Headlines · 2026-08-04

President Donald Trump on Monday said Exxon Mobil and Chevron were making “too much money” and should return some of their profits to the public while cutting retail gasoline prices. He also pointed to Chevron’s return to Venezuela as evidence of support from his administration’s energy policy.

The comments came after both companies posted strong second-quarter results. CNBC reported Chevron’s quarterly earnings jumped nearly 400% to $12 billion, while Exxon’s profit more than doubled to $14.5 billion; Reuters said Chevron posted its highest quarterly earnings in at least six years and Exxon’s profit also doubled year over year.

The market backdrop is still dominated by oil prices and refining margins. Reuters quoted the American Petroleum Institute saying higher prices are being driven by global supply-demand dynamics and uncertainty around the Strait of Hormuz, not by any single company, while CBS cited the Energy Information Administration as saying crude accounts for 51% of the cost of a gallon of gasoline.

Exxon and Chevron had not immediately commented on Trump’s remarks. Their shares slipped after the comments, with CNBC saying Chevron fell nearly 2% and Exxon traded slightly lower.

Strategy disclosed in an 8-K filing that it sold 1,638 Bitcoin for about $104.7 million, using $52.4 million to fund STRC dividend payments and $52.3 million to repurchase STRC. The company also said it raised $290.6 million through MSTR share sales and boosted its U.S. dollar reserve to $4 billion.

The move extends a recent shift in Strategy’s capital framework. Reports based on the filing said STRC closed at $89.46 on the latest session, about 10.5% below its $100 stated value, while management has kept the annual dividend rate at 12% and continued using buybacks to support the preferred stock.

For investors, the key issue is not just the Bitcoin sale but how it affects Strategy’s financing machinery. STRC is one of the company’s funding channels, and a prolonged discount to par can make future issuance less effective; MSTR also traded lower in premarket trading after the disclosure.

Cointelegraph said Strategy repurchased 912,143 STRC shares for $81.2 million and moved $250 million of the MSTR proceeds into its dollar reserve. The company has said that reserve now covers roughly 2.3 years of preferred dividends and interest obligations.

Palantir reported second-quarter revenue of $1.935 billion, up 93% from a year earlier, while adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.41 versus analysts’ expectations of $0.35. U.S. commercial revenue rose 149% to $764 million, the company said in its earnings release.

The quarter also showed strong operating leverage. Palantir said adjusted operating income reached $1.194 billion and adjusted free cash flow totaled $1.220 billion, lifting its Rule of 40 score to 155%. Management raised full-year revenue guidance to $8.15 billion-$8.158 billion, up from the prior range.

Shares moved higher after the report, with multiple outlets saying the stock gained more than 8% in after-hours trading. Investors are closely watching Palantir because it has become one of the most visible names in AI software, and the latest numbers suggest enterprise demand remains strong.

CEO Alex Karp called the quarter “otherworldly” and said demand for sovereign AI is accelerating. Palantir also disclosed 220 contracts worth at least $1 million in the quarter, including $2.132 billion in U.S. commercial contract value.

The White House will host leading AI companies on Tuesday to discuss a new voluntary framework for testing frontier models before launch. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Meta are among those invited, according to multiple reports.

The plan stems from a June executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which directs officials to build a review process for “covered frontier models” but explicitly bars the program from becoming a mandatory federal licensing or preclearance regime. Under the proposal, participating developers could share access to models for up to 30 days before broader release.

For investors, the news matters most to major U.S. AI platforms and their ecosystem, including Alphabet, Meta and OpenAI’s partners, as well as AI safety-testing and cybersecurity vendors. Because participation is voluntary, the immediate effect looks more like policy engagement than a hard compliance burden.

Anthropic, Google and Meta declined to comment on the meeting details, while OpenAI pointed to a blog post from its chief global affairs officer reiterating support for national AI standards established through Congress. Recent reports also noted that Anthropic and OpenAI have both disclosed internal cybersecurity testing incidents involving model behavior.

Amazon disclosed in a Form 144 filing that founder Jeff Bezos plans to sell 15 million shares of common stock, valued at about $4.07 billion. The filing points to a prearranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan rather than an ad hoc decision.

The move comes after Amazon extended its post-earnings rally and briefly crossed the $3 trillion market-cap mark. Investors are also weighing the company’s heavier capital-spending outlook alongside the pace of AWS growth.

Amazon shares eased in after-hours and premarket trading following the filing, with reports showing a roughly 1% to 2% pullback. For traders, the key issue is not just the size of the sale, but how quickly the shares are absorbed and whether AWS margins keep supporting the valuation.

No new separate comment from Bezos was reported with the filing. Market participants are now watching for follow-up disclosures that would confirm the eventual timing and execution of the planned sale.

Michael Saylor said on X that he has never sold any of his personally held Bitcoin, adding that he was speaking “as one saver to another.” He also stressed that Strategy is a public company, not his personal wallet, which reframes his long-standing “Never Sell Your Bitcoin” message as a personal credo rather than a corporate pledge.

The clarification comes as Strategy’s disclosure framework has long allowed the company to buy or sell Bitcoin for capital management. Recent reports said the firm sold 1,638 BTC for about $104.7 million and cut its holdings to 842,138 BTC, using the proceeds to help fund preferred dividends, buy back STRC shares and add to its dollar reserves.

For markets, the distinction matters most for MSTR, Strategy’s common stock, and STRC, the preferred instrument tied to its capital structure and dividend obligations. Investors are watching whether the company continues to manage liquidity with Bitcoin sales while still framing its goal as increasing Bitcoin per share over time.

Strategy CEO Phong Le has said the firm’s objective is not simply to hold Bitcoin but to raise Bitcoin per share. Saylor’s statement reinforces the split between personal conviction and corporate treasury policy, without disputing the company’s right to trade the asset under its disclosed framework.

BlackRock on August 3 unveiled two tokenized money-market products: the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle (BRSRV) and BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund OnChain Shares (BSTBL). BRSRV is aimed at stablecoin reserve management, while BSTBL is an onchain share class of an existing money-market fund that runs on Ethereum.

According to the company’s filing and subsequent reporting, BRSRV supports multiple blockchains and uses Securitize as transfer agent and tokenization provider. BSTBL allows approved wallets to transfer tokenized fund shares while the underlying portfolio remains invested in cash, short-term U.S. Treasurys and Treasury-backed repo agreements.

BlackRock said both products are designed to qualify as eligible reserve assets under the U.S. GENIUS Act framework for permitted stablecoin issuers. The launch extends BlackRock’s tokenization push beyond BUIDL, its flagship tokenized Treasury product, which industry data puts at more than $2.6 billion in assets.

For markets, the move underscores how cash-management giants are moving deeper into onchain settlement and reserve infrastructure. It also highlights growing demand among stablecoin issuers and crypto institutions for yield-bearing, regulated reserve assets rather than native digital tokens.

Snap reported second-quarter revenue of $1.599 billion, up 19% from a year earlier, with adjusted EBITDA of $250 million and net loss narrowing to $164 million. The company also guided third-quarter revenue to $1.7 billion-$1.74 billion, ahead of Wall Street’s roughly $1.7 billion view.

Management said ad momentum improved in North America and internationally, aided in part by World Cup-related spending. Snap also raised its full-year infrastructure cost outlook by $50 million to $1.65 billion-$1.7 billion, citing added AI and machine learning investments to support growth.

Shares rose in after-hours and premarket trading following the report, as investors parsed the better-than-expected revenue, earnings, and user numbers. Daily active users increased to 493 million, and the company said it remained focused on expanding free cash flow.

CEO Evan Spiegel said the company is seeing better momentum in advertising and plans to keep investing with discipline. Snap said it will provide more details on its Specs augmented-reality glasses at a Sept. 16 event in Los Angeles.

onsemi reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $1.604 billion, up 9% from a year earlier, with non-GAAP EPS of $0.74 and GAAP EPS of $0.56. The company also guided third-quarter revenue to $1.65 billion-$1.75 billion and non-GAAP EPS to $0.81-$0.93.

Management said AI data centers remain the company’s fastest-growing business and expects that revenue stream to at least double in 2026. Free cash flow jumped to $425.4 million in the quarter, while share repurchases totaled $332 million.

Investors are watching whether margin gains and cash generation can hold as the semiconductor cycle normalizes. onsemi’s results matter for auto, industrial and AI power-supply chains because the company’s performance reflects demand trends for power semiconductors and related infrastructure.

The company also forecast third-quarter adjusted operating expenses of $303 million-$318 million, a range that suggests continued discipline on costs. Management said revenue, gross margin and EPS all came in above the midpoint of guidance.

Visa said on Aug. 3 that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire BioCatch for $2.4 billion in cash. The transaction still needs customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, and Visa expects to close it by the end of its fiscal second quarter of 2027.

BioCatch uses behavioral and multi-signal fraud intelligence to analyze thousands of signals, including keystrokes, touch gestures and device handling, to distinguish legitimate users from fraudsters in real time. Visa said the company protects about 1.8 billion devices and 760 million users across 21 countries and more than 350 banking clients.

The deal extends Visa’s push into cyber defense and fraud prevention at a time when banks and payments firms are facing more account-takeover, scam and application-fraud attempts. It also gives Visa a deeper foothold in bank workflows, with American Banker noting BioCatch is already embedded across a broad swath of U.S. retail banking.

Both companies framed the acquisition as a fit with Visa’s existing security and identity tools. BioCatch has also expanded in markets such as Australia and Argentina, underscoring the firm’s global footprint as Visa looks to bolster fraud detection for financial institutions.

Jim Cramer said he plans to sell all of his bitcoin, citing fears that quantum computing could weaken crypto security within the next three to four years. The comment came after an interview on CNBC with IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, who warned investors to stay “paranoid” about the risk on that horizon.

The backdrop is a long-running debate over when quantum computers might become capable of breaking widely used cryptography. Krishna’s warning put a short timeline into the conversation, but technical experts remain split, and several researchers still see the threat as farther away than Cramer’s estimate.

Bitcoin’s price held near the mid-$60,000 range after the remarks, with reports citing levels around $63,500 to $64,000. That muted reaction matters because the market has grown used to treating Cramer’s calls as contrarian signals, while traders continue to watch whether any large holders actually move coins.

The episode also keeps attention on post-quantum upgrades for Bitcoin and the broader crypto stack. For now, the main market impact is reputational rather than mechanical: Cramer’s comments may move sentiment, but they do not by themselves confirm any on-chain selling or change the network’s security profile.

X-generated market stats show the S&P 500 has reached as much as 11% year-to-date in August. The same tally says that in 47 calendar years going back to 1923, the index was at least 11% YTD at some point in August, and only once did the full year end negative.

The broader backdrop remains uneven. E*TRADE’s August commentary said the S&P 500 finished July lower even though 59% of its constituents rose, while the VanEck Semiconductor ETF fell more than 19% for the month. Another X signal said the Nasdaq 100 dropped 6.6% in July, underscoring how concentrated the weakness was in growth and chip names.

That matters because seasonal risk tends to rise into late summer. E*TRADE said August has been weaker than average over the past 35 years, and Longbridge’s historical table showed that when June and July were both negative, the rest of the year was more often weak than strong.

For traders, the key issue is not whether the index is near a milestone, but whether leadership broadens beyond the mega-cap and semiconductor complex. If it does not, SPX breadth can stay healthier than the headline suggests even as ETFs tied to chips and momentum remain more volatile.

Palantir reported second-quarter revenue of $1.935 billion, up 93% from a year earlier, with adjusted earnings per share of $0.41. The company also lifted its 2026 revenue outlook to $8.154 billion-$8.156 billion and raised its U.S. commercial revenue guidance to above $3.424 billion.

Vertex delivered second-quarter revenue of $3.33 billion, up 12% year over year, and adjusted EPS of $4.73. It raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $13.1 billion-$13.2 billion from a previous range of $12.95 billion-$13.1 billion, while keeping its spending outlook unchanged.

The updates put both names on investors’ radar for different reasons. Palantir’s surge was driven by 149% growth in U.S. commercial revenue and a stronger cash-flow outlook, while Vertex cited continued momentum in cystic fibrosis therapies and contributions from non-CF products.

For the market, the combination of beats and raised guidance typically reinforces valuation support and can extend post-earnings trading in both stocks. Palantir remains the more explosive growth story, while Vertex is showing steady expansion with multiple product drivers.