Palantir goes "otherworldly" 🔮

Welcome back to the Day Trading newsletter 📈

The Dow closed at a record high Monday as oil plunged on renewed Iran peace hopes. After the bell, Palantir delivered the AI software quarter of the year.

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

🛢️ Oil plunged about 5% Monday after President Trump said he called off a planned strike on Iran and peace talks resumed. WTI settled at $80.34 and Brent at $83.77, unwinding a chunk of July's 20% war-premium surge in one session. Cheaper crude also eases the inflation math ahead of the Fed's September meeting.

💰️ AstraZeneca is in talks to merge with Bristol Myers Squibb in a deal that would create a roughly $400 billion pharma giant, the Financial Times reported. AstraZeneca sank about 7% in London as analysts called the logic "perplexing," and any deal would face heavy antitrust scrutiny over the companies' overlapping cancer drugs. 

🏭️ U.S. manufacturing just grew at its fastest pace in more than four years: the ISM Manufacturing PMI hit 55.6 in July. Production jumped to 58.5, and the employment index swung into expansion after 33 straight months of contraction. The wrinkle: the prices index stayed elevated at 71.1, so input costs are still climbing.

📊 AI infrastructure stocks kicked off August with a bang: CoreWeave jumped 15% and Nebius climbed more than 13% Monday. The buying helped push the Dow to a record close and the Nasdaq up 2.1%, as traders rotated back into the AI trade after last week's earnings sorted winners from losers.

🎮️ GameStop shares slid after the company agreed to swap $1.4 billion of convertible notes for new stock. The deal wipes out the debt without spending a dime of cash — but shareholders absorb the dilution, and GameStop even warned that noteholders may short the stock during the 35-trading-day pricing window.

🤖 Alibaba's Hong Kong shares closed 7% higher after it unveiled Qwen3.8-Max, its biggest AI model yet at 2.4 trillion parameters. The company says the model beats rival Chinese systems on several benchmarks while cutting inference costs — a reminder that the AI trade isn't just an American story.

💵 Bitcoin sat out Monday's rally, hovering near $64,000 even as stocks ripped. Strategy added to the unease, disclosing Monday that it sold another 1,638 BTC for roughly $105 million under its new "Digital Credit Capital Framework." When the market's most famous bitcoin buyer keeps selling, traders pay attention.

🎬️ IMAX stock closed above $50 for the first time ever as Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" keeps smashing records. The film pulled in $44.7 million on IMAX screens in its third weekend (the format's biggest third weekend ever) after powering IMAX to its highest-grossing month in company history in July.

Palantir reported second-quarter revenue of $1.94 billion, up 93% from a year ago and well above the $1.80 billion analysts expected, with adjusted earnings of 41 cents a share versus 35 cents forecast.

The engine was U.S. commercial revenue (sales to American businesses) which soared 149% year over year to $764 million, while U.S. government revenue grew 90% to $809 million.

The company raised its full-year revenue guidance to roughly $8.15 billion: an 82% growth rate, its largest-ever guidance raise, and about $1 billion above where its forecast started the year.

CEO Alex Karp called the sales momentum "otherworldly," and the stock jumped double digits in extended trading, at one point up nearly 15%.

This is the clearest evidence yet that corporate AI spending is translating into actual software revenue, not just chips and data centers.

After last week's earnings sorted Big Tech into AI winners (Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet) and laggards (Apple, Meta), Palantir just showed the same divide is coming for the software layer: companies that can prove AI revenue get rewarded, instantly.

The flip side: Palantir trades at one of the richest valuations in the market, priced as if 90%+ growth continues indefinitely, so the bar keeps rising with the stock.

What to watch: 

• The AI report cards keep coming: AMD and newly public SpaceX both report Tuesday after the close, with SpaceX delivering its first earnings as a public company.

• Then Friday's July jobs report lands ahead of a live September Fed meeting.

• And watch whether Palantir can hold anything close to 149% commercial growth as its comparisons get tougher from here.

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