It was a tough week for stocks, as investors navigated everything from escalating tensions in the Middle East to key tech earnings reports to healthcare developments. Logging their second straight weekly losses, the S & P 500 slipped 0.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 2.1%. Here’s a closer look at what drove the trading action. Oil prices are back in the driver’s seat Oil spiked for a third week in a row on Iran war uncertainty. U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude jumped more than 8%, while international Brent crude surged nearly 10%. Oil prices jumped on Monday after President Donald Trump warned that Iran would pay for the deaths of three U.S. service members “many times over.” They gained momentum throughout the week after Trump threatened again to bomb Iranian bridges and power plants and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tehran was not serious about reaching a deal to end the fighting. By Thursday, fears that the conflict could spread beyond Iran intensified after Houthi militants claimed attacks on Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, sending Brent crude above $100 a barrel for the first time since before the U.S. and Iran reached an interim ceasefire agreement last month. While oil prices pulled back Friday on hopes of restarted U.S.-Iran peace talks, the week’s sharp move higher underscored how quickly geopolitical tensions can reshape the market narrative. The surge in crude reignited inflation concerns, pushing the 10-year Treasury yield to its highest level since January 2025. With the Federal Reserve meeting next week, the odds of an interest rate hike went up. According to the CME FedWatch tool , the markets are now pricing in a nearly 35% probability of a quarter-point increase in rates, up from just a 13% chance one week ago. Wall Street raises the bar for AI spending Artificial intelligence remained a dominant theme of earnings this week, and investors made one thing clear: They’re no longer willing to reward massive spending without seeing a clear path to returns. Club holding Alphabet became the clearest example after reporting Wednesday evening better-than-expected revenue and earnings and Google Cloud growth of 82% year over year. Shares of the Google parent fell 7% on Thursday, as investors focused on Alphabet’s decision to once again increase its capital expenditures (capex) outlook. Management now expects to spend between $195 billion and $205 billion on capital expenditures this year and signaled spending will rise again in 2027. With free cash flow turning negative, Wall Street is becoming increasingly skeptical that hyperscalers can continue pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure without showing a greater financial payoff. Alphabet was the fourth worst performer in the Club portfolio this week, down 7.8%. Capex levels will be the focus when our three other hyperscalers — Amazon , Meta Platforms , and Microsoft — report next week. Club name Intel ‘s results this past Thursday night told the other side of the story. The chipmaker delivered its strongest quarterly revenue growth since 2011 , fueled by a 59% jump in data center revenue as enterprises continue investing aggressively in AI infrastructure. However, we were slightly disappointed that Intel did not announce a major foundry customer. On Tuesday, Intel did announce cybersecurity company Fortinet as its first named foundry customer. Several other companies, including Apple , have been rumored to be partnering with Intel, but no formal agreements have been announced. Intel opened higher Friday but reversed lower, closing down nearly 8%. That put Intel 3% in the red for the week. Data center-exposed earnings mixed GE Vernova served as a prime example of why investors need to look beyond the headline numbers. Shares fell roughly 8% on Wednesday after the Club holding missed Wall Street’s earnings-per-share (EPS) estimate. While a miss is never ideal, we think investors focused on the wrong metric . The more important number was order growth, which surged 88%, driven by exceptionally strong demand across the firm’s Power and Electrification businesses, which are key to running AI data centers. For a company like GE Vernova, orders provide a much better gauge of future growth than quarterly earnings because they reflect customer demand rather than past deliveries. To us, this is exactly the kind of long-term story investors should embrace. Shares of GE Vernova rebounded 4.7% on Thursday, but fell 1.6% on Friday. They ended the week down roughly 4.1%. Dover , on the other hand, reinforced why we think it’s time to move on . Shares of the industrial firm dropped almost 8% on Thursday after delivering a mixed quarter, with earnings narrowly topping expectations but revenue falling short. While the company has meaningful exposure to attractive secular growth areas like AI data centers, those businesses account for only about 25% of expected 2026 revenue. The remainder of its portfolio is spread across a collection of slower-growing industrial businesses, making it difficult for investors to view Dover as a pure-play beneficiary of the AI themes driving the market. We already trimmed the position twice in June, locking in double-digit gains. Shares of Dover rebounded 2.2% on Friday but finished the week down 5.6%. Healthcare catalysts While technology dominated much of the week’s attention, two of the Club’s healthcare names delivered reminders that some of the market’s most compelling long-term growth stories exist beyond AI . Eli Lilly announced encouraging late-stage data for its next-generation obesity drug, triple-acting retatrutide. Shares rose 2% on Thursday’s news. The therapy has generated excitement because it has demonstrated greater weight loss than Lilly’s own Zepbound and Novo Nordisk ‘s Wegovy. Investors initially focused on management pushing its regulatory filing into the first quarter of 2027. We think the more important takeaway is how Lilly plans to file. Rather than using the traditional new drug pathway, the company intends to submit retatrutide as a biologic, a route that generally provides stronger intellectual property protections and exempts the drug from Medicare price negotiations under the Inflation Reduction Act. In our view, a slightly later launch is a reasonable tradeoff if it extends the commercial life of what could become one of Lilly’s most valuable products. Shares of Lilly gained 1.4% for the week. Johnson & Johnson also delivered an important positive surprise after the FDA approved its Ottava robotic surgery system months earlier than investors expected. Shares rose 2% on the news on Wednesday. The approval gives J & J a foothold in the rapidly growing robotic surgery market, long dominated by Intuitive Surgical , and provides an important catalyst for its MedTech business, which has recently lagged the company’s pharmaceutical segment. J & J stock finished 4.1% higher for the week. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. 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Here are 4 forces that drove a tough week for stocks
Jul 26, 2026
