Mega-Cap Earnings Week Meets a Bearish Tape

The Big Picture

The week's dominant theme is earnings. Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Apple all report in the coming days. Their AI spending guidance will set the tone for markets into August. Today's slate is already busy. Procter & Gamble, Boston Scientific, Humana, and General Dynamics all drop numbers this morning. Tariff pressure on margins is the watch item for consumer names.

Bears on the Tape

Options flow is firmly negative across AI and chip names. NVIDIA carries growing hedge pressure despite short interest sitting at just 1.4% of free float. Tesla is the most extreme case — RSI at 27, down 31% year-to-date, with heavy put activity piling in. Short sellers also made a bold move on Chewy, lifting short interest to 81.2% of free float. That's a 15-point jump in a single week.

Zuckerberg Speaks on AI Policy

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back on calls to ban Chinese AI models. He called such a ban "not an effective solution" and raised concerns about regulatory capture. Meta reports earnings this week. The comments land as bearish options bets on the stock have grown notably.

Analysts Lift Targets

Street targets moved higher for PayPal, Visa, and Sherwin-Williams following the earnings season. Corning bucked the trend with a target cut. SK Hynix warned that AI-driven memory demand could push up laptop and phone prices — a sign that component costs are rising across the supply chain.

Insiders Sell

Board-linked sellers filed over $23M in Liquidia disposals. A Singapore-based 10% owner of Victoria's Secret filed a $25.7M sale. Selling activity remains concentrated in biotech and retail names.