July 24th Pre-Market Brief

oil lower and stock futures creeping up

Author

J.L. Bernstein
July 24, 2026

Good Morning

Oil finally backed off and futures are up, which is a nice change after the week we just had. Trump saying he's close to a decision on Iran with no deadline attached.

Second losing week in a row either way, so I'll take the bounce…. hopefully a green close into this weekend.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. Oil Sold Off. Iran Closed The Off-Ramp.

Brent is back near 97 and JPMorgan calls it weekend profit taking. Overnight Iran rejected the ceasefire the Iraqi prime minister brought to Tehran, refusing any deal that leaves Hormuz unresolved. Officials there told the New York Times what follows a US strike: Tel Aviv hit directly, and the Houthis ordered to close Bab el-Mandeb to all shipping, widening today's Saudi-only embargo. Oil is priced for a quiet weekend. Tehran just declined to give one.

2. Intel Says The AI Build Needs More CPUs

Intel grew revenue at its fastest pace since 2011 and the stock is up premarket. On the call, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said GPU and CPU counts in AI systems have reached parity and are tilting toward CPUs, with double digit server chip growth running into 2028. His stated problem is supply, with shortages in wafers, memory and substrates against orders already in hand. Most models send the AI dollar to GPUs, and Intel just said a growing share lands elsewhere.

3. The AI Buildout Is Getting Expensive To Borrow For

Meta is shopping a twelve billion dollar Texas data center at yields above seven percent. Nine months ago it funded the twenty seven billion Hyperion project forty basis points cheaper. Same borrower, same kind of asset, higher price. Germany's ten year yield is at its highest since 2011 and France cleared four percent for the first time since 2009, so the cost of building is rising everywhere at once.

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Stock Spotlight (pre-market)

Intel $INTC ( ▼ 2.33% )  
put up 16.1 billion in revenue with adjusted earnings of 42 cents, both above estimates, and guided the current quarter higher. Shares are up premarket.

American Express $AXP ( ▼ 2.27% )  
fell premarket on a revenue miss of about seventy million against a 19.7 billion base. Underneath it, US consumer billed business grew 11 percent and the CEO said momentum is running ahead of plan, with Millennials and Gen Z the fastest growing cohort. The stock is being sold on a rounding error while the spending data accelerates.

Oracle $ORCL ( ▼ 4.61% )  
Won a Pentagon software contract worth nearly $7 billion over as much as ten years. It consolidates the military's on premises licenses under one vendor, so this is share taken from rivals and locked in for a decade.

Tenet Healthcare $THC ( ▲ 1.88% )  
Earned $6.12 a share against the $4.26 analysts expected and raised its full year outlook. A beat that wide points to volume, and hospital volume tells you whether people are still using care they could put off.

Amkor Technology $AMKR ( ▼ 2.45% )  
Signed a multiyear $1.5 billion agreement with Nvidia covering advanced packaging and testing. Packaging is the assembly step that turns finished chips into usable parts, and Nvidia committing that cash years in advance tells you where it expects the constraint to sit.

Charter Communications $CHTR ( ▼ 11.57% )  
Missed on core profit and free cash flow, then reaffirmed its capital spending plans through 2029. Same setup the market punished in tech this week: spending locked in, returns unproven. The capex question reaches well past AI.

What to Watch

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

Fed Decision (Wednesday, 2:00 PM ET)
Markets put roughly 36 percent on a hike Wednesday, up from 13 percent a week ago. Polymarket traders now have two hikes as the most likely outcome for the full year at 39 percent. The question moved from whether to how many, and a hold Wednesday does nothing to the second one.

CXMT Debut (Monday, Shanghai)
China's largest memory chipmaker raised 8.6 billion and lists Monday, and investors sold Chinese tech this week to fund it. The part that matters here: Beijing told CXMT to prioritize domestic output, which pulls it out of the supply deals US memory names were chasing. Less foreign supply in a market already short memory is a tailwind for Micron $MU.

Megacap Earnings (Next Week)
Microsoft, Amazon and Meta report into a tape that just sold Alphabet for raising spending. Capital spending guidance now carries more weight than the quarter itself. Whoever reports first sets the language the other two have to answer.


- John

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Note: This newsletter is intended for informational purposes only. This edition is in partnership with MarketBeat.