Update (1645ET): Nikkei reports that market participants learned that the Japanese government and the Bank of Japan intervened in the foreign exchange market by buying yen and selling dollars.
Additionally, Nikkei confirmed that the US monetary authorities conducted a "rate check," a preliminary step before intervention.
This indicates that Japan and the US worked together to curb the yen's depreciation.
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Having collapsed to its weakest relative to the dollar in 40 years, it appears the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Japan has had enough and intervened.
Having tagged 164/USD, the Japanese currency suddenly exploded stronger (below 160/USD, which was the prior level of intervention)...
The scale of the move is commensurate with the last large intervention in April.
Obviously, there is no confirmation, yet, but the timing, coming after the Fed and after Japan markets have closed, would certainly fit what we know about the MoF’s tactics, and that’s why there’s renewed speculation over official action.
Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 16:45As Bloomberg notes, "Microsoft’s solid earnings breathed new life into the tech sector Thursday, but Amazon’s report after the bell this evening could deflate the optimism again." To be sure, there’s a lot riding on Amazon results. The longevity of the AI spending boom is in doubt as shareholders punish ambitious capex plans, which has taken away some of the support away from the chipmaker stocks.
Before Microsoft’s earnings, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index had fallen 27% this month. It bounced more than 7% Thursday. Chipmaker Sandisk rose 23%, Micron and Microsoft itself both climbed more than 16%. The Seattle-based software giant announced better-than-expected results, emphasized its clear roadmap to AI monetization and refrained from increasing its capex plans. Amazon is going to have to produce something pretty special to keep the party going.
In terms of expectations, analysts expect Amazon profits to rise 8.8% from a year earlier, based on revenue growth of 17.5%. Free cash flow is expected to come in negative for a second straight quarter. Revenue in the key Amazon Web Services business is expected to grow 31% from a year earlier to $40.6 billion.
While free cash flow for the AI hyperscalers as a group is expected to turn negative, for Amazon, it’s seen fluctuating, dipping below zero before recovering. Amazon was an early starter in the world of cloud computing. That has sometimes looked like a disadvantage. It’s among the cheapest of the big tech stocks, trading at a price to blended forward earnings ratio that’s 1.6 standard deviations below the 10-year average. Nevertheless, as Bloomberg's Sebastian Boyd writes, the tone from analysts has been largely positive. Estimates have been revised slightly higher, and climbed to $1.83 from $1.8 at the end of April.
With all that in mind, this is what Amazon just reported for the recently concluded Q2:
Revenue was stronger across the board (except for another modest miss in the small physical store sales category, and a new miss in subscription services).
However, the most important revenue item, AWS, smashed smashed the sellside estimate...
Geographically the results were focused on North America beating again by more than $2 billion, even as international was a modest miss:
Going down the line:
While AWS sales growth was solid, just as impressive was the the margin for the segment also increased from 37.68% to 39.36%, just shy of the highest on record, and again beating the median Wall Street estimate of 33.52%. Elsewhere, North American profit unexpectedly jumped to $9.123 billion, resulting in a profit margin of 7.83%, down from 7.94% a quarter ago, while international margins rose to 4.07% from 3.58%, the highest since Q2 2025.
As a result of the rise in AWS profits, and generally solid sales margins, Amazon's consolidated operating margin posted a notable jump and in Q1 increased 9.7% to 11.7%, just shy of an all time high.
Looking ahead, the company's guidance was unexpectedly weak:
The projected 10.7% revenue growth was the lowest since March 2025.
And while we wait to get some sense of what happened to AMZNs capex guidance, and whether it was revised higher again, here is a less than flattering view of the company's free cash flow: the company's LTM free cash flow plunged to $7.6 billion negative for the trailing twelve months, vs $18.2 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2025.
And so, to fund its impressive AWS growth, where competition is becoming more fierce by the day, AMZN will need to issue stock or issue much more new debt to fund further capex growth. Indicatively, AMZN's debt soared to $129 billion in Q2, doubling from $65.6 billion at the end of 2025.
Amazon reported spending more than $53 billion on capex, including proceeds from some sales, in the period ended June 30. The company has said it expects to spend $200 billion — a 56% increase from 2025 — mostly on data centers, including those customized for AI services, prompting investors to focus on any signs of overspending.
After all that, AMZN shares were sharply higher this time - unlike last quarter - up about 8% higher largely on the AWS revenue growth and margin, as the market ignores the negative free cash flow... for now.
Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 16:40Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,
The heads of four U.S. intelligence and national security agencies have backed key elements of President Donald Trump’s claim that China engaged in election interference by targeting American voter-registration data.
A fact sheet released July 30 by the White House Government Transparency Task Force says China and its proxies bought, stole, or hacked voter data belonging to as many as 220 million Americans, including some information that was not publicly available.
The fact sheet pairs that finding with the intelligence community’s official definition of election interference, which includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter data.
It notes that, for a foreign country’s actions to amount to “election interference,” they do not have to change the actual results.
“That definition includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter registration infrastructure or data,” the task force states, citing declassified documents produced by the U.S. intelligence community.
The fact sheet was approved by the heads of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the White House.
Representatives from those agencies—as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation—also coordinated with the White House before Trump’s July 16 address and “approved the factual statements” drawn from intelligence documents used in the speech, the task force states.
Election Interference DefinedIn his speech, Trump said China has long been meddling in U.S. elections, including that it was “working to influence” the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which President Joe Biden was ultimately declared the winner.
Trump did not explicitly claim that China managed to change the 2020 result, and neither did the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The spy chiefs did say in the fact sheet that voter-registration data is itself part of election infrastructure and could be manipulated in ways that affect election results, for instance by preventing groups of voters from casting their ballots.
“Adversaries could alter data to potentially prevent individual voters or groups of voters from voting, causing delays on election day or forcing voters to use provisional ballots,” the task force states, citing intelligence community documents.
A voter walks to a polling place in Milwaukee, Wis., on July 28, 2026. Nam Y. Huh/AP
“Adversaries could also use the registration data which in some cases is also available publicly or for purchase—to tailor other interference or influence efforts,” it adds.
Election interference “is a subset of election influence targeted at the technical aspects of the election, including voter registration, casting and counting of ballots, and reporting of results,” according to the task force.
The release of the fact sheet marks the clearest institutional backing yet for central parts of Trump’s allegations, which were challenged by some Democrats who cited an earlier intelligence assessment that China did not interfere in the 2020 election.
Trump Orders InvestigationDuring his July 16 address, Trump described China’s acquisition of the voter data as “the largest compromise of election data in history” and an “unprecedented election security nightmare.”
Trump said U.S. intelligence had found that “China was working to influence the results of the U.S. midterm elections, and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself.”
He also said U.S. intelligence agencies began learning in 2020 that China had bought, stolen, or hacked tens of millions of voter records across 18 states but that some officials withheld or downplayed the information.
Trump directed the Department of Justice, CIA, FBI, and ODNI to investigate why the intelligence was withheld and, where appropriate, to seek criminal charges.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused Trump of using the disclosures to influence the approaching midterm elections. Warner cited the intelligence community’s previous assessment that China did not attempt to interfere in the 2020 election.
“China is a serious strategic competitor, and it absolutely seeks to advance its interests at America’s expense,” Warner said.
“The Intelligence Community … concluded that China considered—but ultimately did not deploy—an influence campaign intended to affect the outcome of the 2020 election, and that no foreign government altered vote totals, hacked voting machines, or compromised the integrity of our election infrastructure,” he added.
Trump, in his speech, called the U.S. election system “so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it.”
“It is not defensible,” Trump said.
The president also said that many previously classified documents spanning from January 2020 to June 2026 that support his claims would be declassified and released to the public.
“This is a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of our democracy,” he said.
Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 16:20