Big Tech's AI Bill Comes Due 💸

Welcome back to the Day Trading newsletter 📈

Markets got a double shot of drama in the last 24 hours.

Big Tech's AI spending bill came due after Wednesday's close, and oil punched through $100 a barrel for the first time since May.

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

🛢️ Oil topped $100 a barrel for the first time since May after Houthi rebels attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea. Brent surged more than 6% Thursday morning to around $101 as five Saudi tankers diverted course, spreading supply disruption beyond the Strait of Hormuz to a second chokepoint.

💰️ Super Micro disclosed more than $60 billion in new quarterly orders — and plans to co-build a gigawatt AI data center with SpaceX and xAI. Shares soared 17% in premarket trading Wednesday and closed up more than 20%, as the server maker also raised its gross-margin outlook to 15–17%. CEO Charles Liang announced the SpaceX buildout on X.

🔼 Memory-chip stocks ripped Tuesday, with Micron, Western Digital and Seagate each gaining about 12%. The Roundhill Memory ETF jumped 11% as traders positioned ahead of this week's AI-heavy earnings slate. The rally helped all three major indexes snap three-day losing streaks.

📈 General Motors beat Wall Street on the top and bottom lines, sending the stock up nearly 5% Tuesday. Adjusted earnings of $3.57 a share topped the $3.29 expected on $48 billion in revenue, and GM raised its full-year profit guidance to $12–$14 a share as tariff costs came in manageable.

💸 IBM and ServiceNow proved not every earnings report ends in tears — both rose about 2% after topping profit estimates Wednesday night. ServiceNow earned an adjusted 90 cents a share on $3.99 billion in revenue and raised its full-year subscription outlook; for IBM, the modest pop is a relief after its profit warning cratered the stock 25% earlier this month.

📞 AT&T beat second-quarter expectations, earning an adjusted 65 cents a share versus the 59 cents forecast on revenue of $31.6 billion. The telecom added 432,000 postpaid phone subscribers (well above the roughly 338,500 expected) plus a record 646,000 internet customers across fiber and fixed wireless.

📃 Senate Republicans released an updated draft of the Clarity Act — the long-awaited crypto market-structure bill — with new ethics provisions limiting crypto investments by the president and federal officials. Bitcoin barely moved on the news, trading flat near $66,000 as traders weighed regulatory progress against Middle East risk.

⛽️ GE Vernova raised its full-year guidance after a strong second quarter, with its backlog swelling to $176 billion. The turbine maker — up roughly 70% this year — now expects at least 125 gigawatts of gas equipment under contract by year-end, as AI data centers scramble for electricity faster than anyone can supply it.

Alphabet and Tesla both delivered revenue beats Wednesday night… and both stocks fell anyway.

Alphabet grew revenue 24% to $119.8 billion, ahead of the roughly $117 billion Wall Street expected, with Google Cloud revenue surging 82% to $24.8 billion.

But the market fixated on the other line: quarterly capital spending of $44.9 billion (roughly double a year ago) and a full-year capex forecast raised to $195–205 billion.

All that data-center construction pushed Alphabet's free cash flow negative (to the tune of $5.9 billion) a stunning shift for one of the world's great cash machines, and shares slid nearly 5% after hours as AI spending overshadowed growth at both companies.

Tesla's story rhymed: revenue jumped 26% to $28.2 billion on a second-quarter record of 480,126 deliveries, but adjusted earnings of 33 cents a share badly missed the 51 cents expected, operating margin shrank to 1.4%, and capex more than doubled to $5.8 billion.

The stock fell about 3% after hours.

This is the clearest signal yet that the AI trade has entered a new phase. Investors are no longer rewarding growth if it comes with a blank check attached.

When a company can beat on revenue and still fall, the market is saying the cost of the AI buildout now matters as much as the payoff.

The money is real. Alphabet alone plans to spend more this year on infrastructure than the market value of most S&P 500 companies.

What to watch:

• The rest of mega-cap tech reports in the coming days, and every one of them will now face the same question: where's the return on all this spending?

• Watch, too, the other side of the trade. Super Micro just booked $60 billion in new orders selling the hardware these giants are buying.

The AI spenders are bleeding cash, the AI suppliers are swimming in it.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your research before making any trades.