Markets Hold Breath as Earnings Season Peaks

The Week That Matters Most

This is the biggest earnings week of the year. Over 1,500 companies report globally between July 25 and July 31. The headliners are MSFT, AMZN, META, AAPL, and QCOM. All report by Thursday. KO and SPGI kick off Tuesday morning. F and SBUX follow later in the week. Markets are on edge. Options traders are split. Bulls and bears are both loading up — especially in semiconductors.

Short Sellers Show No Fear

Bears are adding exposure, not retreating. Hertz short interest hit 75% of free float. Chewy reached 72.4%. Both have near-zero shares available to borrow. Wolfspeed sits at 80.2% SI % of FF with zero availability. Columbia Financial saw the most dramatic move — short interest jumped 22 percentage points in a single week. That is a rare surge for a regional bank. Micron is drawing two-way options flow. It is up 247% year-to-date, and traders are divided on what comes next.

Oil Tops $100, Bonds Rattled

Brent crude crossed $100 per barrel. The move is driving a global bond sell-off. Inflation expectations are resetting. That backdrop adds pressure to rate-sensitive stocks and complicates the earnings picture for consumer names like Starbucks and Procter & Gamble.

Analysts Lift Targets Selectively

Analysts raised targets on Thermo Fisher, Honeywell, and Vistra Corp. All 18 analysts covering Vistra rate it a buy. Verizon and Charter Communications saw targets cut. Telecom is clearly out of favour. The broader analyst shift toward energy and industrials aligns with the oil price breakout — a macro theme now running through multiple data sets simultaneously.