August 12th Pre-Market Brief

Good Morning

inflation report landed exactly where everyone said it would, right down to the decimal. Futures liked it, yields easing this AM, and the odds of a rate hike next month came down.

Paid four dollars a gallon last night to fill up, so I'm not throwing a parade. But a calm print in August will do just fine.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. The Fed Probably Holds Next Month. The Hike Just Moved Back.

July inflation matched forecasts on every line, and traders now put September odds at 58 percent for no move. But the same market still sees better than even odds of a hike by the end of October. Energy did the cooling in this report, with gasoline down almost three percent on the month. A gallon runs four dollars this morning against three eighty-seven a month ago.

2. CoreWeave Booked $104 Billion And Meta Wants The Same Business

Revenue doubled to $2.6 billion, operating income came in near double the estimate, and the stock is up sharply premarket. Backlog stands at $104 billion, before another $25 billion in third-quarter commitments. Meta added $21 billion to its CoreWeave spend this quarter while publicly weighing whether to rent out its own capacity. SpaceX already leases compute to Anthropic and Google.

3. Oil Slipped After The World's Energy Watchdog Cut Its Demand Forecast

The International Energy Agency lowered its 2026 outlook by another 510,000 barrels a day this morning, saying high fuel prices are pushing buyers away. Brent touched ninety overnight and sits back under eighty-nine, even after an attack on a cargo ship near Yemen and a US strike on a container ship in the Gulf of Oman hours later. Global oil in storage is the thinnest since April 2025. Softer demand is what is holding this price down, not progress on reopening Hormuz.

Market Overview

Today’s Sponsor

The Next Breakout Might Be in Your Pocket

Everyone’s hunting for the next Unicorn.

The type of “category disruptor” that grows fast and turns early believers into big winners.

59,000+ investors think that Mode Mobile could be one of those rare finds.

Americans spend 4 ½ hours on their phones daily, and Mode Mobile is monetizing that screentime. With $1B+ earned by over 490M customers and 32,481% revenue growth, Mode’s EarnPhone is turning smartphones into income generating assets.

Their previous raises sold out, and the company is now offering pre-IPO shares at $0.52/share with up to 20% bonus, exclusive to early investors.

Being early is everything, and this window is still open.

>> Review the offer before it closes

^{*Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com.}

^{Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.}

^{The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.}

Stock Spotlight (pre-market)

Super Micro $SMCI ( ▲ 0.45% )  

Higher on a fourth quarter beat and first quarter guidance well clear of the street. The company guided revenue to $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion against consensus near $11.68 billion, with adjusted earnings of $1.01 to $1.10 against 76 cents.

Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 0.02% )  

Higher after Jensen Huang said on X the residual value backstop in Monday's $500 billion financing partnership would run to about a quarter of any given project. The original release left the figure open ended, and Nvidia's credit default swaps had run to their highest level of the year.

Nebius $NBIS ( ▲ 4.95% )  

Higher after second quarter EBITDA, revenue and gross margins all beat estimates. The stock is up more than 150 percent over the past year and just cleared a bar CoreWeave raised a few hours earlier.

Cava $CAVA ( ▼ 1.25% )  

Higher on second quarter earnings of 19 cents against 18 expected and revenue of $368.4 million against $361 million. Customer traffic drove the beat. Menu pricing held, which is the line that separates a volume story from a cost pass through in fast casual.

Workday $WDAY ( ▼ 1.59% )  

Lower with Salesforce, Palantir and ServiceNow as money moved toward the hardware names that reported overnight.

What to Watch

Want to Know about this years upcoming IPO’s?
MarketBeat did an excellent job on this free IPO guide on IPO’s happening this year.

EIA Petroleum Report (10:30 AM ET)
Crude stocks are already the lowest since 1983, so the crude line is not the tell. Refining capacity is the constraint right now and that is what sets gasoline and diesel. Product inventories are what feeds next month's inflation print.

Cisco, Coherent, StubHub And Cerebras (After The Bell)
Lumentum's beat this morning raised the bar for Coherent tonight. Cisco is the enterprise networking read rather than the hyperscaler one. After tonight the AI earnings calendar is effectively empty until Nvidia, so this morning's bid loses its supply of fresh catalysts.

- John

Today’s Sponsor

How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more