ASX 200 Live Today - Friday, 7th August

Welcome to our live ASX coverage for Friday, August 7. Expect a high volume of posts pre-market and more periodic updates throughout the day. We'll be wrapping the blog up around 2:00 pm AEST. Let us know how we can make it even better.

Reporting season is heating up and we've got you covered. Our reporting season calendar has over 250 stocks plus earnings and dividend estimates.

US earnings wrap: Airbnb, Atlassian, Monster, MP Materials, Datadog and TripAdvisor

[9:05 am] A busy session of US quarterly results. Here are a few companies of interest.

• Airbnb (+9.4% AH) beat across the board, revenue up 17% to $3.6bn vs $3.58bn ests (1% beat) and EPS up 33% to $1.37 vs $1.25 ests (10% beat), lifting FY26 guidance to at least mid-teens revenue growth and a 35.5%-plus adjusted EBITDA margin

• Atlassian (+31.7% AH) delivered a strong Q4, revenue up 28% to $1.8bn vs $1.66bn ests (8% beat), cloud revenue up 31% to $1.2bn and RPO up 44% to $4.8bn, with Ken Exner appointed Chief Product Officer for Enterprise and Emerging

• Monster Beverage (-0.3%) revenue up 20.2% to $2.54bn vs $2.43bn ests (5% beat) and adjusted EPS up 15.2% to $0.60 vs $0.58 ests (3% beat), with management noting international net sales rose 34.6% to "approximately 46 percent of total net sales" ahead of a two-for-one stock split trading from August 11

• MP Materials (-0.8%) revenue up 89% to $108.5m vs $99.2m ests (9% beat) and NdPr sales up 127% to 1,006MT, though adjusted EBITDA of $28.5m was in line, as it signed a long-term gadolinium offtake with a new "U.S. aerospace and defense customer at attractive economics"

• Datadog (-19.0%) revenue up 36% to $1.12bn vs $1.08bn ests (4% beat) and adjusted EPS up 41% to $0.65 vs $0.59 ests (10% beat), raising FY26 revenue guide to $4.45-4.47bn (midpoint 2% ahead of ests) as customers "observe, secure, and act on their AI-enabled solutions"

• TripAdvisor (-25.5%) revenue down 7% to $441.9m vs $504m ests (12% miss) and adjusted EBITDA down 21% to $76.4m vs $82m ests (7% miss), with the TheFork sale expected by end-2026 to fund an "experiences-led strategy"

Oil climbs as Iran-Oman Hormuz deal looks set to fall short of a full reopening

[9:02 am] Crude extended gains after Iran reported strikes at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz and signalled its proposed shipping pact would keep US and Israeli vessels out.

• European natural gas futures spiked as much as 12% as traders priced in heightened risk to gas tankers transiting the strait

• Deal seen falling short of a full resumption, with Iran seeking to bar US and Israeli ships, demand compensation from hostile countries and tie a reopening to the lifting of the US maritime blockade

• Prices still down sharply on the week, Brent off around 20% over the past fortnight on hopes flows would soon increase before Thursday's setback

• Saudi Aramco cut Arab Light to Asia by 50 cents to $2 under the regional benchmark, its fifth-lowest setting since 2000, with exports running near 5m barrels a day, about 70% of normal

• Escalation risk persists, with a tanker reporting two explosions in the strait, a Houthi strike on a Saudi tanker in the Gulf of Aden, and Khamenei's sign-off on any deal still unclear

Dimon warns market leverage is 'pretty high', raising disruption risk

[9:01 am] JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon flagged elevated leverage across the financial system as a potential trigger for sudden market disruption.

• Leverage running high across prime brokerage, hedge funds, ETFs and Treasury market arbitrage, Dimon told CNBC on Wednesday

• Higher disruption risk when leverage builds, with a greater chance something rattles the market quickly

• Situational Awareness cited as a recent example, the AI-focused hedge fund offloading part of its public stock book to Citadel after a tech selloff

• Market coped well with that unwind, per Dimon, suggesting the system absorbed the stress

Source: Bloomberg

Australia posts surprise June trade surplus as commodity exports jump

[9:01 am] Australia unexpectedly swung to a trade surplus in June as exports rose the most in four years, led by commodities, while imports slipped.

• $1.9bn surplus against forecasts for a $1.1bn deficit, reversing May's surprise shortfall

• Exports up almost 10% month-on-month while imports fell 0.2%, lifting total exports to nearly $50bn, the highest since early 2023

• Metal ores and minerals up 6.2% and coal, coke and briquettes up 4.6% on the month

• Gold shipments topped $7bn in June and exceeded a record $40bn across the first half

• Fuel imports above $6bn, the third-highest on record, as the Iran war lifts liquid fuel prices for a country reliant on imports

• Outlook still deteriorating as the commodity boom winds down and data centre construction drives higher imports

Alphabet raises US$25bn in one of the year's most sought-after AI bond sales

[9:00 am] Alphabet's investment-grade offering drew roughly US$115bn of peak demand, signalling a rebound in appetite for AI-related debt after last month's tech bond selloff.

• US$25bn raised across 10 tranches, with maturities from two to 40 years and peak demand of about US$115bn, behind only Oracle's and Amazon's deals earlier this year

• Generous premiums drove interest, with the 40-year tranche pricing at 1.3 percentage points above Treasuries, tighter than initial talk of 1.55 points

• Twice-yearly US issuance signalled to bond dealers, a message aimed at easing investor concerns over further tech debt supply

• Alphabet now the biggest AI-related bond seller since 2025, with total issuance above US$114bn plus nearly US$85bn of shares sold

• Backdrop had soured in July as Alphabet lifted its capex forecast to as much as US$205bn, more than double 2025's outlays, driving its first negative cash flow quarter since its 2004 IPO

Source: Bloomberg

China's cheap AI shifts investor focus from chipmakers to internet giants

[8:58 am] Falling AI costs are strengthening the case for China's internet stocks as value rotates away from hardware toward the companies that own consumer-facing applications.

• KraneShares China Internet ETF up more than 20% since its June 25 low, roughly double the Hang Seng's gain, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has fallen about 11%

• Blended inference prices down 36% from their May peak, per Silicon Data, even as customers adopt more capable reasoning models and AI agents

• Cheaper tokens seen as margin positive for Chinese hyperscalers, with Alibaba and Tencent rallying on expectations that lower costs spur AI demand among them and their clients

• Alibaba Cloud estimated to have grown 45% in the June quarter, with Goldman preferring cloud and data centre names on accelerating token growth, rising second-half capex and increasing domestic chip supply

• Microsoft's Nadella echoes the theme, arguing AI models are becoming interchangeable inputs so value accrues to owners of customer relationships and software platforms

Source: Bloomberg

'Sell America' trade resurfaces as Washington policy uncertainty weighs on bonds and the dollar

[8:55 am] Global investors are debating whether to revive last year's 'Sell America' trade after a run of Fed and Treasury policy decisions unsettled the bond and currency markets.

• 30-year Treasury yield above 5%, its highest since 2007, though it has retraced some of the move since the Fed meeting

• Dollar weaker against nearly every G10 currency over the past month despite higher US yields, which would normally support it, with the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index down around 2% since its June peak

• Two policy triggers cited: Fed Chair Warsh's sparse communication style raising inflation-fighting doubts, and Treasury's first coordinated effort in almost 30 years to help Japan prop up the yen

• Japan spillover risk flagged, with the largest foreign holder of US debt potentially forced to sell part of its $1trn-plus Treasury holdings to fund intervention

• 30-year term premium at 1.56%, the highest since 2013, as the Treasury lifts current-quarter borrowing needs to $739bn

Source: Bloomberg

Good morning!

[8:30 am] ASX 200 futures are down 4 pts (-0.04%). Here's what happened overnight:

• A relatively uneventful session as the pullback continues after major US benchmarks rallied 4-5% in the past couple of sessions

• Major US benchmarks finished mostly lower on weak breadth. The Dow lagged and trended lower intraday, snapping a five-day win streak, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed marginally lower

• Iran said its Hormuz shipping agreement with Oman is agreed in principle, but Tehran warned it will not automatically reopen the strait and shipping lobbies attacked the proposed transit fees, Brent rallied 4.6% to US$83.09 overnight

• Notable session for software names, with Datadog posting its worst day on record and HubSpot its biggest fall since listing, despite reporting beat-and-raise results, while storage names dragged the chip complex lower