Q2 earnings season opens this week with two closely watched names. PEP reports Wednesday and DAL follows Thursday. Both face tough conditions — consumer spending is soft and cost pressures remain. Options traders are already positioning early. MSFT borrow costs jumped 131% in a week ahead of its July 30 earnings date.
Short sellers are picking targets. CoreWeave saw short interest hit 28.4% of free float, up nearly 5 percentage points in a week. Bears have been relentless since the AI cloud firm's IPO. Hinge Health drew similar scrutiny. Its SI rose 4.7pp to 18.1% of free float. Meanwhile, Restaurant Brands International saw a sharp unwind. Shorts cut exposure by 5.9 percentage points in seven days.
Analysts turned negative on two consumer staples today. Colgate-Palmolive and International Flavors & Fragrances both faced downgrades on July 3. On the positive side, CrowdStrike target prices edged higher. Consensus stays firmly bullish with 41 Buy ratings.
C-suite selling was heavy this week. AMAT CEO Gary Dickerson filed $56M in stock sales. BABA President J. Michael Evans disclosed a $68M sale filed July 1.
Trump's crypto agenda is shifting focus from Bitcoin to the dollar. Coinbase and Robinhood are both in focus as stablecoin policy takes center stage. Citi forecasts Brent crude could fall to $60 a barrel by Christmas — a bearish signal for energy names like SLB and HAL.
European equities faced pressure from elevated bond yields. The Ukraine–EU $105 billion loan ratification lifted defense stocks. Canada announced a new oil pipeline targeting Asian markets, reducing US dependency — a longer-term structural shift worth watching.
ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
