Mark goes live this morning with a full plate.
Three stories are moving the tape. Trump says Iran negotiations start this afternoon while Tehran says no such talks exist. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) prints Tuesday into a chip group that just handed back 20 percent, and Japan and the U.S. bought yen together for the first time since 1998.
Mark breaks down all three below. Then he does the part I actually wait for.
The crew turned in 10 names for this week's Ticker Highlight play of the week, and Mark reveals every one of them on air.
Mark brought a chipmaker the market wrote off two years ago, plus a trillion-dollar name he thinks is coasting on old work. Licia likes a brokerage that turned meme traders into a real business, and she's fading the fund half of retail hides inside.
Andrew's love is a genetic testing outfit almost nobody covers. His hate is the EV story stock you already argue about at dinner.
Tim wants his semis in a basket and doesn't want the package delivery bellwether. Hans is buying the picks and shovels of the power grid and selling a homebuilder.
One of those 10 becomes the play of the week.
This link adds State of the Market to your calendar.
The Daily News Breakdown
SIGN: Trump says U.S.-Iran negotiations start Monday afternoon. Tehran says otherwise. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters Iran isn't negotiating with Washington at all, and it has no plans to send or receive a delegation.
What Iran is doing is talking to Oman about a temporary route through the Strait of Hormuz, one lane in, one lane out. Baghaei also said the strait stays closed until U.S. attacks stop. Trump called off the strikes after Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar asked him to, and he says a deal is imminent.
Hormuz moved roughly one fifth of the world's oil before the war, and crude sold off on the headline. Two governments describing the same Monday differently is the whole trade.
SIGNAL: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) reports second quarter earnings Tuesday after the bell, and the setup is strange. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index ran up more than 100 percent over the last year, then handed back 20 percent since mid-June. AMD itself climbed 194 percent in 12 months on the AI agent build-out, which leans on CPUs.
Analysts want $1.62 a share on $11.3 billion in revenue, against 48 cents and $7.6 billion a year ago. They model data center sales more than doubling to $6.5 billion, gaming down 30 percent, and memory prices squeezing the PC chip business. Lisa Su's new Helios rack is her direct swing at Nvidia (NVDA).
SNEAKER: Japan and the U.S. bought yen together on Friday, and Washington apparently paid in euros. Tokyo confirmed the coordinated operation Monday, the first joint yen-buying action between the two countries since 1998. The yen touched 163.73 per dollar Thursday, its weakest in about four decades, then snapped back to 157.57.
The euro part is what nobody saw coming, because these operations normally run on dollars. Robin Brooks at Brookings said the mechanics are confusing markets and will prove counterproductive.
One read: Washington didn't want to sell dollars and dent its own strong-dollar talk. Another: it spares Japan from dumping Treasuries when the 10-year already printed 4.735 percent. Neither version is comforting.