Power Lunch 8/10/26

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**Brian Sullivan** (1:03)
Stocks a little bit under pressure as oil rises back above 80 Welcome to Power Lunch, everybody, with Kelly. I am Brian. The market's right now down just a little bit. But remember, coming off, one of the biggest and best weeks of the year, yields though, they are up back above 4.7 percent. That despite the Strategic Petroleum Reserve falling below, with some view as a very important level of 300 million barrels, and some bosses in Iran dispute, they are speaking with the White House. Halima Croft is here to make sense of it all.

**Kelly Evans** (1:31)
Plus, as multibillion-dollar CapEx faces more scrutiny, the market is shifting its focus from raw compute infrastructure to monetization and deployment. Goldman's co-head of public tech investing, Sun Cho, says the next wave of performance won't just belong to the chipmakers, and the market is telling us that already. We'll talk to him about that coming up. And the bullish signals are piling up. Goldman data from last week showing hedge funds are heading back into single stocks. The July 31 through August 6 period was the first week of net buying of single stocks for the first time in a month. And you have JP Morgan raising its S&P year-end target to 8,000 from 7,800 earlier today. So should you be similarly bullish? Here on set with us is Seaport Research Chief Equity Strategist Jonathan Golub and Sanctuary Wealth Chief Investment Strategist Mary Ann Bartels. It's great to have you both here. Mary Ann, where do we begin?
We did, by the way, have a disappointment with the jobs number last Friday. We still have yields on the rise. You could still point to a few factors that are kind of casting a shadow here.
But again, the performance of this market, Iran, oil price, it just keeps grinding higher.

**Mary Ann Bartels** (2:35)
Isn't it a wonderful thing? Wonderful for investors. And it's all about earnings.
Earnings have just come in shockingly above estimates, almost 30% above what analysts were expecting. Earnings are up almost 50% year on year. Take out Alphabet and take out Amazon, they're up 30%, but they're just staggering numbers. So the market is really focused on earnings as it should be, and that's why we've been able to power higher.

**Kelly Evans** (3:03)
Yeah, Jonathan, I mean, the number, look, here they are. We're up 51% from a year ago. Some of that, they say it's worn off in special factors, but you make a good investment in a well-performing company, I think that should count.
8% above expectations, revenue, revenue, so forget how we get to earnings. Revenue is up 15% from last year.
What is this telling us?

**Jonathan Golub** (3:25)
I mean, first, we've got to, you have to break it down, and there's a bunch of stories. I mean, number one, the tech thing is on fire with Semi is leading that, but energy earnings are up well over 100% because of the war and the damage to the consumer and industrial sector is nowhere near as much as the benefit from that. And financials, I mean, all this AI build out and data centers has to be financed, and the financials have crushed it. So it's really, really broad.

**Brian Sullivan** (3:55)
It's interesting too, because some energy earnings are up five and 600%.
No one thinks that level is sustainable, especially because you got to lap it next year. We understand that. But to your point, earnings up, but the hit on the consumer not up as much, that is pure profit. Are you buying into it? I know, Marianne, you like ExxonMobil.

**Jonathan Golub** (4:16)
Yeah. And companies are just so good right now at being able to pass pricing on. So whether it's roofing on a home or materials of any kind, companies are doing a great job of increasing margins. If you look across all the major groups, cyclicals, non-cyclicals, their margins are basically at peaks in a period where inflation is pushing it and oil prices are high.