Earnings, Not Headlines, are Driving This Market

Get your free copy of our Q2 2026 Market Commentary for a closer look at what’s really driving this year’s earnings-fueled rally. It’s An Earnings Market. Here’s the Proof. Through the first half of 2026, investors faced no shortage of reasons for caution—renewed conflict in the Middle East, oil prices spiking, Treasury yields climbing past 4%, and a Federal Reserve under new leadership. Stocks rallied anyway. Our Q3 2026 Market Commentary1 offers our views on why: Corporate earnings have continued to surprise to the upside, often by a lot. First-quarter S&P 500 earnings grew nearly 30% year-over-year, and profit margins reached their highest level in at least a decade. We also look at how a stabilizing labor market, moderating inflation, and a new Fed chairman are shaping the outlook for the second half of the year. Topics in this report include: Why earnings, not speculation, have driven this year’s market gains What record profit margins reveal about corporate resilience How AI infrastructure spending is reshaping free cash flow at mega-cap tech Why a stabilizing labor market and moderating inflation support the outlook What history says about markets in a midterm election year If you have $500,000 or more to invest, request your free copy today. Talk to a Zacks Wealth Advisor today. 1 Zacks Investment Management reserves the right to amend the terms or rescind the free Q3 2026 Market Commentary offer at any time and for any reason at its discretion. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. Zacks Investment Management, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zacks Investment Research. Zacks Investment Management is an independent Registered Investment Advisory firm and acts as an investment manager for individuals and institutions. 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Download GOLD Ace PRO EA for MT4/MT5 (No Grid)

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The two names that carried energy yesterday were sold today. Neither one is in the fund with 'Energy' on the label.

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	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more The AI Trade Everyone Owns Just BLEW UP. The two names that carried energy yesterday were sold today. Neither one is in the fund with 'Energy' on the label. Josh Belanger Aug 4   READ IN APP   The AI trade shot its own power names today. Vistra closed down more than 8%. The Nasdaq ripped 2.6% the same afternoon. Yesterday Vistra was the story inside energy, up 5.2% while the oil names bled. Today the AI trade had a monster session and the stocks that sell it electricity got sold into the rip. The most obvious trade in the AI boom just blew up in broad daylight. Crude cracked another 5% this morning, one day after a called-off strike on Iran. Before the bell, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on TV and put a date on the rest of it. "There is a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the strait," he said. He means the Strait of Hormuz, the tanker chokepoint Iran shut in March. Nothing is signed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was more careful. "There's been progress made in those talks, but not finality yet." Hope was enough. Two sessions pointing the same way, and 10% off the barrel. Same label both days. Opposite money underneath it. The "Energy" Fund Owns 21 Names. Every One Is a Barrel. The desk reads it this way. Energy stopped being one trade. It is two now, and they answer to different bosses. One is the barrel. The other is the electron: the power that runs the data centers, and the gas and reactors behind it. XLE wears the label. It holds 21 positions. Oil, gas, fuel, and the equipment that pulls it out of the ground. Not one utility. Exxon and Chevron alone are 36% of it. Vistra and Constellation, the two names that carried energy yesterday, are top-10 holdings of XLU. The utility fund. Not the energy fund. So money that bought XLE for the AI power theme bought Exxon and Chevron. A fund's name is marketing. What is under the hood is the trade. The electron side has not been paying. Constellation is down more than 20% this year while XLE is up more than 30%. Vistra getting sold on a day like this is the market arguing over who collects the buildout's electricity bill. The desk's call is that the power names collect it. The AI energy trade is on and it runs for years. It is not on inside a fund that owns 21 barrels. Owning the right plays is the whole job. The strait has been shut since March, and every headline since has sent XLE lurching one way and back. That lurch is what the Trading Club works every week with students. Selling put spreads into the knee-jerk, both sides of it. The knee-jerk repeats because the fund keeps trading the barrel. The money keeps moving to the other half of energy, the nuclear and independent power names. Oil is one part of this trade. AI is the other. The fund with "Energy" on the label only ever owned one of them. What to Watch The deal itself. Bessent said one could land today or tomorrow. Nothing is signed. A signed deal pulls the last of the war premium out of crude, and all 21 of those holdings sit on that side. Talks that stall hand it back, and the same fund looks brilliant again. Vistra and Constellation against the AI tape. Today the Nasdaq ripped and both were sold. If the power names start following the AI trade again, the market has decided they collect the electricity bill. If they keep getting sold on big AI days, somebody else does. Whether the pieces keep splitting. The barrel moved the same way two sessions running, and both times the sector split from the inside. Two days is two anecdotes. A month of it is a regime, and the sector label becomes useless as a shortcut. BELANGER TRADING SQUAWK · daily market commentary from the trading desk on what matters on Wall Street Disclaimer: Some of the links above are part of paid promotions. If you take action, we may earn a small commission. The content on BelangerTrading.com, including historical market data, trading strategy documentation, and analytical context, is published for informational and educational purposes only. This is not investment advice, investment recommendations, or personalized guidance. No one at BelangerTrading.com, including Josh Belanger, is a registered investment adviser, and we do not provide investment, tax, or legal advice. Contributors and employees at BelangerTrading.com may use trading strategies or hold positions in securities discussed on this website. We publish historical data and strategy context; contributors may participate in trades based on these strategies, but we do not publish individual trading results or performance. This content is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any particular security or strategy. Your actual results will vary significantly based on numerous factors including timing of entry and exit, execution prices, capital size, position sizing, trading skill and discipline, market conditions, volatility, liquidity, tax treatment, brokerage fees, and other factors beyond your control. Past performance does not guarantee or predict future results. All investments involve risk, and trading strategies may result in substantial loss, including loss of your entire investment. Your investment and trading decisions are entirely yours, and you are solely responsible for them. Before trading, conduct your own due diligence and consult qualified financial, tax, and legal professionals regarding your specific situation.   Restack   © 2026 Josh Belanger 1221 Brickell Dr STE 900, Miami, FL 33131 Unsubscribe

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7 Stocks Positioned for AI's Biggest Spending Boom Yet

🏛 BONUS: What a 4.68% Ten-Year Means for Your Ladder 📐  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

August 04, 2026 AI's biggest spending wave may still be ahead. Our analysts identified 7 companies positioned to benefit from the billions flowing into AI chips, infrastructure, and automation. One builds $40,000 AI accelerator chips designed for broad adoption. Another has a $23 billion robotics backlog, including all 47 distribution centers of a major U.S. retailer. See these companies—and the rest of the list—in 7 AI Stocks to Invest in Today. Free today, August 4th—grab your copy before the paywall goes up. 🏛️ BONUS: What a 4.68% Ten-Year Means for Your Ladder 📐 Rates held near multi-month highs today. Here's what that actually does to the income side of a portfolio. Tonight's Numbers 4.68% — where the 10-year Treasury sat today, near its highest levels since spring, a level that sets the going rate for any new bond-ladder rung you add this month. 3.12% — SCHD's current dividend yield, versus its 3.50% trailing twelve-month average, a reminder that yield moves with price as much as with payouts. 54.2 — the consensus estimate for Wednesday's ISM Services PMI, the next read on whether the economy is still cooling in the orderly way the Fed wants to see. The ten-year Treasury closed out today's session near 4.68%, holding close to its highest levels since late spring. That number does more work than the headline suggests. It's the benchmark against which every new bond purchase, CD renewal, and bond-ladder rung gets priced, so a ten-year sitting near multi-month highs means the next rung you add pays you more than the one you bought back when yields sat closer to 4%. That's the upside of a rate environment that Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues have kept firmly in "higher for longer" territory in recent remarks, one that hasn't been especially kind to bond prices already sitting in a portfolio. For anyone holding older bonds bought when yields were lower, the math cuts the other way: bond prices move inversely to yields, so those older holdings likely show below where you paid if you checked a statement today. That's only a paper problem if you're planning to sell before maturity. Dividend-focused portfolios are living through a related story. SCHD, the widely held income ETF, is currently yielding 3.12%, noticeably below its own trailing twelve-month average of 3.50%. That gap isn't a sign the underlying dividends shrank. It's mostly the flip side of rising share prices: yield is a fraction, and when the price, the denominator, climbs faster than the payout, the numerator, the yield you'd earn buying today goes down even as existing holders keep collecting more. Bank of America's 14% dividend raise last week, its second increase this year, is the kind of payout growth that gets obscured by that math. None of this changes much about what to do between now and September 16, when the Fed's next decision lands. Wednesday's ISM Services print and Friday's jobs report are the two data points worth watching between now and then, not because either will move the Fed on its own, but because both will shape whether the ten-year keeps drifting toward 4.7% or gives some of that move back. It's not a reason to sit on your hands, but it's worth understanding: an income portfolio built to hold through either outcome doesn't need to guess correctly. It just needs the ladder rungs and the payout growth already doing their job, week after week, regardless of what Wednesday or Friday bring. Income Watch Declared: Bank of America raised its quarterly dividend 14% to $0.32 per share, its second increase this year, declared July 24. Ex-dates ahead: A quiet stretch for ex-dividend clustering among the widely held income names we track this week, nothing forces a decision before Friday's jobs report. Yield check: 10-year Treasury: 4.68%. SCHD trailing yield: 3.12%, versus a 3.50% twelve-month average. Tomorrow's Calendar ISM Services PMI, Wednesday 10:00 AM ET — consensus near 54.2, a number that shapes the Fed conversation more than it moves it directly. July jobs report, Friday 8:30 AM ET — the last full employment picture before the Fed's September 16 decision, with wage growth mattering more than the headline count. Is a 4.68% ten-year good news or bad news for how you're building your ladder? Just hit reply, I'd like to know. — Randy Cole, Editor This email may contain paid advertisements and affiliate links. Guardian Financial Publishing may receive compensation if you click a link or make a purchase. The Money Memo is a publication of Guardian Financial Publishing (D/B/A) Stable Financial Publishing | Privacy Policy | Terms | Disclaimer This message was sent as part of your Money Memo subscription. If you did not request this email or believe it was sent in error, please reply directly so our team can review. Subscription Status and Delivery Details Your subscription is confirmed and your delivery preferences are up to date. You are currently receiving content based on the schedule and frequency you selected during registration. If you need to adjust your delivery window, change your email frequency, or pause updates temporarily, reply to this message and our team will process your request within one business day. 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