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| What are this week’s market risks or opportunities? |
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| The S&P 500 Equal Weight index set a record high in the final week of July, while Microsoft is down 5.9% year to date. |
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| Gains are coming from more places than the usual handful. |
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| Even the AI bloc stopped moving as one. Meta and Alphabet fell on higher spending plans, while Microsoft's spending approach and Amazon's margin expansion landed well. Four names in the same trade, two punished and two rewarded. |
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| With growth at 1.5% and the Fed holding at 3.50% to 3.75%, investors have stopped paying for promises and started paying for proof. |
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| So the money is turning up elsewhere: healthcare, where Eli Lilly is up 46.7% this year; energy, where Exxon is up 48.1% and yields 3.5%; and memory over compute, with Micron up 719.8% over a year. |
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| The index is no longer one trade. |
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| Which trades should I consider? |
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| Small caps are passing the same proof test, with analysts marking small caps up faster than the giants. According to Canaccord, second-quarter earnings estimate revisions rose 4% for small caps against 3% for large caps. |
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| Our ProPicks AI Small Cap Sprinters strategy is up nearly 28% year to date. The more useful number: 13 of its 20 holdings are up more than 5% this month, in the first week alone. |
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| Out front is Inspire Medical Systems (INSP), up over 27% month to date, a medical device name that lines up with the healthcare strength above. |
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| Twenty names, one list, each with the model's rationale for why it is held. |
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| Should I consider this trade? |
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| SpaceX is where the proof test gets hardest. Its first public quarter shows one strong business funding two expensive bets. |
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| Starlink is the business, bringing in $4.3 billion of revenue while holding ARPU at $66 and doubling subscribers to 12 million. |
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| Starship and AI compute are the bets, and the AI side arrived earlier than expected, with $2.6 billion of revenue, up 247%, on $14.1 billion of newly signed contracts. |
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| The cost is the other side of it. |
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| Capex ran $18.4 billion in the quarter against $3.5 billion of operating cash flow for the entire half, and the AI segment only shows positive EBITDA once $1.9 billion of depreciation is added back, which is the real cost of running a compute business. |
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| That leaves a lot to prove for a company that listed near 92 times sales when mega-cap peers average 12. |
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| The first wave of insider shares came unlocked Thursday, more than the entire public float, with short interest near 32%, so for now the price will follow who is free to sell. |
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| Data correct to 05.08.2026 |
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