Stocks closed higher on Friday and for the week with the Nasdaq making a new all-time high and close.

Apple, after posting better-than-expected earnings last week (their best quarterly sales growth since 2021), reassuring guidance, and announcing another $100 billion investment into the U.S. over the next 4 years (adding to the $500 billion already committed) under Apple's "American Manufacturing Program," that expands their manufacturing capabilities in the U.S., which in turn suggests that Apple is likely to avoid a portion of the additional tariffs that will be levied on foreign manufactured goods, saw their best week in years (since 2020), gaining 13.3% last week.

Apple was the worst performing Magnificent 7 stock of 2025 going into last week. And while they are still down -8.41% YTD, they are no longer the worst performing Mag 7 component, relinquishing that title to Tesla, which is down -18.4%. (FYI ? the best performing Mag 7 stock this year is Nvidia (no surprise), with 36.0%. In close second place is Meta with 31.4%.)

Apple wasn't the only one reporting better-than-expected earnings last week. There was a slew of stellar gains from marquee names across all sectors.

And we'll get plenty of opportunity to see that play out again this week with another 1,272 companies on deck to report, including Barrick Mining on Monday, CoreWeave on Tuesday, Cisco on Wednesday, and Applied Materials and NetEase on Thursday, to name a handful.

Tariff news continues to trickle in. While there are done deals and working deals that represent roughly 75% of U.S. imports (including the 86% of Canadian goods that fall under the existing USMCA deal, meaning only 14% of Canadian imports will get hit with reciprocal tariffs until a deal is in place to cover those), we're still waiting on other deals to be announced, including a deal with India, which has been hit with 50% tariffs for buying Russian oil.

The markets will also be following what happens with the expected meeting between President Trump and President Putin that will take place in Alaska this week. While that's about ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, it's also likely to cover the topic of Russian oil sales and sanctions, which could have an impact on the market.

We'll get another look at inflation this week with the Consumer Price Index (CPI ? retail inflation), on Tuesday, 8/12, and the Producer Price Index (PPI ? wholesale inflation), on Wednesday, 8/13.

The next Fed meeting isn't until September. But if inflation numbers can continue to show easing, or at least only a modest tick up, we could see the Fed finally resume their rate-cutting cycle next month. Given there's only 3 FOMC meetings left this year, and the Fed has signaled they're still looking to cut 2 times by year's end (presumably by 25 basis points each) ? if it doesn't happen next month, there's only October and December left on the calendar.

The big 3 indexes are all sitting at or near their all-time highs, while the small-cap Russell 2000 and mid-cap S&P 400 are trading within striking distance of their YTD highs.

Hard to believe we only have 4� months left in the year. But I'm still expecting a 20% gain in the S&P this year for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is because of the ongoing AI boom. And given it's 'only' up 8.63% YTD, it looks like there's potentially a lot more upside to go.

See you tomorrow,