VIDEO: What We’re Watching as a Flurry of Holdings Prepares to Report

Chris Versace previews an unusually busy week for markets and the Portfolio, with nine holdings reporting earnings alongside the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting.

Easing U..S-Iran tensions have pushed oil lower and lifted stocks, but Versace remains cautious, noting one strong session doesn’t confirm a rebound. He’s watching whether the S&P 500 can hold above its 50-day moving average and whether the Nasdaq’s technical picture improves, with Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) all reporting this week. Earnings from Welltower (WELL), PACCAR (PCAR), Boeing (BA) and Waste Management (WM) gets things started first.

Ahead of Palantir’s (PLTR) earning’s next week, he discusses what we’ll be listening for this week as more than a few hundred companies report. Ongoing AI adoption and usage trends will be a big part of that, not only for PLTR shares but others in the Portfolio as well. Finally, Versace previews an upcoming podcast with Neostellar Capital (NSLR) CEO Mark Klein that we’ll be sharing with you later this week.

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AAPL, AMZN, BA, META, MSFT, NSLR, PCAR, PLTR, WELL, and WM.

Transcript

Hey everyone, Chris Versace here. Monday, July 27th — the start of an extremely, extremely busy week for the market and for the portfolio. If you read Friday’s weekly roundup, you know we have nine companies reporting this week alone. We’ve got the Fed meeting, and we’ve got a host of other companies reporting as well. The market is going to sit back and digest all of this, as will we.

As we go through it, we’ll obviously pay close attention to what the Fed has to say about the path forward for monetary policy. I’ll say that as we exited last week, the growing expectation was for incrementally hawkish comments. Given weekend developments between the US and Iran, and the fact that President Trump appears to be giving diplomacy a chance, we’re seeing a drop in oil and a rebound in the market today, and that’s lifting a number of positions in the portfolio rather nicely.

But as I discussed briefly in our opening comments this morning, all these things we have going on this week could either deliver a positive test of key support levels for the S&P 500, or perhaps not. That is why we’re starting the week off a little cautiously — even though some of the stocks we talked about, Alphabet and American Express last week, and arguably even Axon, are moving higher today.

Remember, one day doesn’t necessarily give us a firm sense of a rebound. Ask anybody — ask any kid who’s learning how to draw — it takes at least two data points to draw a line. The odds are we’ll want to see more than that, because in addition to the S&P 500, we also have to keep our eye on the Nasdaq. As Bob shared last week when he and I spoke, and shared that conversation with you, he’s a little concerned about the Nasdaq. It’s at the lower end of its range, and we have a very, very big week coming for some key constituents in both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite — you know them better as Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and of course Apple.

Coming off what we saw last week with Google, we saw the reaction. Even though the company delivered what I’d call robust cloud growth — that’s an understatement — talked about the upsizing of its Google Cloud backlog — another understatement — and showed continued progress on margins, we’re going to want to see all of the hyperscalers repeat something similar, or close to it, because that could help push down concerns over rising capital spending levels. Remember, the market is in a very volatile state, between leveraged ETFs and other factors. We’re going to take our time, work through each data point and each earnings report, and watch where stocks settle so we can position the portfolio — not for the next day, not for the next week,

arguably not even the next month, but really the next several months, given our long-term perspective. So we’ll be reviewing all the earnings we have this week, which begins after today’s market close with Welltower, continues tomorrow with PACCAR and Boeing, and — I believe — Waste Management after the close. That’s all before we get into the other hyperscalers, Apple’s earnings, and a few others later in the week. It’s going to be frenetic.

But we’re going to take our time, as we always do, to really get to the heart of what’s going on rather than simply rely on the headlines. Doing that lets us take stock of where we are, what we’re looking for, and the potential catalysts, so we can make smarter, longer-term decisions. Will we be keeping an eye on the technicals? We will.

And if we come out of this week with the S&P 500 back above its 50-day moving average on a sustained basis, and we see improving dynamics for the Nasdaq Composite, that will be constructive. We’ll also want to watch various key technical indicators for the portfolio’s holdings as we weigh any next move — whether with Alphabet, American Express, or others in the portfolio. So that’s our roadmap for the week.

Some other things we’ll be watching over the next couple of weeks: we’ll get new construction spending data, and we’ll look at that relative to United Rentals — if it warrants adjusting that position, we will. We’ll also be paying close attention as earnings widen out across various sectors. We’re going to keep listening for comments on AI adoption and expanding usage.

Part of that obviously feeds back into our views on the hyperscalers and the chip companies — here we’re talking about Nvidia, Broadcom, and Marvell. There were some positive data points this morning, particularly for Marvell and Broadcom; please check our opening comments on that. We also want to keep gauging that overall rising adoption and expanding usage as we think about Palantir’s shares.

There have been a lot of questions about Palantir. We talked about this a while ago — that the shares seem to be range-bound. The question for us is: what will it take to break them out of that range? Normally we’d say rising backlog levels or remaining performance obligations, higher guidance, and — of course, in this environment — a beat-and-raise quarter. Now, Palantir reports next Monday, so we’ll be fine-tuning our thinking on that this week as we collect any and all comments — as I mentioned — about AI adoption and expanding usage. To us, that remains the key factor for the whole “AI trade,” as folks call it.

And as we’ve explained several times, AI adoption is one thing, but to us, the longer-term focus has to be on the expanding usage of what people can do with these various AI tools and agents, and as we move toward inference. So we’re going to take a patient, longer-term view. Our belief is that AI adoption will keep rising and usage will keep expanding, but we’re going to continue to check that. And if we need to make any positioning changes to the portfolio, you know we’ll follow the data ,rather than relying on our emotions or making a subjective move.

So that’s our plan for the week. I’m also happy to say we should have a great Stocks & Markets podcast this week with Mark Klein, CEO of Neostellar. I know some folks have gotten a little frustrated with that position — there have been a couple of call-outs about rising expenditure levels tied to the move to this externally managed structure. We’re going to sort all of that out with Mark and understand: are those just one-time items, or is this a lasting change? And if it is a change, do we need to reorient our thinking and our price target?

We’ll also talk with him about some of the holdings in the Neostellar portfolio, and about how OpenAI — even though it tends to weigh on the stock from time to time — isn’t their largest position, and will likely move down in the pecking order, from number two to maybe number three or four, given some of their other investments. So that’s what we’ll be watching this week. It’s going to be busy. Please be sure to check your emails and alerts; we want to make sure you’re getting our latest thoughts. And if we make any moves with the portfolio, we want you right there with us.

Thanks for watching.