Stop looking to Big Tech to be the stock market engine. That was the message from earnings last week, with markets now likely needing a helping hand from the White House and the Federal Reserve for gains in traditionally sleepy August trading. 

Markets are looking for direction after last week’s reaction to earnings reports from the largest tech companies suggested a more skeptical reaction to artificial intelligence. That could mean a high bar for Elon Musk’s SpaceX and AI chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, which are both set to report Tuesday. And shareholders of memory player Sandisk can expect more volatility after its numbers Wednesday following a 30% drop over the past month. 

The bigger picture is that huge AI investment pledges are harder to swallow when borrowing costs are rising. With 10-year Treasury yields hovering around 4.7% and the 30-year yield near a 19-year high, it’s hard to see tech resuming its leadership role in the short term. 

That means the focus is on what’s moving bonds. There was some relief to start the week after President Donald Trump told reporters over the weekend that the U.S. would engage in talks with Iran on Monday, soothing oil prices and inflation worries. That comes on top of hopes that a coordinated U.S.-Japan intervention last week to support the yen could relieve the need for Japanese investors to sell Treasuries.

Still, the bond market is nervous amid Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh’s insistence that the central bank will provide less public guidance. How investors react to that policy will face an immediate test with the July jobs report looming Friday, potentially reigniting calls for hikes to interest rates if the labor market proves to be strong. 

With tech temporarily out of fuel as the market motor, look to the White House and the Fed for what will drive action this week.

—Adam Clark

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Elon Musk’s newly public SpaceX is set to report second-quarter results after the close of trading on Tuesday, and investors are anticipating something wild. It’s hard to know what to expect from the commercial space company that also has satellites and AI. The stock will likely be volatile.

• The $1.4 trillion company was a $3 trillion company just a few weeks ago, valued at 35 times estimated 2026 sales, led by the world’s richest human. Cantor Fitzgerald’s Colin Canfield characterized this first quarter as suffering from an “extreme estimate skew.”

• SpaceX reports in three segments: Space, Connectivity, and AI. The launch franchise is readying the huge Starship rocket for commercial service. Starlink, the satellite operations, connects more than 10 million users. The AI business has two data centers: Colossus I in Tennessee and Colossus II in Mississippi.

• The AI business generated first-quarter 2026 revenue of $818 million and an operating loss of $2.5 billion. Capital spending was $7.7 billion. Those are the three numbers to watch. SpaceX signed AI data center rental agreements with Anthropic and Google. The Google agreement hasn’t started yet.

• Canfield expects a solid quarter with better-than-expected earnings guidance. Overall, Wall Street expects revenue of $6.9 billion and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, of $2.1 billion. For the full year, Wall Street projects sales of $39 billion and Ebitda of $17.3 billion.

What’s Next: Investors will likely be looking for guidance from the company on the AI outlook for the rest of the year and into 2027, and on when SpaceX plans to start testing its idea to put low-cost AI computing satellites into orbit using Starship.

—Al Root

Artificial intelligence is the biggest story on Wall Street, but the second is arguably GLP-1s. Computers and medicine have some key parallels in this case. These are capacity-constrained markets with immense pricing power and vast and growing demand. Like AI, GLP-1s are about to get a lot better. 

• Used as weight loss medicines now, tomorrow, they might look more like an everything pill. There is increasing insurance coverage for the medication, new delivery methods, and an explosion of potential uses, including sleep apnea, fatty liver, heart disease, substance addiction, and even Parkinson’s.

Eli Lilly reports second-quarter results this Wednesday. It recently passed Walmart, Verizon Communications, and the rest of Big Pharma in profit power. This year, it’s expected to earn $31 billion, up 36%, and good for 14th place in the S&P 500 index. By 2030, that figure could double.

• Morgan Stanley predicts 2035 GLP-1 sales of $190 billion from diabetes and obesity, meaning 30% penetration by then among obese Americans from 6% last year, and about 10% penetration outside the U.S. Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine peaked at $40 billion. Cancer drugs like Merck’s Keytruda do $50 billion a year.

• Federal law long prevented Medicare, which insures seniors, from paying for drugs intended solely for weight loss. That changed on July 1 with a temporary program with $50 copays for a month’s supply, and a permanent program coming after 2027. More than two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries are overweight or obese.  

What’s Next: While Lilly controls around 60% of the injectables market, Ozempic and Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk has an early 85% share in pills and sales are only beginning to ramp up. Pills are expected to make up a quarter of the market by 2030, and they don’t appear to threaten injectables.

—Jack Hough

Surprisingly strong ticket sales globally for Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man: Brand New Day has strengthened the chances that Hollywood can notch the biggest year since 2018’s record box office sales. It’s already the biggest weekend in domestic box office history and the biggest for Sony.

• The latest in the Spider-Man franchise took in an estimated $355 million in domestic ticket sales, easily surpassing Spider-Man: No Way Home. Rentrak’s Paul Dergarabedian said with Spider-Man and Universal’s The Odyssey in theaters, this weekend’s films generated more than $429 million in domestic ticket sales.

• Studios are on track for a $10 billion year. Hollywood’s year-to-date total of $6.195 billion is up 15.2% compared with 2025. International audiences bought another $573 million of Spider-Man tickets, bringing its estimated global debut to $927 million. Hollywood sold $11.9 billion of tickets domestically in 2018.

• EntTelligence Chief Strategy Officer Steve Buck said Brand New Day eclipsed the previous record held by Spider-Man: No Way Home, drawing an estimated 24.1 million people to theaters and selling more than $100 million in tickets before Friday’s opening.

• The money doesn’t include the novelty items movie theaters were selling, including Spider-Man popcorn buckets ($30 to $35), action tumblers ($25), T-shirts ($29), baseball caps ($25), or socks ($20).

What’s Next: If Spider-Man: Brand New Day ends up beating Avengers: Endgame this weekend, Disney will have a chance to retake the throne when Avengers: Doomsday opens on Dec. 18. Avengers: Endgame returns to theaters on Sept. 25, with seven minutes of bonus footage.

—Janet H. Cho

For the superrich, owning a sports team used to be an ego play. Now, there is money to be made, and billionaires have been snapping up franchises in everything from the National Football League to professional pickleball. In some ways these investments are nothing new.

• Last month, news broke that venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and his family were buying a controlling stake in the Seattle Seahawks for $9.6 billion, a record for an NFL franchise. That deal was the third prominent sports ownership transaction in as many months.

• Wealthy individuals and families have long been interested in owning sports teams out of passion for the sport and the “ego play” that comes with it, according to Ronald Diamond, chairman of Diamond Wealth, a syndicate of about 130 family offices ranging in size from $250 million to $30 billion.

• But family interest in sports investing has risen over the past five-to-seven years to include not only the NFL, MLB, National Basketball League, and National Hockey League but within women’s sports leagues, including basketball and soccer, and emerging leagues for pickleball and volleyball.

• Wealthy U.S. investors are pursuing European soccer leagues. The Guardian recently reported that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos may join a consortium led by Amit Bhatia, the former co-owner of Queens Park Rangers to buy a 30% stake in the Liverpool Football Club. A Bezos representative didn’t respond for comment.

What’s Next: Leagues examine all potential owners of various entities and trusts in families, William Kambas, a partner on the private client and tax team at Withers, says. Formula One racing wants to know who all the owners are so they know one person doesn’t have stakes in two competing teams, he says.

—Abby Schultz

—Newsletter edited by Liz Moyer, Callum Keown, Patrick O’Donnell