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The referee bought it — Palantir +15% on a 93% quarter, while Korea's board splits in half

The Morning 10 Tue, Aug 4, 2026 ~90 seconds 08:00 CET

Palantir smashed the quarter and the tape bought it for the first time in four prints, the Dow closed at a record on a four-year high in ISM — and then Asia refused to follow, with Korea's small-cap board ripping seven percent while Samsung and SK Hynix fell three.

  1. Palantir — the referee ruled, and it bought
  2. Korea overnight — the board split in half
  3. The record close, and what actually did it
  4. QQQ closed through 694 — without the calendar
  5. Semis — the floor held, but the sold corner widened
  6. Closelook indices — our own build-out cohort says the same thing
  7. Oil, gold and the yen
  8. JOLTs job openings — due 14:00 UTC
  9. Two prints today — DigitalOcean this morning, AMD tonight
  10. Outside view — Liz Ann Sonders · Schwab
  1. Palantir — the referee ruled, and it bought Context
    What
    Palantir posted revenue of $1.94bn against roughly $1.80bn expected, up 93% year over year, with US commercial revenue up 149% and adjusted EPS of $0.41 versus $0.35. Net income came in at $1.07bn against about $329m a year ago. Full-year guidance went to $8.150–8.158bn from a start-of-year $7.182–7.198bn, and the third-quarter guide of $2.16bn sits well above the $2.00bn consensus. The stock closed at 125.65 and traded near 145 in the after-market and early premarket, up roughly 15%.
    If
    The gain holds through the cash open rather than fading into it.
    Why
    The card came in reading ten straight EPS beats with the last three sold — a regime where delivery was not enough. A beat bought this hard does not adjust that record, it ends it.
    Then
    Read it as a cohort verdict, not a single name: the sold-beat pattern was the season's structure, and the referee just voted the other way.
  2. Korea overnight — the board split in half Context
    What
    Seoul opened up more than 1% and ran above 2% to retake the 6,380 level, then reversed the whole move inside the first half hour, trading as low as 1.66% down near 6,153. By late morning the KOSPI had clawed back to about 0.9% lower near 6,200, with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each off around 3% — while the KOSDAQ, the small and mid-cap board, ran up more than 7% to about 774. Seoul closes after this edition publishes.
    If
    The spread between the two boards survives the close rather than converging in the last hour.
    Why
    Same session, same country, opposite directions: money is leaving the large-cap chip duo and staying in Korea. That is not a risk-off tape, it is a repricing of what specifically gets paid.
    Then
    Note the mirror to Monday's US session — the AI revenue layer bid, the component layer sold. The split has now crossed the Pacific and gone inside a single index.
  3. The record close, and what actually did it Context
    What
    The Dow closed at a record 53,178.41, up 693.38 points or 1.32%; the S&P 500 gained 1.48% to 7,600.50 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 2.13% to 25,913.90. ISM Manufacturing printed 55.6 against consensus just above 54 and a prior 53.3 — the strongest since May 2022 — with the employment sub-index at 52.8, its first expansion reading in 33 months. Amazon rose about 4.6% to close above a $3trn market capitalisation for the first time; Meta added 6%, Microsoft and Alphabet roughly 5% each, Nvidia close to 3%.
    If
    Breadth widens beneath the megacap layer over the next sessions.
    Why
    A record built on a macro surprise plus five or six very large names is a real record with a narrow base. The ISM employment turn after 33 months is the more durable half of the story.
    Then
    Watch whether the ISM read survives contact with this afternoon's labour data, and whether anything outside the megacap block leads.

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C · point 11 · members

Today in point 11: which two filed tests the tape just scored and which one it quietly killed, why a bought beat is a cohort verdict rather than a single-name result, what Korea splitting its own board in half says that the US tape was still able to hide, why the temperature exit count is now dead rather than reset — and what the book does with a confirmation that arrived carrying a macro assist.

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