10 Stocks Worth Watching This Week: SpaceX's Trial by Fire and Jobs Friday — August 3–7, 2026

The market enters August with momentum and a loaded calendar. Last week the Dow and S&P 500 each gained about 1% and the Nasdaq rose 1.6%, capping a volatile July in which the S&P slipped 0.1%, the Nasdaq fell 3.2%, and the Dow eked out a fourth straight monthly gain. Amazon's 15% post-earnings surge on cloud strength did much of the heavy lifting, and the Federal Reserve's decision to hold rates at 3.50%–3.75% — against cooler inflation data and retreating oil prices — kept the soft-landing trade alive. Friday's closes: S&P 500 at 7,489.72, Nasdaq at 25,373.85, Dow at 52,485.03.

This week the tape gets three tests at once:

• The heaviest earnings stretch of the season. More than 1,600 companies report, including Palantir (tonight), AMD and SpaceX (Tuesday), Disney and McDonald's midweek, and Eli Lilly (Thursday). So far, roughly 85% of reporting S&P 500 companies have beaten estimates, with aggregate profits tracking up more than 47%.
• Jobs Friday. July nonfarm payrolls land Friday morning — the single biggest input into whether the Fed's hold turns into a September cut. ISM manufacturing (Monday) and Fed speakers Lisa Cook and Mary Daly (Wednesday) fill in the picture.
• An oil-and-geopolitics crosscurrent. OPEC+'s decision to add 188,000 barrels per day of August production has pushed crude to near five-month lows, stripping out the geopolitical risk premium even as NATO defense budgets keep re-rating the contractor complex.

Here are the 10 names we're watching, split by timeframe: swing trades keyed to this week's catalysts, long-term conviction plays that this week's news flow strengthens, and thematic positions for the macro backdrop.

1. Palantir Technologies (PLTR) — Swing/Catalyst

Last close: $123.06 | Reports tonight, August 3, after the bell

Palantir opens the week's AI earnings gauntlet tonight at 5:00 p.m. ET. The Street expects roughly $1.81 billion in Q2 revenue — up 81% year-over-year — and EPS near $0.35, up 119%. Those are extraordinary growth rates for a company at this scale, and they are the reason the stock trades at a valuation with zero tolerance for a guidance stumble. U.S. commercial AI adoption and government/defense contracts are compounding simultaneously, and acceleration in either book validates the multiple for another quarter. Watch the full-year guide more than the print itself — the market is priced for another beat-and-raise, not merely a beat.

This week's catalyst: Q2 earnings tonight, 5:00 p.m. ET webcast.
Key risk: Valuation. An in-line quarter with conservative guidance could trigger a double-digit drawdown. This is a trade around an event, not an entry for the patient.

2. SpaceX (SPCX) — Swing/Catalyst

Last close: $108.37 | First-ever public earnings Tuesday, August 4

The most consequential event of the week. SpaceX reports its first earnings as a public company Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. ET — two days before a lockup expiry releases 911.5 million pre-IPO shares, roughly $116 billion of potential supply at current prices. The stock has been sold hard into the event: down nearly 40% from its post-IPO high and now below its $135 IPO price. The fundamentals are a barbell. Starlink is genuinely profitable — $1.19 billion in Q1 operating profit on $3.26 billion in revenue — while the AI segment lost $2.47 billion in the same quarter, and the company lost nearly $5 billion in 2025 overall. The Street has not blinked: 27 of 28 covering analysts rate it a buy, with consensus targets near $231. This week decides whether the lockup is a cliff or a clearing event.

This week's catalyst: Maiden earnings call Tuesday; lockup expiry Thursday, August 6.
Key risk: Massive share supply meeting a still-unprofitable income statement. Expect violent moves in both directions; size accordingly.

3. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) — Swing/Catalyst

Last close: $476.15 | Reports Tuesday, August 4, after the bell

The most important semiconductor print of the week. Consensus sits at roughly $11.2–11.3 billion in revenue (up 46–47% year-over-year), adjusted EPS around $1.61–1.67, and gross margin near 56%. The bull case writes itself: last week's hyperscaler earnings confirmed AI capex is still accelerating — Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta all ratified bigger spending — and AMD's MI-series accelerators are the clearest second source to Nvidia on the market. A beat-and-raise here re-rates the entire AI supply chain into the fall.

This week's catalyst: Q2 earnings Tuesday after the close; the data-center segment guide is the number that moves the stock.
Key risk: China export and tariff exposure, plus the margin cost of competing with Nvidia at scale. Expectations are elevated after the stock's run.

4. Nvidia (NVDA) — Long-Term Conviction

Last close: $200.75

Nvidia doesn't report this week — and that's precisely the setup. Every data point that lands between now and its own print gets marked against Nvidia's forward demand curve, and last week delivered the strongest possible read: Amazon's blowout cloud quarter and a unified hyperscaler message that AI infrastructure spending is ramping, not plateauing. Deutsche Bank lifted its target to $220 on exactly that logic. The structural thesis is unchanged — Nvidia remains the tollbooth on the AI buildout, with networking, CUDA software lock-in, and full-system sales reinforcing the accelerator moat. This week's AMD and Palantir results are effectively free due diligence on the demand environment.

This week's catalyst: AMD's data-center guidance Tuesday as a direct demand signal; ISM and payrolls for the macro bid.
Key risk: Concentration. The AI trade is now a crowded macro position, and any capex-digestion signal hits Nvidia hardest.

The rest of this briefing is free — it just requires a free AlphaBriefing account: the GLP-1 giant reporting into a 7% pullback Thursday, the defense contractor with freshly raised guidance and a $250 Street target, the nuclear operator powering the AI buildout, and our gold, rare-earth, and airline positioning for Jobs Friday.

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