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U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily
Thursday, August 20, 2026 — Pre-Market Briefing | Data as of: 07:59 AM ET (dashboard and movers refreshed) | News window: Wed 19 Aug 4:00 PM ET → Thu 20 Aug 7:59 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_2026-08-20_DataNotes.txt). |
1 · Pre-Open Dashboard |
| The overnight in one paragraph. The index is flat and the tape underneath it is not. Walmart beat on both lines, raised full-year guidance on both lines, and is down about 6% in the pre-market — the fifth consecutive American retailer sold on a good print, and the first where the reason is legible rather than positional. Adjusted EPS was $0.81 against $0.74 expected (LSEG) and revenue $187.94bn against $186.77bn, but U.S. comparable sales grew 2.6% where the street wanted 3.5%, and Bloomberg framed it exactly right — the slowest U.S. growth in six years. The quality of the beat compounds it: GAAP net income fell to $6.37bn from $7.03bn, the adjusted line was helped by a tax item, the 25.4% gross margin was flattered by tariff refunds, and CFO John David Rainey told CNBC the company will hand its $2.9bn of refunds straight back to shoppers as third-quarter price cuts, against “just over $2 billion of incremental cost headwinds related to higher fuel prices this year.” A margin windfall that is spent is not a windfall, and the whole defensive-retail cohort is marked down with it — Dollar General −2.7%, Dollar Tree −2.5%, Costco −2.0%, Kroger −1.8%, BJ’s −1.7%. Second, and it is why Walmart’s fuel line matters: Trump declared “the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY” against Iran overnight, threatening consequences for any country supplying Tehran a lifeline, after the UAE suspended all trade with Iran. WTI is $88.57, +3.19%; Brent $94.31, +2.94%. Third, the bond market is taking back Wednesday’s gift: the 10-year is 4.696% (+4.6 bp on the 4.65% official par close), the 30-year 5.241% (+5.1 bp), and the 2-year is unchanged at 4.192% — a bear steepener mirroring yesterday’s buyback-driven bull flattener, and it is American and idiosyncratic, because on Bloomberg’s 7:06 board Germany is −1 bp, Japan −4 bp and Australia −5 bp. Global duration rallied; only the U.S. sold off. Bloomberg’s wrap and WSJ’s Greg Ip agree — “US Stocks Waver as Treasury Rally Starts to Fade” and a Capital Account column arguing the Treasury market’s safe-haven premium is eroding. Fourth, Korea ripped 5.89% and it did not travel: the Kospi recovered essentially all of Wednesday’s 5.80% crash on SK Hynix’s ₩40tn ($28.7bn) buyback-and-cancel, SK Hynix +13% and Samsung +8%, yet U.S. semiconductors never joined in. A capital-return rally in Seoul is not a demand signal in Santa Clara. And the refresh killed even the token bid: between 7:10 and 7:59 Nvidia went from +0.38% to −0.09%, Micron from +0.65% to −0.70% and Marvell from −0.80% to −2.34%, while the whole futures complex rolled over — NQ from +0.10% to −0.42%, ES from −0.01% to −0.24%, YM from −0.14% to −0.45%, VIX from 15.17 to 15.55, gold from flat to −0.50% and 2s10s through the 50 bp line to 50.4 bp. That is one coherent trade, not four — yields up, crude up, equities down, gold down is an inflation scare, and it is building in the ninety minutes before the data. What this hands the 9:30 open: a flat index with a violent consumer-staples unwind inside it, an energy complex with a genuine geopolitical bid, a curve that is un-flattening, and an 8:30 claims print (consensus 210k) plus a Philadelphia Fed survey consensus expects to collapse from 41.4 to 25 standing between here and the bell. |
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| Equity futures (front contract, September 2026) & implied cash open |
| Contract | Level | Chg (pts) | %Chg | Implied cash open | | S&P 500 (@SP.1) | 7,710.25 | −18.75 | −0.24% | ≈ 7,689 vs 7,707.98 close (≈ −19 pts) | | Nasdaq-100 (@ND.1) | 29,387.50 | −125.25 | −0.42% | ≈ 29,301 vs 29,426.02 (≈ −125 pts) | | Dow (@DJ.1) | 53,287.00 | −243.00 | −0.45% | ≈ 53,220 vs 53,463.05 (≈ −243 pts) | | Russell 2000 (IWM pre-mkt proxy) | — | — | −0.24% | ≈ 3,026 vs 3,032.94 |
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| Implied opens apply the futures percentage change to the prior cash close. CNBC’s published fair-value line was not retrievable — the pre-markets board returned only its page shell — so the quote service was used instead. The Russell line is an ETF proxy because @ER2.1 returned empty. |
| Prior cash closes — Wednesday 19 August (the anchor) |
| Index | Close | Chg | %Chg | | S&P 500 | 7,707.98 | +16.22 | +0.21% | | Nasdaq Composite | 26,331.09 | +41.38 | +0.16% | | Dow Jones Industrials | 53,463.05 | +119.65 | +0.22% | | Nasdaq 100 | 29,426.02 | −64.94 | −0.22% | | Russell 2000 | 3,032.94 | +15.06 | +0.50% | | PHLX Semiconductor (SOX) | 11,738.23 | −254.24 | −2.12% | | VIX | 14.89 | −0.95 | −6.00% | | Nasdaq-100 Vol (VXN) | 22.04 | −0.52 | −2.30% |
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| Volatility now: VIX 15.55, +4.43% — back above 15 after one session below. The front VIX future (@VX.1) is 17.70, a wide contango to spot: the market is paying for September and Jackson Hole, not for today. |
| Rates, FX and commodities — live pre-open |
| Instrument | Level | Chg | %Chg / vs prior par close | | UST 2Y | 4.192% | — | +0.2 bp vs 4.19% par | | UST 5Y | 4.389% | — | +3.9 bp vs 4.35% par | | UST 10Y | 4.696% | — | +4.6 bp vs 4.65% par | | UST 30Y | 5.241% | — | +5.1 bp vs 5.19% par | | DXY (@DX.1) | 98.69 | −0.041 | −0.04% | | EUR/USD | 1.1684 | +0.0007 | +0.06% | | USD/JPY | 158.65 | +0.49 | +0.31% | | WTI front (Sep) | $88.57 | +$2.74 | +3.19% | | Brent front (Oct) | $94.31 | +$2.69 | +2.94% | | Gold (Comex front) | $4,522.50 | −$22.80 | −0.50% | | Silver (Comex front) | $66.52 | +$0.695 | +1.06% | | Copper (Comex front) | $6.4235 | −$0.0725 | −1.12% | | Natural gas (front) | $2.750 | −$0.064 | −2.27% | | Bitcoin | $71,869 | — | +5.17% (24h) |
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| Treasury yields are coloured inverted — a rise in yield is red because it is a price decline. Quote basis: EUR/USD is dollars per euro (a rise = weaker dollar); USD/JPY is yen per dollar (a rise = stronger dollar). Commodities are front-month futures; WTI is September and Brent October, so the two are not on a like-for-like month. |
| Global equities overnight |
| Index | Level | %Chg | Status | | Kospi | 6,852.58 | +5.89% | Closed | | Nikkei 225 | 66,216.79 | +1.36% | Closed | | Hang Seng | 25,698.49 | +0.80% | Closed | | Shanghai Composite | 3,903.72 | +0.24% | Closed | | Taiwan TAIEX | 44,933.74 | +0.48% | Closed | | ASX 200 | 9,083.80 | +0.33% | Closed | | Nifty 50 | 24,231.85 | +0.64% | Closed | | Stoxx 600 | 650.39 | −0.12% | Live | | DAX | 25,998.51 | −0.36% | Live | | FTSE 100 | 10,721.90 | −0.20% | Live | | CAC 40 | 8,480.21 | −0.26% | Live | | FTSE MIB | 52,755.39 | +0.26% | Live | | IBEX 35 | 19,847.90 | 0.00% | Live |
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2 · Overnight Hot Spots — ranked by tradability at today’s open |
1. Walmart beat, raised, and is down 6% — and this time the reason is on the tape, not in the positioning. [Equities]
Adjusted EPS $0.81 vs $0.74 expected (LSEG); revenue $187.94bn vs $186.77bn, up 5.9%; global e-commerce +23%; full-year guidance raised to +4–5% net sales (from 3.5–4.5%) and $2.80–2.87 adjusted EPS (from $2.75–2.85). And the stock is −5.94% on 5.67m pre-market shares. The break is U.S. comparable sales +2.6% against 3.5% expected (FactSet) — Bloomberg calls it the slowest U.S. growth in six years — of which 0.8 percentage points is a health-and-wellness drag as drug price caps took effect. … $108.50 holding on the opening auction makes this a gap-fill candidate; failing it opens $105. |
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2. Trump declares economic war on Iran and crude gaps 2.8%. [Commodities / Equities / FX]
On Truth Social overnight: “the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY! This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” with consequences threatened against any country providing Iran a lifeline — naming cash transfers, currency swaps and shipping registries. It follows the UAE suspending all trade and financial transactions with Iran after saying two ballistic missiles were fired at its territory; Iran denied the strikes. WTI $88.57 (+3.19%), Brent $94.31 (+2.94%). Bloomberg separately reports Exxon warning Kazakhstan’s largest oil field will peak within years. … Brent $95 starts repricing airlines and packaged food. |
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3. Wednesday’s Treasury rally is fading, and it is fading only in America. [Rates / Equities]
The 10-year is 4.696%, +4.6 bp on the 4.65% official par close; the 30-year 5.241%, +5.1 bp; the 2-year unchanged at 4.192% — a bear steepener that precisely reverses Wednesday’s buyback-driven bull flattener, front end pinned for a third session. The proof it is domestic sits on Bloomberg’s 7:06 sovereign board: Germany −1 bp to 3.25%, Japan −4 bp to 2.84%, Australia −5 bp to 5.00%, Korea −2 bp, Netherlands and Switzerland −1 bp each. Global duration rallied while the U.S. sold off. … The 1:00 PM 30-year TIPS auction is the confirmation. |
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4. Korea recovered a 5.8% crash in one session — and it did not transmit to U.S. semiconductors. [Equities]
The Kospi closed +5.89% at 6,852.58, recovering essentially all of Wednesday’s −5.80%, with SK Hynix +13% and Samsung +8%; the Kosdaq added 1.99%. The catalyst is capital return, not demand: SK Hynix’s ₩40tn ($28.7bn) buyback-and-cancellation, the largest ever by a Korean listed company, plus a policy to return more than 50% of cumulative 2025–27 free cash flow. … The market is correctly refusing to read a buyback as a demand signal. Forward hook: if SOX cannot hold a gain on a day Korean memory rose 13%, the three-session 7%-plus drawdown is positioning-driven and only Nvidia on 26 August resolves it. |
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5. Bitcoin through $72,000, ether +9%, and a record short squeeze. [Crypto / Equities]
Bitcoin is $71,869, +5.17% on CNBC’s 7:58 board and was $72,022, +5.29% on WSJ’s 7:12 board; ether +9.36% to $2,295; solana +5.93%. Bloomberg: “Bitcoin Roars Past $70,000 as Yields Sink, Trump Sparks Optimism,” with CNBC reporting the President urging Congress to pass the Clarity Act, and Bloomberg logging a record $2.7bn of short liquidations. Equity beta is following: Strategy +10.38%, Coinbase +7.72%, Marathon +5.06%, Riot +3.72%. Forward hook: this is the highest-beta expression of the same liquidity impulse driving item 3, and it points the opposite way — yields up, crypto up. One of the two is wrong. Watch whether COIN holds $170 after the first thirty minutes. |
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6. Alibaba: revenue +9%, cloud +45%, net income −75% — and a memory-price datapoint buried in the capex line. [Equities]
Not an S&P 500 member. June-quarter revenue rose 9%, cloud 45%, with AI Cloud and Compute at RMB48.4bn, its fastest growth in 22 quarters and AI product revenue of RMB12.4bn marking a twelfth straight quarter of triple-digit growth. Against that, net income fell 75% to RMB10,444m ($1,539m) and capex rose 75% to RMB67.7bn (~$10bn). … BABA is −2.91%. Forward hook: AI revenue accelerating while AI economics deteriorate is the exact question Nvidia answers on 26 August. |
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7. Moderna gives back a sixth of the largest single-day gain this report has recorded. [Equities]
Moderna is −11.03% at $155.14 on 3.89m pre-market shares, after closing +176.97% at $174.38 on Wednesday’s INTerpath-001 melanoma readout. Bloomberg reports the surge inflicted a “painful” $5.5bn loss on short sellers. Merck is −1.08% at $150.56 after +12.60%. The fade is orderly, not a reversal — an 11% give-back on a 177% move is a fifth of one day’s gain, on a fiftieth of Wednesday’s 182.8m shares. Forward hook: neither company has given a regulatory filing timetable or named the medical meeting for the data. Until one does this trades on flow, and $150 is the round number the tape will defend. |
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8. Deere beat and the stock is up 3.45% — the only clean beat-and-buy on the board. [Equities]
Third-quarter diluted EPS $5.10 against $4.75 a year ago and consensus of $4.79 (Nasdaq) / $4.70 (Benzinga); net sales and revenues $12,608m vs $12,018m (+4.9%); equipment operations $10,999m vs $10,357m; net income $1,379m vs $1,289m; full-year guidance $4.5–5.0bn. Bloomberg’s framing is the caution — “Deere Narrows Profit Outlook as Farm Recovery Seen in 2027”. Pre-market +3.45% at $600.66, though on only 7,932 shares, thin enough that the print should not be over-read. Forward hook: set against Walmart, the session’s cleanest statement is that the market pays for a beat when the beat is operational and will not pay when it is fiscal. Watch AGCO and CNH for the read-across. |
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9. Canada tariff relief is on the table, and the steel and auto complexes have not moved. [Equities / FX]
WSJ reports the U.S. is considering cutting tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium from 50% to 25%, and top-line auto levies from 25% to 15%; the same desk reports Trump has paused the 50% tariff on some Canadian products that would have hit 5% of Canadian exports. The equity tape is ignoring it: Steel Dynamics −0.19%, Nucor −0.10%, Cleveland-Cliffs +0.14%, GM +0.02%, Ford −0.07%. Forward hook: a 25-point cut in the steel tariff is a genuine negative for domestic mill pricing power and a genuine positive for auto and packaging input costs. The market treats it as noise because it is a “considering,” not a signing. Any confirmation headline is a same-day 3–5% move in STLD and NUE, on a name still +48% year to date. |
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10. German producer prices ran hot, U.K. retail sales beat by 1.4 points, and neither moved its bond market. [Rates / FX]
German PPI rose 3.0% y/y in July against 2.7% expected (prior 1.8%), and +1.1% m/m against +0.7%. U.K. July retail sales rose 1.0% m/m against −0.4% expected (prior −0.5%); GfK consumer confidence improved to −17 from −18 expected; and CBI industrial orders came in at −25 against −40 expected, a fifteen-point beat. Yet Bunds rallied 1 bp and gilts sold off only 1 bp, with sterling +0.21% at 1.3632 and the euro +0.06% at 1.1684. The ECB also published its meeting accounts and euro-area Q2 flash labour costs decelerated to 3.0% from 3.2%. … That correlation breaking is what would make the Bund a short. |
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11. Cybersecurity is the one U.S. sub-sector down more than a percent without a headline. [Equities]
CrowdStrike −2.30% at $196.99 on 85,487 shares; Palo Alto Networks −1.32% at $355.01 on 44,367 shares. No overnight company disclosure was found for either. CrowdStrike reports 26 August after the close with a consensus of $0.05 — de-risking ahead of a print with essentially no earnings cushion is the most likely explanation, and it is worth watching because the two names moved together while the rest of software did not. Forward hook: if this is pre-positioning it stabilises after the open; if it widens, something is circulating that has not reached the tape. |
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3 · Global Markets Overnight — Asia & Europe |
| Asia — closes, with the specific catalyst for each bloc |
| Index | Close | %Chg | Catalyst | | Kospi | 6,852.58 | +5.89% | SK Hynix ₩40tn buyback-and-cancel; SK Hynix +13%, Samsung +8%. Recovers Wed’s −5.80% almost exactly | | Kosdaq | 840.89 | +1.99% | Follow-through after Wednesday’s open-triggered halt | | Nikkei 225 | 66,216.79 | +1.36% | Memory relief; July exports +23.2% y/y vs +19.9% expected | | Hang Seng | 25,698.49 | +0.80% | Alibaba cloud acceleration read past the profit collapse | | HSCEI | 8,547.84 | +0.90% | — | | Shanghai Composite | 3,903.72 | +0.24% | PBoC held the 1-yr LPR at 3.00% and 5-yr at 3.50%, both as expected | | Taiwan TAIEX | 44,933.74 | +0.48% | The bloc’s laggard on a Korean melt-up — itself informative | | ASX 200 | 9,083.80 | +0.33% | 10-yr ACGB rallied 5 bp; Aug inflation expectations 4.9% from 4.7% | | Nifty 50 | 24,231.85 | +0.64% | — |
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| The Asian session’s real content is the dispersion. Korea rose 5.89% and Taiwan rose 0.48%. Both are memory-and-foundry economies; only one had a buyback announcement. That six-point gap between two markets with near-identical macro exposure is the cleanest available evidence that Wednesday’s rout and Thursday’s recovery were about capital return and positioning, not end-demand. |
| Europe — live, and global sovereign 10-year yields (Bloomberg, 7:06–7:07 AM ET) |
| Europe index | Level | %Chg | Sovereign 10Y | Yield | 1-Day | | Stoxx 600 | 650.23 | −0.14% | United States | 4.68% | +3 bp | | DAX | 25,982.41 | −0.42% | Canada | 3.72% | +3 bp | | CAC 40 | 8,472.85 | −0.34% | Germany | 3.25% | −1 bp | | FTSE 100 | 10,711.00 | −0.30% | United Kingdom | 5.06% | +1 bp | | FTSE MIB | 52,704.66 | +0.16% | France | 4.11% | +1 bp | | IBEX 35 | 19,843.40 | −0.02% | Italy | 4.07% | +1 bp | | — | — | — | Spain | 3.70% | 0 bp | | — | — | — | Netherlands | 3.34% | −1 bp | | — | — | — | Switzerland | 0.38% | −1 bp | | — | — | — | Japan | 2.84% | −4 bp | | — | — | — | Australia | 5.00% | −5 bp | | — | — | — | South Korea | 4.32% | −2 bp | | — | — | — | India | 6.85% | +3 bp |
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| Europe is modestly lower with the periphery outperforming the core — Milan +0.16% and Madrid −0.02% against Frankfurt −0.42% and Paris −0.34% — which is a risk-appetite positive. BTP–Bund spread: 82 bp against 80 bp at Wednesday’s European close, 2 bp wider. A 2 bp widening on a day Italian equities outperformed German ones is mild and non-corroborating; it reads as the BTP simply not joining the small Bund rally, not as a periphery risk event. |
| Overnight data already released — actual vs consensus |
| Release | Actual | Consensus | Prior | Reaction | | Germany PPI (Jul, y/y) | +3.0% | +2.7% | +1.8% | Hot. Bunds rallied 1 bp anyway | | Germany PPI (Jul, m/m) | +1.1% | +0.7% | −0.3% | — | | U.K. retail sales (Jul, m/m) | +1.0% | −0.4% | −0.5% | Big beat; GBP +0.26% | | U.K. GfK consumer confidence (Aug) | −17 | −18 | −18 | Better | | U.K. CBI industrial orders (Aug) | −25 | −40 | −45 | 15-point beat | | Japan trade balance (Jul) | −¥634.5bn | −¥680bn | −¥409.9bn (rev) | Narrower than feared | | Japan exports (Jul, y/y) | +23.2% | +19.9% | +19.3% | Large beat; JGB 10Y −4 bp | | Japan imports (Jul, y/y) | +27.8% | +26.5% | +25.4% | — | | China 1-yr Loan Prime Rate | 3.00% | 3.00% | 3.00% | Held, as expected | | China 5-yr Loan Prime Rate | 3.50% | 3.50% | 3.50% | Held, as expected | | Australia inflation expectations (Aug) | 4.9% | 4.4% (fcst) | 4.7% | Hotter; ACGB rallied regardless | | Euro-area labour costs (Q2 flash, y/y) | +3.0% | +3.0% | +3.2% | In line, decelerating | | Euro-area construction output (Jun, y/y) | −0.7% | — | +0.7% (rev) | Weak | | ECB monetary policy meeting accounts | Published | — | — | No market reaction observed |
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| What this hands the U.S. open. Three things. One: the global bond complex rallied and the U.S. did not, so any American duration weakness today is home-grown supply-and-credibility risk rather than an imported growth or inflation impulse — that is a relative-value setup, not a risk-off signal, and it argues for owning banks against REITs rather than reducing equity gross. Two: Korea’s 5.89% against Taiwan’s 0.48% tells U.S. semiconductor investors the Asian bounce carries no demand information, so the American complex opens with its three-session drawdown unresolved, its token bid already faded to red, and Nvidia on 26 August the only catalyst. Three: hot German PPI plus a very strong U.K. retail print plus crude +2.8% is a coherent global reflation impulse landing ninety minutes before a U.S. jobless-claims number — it raises the stakes on the 8:30 print in the hawkish direction, which is the opposite of what the equity market has been positioned for since Wednesday’s buyback headline. |
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4 · Pre-Market Movers & Single-Name Catalysts |
| All quotes from the CNBC real-time quote service, session flag PRE_MKT, pulled 7:08–7:14 AM ET. Pre-market volume is stated on every line so thin prints can be discounted. |
HIGHER | Strategy (MSTR) +10.38% to $115.07 on 3.22m shares — the highest-beta bitcoin proxy on a +5.2% BTC session. Not an S&P 500 member. | | Coinbase (COIN) +7.72% to $172.56 on 682,415 shares — bitcoin above $72,000; Bloomberg logs a record $2.7bn of crypto short liquidations. Extends Wednesday’s +9.64%. | | Marathon (MARA) +5.06% on 1.36m shares; Riot (RIOT) +3.72% on 333,201. Neither is an S&P 500 member. | | Deere (DE) +3.45% to $600.66 — Q3 beat on both lines. On only 7,932 shares: the thinnest headline move on the board and the least reliable. | | Occidental +1.30%, Valero +1.12%, Exxon +1.07%, Chevron +0.72% — crude +3.19% on the Iran escalation. | | Nebius (NBIS) +1.30% on 495,272 shares — stabilising after Wednesday’s −9.87% on the $4.5bn convertible. Not an S&P 500 member. | | Broadcom +0.03% — the last semiconductor still green, and only just. The rest of the complex has turned red since 7:10: Nvidia −0.09%, Micron −0.70%, Intel −1.27%, Marvell −2.34%. | | Burlington (BURL) +0.37% — the sole off-price name resisting the Walmart drag. |
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LOWER | Moderna (MRNA) −11.03% to $155.14 on 3.89m shares — profit-taking on +176.97%. | | Coty (COTY) −9.57% to $2.74 on 123,001 shares. Not an S&P 500 member. A sub-$3 share price makes the percentage mechanically large. | | Walmart (WMT) −5.94% on 5.67m shares — the highest-conviction move on the board and the only one with institutional-scale pre-market volume. After-hours-to-pre-market drift: −5.81% at 7:06, −5.18% at 7:09, −5.99% at 7:14 and −5.94% at 7:59 on 5.67m shares — it has stopped widening but it has not bounced. | | Stellantis −3.13% on 543,628 shares — not an S&P 500 member; moving against the Canadian auto-tariff headline rather than with it. | | Alibaba (BABA) −2.91% on 1.80m shares — net income −75% on capex +75%. Not an S&P 500 member. | | Dollar General −2.71%, Dollar Tree −2.52%, Costco −1.98%, Kroger −1.83%, BJ’s −1.68% — the Walmart comp-miss read-through, priced within minutes, with no company-specific news at any of the five. | | CrowdStrike −2.30%, Palo Alto −1.32% — no overnight disclosure found. | | TJX −1.36%, Target −1.26%, Home Depot −0.67% — on 7,431–17,705 shares. Do not trade these prints; they are indications, not liquidity. | | Merck −1.08% — giving back part of +12.60%. Tesla −0.63% — no catalyst identified. |
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| Analyst actions — withheld this run, deliberately |
| Four differently-worded sweeps for a dated 20 August research sheet returned only stale material: a Yahoo/The Fly compilation with a current-sounding headline that carried an August 5, 2026 dateline, and a 24/7 Wall St. sheet from 19 August whose contents already appeared in this report’s Closing Daily of 19 August. TheFly’s ratings page redirected to a gated dashboard. No 20 August analyst action is asserted, because none was verified. |
| Corporate actions and regulatory |
| Stripe is acquiring OpenRouter for $7bn (WSJ) — an AI-model-routing layer; read-through to payments and AI-infrastructure private marks, no listed pure-play. • FTC has warned retailers on using private consumer data to raise prices (WSJ exclusive) — personalized pricing must be disclosed or firms may face lawsuits; lands the same morning as Walmart’s print and is relevant to AMZN, WMT, TGT, KR and the retail-media narrative. … • Trump Administration moving to open millions of national-forest acres to logging (WSJ), rescinding the 2001 roadless rule — positive for WY, PCH, LPX if it survives litigation. |
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5 · Overnight Earnings Scorecard |
| Every company reporting since Wednesday’s 4:00 PM ET close. Bold = S&P 500 member. |
| Walmart (WMT) — S&P 500 and Dow member — fiscal Q2 2027, before the open |
| Metric | Actual | Consensus / prior year | Result | | Adjusted EPS | $0.81 | $0.74 (LSEG) / $0.73 (Nasdaq) | Beat | | Revenue | $187.94bn | $186.77bn | Beat (+5.9% y/y) | | U.S. comparable sales | +2.6% | +3.5% (FactSet) | MISS | | Global e-commerce | +23% | — | — | | Gross margin | 25.4% | — | Up, tariff-refund aided | | GAAP net income | $6.37bn ($0.80) | $7.03bn ($0.88) prior year | Down 9.4% y/y | | FY27 net sales guide | +4–5% | prior +3.5–4.5% | Raised | | FY27 adjusted EPS guide | $2.80–2.87 | prior $2.75–2.85 | Raised | | Q3 guide | sales +3–3.75%; adj EPS $0.62–0.64 | — | — | | Pre-market | −5.94% | on 5.67m shares | — |
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| The read-through — three things travel. (a) The comp miss is the whole story and 0.8pp of it is a health-and-wellness drag from drug price caps, which is a policy headwind, not a consumer one, and hits CVS and WBA logic more than Walmart’s. … Every large-format retailer and every freight name carries the same exposure. |
| Deere & Company (DE) — S&P 500 and Dow member — fiscal Q3 2026, before the open |
| Metric | Actual | Prior year | Consensus | | Diluted EPS | $5.10 | $4.75 | $4.79 (Nasdaq) / $4.70 (Benzinga) | | Net sales and revenues | $12,608m | $12,018m | — | | Equipment operations net sales | $10,999m | $10,357m | $10.73bn (Benzinga) | | Net income attributable | $1,379m | $1,289m | — | | FY26 net income guidance | $4.5–5.0bn | — | — | | Pre-market | +3.45% | on 7,932 shares | — |
|
| Bloomberg: “Deere Narrows Profit Outlook as Farm Recovery Seen in 2027.” The read-through: a 4.9% revenue increase and 7% earnings increase in a down agricultural cycle is a share-and-pricing result, not a volume one. It travels to AGCO, CNH and Titan Machinery, and to Mosaic, CF, Nutrien, ADM and Bunge on the implication that farmer cash flow is stabilising. Respect the caution in the headline: management guides the recovery into 2027, so this is valuation support, not an inflection. |
| Alibaba (BABA) — not an S&P 500 member — June quarter, before the open |
| Metric | Actual | Detail | | Revenue | +9% y/y | — | | Cloud revenue | +45% | — | | AI Cloud and Compute Services | RMB48.4bn | Fastest growth in 22 quarters | | AI product revenue | RMB12.4bn | 12th straight quarter of triple-digit growth (prior qtr RMB8.97bn) | | Net income | RMB10,444m ($1,539m) | −75% y/y | | Capital expenditure | RMB67.7bn (~$10bn) | +75% y/y | | Pre-market | −2.91% | on 1.80m shares |
|
| Two separate signals. (a) The AI-capex-versus-earnings squeeze is now global — the same shape as the OpenAI economics covered on 19 August, but with audited numbers attached, three trading days before Nvidia. … Dell fell 6.64% and Seagate 7.87% on Wednesday; on this datapoint they should not have moved together. |
| Tonight, after the close |
| Ross Stores (ROST) — S&P 500. Consensus EPS $1.93 (Nasdaq). Pre-market +0.12% on 567 shares. The last of the off-price block after TJX’s −4.21% on Wednesday. Given Walmart’s price-cut announcement, guidance language on promotional intensity is the line that matters, not the quarter. |
| Aggregate scorecard. Per FactSet Earnings Insight (August 2026 editions), with 88% of the S&P 500 reported for Q2 2026: blended year-over-year earnings growth is 50.4%, falling to 32.0% excluding Alphabet and Amazon; 86% have beaten on EPS and 76% on revenue; the aggregate earnings surprise is 29.2%, or 10.9% ex-Alphabet-and-Amazon — still above the five- and ten-year averages. The important part for today is not the beat rate but the payment for it. Across the retail block: Home Depot beat and closed −0.12%; Target beat and raised and closed +4.28%; Lowe’s guided to the low end and closed +2.02%; Estée Lauder beat and closed +16.30%; TJX said nothing and closed −4.21%; Walmart beat, raised, and is −6%. Six prints, no consistent reaction function, and dispersion of more than 22 percentage points in three sessions. The market is not paying for beats; it is paying for the composition of beats. |
|
6 · U.S. Treasury Par Curve & Rates |
| Official par curve — Wednesday 19 August, 3:30 PM ET close |
| Tenor | 19 Aug | 18 Aug | Δ 1-Day | 12 Aug | Δ 1-Week | | 1 Mo | 3.77% | 3.78% | −1 bp | 3.78% | −1 bp | | 1.5 Mo | 3.77% | 3.78% | −1 bp | 3.79% | −2 bp | | 2 Mo | 3.81% | 3.82% | −1 bp | 3.80% | +1 bp | | 3 Mo | 3.86% | 3.86% | 0 bp | 3.87% | −1 bp | | 4 Mo | 3.88% | 3.88% | 0 bp | 3.89% | −1 bp | | 6 Mo | 3.94% | 3.94% | 0 bp | 3.97% | −3 bp | | 1 Yr | 4.00% | 3.99% | +1 bp | 4.00% | 0 bp | | 2 Yr | 4.19% | 4.19% | 0 bp | 4.20% | −1 bp | | 3 Yr | 4.25% | 4.26% | −1 bp | 4.25% | 0 bp | | 5 Yr | 4.35% | 4.37% | −2 bp | 4.38% | −3 bp | | 7 Yr | 4.48% | 4.53% | −5 bp | 4.52% | −4 bp | | 10 Yr | 4.65% | 4.71% | −6 bp | 4.68% | −3 bp | | 20 Yr | 5.17% | 5.28% | −11 bp | 5.24% | −7 bp | | 30 Yr | 5.19% | 5.28% | −9 bp | 5.24% | −5 bp |
|
| Live pre-open block, and curve spreads |
| Tenor | Live | vs 19 Aug par | Spread | Live | 19 Aug | Δ o/n | | 2 Yr | 4.192% | +0.2 bp | 2s10s | 50.4 bp | 46 bp | +4.4 bp | | 5 Yr | 4.389% | +3.9 bp | 3M10Y | 83.6 bp | 79 bp | +4.6 bp | | 10 Yr | 4.696% | +4.6 bp | 2s30s | 104.9 bp | 100 bp | +4.9 bp | | 30 Yr | 5.241% | +5.1 bp | — | — | — | — |
|
| Bloomberg’s 7:06 mark on the U.S. 10-year was 4.68%, +3 bp; the yield has since risen a further 2 bp on the quote-service feed, so the overnight back-up is accelerating into the 8:30 data. 3M10Y is a hybrid — the 19 August official 3-month par yield of 3.86% against the live 10-year, because no live bill quote was retrieved. |
| Name the shape: a bear steepener, front end pinned, and it is the exact photographic negative of Wednesday. Wednesday produced a bull flattener — 20s and 30s down 11 and 9 bp, the 2-year literally unchanged — on the Treasury’s announcement it would at least double its buyback cap from $2bn to $4bn. Overnight the long end has given back 3.0 bp at the 30-year and 2.6 bp at the 10-year while the 2-year has again not moved, re-steepening 2s10s by 4.4 bp to 50.4 bp, through the 50 bp line. The diagnosis is neither imported, nor data-driven, nor a Fed-path repricing, and each can be ruled out on the evidence. Not imported: on Bloomberg’s 7:06 board Germany fell 1 bp, Japan 4 bp, Australia 5 bp, Korea 2 bp — global duration rallied while the U.S. sold off, and an imported move cannot run opposite to every market it would be imported from. Not data-driven: the only overnight surprises were German PPI and U.K. retail sales, both foreign, and both failed to move their own curves. … A $4bn maximum operation size does not change a $40tn stock of debt, and twenty-four hours was long enough for the market to work that out. |
|
| Today’s supply and Fed operations |
| 1:00 PM ET — 30-year TIPS auction. Prior stop 2.473%. A long-end real-rate auction on the day the long-end nominal is backing up is a mid-session equity risk event; a tail here confirms the give-back thesis. • 10:00 AM ET — Federal Reserve Reserve Demand Elasticity release, the most informative scheduled item on money-market conditions. • Fed speakers: none scheduled. Checked against the Federal Reserve Board’s August 2026 calendar and the Benzinga economic calendar. The next communication event of consequence is Jackson Hole, 27–29 August. |
|
7 · U.S. Macroeconomic Calendar |
| ★ TODAY — ★ TODAY — Thursday, August 20 |
|
| Time (ET) | Release | Consensus | Prior | Sensitivity | What a beat / miss does | | 08:30 | Initial jobless claims (wk to 15 Aug) | 210,000 | 209,000 | Very High | The morning’s gap risk — 60 minutes before the bell. Above ~225k pulls the front end lower, bull-steepens 2s10s and bids duration-sensitive equities; below ~195k confirms the hawkish minutes and pressures REITs, utilities and small caps. With the front end refusing to move for three sessions, the asymmetry favours the upside-surprise reaction | | 08:30 | Philadelphia Fed manufacturing (Aug) | 25.0 | 41.4 | High | Consensus wants a 16.4-point collapse. In-line is already priced as sharp deceleration; a print near 40 is a hawkish shock into the claims number. Watch prices paid (prior 53.90) — with crude +3.2% it is today’s cleanest energy-and-tariff pass-through read | | 08:30 | Continuing jobless claims (wk to 8 Aug) | 1,790k | 1,777k | Medium | Labour-slack confirmation on the headline | | 08:30 | Philly Fed sub-indices — orders / employment / capex | — | 37.0 / 10.0 / 30.10 | Medium | Employment is the one to read against claims | | 10:00 | Conference Board leading index (Jul, m/m) | +0.1% | −0.2% | Low | A return to positive would be the first in three months | | 10:00 | Fed — Reserve Demand Elasticity | n/a | — | Medium | Reads on money-market tightness | | 10:30 | EIA natural gas storage (wk to 14 Aug) | +15 Bcf | +36 Bcf | Medium | Nat gas is −2.27% against crude +3.19%; a small build widens the divergence | | 13:00 | 30-year TIPS auction | — | 2.473% prior stop | High | Mid-session risk event | | — | Fed speakers | None scheduled | — | — | Next is Jackson Hole, 27–29 August |
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| The single most important framing for the morning: two releases rated Very High and High land simultaneously at 8:30 AM ET, one hour before the open, and they can point in opposite directions — a soft claims number with a hot Philly Fed, or the reverse. Do not size an opening-auction position ahead of 8:30. |
| Overnight global data already released |
| Covered in full in §3. In brief: German PPI +3.0% y/y vs +2.7% expected; U.K. retail sales +1.0% m/m vs −0.4%; U.K. CBI orders −25 vs −40; Japan exports +23.2% y/y vs +19.9%; China held both Loan Prime Rates; euro-area Q2 labour costs +3.0%, decelerating from 3.2%; ECB meeting accounts published. |
| Rest of this week, and next week |
| Date | Time (ET) | Release | Consensus | Prior | Sensitivity | | Fri 8/21 | 09:45 | S&P Global manufacturing PMI, flash (Aug) | 53.9 | 53.9 | Medium | | Fri 8/21 | 09:45 | S&P Global services PMI, flash (Aug) | 54.0 | 54.6 | High | | Fri 8/21 | 09:45 | S&P Global composite PMI, flash (Aug) | 53.2 | 54.5 | Medium | | Fri 8/21 | 16:30 | Fed balance sheet (wk to 19 Aug) | — | $6.760tn | Low | | Mon 8/24 | 08:30 | Chicago Fed national activity index (Jul) | +0.10 | −0.02 | Low | | Mon 8/24 | 11:30 | 3-month and 6-month bill auctions | — | 3.715% / 3.780% | Low | | Tue 8/25 | 08:00 | Building permits, final (Jul) | 1.443m | 1.374m | Medium | | Tue 8/25 | 09:00 | S&P/Case-Shiller home price (Jun, y/y) | 2.1% | 1.6% | Medium | | Tue 8/25 | 10:00 | Conference Board consumer confidence (Aug) | — | — | High | | Wed 8/26 | 08:30 | PCE price index and core PCE (Jul) | Core +0.3% m/m; +3.3% y/y | +0.1% m/m; +3.3% y/y | Very High | | Wed 8/26 | 08:30 | GDP growth rate, 2nd estimate (Q2) | +1.5% | +2.1% | Medium | | Wed 8/26 | 08:30 | Durable goods orders (Jul, m/m) | +0.2% | +0.3% | Medium | | Wed 8/26 | 08:30 | Personal income / spending (Jul) | +0.2% / +0.3% | +0.2% / +0.3% | High | | Wed 8/26 | 13:00 | 2-year note auction | — | 4.315% prior stop | Medium | | Thu 8/27–Sat 8/29 | — | Jackson Hole Economic Symposium | — | — | Very High |
|
| The look-ahead. This week is a low-density data week whose only genuine event risk is this morning’s 8:30 double-header; next week is the opposite. Wednesday 26 August carries the July PCE deflator at 8:30 and Nvidia after the close, with eight other S&P 500 reporters the same evening, and Jackson Hole opens the next morning. Consensus for core PCE is +0.3% m/m against +0.1% prior — a threefold acceleration that would, if delivered, validate the July minutes’ warning that tightening “would likely be necessary if inflation did not decline.” Between now and then the market has to absorb a re-steepening curve, a crude price up 2.8% in a session on geopolitical escalation, and a consumer bellwether that just said comparable sales are running at their slowest in six years. Positioning into 26 August is the trade; this week is the setup for it. |
|
9 · FX Market |
| Quote basis: EUR/USD and GBP/USD are U.S. dollars per unit of foreign currency (a rise = weaker dollar). USD/JPY, USD/CHF, USD/CNY, USD/KRW and USD/MXN are foreign-currency units per dollar (a rise = stronger dollar). Levels from the CNBC real-time quote service at 07:05 AM ET; change is against the prior 4:00 PM ET New York level. |
| Pair | Level | Chg | %Chg | Driver | | DXY (@DX.1) | 98.69 | −0.041 | −0.04% | Softer dollar despite U.S. yields rising — the divergence of the morning | | EUR/USD | 1.1684 | +0.0007 | +0.06% | German PPI beat plus ECB accounts; euro firm | | USD/JPY | 158.65 | +0.49 | +0.31% | Yen weaker even though the JGB 10-year rallied 4 bp — the second-order tell | | GBP/USD | 1.3632 | +0.0029 | +0.21% | Strongest G10 mover. Retail sales +1.0% vs −0.4%, CBI −25 vs −40, GfK −17 vs −18 | | USD/CHF | 0.7982 | +0.0009 | +0.11% | Franc WEAKER on an Iran escalation — the haven is not bid at all | | USD/CNY | 6.7226 | −0.0069 | −0.10% | Renminbi firmer; LPRs held at 3.00% / 3.50% | | USD/KRW | 1,396.11 | +8.14 | +0.59% | Won weaker on a +5.89% Kospi — the session’s sharpest contradiction | | USD/MXN | 16.9832 | +0.0441 | +0.26% | Peso marginally softer; Bloomberg reports EM FX gaining on “Bessent put” carry appeal |
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| Two crosses are behaving contrary to their own local markets, and both say the same thing. The yen weakened 0.31% on a morning the JGB 10-year rallied 4 basis points; the won weakened 0.59% on a morning the Kospi rose 5.89%. Ordinarily a domestic bond rally supports the currency and a 5.9% equity melt-up drags foreign inflow in behind it. Neither happened, which means the flow is going the other way — out of Asia and into dollars — even while Asian asset prices rise. Read with Bloomberg’s note that emerging-market FX is gaining because the “Bessent put” burnishes carry-trade appeal, the honest interpretation is carry, not conviction: money borrowed in yen and won and deployed into higher-yielding dollar assets, which is exactly what a re-steepening U.S. curve pays for. The contradiction to hold in view is the dollar index itself. DXY is −0.04% while the U.S. 10-year is +4.6 bp and every other major sovereign rallied. … The won at 1,396 weakening into a Korean melt-up caps the dollar return for anyone who bought the bounce — a U.S. investor in EWY captured materially less than 5.89% this morning, which is worth knowing before treating that index print as a signal about semiconductor demand. |
|
10 · Commodities |
| All quotes are front-month futures, CNBC real-time quote service, 06:55 AM ET, against the prior settlement. Contract months are stated because the September-to-October roll is live in crude and the spot-versus-futures gap in the metals is material. |
| Contract | Price | Chg | %Chg | Driver | | WTI crude (@CL.1, Sep ’26) | $88.57 | +$2.74 | +3.19% | Trump’s “economic warfare” declaration; UAE suspends Iranian trade | | Brent crude (@BZ.1, Oct ’26) | $94.31 | +$2.69 | +2.94% | WTI is outperforming Brent by 25 bp — unusual on a Gulf supply scare | | Gold (@GC.1, Comex front) | $4,522.50 | −$22.80 | −0.50% | Flat. Refused to bid on an Iran escalation after +3.56% Wednesday | | Silver (@SI.1, Comex front) | $66.52 | +$0.695 | +1.06% | Outperforming gold by 156 bp — an industrial, not a haven, bid | | Copper (@HG.1, Comex front) | $6.4235 | −$0.0725 | −1.12% | Lower despite the Korean and Japanese equity rally | | Natural gas (@NG.1, front) | $2.750 | −$0.064 | −2.27% | Falling as crude rises — a 4.75-point divergence in a session |
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| Aluminium, corn, wheat and uranium were not retrieved this run and no figure is asserted for them; §10 carries six contracts rather than the mandated eight. Year-to-date columns were also not retrievable from a single consistent vendor basis and are omitted rather than mixed across sources — a YTD column stitched from three vendors on three contract months is worse than no column. |
| Three divergences inside one commodity complex, and each contains information. First, gold did not move. Crude gapped 2.80% on an explicit declaration of economic war against a Gulf producer, and gold is −0.50%, and it has fallen further as crude has risen further. That is not a haven; it is an asset that already priced its catalyst. Wednesday’s +3.56% was a monetary trade on the buyback and the debasement read, not a geopolitical one — and with the buyback trade fading in the bond market, gold is being sold outright. Silver outperforming gold by 156 bp confirms it: the marginal bid is industrial and momentum-driven, not defensive. If gold cannot rally on an Iran escalation, the debasement bid is spent for now, which is a warning for GDX after Wednesday’s +9.42%. Second, natural gas fell 2.27% while crude rose 3.19%. A five-and-a-half-point divergence between two energy contracts on the same morning says the crude move is entirely a supply-risk premium on Gulf transit, not a broad energy-demand impulse — U.S. natural gas has no Hormuz exposure. … Gold miners: GDX −1.70% at 7:59, from −0.29% an hour earlier — the metals trade is being distributed in front of us. |
|
12 · Trading Views (desk-style, not personalized advice) |
| These are desk-style observations for professional investors, not personalized investment advice. Every level is a stated invalidation, not a prediction. Verify independently before acting. |
1. Walmart — do not fade the gap before 10:00 AM.
Expression: wait; if forced to act, express through the cohort, not the name. Rationale: WMT is −5.94% against a 4.50% option-implied move — the market has already exceeded what it charged for. But the pre-market drift is widening, not stabilising (−5.81% at 7:06 → −5.99% at 7:14 → −5.94% at 7:59) on 5.67m shares, and it has flattened rather than bounced. Beat-and-raise gaps of this size on a comp miss typically see the low of the day inside the first thirty minutes, but “typically” is not a plan. Catalyst: 8:30 claims, then the opening auction; call commentary on Q3 price investment. … Sizing: half-size at most before 10:00 — the pre-market book in a name gapping 6% is not the book you will trade against. |
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2. The cleanest expression of the Walmart print is short the discounters, not short Walmart.
Expression: short a basket of DG / DLTR / KR / BJ against long WMT, dollar-neutral. Rationale: Walmart has explicitly said it will convert $2.9bn of tariff refunds into price cuts landing in Q3 — a transfer of margin from the price-taker to the price-setter. The four names are down 1.7–2.7% on no news of their own, so the market has recognised the mechanism but priced only its first order. Walmart absorbs the cost of a price war from scale; the others absorb it from weakness. Catalyst: Dollar General and Dollar Tree both report 27 August before the open; Ross Stores tonight is the early tell on promotional language. … Sizing: dollar-neutral, quarter-size into the earnings dates. |
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3. Long energy against airlines — the barrel, not the molecule.
Expression: long XOM / CVX / OXY against short DAL / UAL / LUV, beta-neutral. Rationale: crude +3.19% on an explicit declaration of economic warfare with the UAE already suspending Iranian trade, and natural gas −2.27% confirming the move is Hormuz transit risk rather than energy demand. The airlines are flat to −0.3% and have not marked for it at all. Walmart has just told the market what a fuel shock costs a large consumer — >$2bn incremental in one fiscal year — and airlines are the most fuel-levered cohort in the index. Catalyst: any UAE walk-back reverses this; WSJ notes the squeeze “will live or die in Dubai.” Brent through $95 accelerates it. … Sizing: beta-neutral; a headline-risk trade in both directions, sized for a gap. |
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4. Re-steepener — own the give-back of Wednesday’s buyback rally.
Expression: 2s10s steepener; the equity proxy is long banks (JPM / GS / BAC) against short REITs. Rationale: 2s10s has re-steepened 4.4 bp to 50.4 bp — through the 50 bp trigger with the 2-year barely moved for a third session, and the move is provably American — Germany −1 bp, Japan −4 bp, Australia −5 bp overnight. The KBW Bank Index fell 2.41% on Wednesday purely on the flattener; the flattener is unwinding and the banks have not been marked back up. Catalyst: 8:30 claims, then the 1:00 PM 30-year TIPS auction — a tail there is the confirmation. Invalidation: 2s10s back inside 46 bp says the buyback bid is durable and this is wrong. Sizing: the equity proxy carries unwanted rate-beta on the short leg; prefer the rates expression if available. |
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5. Do not buy U.S. semiconductors on the Korean bounce.
Expression: no position, or fade strength in SOX proxies. Rationale: Korea rose 5.89% with SK Hynix +13% and Samsung +8% on a ₩40tn buyback, and U.S. semis are red — Nvidia −0.09%, Micron −0.70%, Marvell −2.34%, having faded from fractionally green an hour earlier. Three independent confirmations that the Asian move carried no demand content: Taiwan +0.48% against Korea’s +5.89%; copper −1.12%; and the U.S. complex’s own refusal to follow. Alibaba’s disclosure of “higher prices across a broad range of chip components” is a cost signal that cuts against system assemblers as much as it helps memory. … Sizing: flat is a position here. |
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6. The memory-versus-assembler pair Alibaba just handed the desk.
Expression: long MU / STX / WDC against short DELL / SMCI, dollar-neutral. Rationale: Alibaba attributed part of a 75% capex increase to “higher prices across a broad range of chip components.” Component price inflation is revenue to the component makers and cost to the box builders. On Wednesday the market sold both — Seagate −7.87%, Western Digital −6.87%, Dell −6.64% — which cannot be right on this datapoint. Catalyst: Nvidia 26 August; HP Inc. 26 August after the close. Invalidation: a memory spot-price rollover, or Dell guiding to successful cost pass-through. Sizing: quarter-size; a slow pair with individually volatile legs. |
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| Vol note. VIX is 15.55, +4.43%, back above 15 after one session below; Wednesday’s close was 14.89, −6.00%. VXN is 22.04. The front VIX future is 17.70, a 2.15-point contango to spot — the market is charging for September and Jackson Hole, not for today. Today’s option-implied S&P move works out at approximately ±0.98%, or ±76 S&P points around 7,707.98 (VIX ÷ √252), an implied range of roughly 7,632 to 7,784. Key levels: prior close 7,707.98; the record intraday high of 7,816.70 from 13 August sits 1.41% above the implied open; the round number the tape is trading around is 7,700, and the S&P has now spent four consecutive sessions within roughly 1.4% of its record without making a new one. What the VIX is and is not pricing. At 15 the index is priced for a quiet day, and for the index level that is probably correct — futures are within one point of fair. What it is not pricing is the dispersion underneath: a 6% gap in a top-ten constituent, a 5.9% overnight move in Korea, a 2.8% move in crude, an 11% give-back in a name that rose 177% yesterday, and a curve reversing direction. 0DTE and gamma positioning were not retrievable this run and no figure is asserted. The honest summary is that index volatility is cheap and single-name volatility is not, which argues for expressing today’s views in pairs rather than in the index. |
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13 · S&P 500 Earnings Calendar |
| ★ TODAY — ★ TODAY — Thursday, August 20 |
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| Company | Ticker | Bucket | Consensus EPS | Result | Pre-market | | Walmart | WMT | BMO 7:00 | $0.74 (LSEG) / $0.73 (Nasdaq) | $0.81 adj — beat; U.S. comps +2.6% vs +3.5% — miss | −5.94% | | Deere & Company | DE | BMO 6:20 | $4.79 (Nasdaq) / $4.70 (Benzinga) | $5.10 diluted — beat | +3.45% | | Ross Stores | ROST | AMC 4:00 | $1.93 | Reports tonight | +0.12% |
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| Option-implied moves: Walmart’s was reported at 4.50% ahead of the print (Benzinga). None was retrievable for Deere or Ross Stores and none is asserted. Non-S&P-500 names reporting today, listed so their absence is not mistaken for an omission: Alibaba (BABA) — reported, covered in §5 — plus NetEase (NTES), Futu (FUTU), Atour (ATAT), Advance Auto Parts (AAP), Autohome (ATHM), Aegon (AEG) and OSI Systems (OSIS). Fifty-seven companies report today across all listings; three are S&P 500 members. |
| CURRENT WEEK — August 17–21 |
|
| Day | Reporters | Mon 8/17
— completed | No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket | Tue 8/18
— completed | BMO: Home Depot (HD) — beat both lines, best comps in nearly four years, $730m tariff refunds, guidance unchanged; closed −0.12%. AMC: Keysight (KEYS) — EPS $3.07 ex-items vs $2.48, revenue $1.85bn vs $1.75bn; rose 2% after hours then closed −6.29% Wednesday. Jack Henry (JKHY) | Wed 8/19
— completed | BMO: Lowe’s (LOW) — outlook to the bottom of the range; closed +2.02%. Estée Lauder (EL) — beat, FY27 guidance $3.10–3.35; closed +16.30%. Target (TGT) — beat and raised, $752m ($1.65/share) tariff refund; closed +4.28%. Analog Devices (ADI) — EPS, revenue and guidance all beat, non-GAAP gross margin 72.5% vs 69.2%; closed −0.89% after a $383.40 high. TJX (TJX) — closed −4.21% on no negative headline. AMC: Nordson (NDSN) | ★ Thu 8/20
— TODAY | BMO: Deere (DE) [6:20], Walmart (WMT) [7:00]. AMC: Ross Stores (ROST) [4:00] | | Fri 8/21 | No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket |
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| Day | Reporters (consensus EPS from the Nasdaq calendar capture) | | Mon 8/24 | No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket | | Tue 8/25 | AMC: Intuit (INTU) $2.14 | | Wed 8/26 | BMO: J.M. Smucker (SJM) $2.21, Williams-Sonoma (WSM) $2.05. AMC: Nvidia (NVDA) $2.01, Salesforce (CRM) $2.35, CrowdStrike (CRWD) $0.05, Synopsys (SNPS) $2.67, Agilent (A) $1.48, Veeva Systems (VEEV) $1.62, HP Inc. (HPQ) $0.66 | | Thu 8/27 | BMO: Dollar General (DG) $2.00, Dollar Tree (DLTR) $1.11, Best Buy (BBY) $1.34, Hormel Foods (HRL) $0.36. AMC: Marvell (MRVL) $0.65, Autodesk (ADSK) $2.35, Workday (WDAY) $1.26, Ulta Beauty (ULTA) $6.19 | | Fri 8/28 | No S&P 500 reporter on either bucket |
|
| Changes versus the prior calendar (19 August edition) |
| One genuine correction. Williams-Sonoma (WSM) now carries a published pre-market bucket on 26 August, where the prior edition carried it as after-close on the provenance of a 14 August Earnings Whispers pull and noted Nasdaq had returned “not-supplied.” Nasdaq now publishes the timing and it is before the open, moving WSM out of the crowded Wednesday-evening block into the Wednesday-morning one. … • Membership caveat, unchanged: the constituent screen does not carry HEI, ZM, DKS, PVH, COTY, BBWI, KSS, ANF, URBN, NTNX, OKTA, FIVE, BURL, GAP, AFRM, ESTC, S, HQY, BILL, AAP or TITN, each of which reports inside the window; all are conservatively excluded and listed in the Data Notes. |
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| What the forward calendar hands the desk. Today is the last meaningful S&P 500 earnings day of the week — Ross Stores tonight and then nothing until Tuesday. Next Wednesday is the year’s densest single evening: nine S&P 500 members on 26 August, seven after the close, with Nvidia among them and the July PCE deflator that same morning. The five-session gap between now and then is when positioning gets set. |
14 · Risk Map — Today’s Session |
| ★ TODAY — ★ THE EVENT CLOCK — Thursday, August 20 (all times ET) |
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| Time | Event | Why it matters | | 08:30 | Initial jobless claims (cons. 210k) and Philadelphia Fed manufacturing (cons. 25.0 vs 41.4 prior) — simultaneous | The morning’s single largest air pocket. Two releases of different sensitivity landing together, one hour before the bell, capable of pointing in opposite directions | | 08:30 | Continuing claims (cons. 1,790k); Philly Fed sub-indices incl. prices paid (prior 53.90) | Prices paid is today’s cleanest energy-and-tariff pass-through read | | 09:30 | U.S. cash open | Walmart gap, staples cohort unwind, energy bid | | 10:00 | Conference Board leading index (cons. +0.1%); Fed Reserve Demand Elasticity | Second-tier; the Fed release reads on money-market tightness | | 10:30 | EIA natural gas storage (cons. +15 Bcf) | Nat gas is −2.27% against crude +3.19% | | 13:00 | 30-year TIPS auction (prior stop 2.473%) | Mid-session equity risk event. A tail confirms the long-end give-back thesis | | 16:00 | U.S. cash close | — | | 16:05 | Ross Stores (ROST) reports, consensus $1.93 | The last off-price read of the week; promotional-intensity language is the line |
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| No Fed speakers are scheduled today. The next communication event of consequence is Jackson Hole, 27–29 August. |
| Crowded consensuses to stress-test — each with the number that breaks it |
| 1. “The Treasury buyback put is real and the long end has found its floor.” Breaks if: the 1:00 PM 30-year TIPS auction tails, or 2s10s pushes through 50 bp. The evidence is already accumulating: the long end has given back 3.0 bp at the 30-year overnight, Bloomberg published “Bessent Plan May Prove Short-Lived Remedy,” JPMorgan warned the fix “could backfire,” and Greg Ip argued the safe-haven premium is eroding. A $4bn maximum operation size against a $40tn debt stock is the arithmetic the market is now doing. |
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| 2. “The American consumer is holding up.” Breaks if: it already did. Walmart’s U.S. comparable sales at +2.6% are the slowest in six years, and Rainey’s own words were that consumers are “stretched thin, especially with higher gas prices.” The numbers that confirm the break: Conference Board consumer confidence on 25 August, and Ross Stores’ comps tonight. |
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| 3. “The Asian bounce means semiconductor demand is fine.” Breaks if: it never meant that. Korea +5.89% versus Taiwan +0.48%, copper −1.12%, and a U.S. complex that has gone outright red — Nvidia −0.09%, Micron −0.70%, Marvell −2.34% — are three independent refutations. The number that settles it is Nvidia’s data-centre revenue on 26 August. • 4. “Gold is the debasement hedge and it works.” Breaks if: today. Crude gapped 3.19% on an explicit declaration of economic war and gold is −0.50%, with GDX −1.70%. … Six retail prints in three sessions with 22 percentage points of dispersion and no consistent reaction function; Walmart beat, raised, and is −6%; TJX said nothing and fell 4.21%; Analog Devices beat on every line and closed red. |
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| The two-sided geopolitical tape, and structural watch items |
| Escalatory: Trump’s “MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY” with secondary consequences threatened for any country providing Iran a lifeline — explicitly naming cash transfers, currency swaps and shipping registries; the UAE’s suspension of all trade and financial transactions with Iran after alleging two ballistic missile launches at its territory; eight reported attacks on Hormuz-transiting vessels this month; and Exxon’s Kazakh field-decline warning the same morning. … Separately, Taiwan floated a record defence budget and Trump is seeking a Kim Jong Un summit that WSJ reports North Korea does not need. |
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| The trade tape is the quiet two-sided one: the U.S. is considering cutting Canadian steel and aluminium tariffs from 50% to 25% and autos from 25% to 15%, and has already paused the 50% levy on some Canadian products — a headline that would move STLD, NUE, GM and F by 3–5% on confirmation and has moved them by nothing so far. … And FTC scrutiny of personalized pricing at retailers lands on the morning of the year’s most-watched retail print. |
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| What the VIX and today’s implied move are — and are not — pricing. At 15.55 with a front future at 17.70, the index is priced for a ±0.98% day (±76 S&P points, a 7,632–7,784 range), and futures have just travelled a quarter of that range in fifty minutes without a single data release. What it is not pricing is everything happening underneath it. In the last twelve hours a top-ten S&P constituent gapped 6% on a beat-and-raise, Korea round-tripped 5.8%, crude moved 2.8% on a declaration of economic warfare, a name that rose 177% yesterday gave back 11%, the U.S. curve reversed direction while every other sovereign curve went the other way, and bitcoin broke $72,000 on a record $2.7bn of short liquidations. A 15 VIX is a statement that all of that will net to nothing at the index level. It may well be right — that is precisely what a well-diversified index does with idiosyncratic shocks. But it means the compensation for owning index volatility today is poor and the compensation for owning dispersion is good, and it means the risk in this session is not that the S&P falls 2%; it is that it closes unchanged while a sector-neutral book bleeds from four different single-name gaps. |
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Sources |
| Index levels, futures, single-name pre-market prices, volumes, session flags and prior closes come from the CNBC real-time quote service, called from a loaded CNBC page across six baskets covering roughly 200 symbols between 07:05 and 07:14 AM ET; CNBC’s pre-markets board itself returned only its page shell, so the published fair value and implied open were unavailable and implied opens are computed from the futures percentage change. … Both Bloomberg and WSJ were reachable this run and both were used as primary cross-checks rather than fallbacks; Bloomberg loaded already on the US Edition, so the mandated edition switch was a no-op. Where a figure could not be verified from a dated, live source — analyst actions, implied moves for Deere and Ross Stores, commodity year-to-date columns, 0DTE and gamma positioning — no number is asserted, and the reason is recorded in the companion Data Notes. |
| Full categorized source links and the complete Data Notes & Conflicts section — including the timestamp and session verification, the Yahoo cached-page and search-dateline traps that fired this run, every multi-vendor reconciliation, the contract-month and spot-versus-futures caveats, the pre-market liquidity caveats and the conservatively excluded names — are in the companion file US_CrossAsset_Opening_2026-08-20_DataNotes.txt. |
| U.S. Stock, Fixed Income & Cross-Asset Opening Daily — Thursday, August 20, 2026. News window: Wednesday 19 August 4:00 PM ET → Thursday 20 August, the data-as-of time in the header. Prepared for institutional investors. Not personalized investment advice; verify independently before acting. Sections 8 and 11 are retired; their numbers are intentionally unused so archived cross-references stay correct. |
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