risk premium for the second session in three even as Ukraine struck Russian Black Sea grain terminals overnight and Bloomberg reported Russian diesel flows at multi-year lows — the market is trading the IEA's demand cut, not the supply headlines. What this hands the 9:30 open: a +10-point implied S&P open, a semiconductor complex that rose 2.49% yesterday now facing Applied Materials tonight with a roughly 14% option-implied move, a single-name air pocket in Cisco worth about forty-nine Dow points, and a VIX at 14.57 pricing a ±0.92% day into a producer-price print that feeds the 26 August PCE deflator directly. Trade the first thirty minutes as a data event, not a trend. |
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2 · Overnight Hot Spots — ranked by tradability at today's open |
| 1. Cisco beat, raised, and is −5.84% — the cleanest ‘good numbers, wrong composition’ print of the quarter. [Equities] Fourth-quarter revenue was $17.3bn against a $16.82bn consensus and adjusted EPS $1.22 against $1.17 — a record quarter that beat the high end of the company's own guidance on revenue, non-GAAP operating income and EPS, on full-year revenue of $63.3bn, +12%. Adjusted gross margin was 66.3% against a 66.0% StreetAccount consensus. And the fiscal-2027 guide was not close — revenue $72.2–73.4bn against $68.69bn expected and adjusted EPS $5.05–5.11 against $4.80. The company lifted its fiscal-2026 AI-infrastructure order forecast to $9bn from an initial $5bn, with hyperscaler AI orders framed around $7.5bn. CEO Chuck Robbins: the company is “well positioned to support our customers however or wherever they decide to deploy AI.” The stock closed +2.92% at $123.95, fell 4.1% to $118.84 after hours, and is −5.84% at $116.65 at 8:07 AM — the fade extended overnight rather than stabilising, which is the tell. Mechanism into the open: at $123.95 → $116.65 Cisco removes roughly $7.5 of Dow price, ≈49 index points, and YM is nonetheless +120 — so the rest of the Dow is doing about +170 points of work. Forward hook: $118.84 is the level that decides gap-fill versus distribution; failure to reclaim it in the first hour marks the multiple, not the numbers. | | 2. Three AI-adjacent beats sold in a row, and the dispersion inside the theme is now the trade. [Equities] Coherent beat by $0.12 on adjusted EPS ($1.74 vs $1.62) and by $70m on revenue ($2.05bn vs $1.98bn, +34% y/y) and guided the first quarter above consensus — but non-GAAP gross margin was 40.2% against 40.0%. It closed +8.24% at $355.64, the fifth-best S&P performer of the day, and is −5.1% pre-market. Cerebras Systems (not S&P 500) closed +12.07%, printed Q2 revenue of $180m against a $194m LSEG consensus, and is −18.07% at $214.70 — a 30-point round trip in eighteen hours. Against that, Wednesday paid Nebius +34.14% to $259.20 on a 514% jump in AI cloud sales and CoreWeave +19.28% to $107.73 on revenue of $2.58bn (+112% y/y) and a $104bn backlog (WSJ). Read-through: the market is no longer paying for AI exposure, it pays for AI revenue recognised now and punishes any beat carried by orders, backlog or twenty basis points of gross margin. Forward hook: Applied Materials at 4:00 PM ET tonight reports into exactly this filter; SOX 12,399.4 is the level that says the complex absorbed three sells without breaking. | | 3. Korea entered a bull market on the same thesis the U.S. is selling. [Equities / FX] The Kospi rose 3.48% (CNBC cites 3.6%) to 6,808.22, high 6,895.63, taking the gain from the 30 July low to roughly 22% — the threshold Bloomberg used this morning (“Kospi Index Jumps Toward Bull Market on Samsung, SK Hynix Gains”). Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each rose about 5% or more; the two drive nearly 30% of index movement. WSJ carried it as a Markets headline. USD/KRW 1,421.39, 0.31% on Bloomberg's board. Why it matters at 9:30: this is the memory-and-foundry leg that lifted the SOX 2.49% on Wednesday, and it is confirming while the U.S. hardware sellers are marked down. The pair is now explicit — long the supply chain (MU +0.30% at $914.00, SMCI +2.26% at $38.46) against the systems vendors that have already guided. Forward hook: a SOX open below 12,300 says the U.S. is trading Cisco instead of Seoul. | | 4. PPI at 8:30 is the whole session's risk, and it is the print that can rebuild September. [Rates / Equities / FX] Consensus +0.2% m/m headline and 4.9% y/y from 5.5%; core +0.3% m/m and 4.2% y/y from 4.7%. Initial claims land at the same minute, consensus 202,000 against 199,000. The asymmetry is one-sided: with July CPI now known and in line, the PPI health-care and portfolio-management components are the direct feed into the 26 August core PCE deflator, so a hot producer print can rebuild September hike risk in a way a hot CPI no longer can. Wednesday took roughly ten points out of the September hike (Investing.com's card: 37.7% at 8:35 PM ET from 47.4%), and WSJ's rail reads “Investors Now See a Growing Chance the Fed Won't Hike This Year.” Transmission: a +0.4% core puts 2s back through 4.25% and hits the rate-sensitive consumer first; a +0.1% core takes 2s to 4.12% and small caps are the highest-beta expression. Forward hook: 4.20% on the 2-year is the pivot; the VIX-implied day is ±0.92%, so an 8:30 move above 71 S&P points says the print changed the path. | | 5. Crude gave back the war premium again — and the airlines and refiners disagree. [Commodities / Equities] WTI Sep −1.99% to $81.61 and Brent Oct −1.76% to $87.41, on top of Wednesday's full round trip from $84.30 pre-open to an $83.27 settle. The bearish agent is unchanged — the IEA's cut of 2026 demand to −1.6m b/d, 510,000 b/d worse than July — and it is now overriding a tightening supply tape: Ukraine struck Russian Black Sea grain export terminals overnight, Bloomberg reported Russian diesel flows at their lowest in years as drones hit refineries, and WSJ's most-read World items are “U.S. Fires on Ship Breaking Its Blockade of Iran” and “Gulf States Accept a New Normal in Hormuz.” Equity transmission: a two-day ≈$3 fall in WTI is unpaid for airlines (UAL, DAL and LUV all fell on Wednesday's flat barrel) and negative for producers. Forward hook: $80.00 WTI — a break puts the +34.07% YTD energy leadership into a genuine demand-led de-rating and hands the tape a disinflation story two hours after PPI. | | 6. Tapestry beat and guided, and is −8.07% — the consumer print nobody was positioned for. [Equities] Results landed 6:45 AM ET with $8.0bn of full-year revenue and $7.27 of EPS, gross and operating margin expanded year on year in both the quarter and the year and exceeded the company's own guidance, the dividend was raised 16%, and $1.7bn was returned in fiscal 2026. The FY27 outlook is EPS $7.80–7.90 on revenue $8.4–8.5bn. Do the arithmetic the tape did: $7.80–7.90 against $7.27 is +7.3% to +8.7% EPS growth, against a company describing its long-term commitment as low-double-digit. That is the gap. The stock is −8.07% at $141.33 having already fallen 6.7% into the print — −14.3% in three sessions, and the drawdown began before the number. Read-through: first of seven U.S. consumer reporters in six sessions (HD 8/18; LOW, TGT, TJX 8/19; WMT, ROST 8/20). Forward hook: if discretionary trades down more than Tapestry's weight justifies, positioning into next week is being cut — and Wednesday's 2–3.5% declines across Home Depot, Lowe's and the builders already said so. | | 7. Home Depot's CEO is taking a medical leave of absence — five sessions before the print. [Equities] WSJ reported the leave overnight and paired it with a CEO Brief asking whether investors deserve the details. Home Depot closed −3.12% at $343.43 as the second-largest Dow drag and reports 8/18 BMO into a housing complex that would not participate in Wednesday's rate rally (Lowe's −2.39%, DR Horton −3.30%, Lennar −2.68%, PulteGroup −2.46%, Builders FirstSource −3.58%). Mechanism: leadership uncertainty into a print is a multiple event, not an earnings event, and the practical effect is that no one upgrades into 8/18, so the drawdown has no natural buyer. Note the cross-current: Lennar is +3.24% at $87.96 pre-market with no attributable catalyst on thin size — noise until the cash open confirms. Forward hook: $340 on HD; a break with the 10-year lower on the day isolates this as a governance discount, not a rates trade. | | 8. The 30-year auction at 1:00 PM is the most expensive in a quarter of a century, and it sits mid-session. [Rates / Equities] Treasury sells $25bn of 30-year bonds at 1:00 PM ET, settling 17 August, closing a $125bn quarterly refunding that retires roughly $96.3bn of privately held paper. Bloomberg's markets page carried it explicitly: “US Set to Pay Most for 30-Year Debt in Quarter of a Century.” The long bond is at 5.235% pre-open, unchanged to −0.5 bp against Wednesday's 5.24% par close, and it did not move at all on an in-line CPI — 2s30s has widened 5 bp in a week while the front end rallied. Mechanism: a tail wider than ~1.5 bp on a 5.2-handle 30-year typically puts 5–10 bp into the back end inside thirty minutes and takes utilities, REITs and the homebuilders with it. Forward hook: 5.30% turns a supply event into a term-premium event; 1:00–1:15 PM is the day's second air pocket. | | 9. StubHub missed on earnings while beating on everything else, and lost a fifth of its value. [Equities] (Not S&P 500.) Q2 revenue +33% to $573m, GMS +34% to $3.1bn, adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled to about $106m at an 18% margin — and adjusted EPS of essentially $0.00 against a $0.24 consensus. Full-year GMS guidance was raised to $10.1–10.3bn (+10–12%) while adjusted EBITDA guidance was left unchanged at $400–420m. The stock closed +4.27% at $8.54, fell 13.9% after hours, and is −17.80% at $7.02. Why a $3bn company earns a slot: raising the top-line guide while holding the profit line is an explicit statement that incremental growth is being bought. Forward hook: whether the read touches the other take-rate models (EBAY −3.50% Wednesday, ABNB −2.62%) at the open. | | 10. Japan's PPI undershot badly, the JGB rose anyway, and the yen is still on 160 watch. [Rates / FX] July producer prices rose just +0.1% m/m against a +0.6% consensus and 7.2% y/y against 7.4% expected and 7.3% prior. The 10-year JGB nonetheless rose 2 bp to 2.85%, the only major sovereign higher overnight and +136 bp over a year, and Bloomberg carried “Yen Remains on 160 Watch Despite Takaichi's Support for BOJ Hike.” USD/JPY is 159.335, −0.05%. Mechanism: a JGB selling off into soft producer prices is a term-premium and intervention-credibility story, not an inflation story — and it is the largest source of imported duration risk to the U.S. long end into a 1:00 PM 30-year auction. Forward hook: 160.00 on USD/JPY. WSJ's Markets A.M. column this morning is headlined “Japanese Drama Is No Sideshow for U.S. Markets.” | | 11. Antofagasta cut guidance, copper fell, and the FTSE is the only red bourse in Europe. [Equities / Commodities] Dow Jones/WSJ: “European Indexes Mostly Higher; London's FTSE 100 Hit by Antofagasta Guidance Cut.” Comex September copper $6.5880/lb, −0.42% against Wednesday's $6.6155 settle — a second consecutive decline in the cleanest global-growth proxy, on a morning when euro-area June industrial production printed flat m/m with capital goods −1.4% (Eurostat). U.S. transmission: Freeport-McMoRan −1.49% at $68.19; the read extends to the miners and the electrical-equipment complex carrying Industrials. Forward hook: $6.50 copper. (A twelfth item — the AI capital-structure tape: Anthropic's reported $6bn Decart approach ahead of its IPO, WSJ on chips as collateral and a $500bn AI financing deal, and SpaceX clearing its first lockup at a $500bn valuation with SPCX +9.65% on 167m shares — is carried in the §14 structural watch list.) |
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3 · Global Markets Overnight — Asia & Europe |
| Asia (closes) |
| Index | Close | %Chg | Catalyst | | Kospi | 6,808.22 | +3.48% | Bull market: +22% from the 30 July low. Samsung and SK Hynix each ≈+5%; ~30% of index movement | | Nikkei 225 | 68,308.59 | +1.16% | July PPI +0.1% m/m vs +0.6% cons; the AI-hardware bid spilled over | | Shanghai Composite | 3,959.72 / 3,926.97 | +0.33% / −0.50% | Vendor conflict — Data Notes | | SZSE Component | 14,567.64 | +1.06% | Domestic tech followed Korea | | FTSE China A50 | 15,163.10 | +0.86% | — | | Hang Seng | 25,396.51 | −0.17% | Second consecutive decline; H-shares fut 8,425 | | ASX 200 | 9,148.20 / 9,188.50 | −0.66% / −0.23% | Materials dragged on copper | | Nifty 50 | 24,435.95 | −0.15% | Sensex 77,966.35, −0.24% | | Straits Times | 5,720.05 | −0.01% | — | | Taiwan TAIEX | no reliable cash close | — | Vendor board stale (11/08); Bloomberg Aug future 46,080 |
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| The Asian session had exactly one story and it was Korea. Bloomberg's framing — “Korean stocks rise 22% in ten days as chip rally regains steam” — is the whole of it: an index that was in a bear market on 30 July is in a bull market on 13 August, and the driver is the supply chain of the AI trade rather than its customers. The U.S. ran the same rotation Wednesday (SMCI +19.02%, DELL +9.89%, HPE +8.12%, SOX +2.49% against MSFT −2.26%, META −3.38%) and is now marking three of the sellers down. Japan was the second-order confirmation; China the dissent — JD.com posted its first revenue decline, RMB346.4bn (−2.9% y/y) while net income swung to RMB7.1bn from a RMB0.9bn loss. Growth traded for profit is the Chinese consumer story of this quarter. |
| Europe (live, ~8:09 AM ET) |
| Index | Level | Chg | %Chg | Index | Level | Chg | %Chg | | Stoxx 600 | 660.61 | +1.13 | +0.17% | IBEX 35 | 20,331.4 | +127.0 | +0.63% | | DAX | 26,440.33 | +109.26 | +0.41% | SMI | 14,491.51 | +42.04 | +0.29% | | CAC 40 | 8,686.96 | +12.02 | +0.14% | AEX | 1,117.59 | +5.31 | +0.48% | | FTSE 100 | 10,803.47 | −29.68 | −0.27% | BEL 20 | 5,711.81 | −11.46 | −0.20% | | FTSE MIB | 53,922.43 | +223.77 | +0.42% | OMXC 25 | 1,880.76 | +7.24 | +0.39% | | Euro Stoxx 50 (Sep fut) | 6,590 | +39 | +0.60% | OMXS30 | 3,292.31 | +0.92 | +0.03% |
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| Reuters marked the Stoxx 600 +0.2% at 660.49 by 0714 GMT, “as oil prices fell, shifting focus to demand concerns, while U.S.–Iran peace efforts remained stalled.” The index retreated from a record Wednesday and is +11% YTD, with the DAX, CAC 40 and FTSE MIB all at all-time peaks this past week. The one red bourse is London and the reason is a single miner. Elsewhere Tata Motors' JLR unit missed profit estimates on luxury weakness (Bloomberg), and the UK data was the morning's genuine surprise — June GDP +0.3% m/m against −0.1% — but industrial production −0.2% against +0.1%, manufacturing −0.5%, and the trade deficit £23.01bn against £20.4bn. Bloomberg: “UK Economy Shrugs Off Iran War Shock for Now.” Sterling fell anyway — the composition was services-led and industry contracted. And the morning's cleanest Hormuz read came from shipping: Maersk raised its 2026 earnings guidance for the second time this year, explicitly on the Strait of Hormuz blockade, and the shares rose about 7% — a reminder that the blockade is a revenue event for freight even as it stops being a price event for crude. |
| Global rates and the risk-appetite proxy |
| 10-Year | Yield | 1-day | 10-Year | Yield | 1-day | | United States | 4.67% | −2 bp | Spain | 3.58% | −2 bp | | Germany (Bund) | 3.148% | −0.9 bp | Greece | 3.80% | −3 bp | | United Kingdom (Gilt) | 4.966% | −0.9 bp | Japan (JGB) | 2.85% | +2 bp | | Italy (BTP) | 3.927% | −2.3 bp | Australia | 4.99% | −3 bp | | France (OAT) | 3.960% | −1.4 bp | South Korea | 4.29% | −1 bp |
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| BTP–Bund spread ≈77.9 bp, roughly 1.4 bp tighter on the day (Bloomberg's rounded board gives 76 bp). Periphery is beating core across the board — Italy −2.3 bp, Greece −3 bp and Spain −2 bp against Germany −0.9 bp and France −1.4 bp — the cleanest available statement that European risk appetite is intact despite the equity market's flatness. The dissent is the JGB, the only sovereign in the world higher in yield overnight. Overnight data: Japan July PPI +0.1% m/m vs +0.6% and 7.2% y/y vs 7.4%; UK June GDP +0.3% vs −0.1% with IP −0.2% vs +0.1%; euro-area June industrial production flat m/m (EU +0.2%), +0.1% y/y, capital goods −1.4%, intermediate −0.8%, energy +1.5%, non-durables +3.0% (Eurostat). |
| What this hands the U.S. open. A supportive but unenthusiastic external tape. Positive: Korea's chip complex confirming the AI-supply-chain trade (long MU, SMCI, LRCX, AMAT into tonight); European periphery credit tightening; a soft Japanese PPI removing one global inflation worry; crude −2% as a disinflationary tailwind into an 8:30 producer print. Negative: copper −0.90% and euro-area capital goods −1.4% both saying global capex is not accelerating, which is a problem for Industrials (+16.22% YTD) and the electrical-equipment complex; a JGB backing up into a 1:00 PM 30-year auction; JD.com's first-ever sales decline as a China-consumer marker for the ADR complex. Sector map: semis and semi-cap positive; miners and copper-levered industrials negative; energy negative on the barrel; airlines positive on the barrel; UK-exposed names neutral-to-negative on a composition-poor GDP beat. |
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4 · Pre-Market Movers & Single-Name Catalysts |
| Investing.com pre-market board stamped 08:07 AM ET, with the 07:03 board shown where the two disagree. Volumes run 20,000–3m shares — percentage moves outside the earnings names are indicative, not tradeable, until the 9:30 auction. Non-S&P-500 names are flagged. |
Up (08:07 AM ET) | HP Inc. (HPQ) +7.09% to $31.36 (+5.87% at 07:03 — building, not fading) — the systems-hardware read-across from Wednesday's Dell/HPE/Super Micro re-rating extending into the second tier. No company-specific catalyst in the reviewed sources, but it has held and extended across two pulls, which is what separates it from the 07:03 prints below. | | Dell Technologies (DELL) +3.47% to $501.29 — through $500 for the first time in the report's window, adding to Wednesday's +9.87% on Goldman's reiterated Buy and $510 target. Two sessions +13.7%, and the target is now 2% away. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) +3.39% to $60.78 after +8.12% — on a note whose price target was cut to $75 from $79. Super Micro (SMCI) +1.28% to $38.09 after +19.02%. | | Federal Realty (FRT) +5.25% to $123.36 and UDR +2.55% to $38.18 — a REIT pair bidding on a morning the 10-year is only −0.8 bp. Baxter (BAX) +3.90% to $28.00 and Celanese (CE) +2.75% to $44.50 reverse Wednesday's −2.41% and −3.41%. Palo Alto (PANW) +2.41% to $396.33, Targa (TRGP) +2.28%, Fox Corp A (FOXA) +2.63% — none with an identified catalyst. | | Mega-caps have turned mixed since 07:03 and the rotation is visible in the change: MSFT +0.34% $494.12 (from +0.16%), GOOGL +0.48% $345.18, META +0.37% $580.99, AAPL +0.33% $303.24 — but MU −0.49% $906.79 (from +0.30%), NVDA −0.29% $223.44 (from +0.09%), INTC −0.24% $100.71 (from +0.47%), TSLA −0.55% $325.72. Software and platforms are being bought and semis sold in the last hour of the pre-market — the exact inverse of Wednesday's cash session, and the single most useful second-order tell on the board. |
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Down (08:07 AM ET) | Tapestry (TPR) −8.07% to $141.33 — reported 6:45 AM ET and the gap has not filled in an hour and four minutes. FY26 revenue $8.0bn, EPS $7.27; margins expanded and exceeded guidance; dividend +16%; $1.7bn returned in FY26. FY27 guide EPS $7.80–7.90 on revenue $8.4–8.5bn = +7.3% to +8.7% EPS growth, below the stated low-double-digit commitment. Down 14.3% in three sessions. | | Cisco (CSCO) −5.84% to $116.65 — beat, raised and sold. The after-hours print was $118.84 (−4.1%), so the fade extended overnight and has since stabilised about twenty cents above the 07:03 low of $116.42. $118.84 remains the level. | | Coherent (COHR) ≈−5.1% — closed +8.24% at $355.64; adjusted EPS $1.74 vs $1.62, revenue $2.05bn vs $1.98bn, non-GAAP gross margin 40.2% vs 40.0%, Q1 guidance above consensus. | | JB Hunt (JBHT) −3.83% to $265.40 — and it was +2.87% at $283.87 at 07:03. An 18-point round trip inside an hour on no news is a liquidity artefact, not a repricing; take the 08:07 mark and treat both as unreliable until the auction. | | Darden (DRI) −3.10% to $220.63 (after +4.01%), L3Harris (LHX) −2.63%, EPAM −2.53%, Global Payments (GPN) −2.21% (after +3.11%), CDW −2.09%, Welltower (WELL) −2.08% (after +1.88%), Medtronic (MDT) −1.99%. Note the pattern: five of these seven are reversing Wednesday's gain — mean-reversion into the print rather than news. | | Cerebras Systems (CBRS) −18.07% to $214.70 (not S&P 500) — Q2 revenue $180m vs $194m LSEG; closed the regular session +12.07%. StubHub (STUB) −17.80% to $7.02 (not S&P 500) — adjusted EPS ≈$0.00 vs $0.24; GMS guide raised, EBITDA guide held. | | Two 07:03 prints have vanished from the 08:07 board entirely, confirming the flag put on them: Ameriprise (AMP) +13.69% to $642.41 and BorgWarner (BWA) −11.26% to $61.10 were carried at 07:03 with no earnings, filing or news in any reviewed source, and neither appears on the refreshed board. Treat both as erroneous. ADP +3.26%, Lennar +3.24%, Caesars +2.60% and Allstate +2.33% also did not survive the hour. |
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Analyst actions, corporate actions and other catalysts | Applied Materials (AMAT): consensus EPS $3.39 on ≈$9.0bn of revenue (+23% y/y) tonight; company guide $3.16–3.56; Moderate Buy with an average target of $603.23, ≈+10% above Wednesday's $548.39 close; option-implied move ≈14% (~$75). AMAT rose 4.33% Wednesday, so the setup is more demanding than 24 hours ago. | | Cisco (CSCO): BofA carried Buy with a $150 target (from $135) into the print; KeyBanc Overweight $130; Morgan Stanley Overweight $130. No post-print revisions at the data cut. Home Depot (HD): chief executive to take a medical leave of absence (WSJ); reports 8/18 BMO. | | Deals: WSJ reports Jeff Bezos among investors nearing a deal for a Liverpool FC stake at an $8bn valuation with Fenway Sports Group; Bloomberg reports Anthropic in talks to acquire Decart AI for about $6bn ahead of a listing; SpaceX (SPCX) +9.65% to $146.15 Wednesday on 167m shares as it cleared its first lockup expiry. | | Non-U.S. reporters this morning: JD.com (JD) (ADR) Q2 net revenue RMB346.4bn / $51.1bn, −2.9% y/y, its first-ever decline, net income RMB7.1bn vs a RMB0.9bn loss; call 8:00 AM ET. Lenovo on WSJ's stocks-to-watch list; Nu Holdings BMO; Globant AMC. | | Wednesday's after-hours carry-over: Nebius +34.14%, CoreWeave +19.28% with a $104bn backlog, Lumentum +13.63%, Ciena +11.49%, Sandisk +5.76% — the AI-optical and storage complex is the part of the theme that has not been sold. |
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5 · Overnight Earnings Scorecard |
| Every company that reported between Wednesday's 4:00 PM ET close and this morning's data cut. |
| Name | EPS vs cons. | Revenue vs cons. | Guidance | Pre-mkt | Read-through | | Cisco (CSCO) S&P 500 | $1.22 adj vs $1.17 — beat | $17.3bn vs $16.82bn — beat; FY26 $63.3bn, +12% | FY27 revenue $72.2–73.4bn vs $68.69bn; FY27 adj EPS $5.05–5.11 vs $4.80; FY26 AI infra orders raised to $9bn from $5bn; hyperscaler AI orders ≈$7.5bn | −5.84%
$116.65 | Adjusted gross margin 66.3% vs 66.0% is the blemish the tape chose to trade. A double beat plus a ~5% revenue-guide raise sold 6% is a multiple verdict on AI networking, not an earnings one | | Coherent (COHR) (status uncertain) | $1.74 adj vs $1.62 — beat | $2.05bn vs $1.98bn, +34% y/y — beat | Q1 guidance above consensus | ≈−5.1% | A $0.12 EPS beat, a $70m revenue beat, 34% growth and a raised guide — sold. Non-GAAP gross margin 40.2% vs 40.0%, GAAP 38.5%: a 20 bp beat treated as a miss. Optical margin is now the market's chosen metric, which matters for LITE (+13.63%) and CIEN (+11.49%) | | Tapestry (TPR) S&P 500 | FY26 EPS $7.27 | FY26 revenue $8.0bn | FY27 EPS $7.80–7.90 on revenue $8.4–8.5bn; dividend +16%; $1.7bn returned in FY26 | −8.07%
$141.33 | Margins expanded and beat the company's own guide, yet the FY27 EPS bridge is +7.3–8.7% against a low-double-digit long-term commitment. First of seven U.S. consumer reporters in six sessions | | Cerebras (CBRS) not S&P | — | $180m vs $194m LSEG — miss | — | −18.07%
$214.70 | Closed the regular session +12.07%; a ~30-point round trip. The purest read on whether AI-silicon challengers get funded on revenue or on narrative | | StubHub (STUB) not S&P | ≈$0.00 adj vs $0.24 — miss | $573m, +33% | FY26 GMS raised to $10.1–10.3bn; adj EBITDA held at $400–420m | −17.80%
$7.02 | GMS +34% to $3.1bn, adj EBITDA nearly doubled to ~$106m at an 18% margin. Raising the top line while holding the profit line is an admission that growth is being bought | | JD.com (JD) ADR | — | RMB346.4bn, −2.9% y/y — first decline | Call 8:00 AM ET | — | Net income RMB7.1bn vs −RMB0.9bn; operating margin 1.3% vs −0.2%. Bloomberg: “first sales fall in latest sign of consumer malaise.” The China-consumer marker for the ADR complex | | Tata Motors / JLR not U.S. listed | — | — | — | — | Missed profit estimates, stung by luxury-unit weakness (Bloomberg). A European luxury-demand data point landing the same morning as Tapestry |
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| Aggregate. Four of the five reporters with a scoreable line beat on the headline; all five are lower. No FactSet or LSEG blended-scorecard update was published inside this run's window, so no season-to-date beat rate is claimed rather than estimated. What the tape says: the market has paid for exactly one thing in two sessions — recognised revenue growth from AI infrastructure suppliers (Nebius +34.14%, CoreWeave +19.28%, Lumentum +13.63%, Ciena +11.49%) — and has sold every beat whose quality rested on orders, backlog, guidance or twenty basis points of gross margin. The scheduled test is Applied Materials at 4:00 PM ET tonight. |
6 · U.S. Treasury Par Curve & Rates |
| Official par curve — Treasury.gov, 3:30 PM ET close, 12 August 2026 |
| Tenor | 8/12 | 8/11 | Δ 1-day (bp) | 8/5 | Δ 1-week (bp) | | 1 Mo | 3.78% | 3.79% | −1 | 3.77% | +1 | | 1.5 Mo | 3.79% | 3.82% | −3 | 3.79% | 0 | | 2 Mo | 3.80% | 3.83% | −3 | 3.84% | −4 | | 3 Mo | 3.87% | 3.89% | −2 | 3.89% | −2 | | 4 Mo | 3.89% | 3.90% | −1 | 3.91% | −2 | | 6 Mo | 3.97% | 3.99% | −2 | 3.98% | −1 | | 1 Yr | 4.00% | 4.03% | −3 | 4.03% | −3 | | 2 Yr | 4.20% | 4.22% | −2 | 4.18% | +2 | | 3 Yr | 4.25% | 4.27% | −2 | 4.24% | +1 | | 5 Yr | 4.38% | 4.39% | −1 | 4.33% | +5 | | 7 Yr | 4.52% | 4.54% | −2 | 4.47% | +5 | | 10 Yr | 4.68% | 4.70% | −2 | 4.63% | +5 | | 20 Yr | 5.24% | 5.25% | −1 | 5.18% | +6 | | 30 Yr | 5.24% | 5.24% | 0 | 5.17% | +7 |
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| Live pre-open block and curve spreads |
| Tenor | Live (7:04 AM ET) | vs 8/12 official par | Spread | 8/12 official | Live pre-open | Δ vs official | Δ 1-week | | 2 Yr | 4.178% | −2.2 bp | 2s10s | 48 bp | 49.4 bp | +1.4 bp | +3 bp | | 5 Yr | 4.350% | −3.0 bp | 2s30s | 104 bp | 105.9 bp | +1.9 bp | +5 bp | | 10 Yr | 4.672% | −0.8 bp | 3M10Y (par basis) | 81 bp | ≈80 bp | −1 bp | +7 bp | | 30 Yr | 5.237% | −0.3 bp | 3 Mo (bill, discount) | 3.87% CE | 3.799% BD | not comparable | — |
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| The shape and the diagnostic: a shallow front-led bull steepener, and it is domestic, not imported. The 5-year is the biggest mover at −3.0 bp, the 2-year −2.2 bp, and the long end has barely moved — 10s −0.8 bp, 30s −0.3 bp. The proof it is not imported is in the relative basis points: Bunds −0.9 bp, Gilts −0.9 bp, OATs −1.4 bp, and the JGB +2 bp — the European rally is smaller than the U.S. front-end rally and Japan is going the other way entirely. If this were a global-duration event the 10-year would lead and the 2-year follow; it is the reverse. This is a policy-path trade put on ninety minutes before a producer-price print, on top of Wednesday's identical pattern. One sentence of Fed-path context, because it explains the curve and nothing more: Investing.com's September card had the hike at 37.7% as of 8:35 PM ET Wednesday against 47.4% a day earlier and 53.7% a week earlier, and WSJ's rail reads “Investors Now See a Growing Chance the Fed Won't Hike This Year” — the front end is trading that and the back end is not listening. The week is the frame that matters and it points the other way: since 5 August the 2-month is −4 bp and the 1-year −3 bp while the 5-, 7- and 10-year are all +5 bp, the 20-year +6 bp and the 30-year +7 bp. 3M10Y has widened 7 bp in a week and 2s30s 5 bp — a term-premium build an in-line CPI did not reverse by a single basis point, and it now runs into supply. |
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| Today's supply and Fed operations |
| 1:00 PM ET — $25bn 30-Year Bond auction, settling Monday 17 August, closing a $125bn quarterly refunding that retires roughly $96.3bn of privately held notes and bonds maturing 15 August. Bloomberg's markets page this morning: “US Set to Pay Most for 30-Year Debt in Quarter of a Century.” At a 5.24% par yield this is the most expensive long-bond funding since the early 2000s, and a 1:00 PM auction is a mid-session equity risk event — a tail wider than ~1.5 bp typically puts 5–10 bp into the back end inside thirty minutes and takes utilities, REITs and the homebuilders with it. | | 8:15 AM ET — Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack speaks, fifteen minutes before PPI. 8:40 AM ET — Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin speaks, ten minutes after it (single-sourced — see Data Notes; voting status not claimed for either). | | Vendor reconciliation. Bloomberg marks the 10-year at 4.67%, −2 bp at 7:02 AM; CNBC 4.672%, −2.0 bp; Investing.com 4.666%. All three measure against Wednesday's real-time ~4.69% close, not the 3:30 PM official par 4.68% — which is why this report shows −0.8 bp on the official basis and quotes the vendors' −2 bp separately. A basis difference, not a level dispute. The live 3-month 3.799% is a bank-discount quote against a coupon-equivalent 3.87% par, so no delta is shown and 3M10Y is computed on the par basis only. |
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7 · U.S. Macroeconomic Calendar |
| ★ TODAY — Thursday, August 13 |
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| Time ET | Release | Consensus | Prior | Sensitivity | What a beat / miss does | | 08:15 | Fed's Beth Hammack (Cleveland) speaks | — | — | Medium | Fifteen minutes before the print. Any explicit September framing moves the 2-year before the data does | | 08:30 | PPI final demand, m/m (July) | +0.2% | −0.3% | Very high | The morning's gap risk. ≥+0.4% rebuilds September hike odds, sends 2s through 4.25% and hits the rate-sensitive consumer first; ≤+0.1% takes 2s to ~4.12% and small caps are the highest-beta expression | | 08:30 | PPI final demand, y/y | 4.9% | 5.5% | Very high | A 60 bp deceleration is already in the price; at or above 5.2% is the hawkish surprise | | 08:30 | Core PPI, m/m | +0.3% | +0.2% | Very high | The line that matters most. Health-care and portfolio-management components map mechanically into core PCE — this is the read for the 26 August deflator | | 08:30 | Core PPI, y/y | 4.2% | 4.7% | Very high | — | | 08:30 | Initial jobless claims (w/e 8 Aug) | 202,000 | 199,000 | High | Below 200k for three straight weeks. The level that would open a 2026 cut in the strip is above 240,000; nothing between 190k and 220k changes anything | | 08:30 | Continuing claims (w/e 1 Aug) | ≈1,800,000 | 1,801,000 | Medium | — | | 08:40 | Fed's Thomas Barkin (Richmond) speaks | — | — | Medium | Ten minutes after the print — the first official reaction function on the tape (single-sourced) | | 10:30 | EIA Natural Gas Storage Change | +31 Bcf | +33 Bcf | Low | Natural gas is $2.78, −0.93% | | 11:30 | NY Fed Weekly Economic Index | — | — | Low | Real-activity nowcast | | 13:00 | $25bn 30-Year Bond auction | — | — | High | Mid-session risk event; the most expensive long-bond funding in ~25 years | | 16:00 / 16:30 | Applied Materials results and call | EPS $3.39 / rev ≈$9.0bn | — | High | ~14% option-implied move; the read for the whole semi-cap complex |
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| Everything that can move today's open lands at 8:30 AM ET, one hour before it. That is the single most important structural fact of this session: the futures market gets sixty minutes to reprice, so a large 8:30 move will be substantially expressed by 9:00 and the cash open will be a continuation or a fade, not a discovery. |
| Overnight global data already released |
| Time ET | Region | Release | Actual | Consensus | Prior | Reaction | | ~19:50 (8/12) | Japan | July PPI, y/y | 7.2% | 7.4% | 7.3% | Nikkei +1.16%; JGB 10Y +2 bp to 2.85% anyway | | ~19:50 (8/12) | Japan | July PPI, m/m | +0.1% | +0.6% | — | A clear undershoot | | 02:00 | UK | June GDP, m/m | +0.3% | −0.1% | 0.0% | GBP/USD 1.3488, lower — composition, not level | | 02:00 | UK | Q2 GDP, q/q · y/y | +0.4% · +1.2% | +0.4% · +1.1% | +0.6% · +0.9% | — | | 02:00 | UK | Industrial production, m/m | −0.2% | +0.1% | −0.7% | FTSE 100 −0.22%, the only red bourse | | 02:00 | UK | Manufacturing production, m/m | −0.5% | −0.3% | −0.2% | — | | 02:00 | UK | Trade balance (June) | −£23.01bn | −£20.4bn | −£21.08bn | — | | 05:00 | Euro area | Industrial production, m/m (June) | 0.0% (EU +0.2%) | 0.0% | −0.2% | Capital goods −1.4%, intermediate −0.8%, energy +1.5%, non-durables +3.0%. Copper −0.90% agrees |
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| Rest of this week and next |
| Date | Time ET | Release | Sensitivity | Note | | Fri 8/14 | 08:30 | Advance Retail Sales (July) | Very high | The week's second gap risk. The control group drives the GDP nowcast — and Wednesday's 2–3.5% declines across HD, LOW and the builders say equities are positioned for a soft one | | Fri 8/14 | 10:00 | Michigan Consumer Survey (prelim) | High | The inflation-expectations component could make September live again on its own | | Fri 8/14 | 10:00 | Business Inventories · SPF | Low | Mechanical GDP input; long-run expectations | | Fri 8/14 | 12:45 | NY Fed Staff Nowcast | Low | Q3 GDP tracking | | Mon 8/17 | 08:30 | Empire State Manufacturing | Medium | Prices-paid is the tariff/crude pass-through read | | Mon 8/17 | 11:00 | SCE Labor Market Survey | Low | — | | Tue 8/18 | 08:30 | Business Leaders · Import & Export Prices | Low | Import prices are the cleanest tariff read | | Tue 8/18 | 08:30 | New Residential Construction | Medium | Starts and permits — same morning as Home Depot | | Tue 8/18 | 09:15 | Industrial Production & Cap. Utilization | Medium | — | | Tue 8/18 | 10:00 | NAR Pending Home Sales | Medium | — | | Wed 8/19 | 10:00 | NY Fed Outlook-At-Risk | Low | — | | Thu 8/20 | 08:30 | Initial Jobless Claims | High | Highest-frequency labour input | | Thu 8/20 | 08:30 | Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing | Medium | Second August regional survey | | Thu 8/20 | 10:00 | Reserve Demand Elasticity | Low | — | | Fri 8/21 | 12:45 | NY Fed Staff Nowcast | Low | — |
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| Look-ahead. The calendar has front-loaded everything. Three of the next five macro hooks land in the next 26 hours, and the fourth — the 26 August PCE deflator — will be almost entirely predictable from this morning's PPI once the health-care and portfolio-management lines are known. By 10:00 AM Friday the market will have seen producer prices, claims, retail sales and inflation expectations, and will have essentially all the information it gets before the September meeting. The positioning consequence is the asymmetry. Five sessions have taken sixteen points out of the September hike and there is almost nothing left to remove without pricing a cut, which sits at 0.0% for every 2026 meeting — the dovish trade is close to exhausted and the hawkish one is not. WSJ's Nick Timiraos framed Wednesday's CPI exactly right: “not soft enough to take a rate increase off the table, not firm enough to force one.” Against that, Greg Ip's column this morning — “The Jobless Boom Has Arrived” — is the bear case for the second half of the calendar. The practical read: the VIX at 14.57 prices a ±0.92% session into the most PCE-relevant release on the calendar, the cheapest hedge available before Friday's retail sales. |
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9 · FX Market |
| Levels from Bloomberg's BGN composite; signs and percentage changes from CNBC's signed board, because Bloomberg's page text strips minus signs from FX tables (Data Notes). Changes are against Wednesday's ~4:00 PM ET levels. |
| Pair | Level | Chg | Driver | | DXY | 99.912 | +0.01% | Flat into PPI. The dollar rose 0.13% on Wednesday's soft CPI and is refusing to give it back — the report's standing disagreement | | EUR/USD | 1.1530 | +0.08% | Euro-area June IP flat, capital goods −1.4%; periphery spreads tighter. A carry-and-spread bid, not a growth bid | | USD/JPY | 159.33 | −0.05% | 10Y JGB +2 bp to 2.85% on a PPI undershoot. Bloomberg: the yen “remains on 160 watch despite Takaichi's support for a BOJ hike” | | GBP/USD | 1.3490 | −0.02% | June GDP beat (+0.3% vs −0.1%) but industrial production −0.2% and manufacturing −0.5%. The market bought the composition, not the headline | | USD/CHF (haven) | 0.8125 | −0.11% | The franc is the strongest major overnight. A quiet haven bid on a green-equity morning is the session's most useful contradiction, though it has halved since 7:04 | | AUD/USD (commodity beta) | 0.7053 | +0.13% | Up despite copper −0.90% and ASX weakness — carry, not commodities | | USD/CAD | 1.3942 | +0.01% | Unmoved by WTI −1.99%; the loonie has decoupled from the barrel for a second session | | USD/KRW (EM) | 1,421.39 | ≈0.31% | Moves with the Kospi's 3.48% and the 22% ten-day run. Foreign equity inflow is the dominant flow | | EUR/GBP | 0.8552 | +0.12% | Sterling the weaker of the two on the UK industrial data |
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| The take: the contrarian cross this morning is the Swiss franc, and the second one is the Canadian dollar. USD/CHF −0.17% is the largest move on the board on a session in which European equities are green, periphery credit is tightening and U.S. futures are up — a haven bidding into risk-on is either positioning ahead of 8:30 or somebody hedging the geopolitical tape. Either way it is the cheapest available statement that the tape does not fully believe itself. USD/CAD unchanged on a 2% fall in crude is the mirror image: the loonie is no longer trading the barrel, which says the oil moves are being read as demand stories rather than terms-of-trade stories — consistent with the IEA cut, inconsistent with the supply headlines. In equity terms: a DXY pinned at 99.91 with a flat 24-hour change is about the most neutral possible setup for the S&P's foreign-revenue cohort (~40% of index revenue), so today's dispersion will be earnings-driven, not currency-driven. Two specifics: USD/JPY at 159.33 with the JGB backing up keeps the Japanese translation tailwind intact but raises the risk of a disorderly intervention headline, which hits U.S. semis and machinery hardest through the yen-carry channel; and the won's strength alongside a 22% Kospi run means Samsung and SK Hynix are outperforming in dollar terms, strengthening the long-Asian-supply-chain / short-U.S.-systems-vendor pair. If PPI prints hot, DXY up and EM/commodity beta down — AUD/USD 0.7000 and USD/KRW 1,430 confirm. |
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10 · Commodities |
| Front-month futures on a consistent basis unless stated; changes computed against Wednesday's settles because Bloomberg's commodity table strips minus signs (Data Notes). |
| Contract | Price | Chg vs settle | % | Driver | | WTI Crude (Sep, Nymex) | $81.61 | −$1.66 | −1.99% | IEA's −1.6m b/d 2026 demand cut still overriding the supply tape; Energy is the best U.S. sector YTD at +34.07% | | Brent Crude (Oct, ICE) | $87.41 | −$1.57 | −1.76% | WTI–Brent ≈$5.80 | | Natural Gas (Sep, Nymex) | $2.76 | −$0.04 | −1.43% | EIA storage 10:30 AM, consensus +31 Bcf | | RBOB Gasoline (Sep) | 314.85¢/gal | −0.52¢ | −0.16% | Product holding better than crude | | Gold (Comex Dec) | $4,441.10 | −$26.40 | −0.59% | First decline after six straight advances | | Gold spot | $4,386.74 | −$21.55 | −0.49% | Futures–spot basis $54.36 | | Silver (Comex Sep) | $65.06 | −$0.64 | −0.98% | Reverses Wednesday's +1.30% | | Copper (Comex Sep) | $6.5880/lb | −$0.0275 | −0.42% | Antofagasta guidance cut; euro-area capital goods −1.4% | | Platinum spot | $1,735.50 | −$20.68 | −1.18% | Whole precious complex lower | | Wheat (CBOT Dec) | 673.00¢/bu | +3.25¢ | +0.49% | USDA's lowest U.S. crop estimate since 1970, plus Ukraine's strike on Russian Black Sea grain terminals overnight (sign inferred — Data Notes) | | Bloomberg Commodity Index | 347.76 | −2.14 | −0.61% | Energy doing all of it |
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| The take. Positioning and curve structure. Crude has now given back the Red Sea / Gulf of Oman risk premium twice in three sessions — $84.30 pre-open Wednesday to an $83.27 settle, then $83.27 to $81.61this morning — while the headline flow has been unambiguously bullish supply: a fatal Houthi attack in the Bab el-Mandeb, a U.S. missile strike on a blockade-runner in the Gulf of Oman, Russian diesel flows at multi-year lows as drones hit refineries (Bloomberg), Ukrainian strikes on Russian Black Sea grain terminals (CNBC), and WSJ's read that the Gulf states have accepted Iranian control of Hormuz. A market that will not rally on that news is trading a demand balance, and the IEA gave it one. Crude vol at 52.34 (−4.82%) agrees the tail has narrowed. Contract-month and basis caveats: WTI, gasoline, heating oil and natural gas are September, Brent October, gold December, silver and copper September; the gold futures–spot basis is $60.77, so another vendor's “gold” may differ by that much without disagreement; Bloomberg's copper and silver rows carried stale 08/07 stamps, so both are taken from signed boards and computed against Wednesday's settles. Equity read-through. Airlines are the clean long — United, Delta and Southwest all fell on Wednesday's flat barrel, so they are unpaid for this two-day ≈$1.7 move in WTI. Refiners over producers is seven sessions old (MPC +3.52%, VLO +1.94% against COP +1.11%, CVX −0.04%, OXY −0.86%). Producers are the funding short into a −2% barrel with the group +34.07% YTD. Miners and copper-levered industrials are the second short, with euro-area capital goods at −1.4% as corroboration. Packaged food faces a wheat squeeze on the Black Sea strike. Gold miners lose their sixth-session tailwind; the metal's first down day in seven with the dollar flat is a positioning unwind, not a macro signal. |
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12 · Trading Views (desk-style; not personalized investment advice) |
| 1. Long the AI supply chain / short the AI systems vendors. Expression: long MU, LRCX, AMAT, KLAC (or the SOX) against short CSCO, ANET and the enterprise-systems complex, beta-neutral. Catalyst: Applied Materials 4:00 PM ET tonight with a ~14% option-implied move; the Kospi's +22% ten-day run is the confirming leg. Invalidation: SOX opening below 12,300 while CSCO holds $118.84 — that inverts the pair. Sizing: half-size into the print, because a 14% implied move means the short leg's read-through is not knowable until 4:30 PM. Dollar-neutral, ~1.0x gross. | | 2. Fade the 8:30 gap in the small-cap index, don't chase it. Expression: RTY / IWM. Rationale: the Russell made a 52-week high intraday Wednesday (3,051.82) and closed 0.21% under it; the implied open is only +2.72 points (+0.09%) against ES's +10 — small caps are the least bid part of the futures complex despite being the highest-beta expression of a dovish PPI. That resolves violently in one direction at 8:30. Catalyst: core PPI. Invalidation: a core print ≥+0.4%, at which point this is a short, not a fade. Sizing: quarter-size before 8:30, full size only after the first fifteen minutes of cash trade. | | 3. Long airlines against energy producers on the barrel. Expression: long UAL/DAL/LUV against short COP/OXY/DVN. Rationale: the airlines fell on Wednesday's flat crude and rose on Tuesday's +1.30% crude — they are trading the Hormuz headline, not fuel, so a two-day $3 fall in WTI is unpaid. Energy is +34.07% YTD into a demand downgrade. Catalyst: whether WTI holds $80. Invalidation: WTI reclaiming $83.27 — supply headlines back in charge. Sizing: dollar-neutral, modest gross; a two-week idea. | | 4. Own duration into the 1:00 PM auction only if you are paid for the tail. Expression: 5s30s flattener, or long the 30-year against 2s. Rationale: the 30-year is at 5.235%, the most expensive long-bond funding in a quarter of a century; 2s30s has widened 5 bp in a week and the long end did not move on an in-line CPI — the term premium is being rebuilt and a $25bn auction that tails completes it. Catalyst: 1:00 PM results. Invalidation: a tail wider than 1.5 bp or a 30-year through 5.30%. Sizing: small — the risk is one-sided against you between 1:00 and 1:15. | | 5. Short the U.S. consumer discretionary complex into next week's block. Expression: short HD, LOW, TGT against long the experience cohort (DRI, YUM, HLT), or simply reduce gross. Rationale: Tapestry beat, guided, raised the dividend 16% and is −8.07%; Home Depot's CEO is on medical leave five sessions before its print; housing would not rally on Wednesday's 9.7-point fall in September hike odds. Seven S&P consumer reporters in six sessions. Catalyst: Friday 8:30 retail sales, then HD 8/18. Invalidation: Tapestry closing green. Sizing: beta-neutral, one-third size before Friday. | | 6. Buy the VIX, not the S&P puts. Expression: long VIX call spreads or a small VIX future. Rationale: VIX 14.57 is a whisker above the lowest close of the month, set on the evening before a ‘Very high’ producer-price print and 26 hours before ‘Very high’ retail sales. Bloomberg's headline for Wednesday: “Investors Abandon Hedges in Order to Chase Soaring Stocks.” At 14.55 the index prices a ±0.92% daily S&P move, ±71 points on 7,748.50 — realised over the last three sessions was −0.32%, +0.26% and −0.06%, so the short-vol carry is working, which is why it is crowded. Catalyst: 8:30 today; 8:30 and 10:00 Friday. Invalidation: a benign PPI and a benign retail sales. Sizing: premium-defined only. |
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| Vol note and key levels |
| VIX 14.55 close, 14.57 (+0.14%) at 8:07 AM. VXN 20.97 (−6.3% Wednesday); OVX 52.34 (−4.82%) — equity vol and crude vol both sold off into a data-heavy 48 hours. VIX-implied daily S&P move ≈ ±0.92% = ±71 points on the 7,748.50 close. A VIX-derived approximation, not an observed at-the-money straddle — no dealer straddle quote was retrievable this run, and no 0DTE or dealer-gamma positioning data was sourceable; neither is estimated. | | Key S&P levels: prior close 7,748.50; implied open ≈7,759.3; Wednesday's high 7,766.01 and low 7,737.95; overnight ES range 7,764.25–7,786.25. The round number the tape is trading around is 7,750; 7,766 turns a data gap into a trend day. Single names: CSCO $118.84 (the after-hours print); AMAT $548.39 with a ~14% implied move tonight; SOX 12,399.4; RTY 3,051.82 (the 52-week high). | | This section is desk-style commentary on market structure and is not personalized investment advice. Verify all levels independently before acting. |
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13 · S&P 500 Earnings Calendar |
| ★ TODAY — Thursday, August 13 |
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| Bucket | Name | Time ET | Consensus | Implied move | Status | | BMO | Tapestry (TPR) | 6:45 | FY26 delivered: revenue $8.0bn, EPS $7.27 | — | REPORTED — stock −8.07% at $141.33. FY27 guide EPS $7.80–7.90 on revenue $8.4–8.5bn; dividend +16%; $1.7bn returned in FY26. Call 8:00 AM ET | | AMC | Applied Materials (AMAT) | 4:00 (call 4:30) | EPS $3.39 · revenue ≈$9.0bn (+23% y/y); company guide $3.16–3.56 | ≈14% (~$75 on $548) | The single most important scheduled equity event of the session. Closed $548.39 (+4.33%) Wednesday; consensus Moderate Buy, average target $603.23 |
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| Non-S&P-500 reporters today, for context only: JD.com (JD) BMO — Q2 revenue RMB346.4bn, −2.9% y/y, its first decline; Nu Holdings (NU) BMO; Globant (GLOB) AMC. |
| Current week — August 10–14 |
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| Mon 8/10 — completed. BMO: Berkshire Hathaway B (BRK.B) 8:00 — closed +1.46% on the day and has since fallen three consecutive sessions to $510.00, −3.7%. AMC: Simon Property Group (SPG) 4:05. |
| Tue 8/11 — completed. BMO: Cardinal Health (CAH) 6:45 — closed −2.54% at $234.16 Wednesday; Amentum (AMTM) 8:00. AMC: Lumentum (LITE) 4:00 — +13.63% to $932.47 Wednesday; Super Micro Computer (SMCI) 4:05 — +19.02% to $37.61, the best S&P performer of the day, and +2.26% again pre-market. |
| Wed 8/12 — completed. BMO: Amcor (AMCR) 6:00; Trimble (TRMB) 6:55 — closed −2.85% at $56.33. AMC: Cisco (CSCO) 4:05 — closed +2.92% at $123.95, fell 4.1% to $118.84 after hours and is −5.84% at $116.65 pre-market; Coherent (COHR) 4:05 — closed +8.24% at $355.64, now ≈−5.1% pre-market. |
| ★ Thu 8/13 — TODAY. BMO: Tapestry (TPR) 6:45 — reported, −8.07%. AMC: Applied Materials (AMAT) 4:00 — ~14% implied move. |
| Fri 8/14. Neither the before-open nor the after-close page lists an S&P 500 reporter; both are micro-cap, biotech and broadcasting. |
| Next week — August 17–21 (twelve S&P 500 reporters across three sessions) |
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| Mon 8/17. No S&P 500 reporter on either page. |
| Tue 8/18. BMO: Home Depot (HD) 6:00 — the CEO is taking a medical leave of absence (WSJ); the stock closed −3.12% at $343.43. 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 on either page. |
| Changes vs the prior calendar (12 August Closing Daily): no additions and no removals. TPR 6:45 and AMAT 4:00 both reported / are scheduled exactly as carried; HD 6:00, KEYS 4:05, JKHY 4:15, LOW 6:00, EL 6:00, TGT 6:30, ADI 7:00, TJX 7:30, NDSN 4:30, DE 6:20, WMT 7:00 and ROST 4:00 are unchanged. Membership caveat, restated: the constituent board used as this report's screening proxy does not carry Coherent (COHR); it has been carried by the prior six editions and is retained for continuity — confirm with company IR. Conservative exclusions on this pull: AIT 8/13; FN 8/17; TOL and MRCY 8/18; COTY, BILL and JBSS 8/19; FLO, AAP and OSIS 8/20; BJ and BKE 8/21. Toll Brothers remains the most borderline. |
| What the forward calendar hands the desk. Applied Materials tonight is the whole of it. It reports into a semiconductor complex that rose 2.49% on Wednesday with the stock itself +4.33%, into a Korean chip index that just entered a bull market, and into a tape that has sold three consecutive AI-adjacent beats on composition. A ~14% implied move is the options market saying it does not know which of those two facts wins. Then the consumer block: Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, TJX, Estée Lauder, Walmart and Ross Stores in three sessions, opened this morning by a Tapestry print that beat, guided and fell 8%. Analog Devices (8/19 BMO) is the analog read against the memory melt-up, and Keysight (8/18 AMC) the test-and-measurement one. |
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14 · Risk Map — Today's Session |
| ★ TODAY — The event clock — Thursday, August 13 (all times ET) |
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| Time | Event | Why it matters | | 08:00 | Tapestry earnings call | The first live consumer read of the week; the stock is already −8.07% | | 08:00 | JD.com earnings call | China-consumer read for the ADR complex | | 08:15 | Fed's Hammack speaks | Fifteen minutes before the print — a September framing here moves 2s before the data | | 08:30 | PPI (July) + core PPI + initial claims | The session's dominant risk. Core PPI feeds the 26 August PCE deflator mechanically | | 08:40 | Fed's Barkin speaks | The first official reaction function on the print (single-sourced) | | 09:30 | Cash open | Sixty minutes after the data — a continuation or a fade, not a discovery | | 10:30 | EIA natural-gas storage (cons +31 Bcf) | Natural gas $2.78, −0.93% | | 11:30 | NY Fed Weekly Economic Index | Low | | 13:00 | $25bn 30-Year Bond auction | The mid-session air pocket. Most expensive long-bond funding in ~25 years | | 16:00 | Cash close | — | | 16:00 / 16:30 | Applied Materials results and call | ~14% implied move; the read for the whole semi-cap complex |
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| Crowded consensuses to stress-test — each with the number that breaks it |
| 1. “The Fed is done hiking.” Five sessions have taken sixteen points out of the September hike. Breaks on: core PPI at +0.4% m/m or above, which rebuilds September inside an hour. | | 2. “AI capex is accelerating and the suppliers are the way to own it.” Korea is +22% in ten days on precisely this. Breaks on: Applied Materials guiding October-quarter revenue below ~$9.0bn tonight, or a gross-margin line repeating the Cisco/Coherent pattern. | | 3. “The consumer is fine.” Breaks on: Friday's retail-sales control group below +0.1% — and Tapestry's 8% decline on a beat is the first live evidence that the market will not pay for consumer earnings quality. | | 4. “Term premium is a slow-moving story.” 2s30s +5 bp in a week, the 30-year unchanged on an in-line CPI. Breaks on: a 30-year auction tail wider than 1.5 bp at 1:00 PM, or a stop-through above 5.30%. | | 5. “Crude's risk premium is a floor.” WTI has round-tripped it twice in three sessions. Breaks on: $80.00 WTI, which puts 2026's best sector (+34.07% YTD) into a demand-led de-rating. | | 6. “Vol is correctly priced at 14.5.” Breaks on: a realised S&P move today greater than ±0.92%, the level one-month implied is charging for. |
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| The two-sided geopolitical tape and structural watch items |
| Risk-off: WSJ's most-read World items are “U.S. Fires on Ship Breaking Its Blockade of Iran,” “Iran Sees an Opening to Kick the U.S. Out of the Gulf” and “Gulf States Accept a New Normal in Hormuz”; XTB leads with Iran toughening its negotiating stance; Ukraine struck Russian Black Sea grain terminals overnight; Bloomberg reports Russian diesel flows at their lowest in years; WSJ reports Taiwan weaponising its coast guard. Any of these can reprice crude, wheat and defence intraday. Risk-on: Mexico is pushing for lower auto tariffs (WSJ exclusive), a real de-escalation channel for autos and industrials; a Hormuz reopening headline would take $3–5 out of crude and lift the airlines. | | Structural: the financing layer of the AI trade — chips as collateral, a $500bn AI financing deal, Anthropic's $6bn Decart approach, SpaceX clearing its first lockup at a $500bn valuation; Kevin Warsh's Fed and the credibility test (WSJ: “Inflation Reports Could Test Warsh's Tough Talk”) — today and Friday are the first two of those reports; the Finviz Industrials constituent-set break flagged on 12 August remains unresolved; and Home Depot's leadership into an 8/18 print. |
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| What the VIX is and is not pricing. At 14.57 the index is charging ±0.92% for today, roughly ±71 S&P points, and it set the lowest close of the month on the evening before the most PCE-relevant release on the calendar. What that price does cover: an in-line PPI, a claims print anywhere between 190k and 220k, and an Applied Materials result that lands inside its own guidance range. What it does not cover: a core PPI at +0.4%, which reprices the entire front end and the rate-sensitive consumer complex in the sixty minutes before the open; a 30-year auction tail at 1:00 PM into the most expensive long-bond funding in twenty-five years; a 14% move in a semi-cap bellwether at 4:00 PM that the whole SOX trades off tomorrow; or the fourth consecutive AI-adjacent beat being sold, which would stop being a stock story and start being a de-rating. Three of those four land after the cash close or in the last three hours of it — so the risk in this session is back-loaded, and the 14.57 print is buying the front of the day, not the back. |
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| Source Links and the full Data Notes & Conflicts section — vendor reconciliations, the flagged pre-market prints (AMP, BWA), contract months and the Bloomberg/WSJ coverage audit — are in US_CrossAsset_Opening_2026-08-13_DataNotes.txt. |
| U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily — Thursday, August 13, 2026. For institutional investors (equity long/short, real money). News window: Wed 12 Aug 4:00 PM ET close → Thu 13 Aug ~8:20 AM ET. Sections 8 and 11 retired; Source Links (15) and Data Notes (16) are in the companion text file. Not personalized investment advice; verify independently before acting. |
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