Top 10 Stocks to Watch — Friday, August 28: AI Earnings Aftershock

The AI mega-earnings wave that redrew valuations across software and semiconductors this week hits its final trading session Friday, with the market's attention divided between the aftershocks of Thursday's prints and the biggest Fed wildcard of the year. S&P 500 futures opened fractionally lower (–0.12%), Nasdaq futures off –0.30%, the Dow ticking up slightly. The tape is cautious — and for good reason.

At 10 a.m. ET, Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote. With three Fed dissents at the July 29 meeting — Hammack, Kashkari, and Logan all voting for a hike, the first three-way split since 2016 — markets are pricing roughly 1-in-3 odds of a September rate hike. Warsh's speech is the tiebreaker. Goldman Sachs flagged the dollar as the primary vehicle for the move; expect amplified cross-asset volatility through lunch, with the signal carrying into the open next week.

The backdrop: this was the most consequential earnings week of the summer for AI-exposed software and semiconductors. Salesforce (+22.6%), CrowdStrike (+20.5%), Veeva Systems (+15.2%), Zscaler (+10%), ServiceNow (+10%), and Nvidia (+8.7%) all gapped up Thursday in a coordinated beat-and-raise wave. Friday's question is where the buying continues, where the digestion stalls, and where fresh catalysts open new entries.

1. $ESTC — Elastic N.V.

Pre-market (Aug 28): ~$98.50 | Prior close: $83.74 | Pre-mkt change: +17.63%

Elastic is Friday's freshest catalyst — the stock gapping more than 17% in pre-market trade after a beat-and-raise quarter reported after Thursday's close. The move represents a breakout above the stock's prior range; at $98.50, Elastic is trading at levels not seen in over a year. The company's AI Search and SIEM platform is increasingly positioned as infrastructure in the enterprise AI build-out, and the guidance revision suggests its "search everywhere" thesis is gaining real traction as enterprises integrate large language models into workflows.

Watch for: Whether the opening print holds above the $95 level on first-hour volume. A fade below $92 signals institutional distribution into the gap; a consolidation above $96–97 with declining sell pressure sets up continuation through the session.

2. $AFRM — Affirm Holdings

Pre-market (Aug 28): ~$87.75 | Prior close: $77.49 | Pre-mkt change: +13.24%

Affirm is gapping 13% on what appears to be a strong earnings surprise. The buy-now-pay-later sector has been sentiment-whipped for two years, which means a genuine beat at this scale carries credibility beyond the quarter's numbers alone — it's a data point for the bull thesis on consumer credit underwriting quality. The central debate heading into the print was delinquency trajectory; a gap of this magnitude suggests the results cleared that bar decisively.

Watch for: The opening auction level and whether the gap holds or fills in regular session. AFRM has a history of violent post-earnings moves in both directions — a gap hold above $85 is constructive; a slip below $82 early in the session would suggest the move is pre-market-only and regular session sellers are stepping in.

3. $CRM — Salesforce

Pre-market (Aug 28): ~$250.53 | Prior close: $252.05 | Pre-mkt change: –0.60%

Salesforce's +22.6% Thursday session was the single largest earnings move of the week for a large-cap name. The results themselves were a strong beat, but the catalyst with longer legs is the expanded Anthropic partnership — the "Claudeforce" program positions Salesforce's Agentforce platform as the enterprise AI deployment layer with Claude as the core model, turning every Salesforce seat into a potential AI agent deployment. The stock digesting Friday essentially flat after such a move is a sign of resilience, not exhaustion. Large-caps that hold gap levels after 20%-plus moves rarely surrender them in the next session.

Watch for: The $245–248 zone as first support in orderly digestion. A break below $242 with volume is early warning of profit-taking acceleration. Holding above $250 into the Warsh speech would be constructive for another leg.

The rest of this briefing is for paid members: entries 4–10 with specific price levels and watch triggers — including the buy-the-dip thesis on Marvell, where Nvidia sits relative to the options market's implied range today, the cybersecurity pair trade setup, and a bottom-line sector framework for navigating Warsh Day.

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