Hey Sharks, Fin here. Earnings season is when the Mag7 stop vibing and start proving. Here’s what we’ve got for you today.

(All times after market close unless noted)

What Wall Street cares about:

✅ Bull case: Azure re-accelerates + Copilot attach rates look real → MSFT stays the “grown-up AI winner.”
❌ Bear case: Azure slows + capex spikes → investors do the classic “wait, we’re paying how much?” re-rate.

Fin’s take: If the executives sound calm and confident, the stock usually follows.

What matters:

✅ Bull case: Margins stabilize + guidance improves → market prices in “the worst is over.”
❌ Bear case: More price cuts + margin compression → Wall Street remembers Tesla is still, you know… a car company.

Fin’s take: Tesla can miss numbers and still rally if Elon sells the future convincingly. Annoying, but tradable.

What matters:

✅ Bull case: Ads stay strong + expenses stay controlled → Meta keeps printing cash.
❌ Bear case: Big AI spend with fuzzy payoff → investors start asking “cool… but where’s the profit?”

Fin’s take: Meta’s basically an ad vending machine. If it doesn’t jam, it usually wins.

What matters:

✅ Bull case: Services beats + iPhone holds up + AI narrative improves → Apple gets “premium multiple” permission again.
❌ Bear case: Soft guidance or China weakness → market remembers Apple is a huge ship that turns slowly.

Fin’s take: Apple doesn’t need fireworks — it needs clean guidance and “AI but Apple-style” credibility.

What matters:

✅ Bull case: Cloud accelerates + ads stay durable → multiple expands (aka stock finally gets respect).
❌ Bear case: Cloud slows or AI spend balloons → investors worry Google’s paying to defend its moat.

Fin’s take: If Cloud margins improve while AI keeps scaling, Google can surprise people who still think it’s “just search.”

What matters:

✅ Bull case: AWS re-accelerates + margins expand → Amazon gets its “high-growth, high-margin” aura back.
❌ Bear case: AWS stays sluggish → market treats AMZN like a retail company with expensive hobbies.

Fin’s take: AWS guidance is the headline. Everything else is side quests.

What matters:

✅ Bull case: Guidance stays absurdly strong → AI trade gets another leg and everyone pretends valuation is a myth.
❌ Bear case: Any hint of demand digestion → “AI is over” thinkpieces drop instantly (even if they’re wrong).

Fin’s take: NVDA doesn’t report earnings. It reports how hungry the AI economy is.

1) Inflation: CPI came in steady — but the “sticky” debate isn’t dead.
December CPI rose 0.3% m/m and 2.7% y/y, roughly in line with expectations. Markets took it as “okay, no new fires,” but commentary is still circling around whether underlying inflation is cooling fast enough.

2) The consumer refuses to tap out.
U.S. retail sales rose 0.6% (stronger than expected), a reminder that the economy still has a pulse—even with rates where they are. Strong consumers = supportive backdrop for big-tech revenue (ads, devices, cloud demand), but it can also keep rate-cut hopes on a leash.

3) The Fed: “We’re good here.”
Fed Vice Chair Jefferson said policy is “well positioned,” and markets are pricing only a small chance of a near-term cut. Translation: stocks can still run, but “rate cut euphoria” may need to wait its turn.

4) Oil & geopolitics: risk premium tried to show up… and got sent home.
Oil prices were choppy as U.S.–Iran tensions flared (tariff threats) and then cooled, with crude settling without a sustained spike. For markets, this matters because energy pops can reheat inflation expectations (and spook rate-sensitive growth stocks).

5) Housing: affordability is still the boss fight.
Homebuilder sentiment slipped again as affordability constraints persist, even with mortgage rates easing. Housing weakness can be a drag on sentiment broadly—and it’s a reminder the economy is strong in some places and wobbly in others.

Fin’s 10-second takeaway: This week was a tug-of-war between “soft landing vibes” (steady inflation + strong consumer) and “don’t get greedy” (Fed still patient + geopolitics lurking). Sharks stay nimble. 🦈

Quick bites on the non-Mag7 names making waves in AI, quantum, and the next tech cycle. ie. Smaller tickers with big potential.

Sent with bite,
– Fin 🦈

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