If you spent the holiday week doomscrolling instead of watching finance YouTube, here's your catch-up: the mood is cautiously bullish, the rotation trade is real, and the Fed is doing its best impression of a sphinx. Goldman Sachs expects global equities to trend higher in H2, with S&P 500 earnings growth consensus surging from 15.2% to 24.3% since January — and targets pointing toward S&P 8,000. The Russell 2000 is already up 22% YTD, its best first half since 1991. Small caps are having a moment and nobody's talking about it.
On individual names: $GIS was the surprise hero of the week, surging up to 10% intraday — its biggest jump since March 2020 — after crushing Q4 EPS at 95 cents vs. an 80-cent consensus and announcing a $3 billion savings plan. Meanwhile $NKE continues its slow-motion collapse, with analysts warning the turnaround is still quarters away and 28 downward revisions piling up. A one-time $986 million tariff windfall masked what was otherwise a flat revenue year — the financial equivalent of putting a bow on a broken blender. $STZ beat EPS by posting $3.43, but a 47% wine and spirits collapse keeps it firmly in hold territory.
The meta-theme tying it all together? AI capex is now a legitimate economic force — Goldman calls it a "CapEx supercycle" spilling beyond chips into infrastructure, and even the Fed's likely next chair Kevin Warsh called out AI's "huge implications" for monetary policy. Korea's equity rally is 70% AI-driven and backed by real earnings. The bull case isn't hype anymore — it's showing up in the numbers, which is either very reassuring or exactly what people say before things get interesting.
