Amazon reports second-quarter 2026 results after the market closes on Thursday, July 30, and I can already predict the ritual. The revenue number will arrive. The earnings-per-share figure will follow. Television anchors will begin speaking faster. A stock chart will twitch violently in one direction, reverse course six minutes later, and then move again when an executive uses an adjective Wall Street was not expecting. Some investors will celebrate. Others will announce that civilization has ended. Social media will produce 10,000 confident interpretations before most people have opened the earnings release. I will be watching the margins. Revenue tells me how much economic activity passed through Amazon. Margins tell me how much value Amazon kept after paying the staggering cost of making that activity possible. That distinction matters because Amazon is no longer simply an online retailer. It is a collection of businesses with radically different economics forced to share one income...
Apple is scheduled to report its fiscal third-quarter results after the market closes on Thursday, July 30, 2026. Here is what I will be watching—and why a perfectly respectable quarter may no longer be enough for the stock. I have followed Apple long enough to recognise the ritual. A few days before earnings, Wall Street suddenly develops the emotional stability of a toddler who has been handed the wrong colour cup. Analysts revise estimates by pennies. Traders dissect supplier comments like intelligence officers decoding enemy communications. Every rumour about iPhone demand becomes either proof of an approaching supercycle or confirmation that civilisation has lost interest in smartphones. Then Apple reports billions of dollars in quarterly profit, and the market complains about something management said during minute 47 of the conference call. This quarter arrives with especially high expectations. Apple shares recently traded around $337, giving the company a market value approach...