S&P Global arrives at its July 28 earnings release in a more complicated position than the one described in last week's trader note — the stock has reversed course, falling 5.4% over the past week to $426.40, wiping out much of the monthly gain that previously put bulls in charge.
The week's selloff is the most notable shift since the July 18 article. The stock is still up about 6% over the past month, but the five-day decline has pulled it back toward levels seen before the recent re-rating. That weakening technical backdrop — flagged in the earlier note via the 365-day relative strength reading and the 50/200-day moving average ratio — now has fresh near-term price action to match it. Peers have moved in the same direction: MCO dropped 9% on the week, MSCI fell 13%, and FDS shed 7%, suggesting sector-wide rotation rather than SPGI-specific pressure. ICE was the outlier, gaining roughly 1%.
Analysts remain firmly constructive, though the target-price trajectory has been choppy. JP Morgan raised its target to $555 on July 20 — the most recent bellwether move — following a cluster of cuts from Morgan Stanley, Barclays, UBS, and RBC on July 7. Since then, Baird and Stifel have also nudged targets higher, and the consensus mean sits at $518.72, implying roughly 22% upside from current levels. The bull case centres on S&P Global's dominant position across ratings, market intelligence, and commodity data, with the Mobility division spin-off seen as a margin catalyst. Bears point to intensifying competition in market data and integration risks, along with uncertainty around how the structural changes affect near-term reported numbers.
Options positioning has drifted slightly more cautious into the print, though not dramatically so. The put/call ratio is running at 0.73, modestly above its 20-day average of 0.63 — a z-score of 0.58 suggests mild rather than extreme hedging demand. Short interest tells no meaningful story here: it has fallen 27% over the past month to just 1.1% of the free float, and borrow availability is essentially uncapped, with the lending pool almost entirely unused.
The July 28 print will test whether S&P Global's core ratings and data franchises are growing fast enough to justify a re-rating back toward analyst targets — or whether the sector selloff of the past week reflects a more durable recalibration of expectations for financial data businesses.
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