Earnings Week Takes Centre Stage as Bears Circle Key Names

The Week That Matters

This week is the heaviest on the earnings calendar. MSFT Microsoft reports fiscal Q4 results Wednesday after the close. The $2.8 trillion company sets the tone for AI sentiment across markets. Options traders are already hedging hard. Microsoft's cost to borrow has doubled in a month. Short interest remains low at 1.2% of free float, but institutional caution is clear.

VRT Vertiv Holdings faces its own scrutiny. The data centre power maker is up 79% year-to-date. Options turned defensive ahead of its July 29 print. Bears are not shorting the stock heavily — but they are buying protection.

Short Sellers Move Fast

HTZ Hertz and CHWY Chewy saw the sharpest short interest jumps of the week. Hertz hit 75% SI % of Free Float. Chewy reached 72.4%. Both face near-term catalysts. WOLF Wolfspeed holds the most extreme position at 80%, with zero shares left to borrow.

Chips Up, Utilities Down

Wall Street turned bullish on semiconductors. Morgan Stanley lifted INTC Intel's target to $84. Oppenheimer raised NXPI NXP Semiconductors to $325. Utility stocks moved the other way. DUK, SO, and XEL all saw targets trimmed — a broad reset driven by rate expectations.

Nordic Insiders Buy Big

In Europe, three insiders at SHB A Handelsbanken filed purchases worth nearly $94M combined. Sweden's Lundbergföretagen also bought $35M worth of SAND Sandvik shares. The same group is building positions across Nordic industrials — one of the clearest insider-buying clusters seen this week globally.