Top 10 Stocks to Watch — Monday, August 3

Two things happened over the weekend, and the market is only pricing one of them.

President Trump called off a planned strike on Iranian energy infrastructure late Saturday, saying a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was close. Crude repriced hard: WTI down about 6% near $79.54, Brent down roughly 5% to $83.47. But this is the fourth de-escalation headline since the war began on February 28, and the previous three failed. The June 17 Islamabad Memorandum formally ended the blockade and Iran re-closed the strait three days later. This morning Tehran's foreign ministry said flatly it is not negotiating with Washington at all, only with Oman, and only over a narrow transit corridor. The strait is still closed. Oil moved anyway, helped by a second catalyst the headlines skipped: OPEC+ met Sunday and agreed to a 188,000 barrel-per-day September increase, then a pause.

The equity response is the tell. S&P 500 futures sit near 7,562 and Nasdaq 100 futures near 28,528, both up about half a percent, but the two groups that should be surrendering war premium are not doing it. Tankers are flat, defense is flat to green, and no US-listed operating company has a pre-market move above 3% attributable to Iran in either direction. The commodity believes the headline. The equity market does not.

Underneath that sits one of the heaviest calendars of the year. ISM Manufacturing lands at 10:00 a.m. ET, consensus 54.0 against 53.3 prior, with prices paid seen cooling to 70.0 from 73.0. Palantir reports tonight. Tomorrow after the close brings SpaceX's first public quarterly report, AMD and Arista in the same hour. Payrolls close the week Friday. The 10-year finished Friday near 4.75%, its highest close in a year, which is the quiet risk under everything else.

All prices below are pre-market prints timestamped 7:16 a.m. ET, with Friday's close for reference. These are watch candidates and scenarios, not recommendations, and pre-market tape is thin.

1. $SPCX, SpaceX

$107.44 pre-market, down 0.86%. Friday close $108.37, down 3.41%.

The best-defined setup on the board, and it is defined by a calendar rather than a story. SpaceX reports its first results as a public company tomorrow after the close. Two trading days later, on Thursday August 6, the first lock-up tranche releases roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, about 20% of eligible stock, worth on the order of $109 billion at current prices.

The stock is not waiting well. It sits $0.43 above its all-time low of $107.01, having IPO'd June 12 at $135 and traded as high as $225.64. A second tranche of about 455.8 million shares stays locked because the stock is below its $175.50 price trigger, which is the one mercy in the schedule.

Watch for: whether $107.01 holds into tomorrow's print. A stock that breaks its all-time low going into a binary event tells you what positioning expects. A defense of that level on volume is the more interesting tell, because it means someone is willing to own the lock-up.

2. $PLTR, Palantir Technologies

$126.30 pre-market, up 2.63%. Friday close $123.06, up 0.65%.

Palantir reports at 5:00 p.m. ET tonight. Consensus is roughly $1.81 billion in revenue, about 80% growth, on adjusted EPS near $0.34. Last quarter revenue grew 85%, US revenue doubled, and US commercial revenue grew 133% to $595 million; management guided the full year to $7.65 to $7.662 billion and US commercial above $3.224 billion.

The stock is down about 31% year to date and 41% below its 52-week high of $207.52. It has not been marked down on execution, and it has beaten eight quarters running. It has been marked down on multiple, caught in the software de-rating traders have nicknamed the SaaSpocalypse, plus headline risk around UK contract reviews. The Street is unusually split for a $295 billion company: RBC carries a Sell at $90, Rosenblatt a Buy at $225, consensus around $182.

Watch for: the US commercial growth rate, not the headline beat. That line is the only thing holding up the multiple, and any deceleration from 133% is what the tape will trade. The 52-week low of $106.37 sits about 16% below this morning's quote.

3. $BMY, Bristol Myers Squibb

$69.03 pre-market, up 5.69%. Friday close $65.31, up 0.69%.

The Financial Times reported, with Bloomberg corroborating, that AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers held early-stage talks on a merger worth roughly $400 billion. Neither company has confirmed it, and the talks are described as preliminary and capable of collapsing.

The direction of the two stocks is what makes it watchable. Bristol Myers is bid to $69.03, which would be an all-time high against a 52-week high of $65.66. AstraZeneca's ADR is down 4.59% to $161.86 and its London line fell as much as 7%. That is the market handing target economics to one and acquirer dilution to the other, with several analysts calling the strategic logic hard to follow. Bristol Myers has its own momentum underneath: Q2 adjusted EPS of $2.04 against $1.59 expected, and full-year guidance raised to $49.0 to $50.0 billion.

Watch for: whether the move survives the absence of confirmation. Mega-cap pharma deal gaps fade fast when neither party comments by the close. Opening above an all-time high on an unconfirmed report and holding it is a very different signal from giving it back by 11 a.m.

The rest of this briefing is for paid members: the S&P 500 index add with a hard Wednesday deadline and a forced buyer behind it, the merger of equals whose exchange ratio does not reconcile to where the stock is trading, the all-cash takeout still quoted below the offer price, the AI name that reversed 8% intraday Friday ahead of tomorrow's print, and the watch levels and triggers for entries four through ten.

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