August 11th Pre-Market Brief

Good Morning

Oil poked at $90 overnight and thought better of it, futures are a shade green, and yesterday brought the least volume we have seen all year.

Everybody is saving their powder for CPI tomorrow morning. After the last few weeks I will happily take a boring open. Boring is underrated.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. Traffic Through Hormuz Kept Falling While Oil Fell With It

Six vessels moved through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, per Reuters. The ten day average is eleven. Before the war it ran between 130 and 140. Brent hit $90 overnight and then dropped under $88 on comments from Pakistani and Qatari officials, which means oil is pricing the negotiation and ignoring the waterway.

2. Hiring Plans Climbed In The Same Month Hiring Slowed

Small business optimism printed 99.8 this morning, the best since August 2025, with hiring plans at their strongest level since October 2022. Private hiring has now slowed six weeks running and Friday's payroll report missed. September rate hike odds moved to roughly even, up again from Monday. Soft labor data normally argues against a hike, and this morning handed the hawks a counterexample.

3. Intel Sold Stock At A Discount And Got Five Times The Demand

Intel priced its upsized $20 billion offering at $95, below Monday's close, and drew more than $100 billion in orders. Nvidia lined up $500 billion of outside capital for data centers the day before. Riot signed a twenty year lease on 191 megawatts from its Rockdale campus, reportedly worth $9.1 billion to Anthropic. Capital is arriving faster than the buildout can absorb it, and the contract that gets paid for now is the power.

Market Overview

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Stock Spotlight (pre-market)

Riot Platforms $RIOT ( ▼ 5.46% )  

Up sharply on a twenty year lease supplying 191 megawatts to what the company called a leading frontier AI lab. Bloomberg named Anthropic near $9.1 billion. Shares fell after hours on the earnings release and reversed once the counterparty was reported.

Apple $AAPL ( ▲ 0.45% )  

Bloomberg reports the glass iPhone redesign is still on for 2027, contradicting the Jefferies check behind yesterday's downgrade. That device premium was the offset to rising memory costs. Two sourced checks, opposite conclusions.

On Holding $ONON ( ▲ 3.28% )  

Down hard on a second quarter sales miss and a cut to the top end of full year revenue guidance. On trades on its growth rate, so the multiple and the estimate reset together.

Hims & Hers Health $HIMS ( ▲ 0.57% )  

Lower on an $86.3 million net loss against a profit a year ago. Revenue grew thirty-eight percent, but US revenue grew seventeen and the rest came from the Eucalyptus deal that closed in June. Citi flagged execution risk on a fourth quarter carrying most of the year.

Rocket Lab $RKLB ( ▼ 3.37% )  

Lower after the first Neutron rocket slipped to a fourth quarter pad delivery, against May guidance to fly this year. CEO Peter Beck said the window is narrowing. Neutron is the 2027 revenue line.

First Solar $FSLR ( ▲ 3.21% )  

Higher on a Baird upgrade to outperform, target to $318 from $205. Baird cites the removal of the Section 232 overhang, which should restart 2029 and 2030 bookings at better pricing. No company news attached.

What to Watch

Upcoming IPO’s?
MarketBeat did an excellent job on this free IPO guide on IPO’s happening this year.

AI Infrastructure Earnings (After The Bell)
CoreWeave, Super Micro and Lumentum report tonight. The cost side is the underrated variable here. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan both expect memory prices to stay elevated for another two years, and Super Micro carries that in its input costs. Gross margin guidance matters more than the revenue line.

CPI (Wednesday, 8:30 AM ET)
Consensus is 3.4 annual, down from 3.5. The options market is pricing a smaller move for the S&P on the day than its two year average, which is why Wells Fargo is calling hedges cheap into a hot print. Nuveen's read is the one worth keeping: the tell is whether the gap between CPI and the Fed's preferred inflation gauge starts closing, not which way the tenth breaks.

- John

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