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Warm Up
- NEW CTP ANNOUNCED!
- Jailtime? Short Seller targeted
- The EXCITING Summer Olympics
- Last vote - never again!

Market Update
- New Study - Power and AI
- Apple releases new AI (first version)
- Bitcoin - Not Buying the Electoral Rhetoric
- Correction territory for many of the tech names....
- Microsoft Earnings...

Crowdstrike Glitch
- 2nd shoe is dropping
- Lawsuits are on the way - hitting Crowdstrike and Microsoft
- Several announced this week.....
- CRWD still falling - Down 40% since before the "glitch"

 

Microsoft
- Reports Q4 (Jun) earnings of $2.95 per share, $0.01 better than the FactSet Consensus of $2.94; revenues rose 15.2% year/year to $64.73 bln vs the $64.38 bln FactSet Consensus.
- Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of +29%, +30% constant currency vs +30-31% CC prior guidance.
- Guides next quarter is below consensus
- Stock getting hit - down 7% initially, but comes back a bit in after-hours

AMD
- Better than feared - stock up after hours nicely

Intel
- cutting 1000's of  jobs - they are not a contender at all

Citron Boss
- The activist short seller Andrew Left surrendered in Los Angeles on Monday to face federal criminal securities fraud charges, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office there said. (Like he was in jail until bail was paid!)
- $10M Bail
- Andrew Left - is accused of using his public platform, which included social media posts on X and appearances on CNBC, to make illegal profits of at least $16 million by manipulating stock market activity and trading in a way that was contrary to the positions he publicly purported to take.
- Left is also being sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which in a civil complaint filed last week in LA federal court accused him and Citron of “engaging in a $20 million multi-year scheme to defraud followers by “publishing false and misleading statements regarding his supposed stock trading recommendations.”
- “Left bragged to colleagues that some of these statements [he made] were especially effective at inducing retail investors to trade based on his recommendations and said that it was like taking ‘candy from a baby,’” the SEC alleges in that lawsuit.

Big Boys - Tuesday Update
- NVDA (-6.5%) extends to session lows, as AI group comes under pressure ahead of key earnings reports and AI capex guides... other AI movers of note include ARM -6%, VRT -6%, SMCI -5.5%, QCOM -4%, MU -3%, SMH -3%

Eurozone
- The euro zone's economy grew by more than expected in the second quarter of 2024, flash figures from the European Union's statistics office showed Tuesday.
- The zone's gross domestic product rose by 0.3% in the three months to the end of June compared to the previous quarter, the data showed. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 0.2% increase on a quarterly basis.

McDonald's Earnings
- McDonald’s on Monday reported quarterly earnings and revenue that missed analysts’ expectations as same-store sales declined across every division.
- Earnings per share: $2.97 adjusted vs. $3.07 expected
- Revenue: $6.49 billion vs. $6.61 billion expected
- “At the end of the day, we expect customers will continue to feel the pinch of the economy and a higher cost of living for at least the next several quarters in this very competitive landscape,” McDonald’s U.S. President Joe Erlinger said
- Stock - Went up
- Big plan ????? Bring back the Value Meal (How does that actually help?)

More Inflation News
-Between May 2022 and May 2023, home insurance prices rose an average of 21% at renewal time, according to Policygenius.
- A rise in catastrophic severe weather events contributed to this jump, experts say, and the rate of price increases is not expected to slow. As insurers face higher costs, they pass those along to consumers in the form of pricier premiums.
- Climate change being used as profit machine for insurance companies

Airlines
- U.S. airlines are reducing their capacity through the end of the year in a bid to cool an oversupplied domestic market that has led to lower fares and reduced profits despite strong summer travel demand.
- Jetblue has great quarter BTW - shares up 20% on Tuesday
- Spirit should be reporting in the next week or so...

Bank of America
- Berkshire liquidating some of the holding
- Could be good opp once pressure relieved
- Berkshire sold 18.4 million Bank of America shares for $767 million between July 25 and 29, according to a Monday night regulatory filing. It has sold 71.2 million shares for $3.05 billion since July 17, reducing its holdings in the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender by 6.9% to 961.5 million shares.

Olympics
- River Seine has been an issue as there is concern if it will be clean enough on Tuesday to hold the men's triathlon (not sure if it went off)
- Italian high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi was given the honorable role of flagbearer for his country. During the kickoff to the Olympic Games, as the boat sailed down the Seine River, the Olympic champion proudly waved the Italian flag while standing on the ledge of the boat. Things quickly took a turn when the world-renowned athlete watched his wedding ring slip off of his finger and into the river below.
---- Sobbed and issues a "heartfelt" apology letter to his wife

The POWER and AI
- Something we have talked about is the massive power suck from AI
- concerns are mounting about whether the U.S. can generate enough electricity for the widespread adoption of AI, and whether our aging grid will be able to handle the load.
- One ChatGPT query uses nearly 10 times as much energy as a typical Google search
- in Kansas City, where Meta is building an AI-focused data center, power needs are so high that plans to close a coal-fired power plant are being put on hold.
- Boston Consulting Group estimates demand for data centers will rise 15%-20% every year through 2030, when they're expected to comprise 16% of total U.S. power consumption.

Apple Intelligence
- Apple on Monday released the first version of Apple Intelligence, its suite of artificial intelligence features that will improve Siri, automatically generate emails and images and sort notifications.
- Not for you yet - The new software called Apple Intelligence was released in the developer beta of iOS 18.1.
- It's also available in similar releases for iPad and Mac. It's currently only available to registered Apple developers who pay $99 a year.

Good News - No More Voting
- Trump said: "Christians, get out and vote, just this time. "You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians."
- He added: "I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote," Trump said.

Both Trump and Harris now LOVE Bitcoin
- Trump proposes strategic national crypto stockpile - vows to boost value
- Harris campaign reaches out to major Crypto companies - Coinbase, Ripple - trying to repair their strained relationship

No Kidding!
- Shares of Dexcom tumbled more than 36% in after-hours trading Thursday after the diabetes management company released second-quarter results that missed analysts' expectations for revenue and offered weak guidance.
- Great company - device for type-II diabetes - constant and automatic insulin pump
- - BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!  GLP-1 glucagon-like peptide 1 helping ??? Killing off the new breed of competition?

FORD!!!!!!!!
- Worst day since 2009 on earnings miss (18% on the day)
- Warranty problems building up much more than anticipated (The automaker reported an additional $800 million)

New Search King?
- OpenAI last week - announced a prototype of its own search engine, called SearchGPT, aimed to give users "fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources." The company said it eventually plans to integrate the tool, which is currently being tested with a small group of users, into its viral chatbot, ChatGPT

High End Consumers - Crunch
- Shares in Gucci-owner Kering fell on Thursday, after the luxury group announced a sharp decline in revenue in the first half of the year and issued a weak forecast for the remaining six months of the year.
- The luxury group late on Wednesday announced that its revenue had fallen 11% in the first half of 2024, compared to the same time period a year earlier.
- Decline in most regions with the exception of Japan.

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