In this July 31, 2026 episode of the One‑of‑a‑Kind Financial Show Daily, Certified Financial Planner Mike Milligan delivers a fast‑paced market and earnings roundup. He opens with a recap of the week’s volatility – Fed drama, a mid‑week crash and a Thursday rally that erased losses. He highlights Microsoft’s surprise AI earnings, noting a 43% jump in Azure revenue, a $678 billion AI backlog, and a $400 billion one‑day market‑cap gain – the biggest single‑day percentage rise for Microsoft in 18 years. Chip stocks surged, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up 8.19% and individual names (Micron, SanDisk, AMD, Intel) posting double‑digit gains. Milligan then reviews the Mag‑7 earnings: Apple posted a record June quarter (revenue $109.4 bn, EPS $2.02) but missed service revenue estimates and guided lower growth, causing a post‑earnings dip. Amazon reported a historic $200.6 bn quarter, with AWS revenue up 37% YoY and a $53.4 bn non‑operating gain from its Anthropic investment, driving a 7‑9% after‑hours rally. He contrasts the market’s split reaction – hyperscalers (Microsoft, Amazon) rewarded, while Apple and Meta saw price declines despite solid results. Turning to Asia, Milligan notes a historic rally in South Korea’s KOSPI (up >13% intraday, 17% peak), the largest single‑day gain ever, driven by memory‑chip demand after Microsoft’s AI news and a rebound from a 40% monthly decline. Samsung and SK Hynix posted massive intraday gains, with SK Hynix’s chairman buying personal shares. A quick Google Trends scan shows the week’s top public searches (Trump, Senate AG nomination, Dulles PeopleMover, a murder trial, COVID‑19 origins), underscoring that market volatility mirrors broader societal uncertainty. Milligan wraps with a forward‑looking calendar (Palantir, AMD, Pfizer, Disney, Uber, McDonald’s, July non‑farm payroll) and stresses that short‑term returns are unpredictable, but a written financial plan can provide stability. He ends with calls to action for listeners to engage with his One‑of‑a‑Kind Financial Plan service.
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Happy Friday. This is Mike Milligan, Certified Financial Planner. This is the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily for Friday, July 31st. We are closing out the biggest week of earnings for the year. There was Fed drama this week and there's market emotion that has been leading us on this roller coaster all year. Apple and Amazon reported after the bell yesterday. Wall Street rallied hard on Thursday to erase Wednesday's crash. And overnight in Asia, South Korea's KOSPI is staging the largest single-day rally in its history right now while you sit here and listen to this. Today, I also want to check on Google one more time to see what the middle of the country is really searching for as the noise of this week ends. Educate, coach, plan. Never miss a moment.
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Here's the tale of the tape for July— Thursday, July 30th. Well, Walmart erased Wednesday's crash in a single session. S&P up 1.66%, the best day since June 11th. NASDAQ Composite, uh, up 2.78%, the best day since March 31st, and it ended a 6-day losing streak. Dow Jones Industrial Average up 613 points or 1.19%. Russell 2000 small caps up 1.4%. And here's an index we don't look at often, The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index was up 8.19%, the biggest one-day gain since April 2025. Chip stocks led the charge. Micron up 18%, SanDisk up 26%, AMD up 13%, Intel up 11%. Microsoft up 15.5% on the day, the biggest single-day percentage gain in 18 years. Microsoft added roughly $400 billion of market cap in one session. That number is almost— that number almost doesn't make sense until you hear it out loud. $400 billion, $400 billion with a B, added in 6.5 hours of the market being open. What changed on Thursday? Well, on Wednesday, this market was terrified that hundreds of billions of dollars of AI CapEx spending would never generate real revenue. When Microsoft had its earning call, They reported that their AI, Azure, was up 43% and backlogged— it has a backlog incoming revenue of $678 billion. And that gave the market its answer. When one hyperscaler like Microsoft prints numbers like that, the fear becomes belief. Not a forecast, just an observational tape. For the week, the S&P, Dow, and the NASDAQ grew up modestly, Let's see how they end today and we'll report back on that on Monday's episode of the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily.
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Then after the closing bell on Thursday, we got the last 2 of the Mag 7 stocks and the market delivered a split verdict on those 2 companies as well. Apple reported a record June quarter. Revenue at $109.4 billion, up 16% year over year. And that was a beat on what the market or what analysts expected. Adjusted earnings per share were $2.02, again, a beat of what was expected of $1.89, 7% more than expected. iPhone revenue up 22%. That's the best iPhone June quarter in company history. Mac revenue was up 29%, blowing past estimates. And then when you looked regionally, their Greater China revenue was up 22.4%. Gross margin at Apple was over 50%, 50.1%, which included about 2 percentage points for tariff refunds from the US government. Without the tariff refunds, gross margin was still at 48%. above the guidance midpoint. But 2 things concerned investors. Their service revenue came in at $30.7 billion, growing at 12%, but it missed by about half a billion dollars on the estimate. And it's first— that's the first sequential decline in more than 3 years. And on the conference call, Apple guided current quarter revenue growth to only 9 to 11% below the analyst estimate of 12%. This week, as I've been educating you on earnings season, you heard me on Apple say beat, beat, beat, lower guidance, lower guidance in there. So let's hear what the CFO, Kevin Parrish, cited on the conference call yesterday. He cited there's some supply constraints affecting iPhone, Macs, and iPads in that memory chip pricing was higher than they anticipated. After hours yesterday, Apple dropped as much as 7 to 8% during the conference call before settling closer down to 5 to 6%. We'll give an update on Monday how Apple did for a full trading session on Friday. This came, remember, after Apple crossed $5 trillion in market cap on Tuesday, becoming the most valuable country in the— valuable company in the United States. The second company that we're going to talk about today that reported on Thursday is Amazon. A very different reaction. Their revenue was up to $200.6 billion, 20% year over year. The first time Amazon has ever generated over $200 billion in a single quarter. Their adjusted earnings per share, $5.75. Analysts expected $1.82. I have to give you the full picture on that number. Amazon's 2nd quarter net income adjusted included $53.4 billion of non-operating income, primarily from an unrealized gain on Amazon's investment in AI company Anthropic. Strip that gain out and you still have a healthy operating quarter. Amazon Web Services grew 37% year over year to $42.2 billion, the fastest AWS growth in 18 quarters. AWS annualized run rate now is $169 billion. And here's the mic drop from CEO Andy Jassy on the call. Amazon's chip business is now over $25 billion of annualized revenue in its run rate, and its AI business is separately over $25 billion, both growing triple different percentages year over year. Amazon rose after the bell 7 to 9%. So the split screen here, Microsoft and Amazon are hyperscalers who beat and are being rewarded. Meta and Apple both delivered good numbers and both traded down. Meta for its $130 to $145 billion of CapEx guidance. Apple for a miss and guidance walk down. The, the audience takeaway for you is the same I gave you Yesterday and some other shows this week. The market is separating AI winners, winners from AI spenders one earnings call at a time. And every one of these companies is spending eye-watering amounts of capital. Only some are being paid for it yet. And we're going to see how that story plays out next quarter and the quarter after that.
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Now, while I sit here in San Juan Puerto Rico. Taping this show, Asian markets are open and something historic is happening right now. South Korea's KOSPI index is currently up more than 13%. During Asian trading on Friday, the benchmark KOSPI at one point rose 17%. Interesting. Let's see if it could get back to that target by the end of its trading. That's the largest single-day gain in index's history. The previous record was 11.95%, October 30th, 2008. Boy, those were some times right there. When the US-Korea currency swap was signed, this move is bigger. The buy-side circuit breaker, the sidecar mechanism, very technical, was triggered on both the KOSPI and the KOSDAQ, the KOSDAQ, which is within 1 second of each other at 9:06, 9:06 AM Seoul time to try to slow the rally. Samsung Electronics was current, was up 20% intraday. SK Hynix, Up 24 to 28% intraday, uh, depending on when the moment you looked. SK Hynix reported record Q2 earnings this week, and SK Group Chairman Choi Taiwon personally bought 3,620 shares of the company on the open market, the first time he's ever bought shares in his personal name. And that was worth about $3 million. That showed confidence to the investor community that he sees more growth in the future. Foreign investors have been net buyers of around $3 trillion, right, of Korean stocks overall. What's triggered this? 2 things. Microsoft's earnings last night reignited belief that AI infrastructure spending will keep flowing to memory chips. Second, KOSPI had fallen roughly 40% this month alone, forcing high-leverage funds to liquidate. When the leveraged money is flushed out and the fundamentals turn, you get rallies like this one. 2 Fridays ago today on The Daily Show, I told you the KOSPI had fallen 28% from its June record on Samsung and SK Hynix concentration risk. Today we are watching the mirror image of that trade play out overnight in real terms, in real time.
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One last look on Google Trends for Thursday, July 30th for this week. Top of the list, Trump says, quote, it is their turn after intercepted Iranian attacks completed U.S.-Iran strike operations. Second, a Senate panel delayed voting on Blanche's Attorney General nomination. Third, Dulles Airport retired its PeopleMover shuttles. I go through Dulles a lot. Matter of fact, I'll go through Dulles Over this weekend, uh, and that is a national story. Number 4, Lindsay Clancy murder trial hearing, uh, for her ex-husband had her ex-husband Patrick's 911 call. And 5th, NPR revisiting COVID-19 origin sites on the back of Fauci's Senate hearing. What in the world, guys? The market is moving in those 5 searches.
Red.
Attorney general politics, everyday travel, a mother on trial, and a pandemic looking back at itself. Not one is a market story. All of them are everyday emotional weight the American family has carried. And on top of that, the Dow crashed Wednesday, roared back Thursday, and Asia is going crazy overnight. Every day this week, our neighbors have been asked to hold their nerve about something outside of their control, and they're going to look about, and they're searching on the worries that keep them up at night. Here's the, here's the through line for Friday. The market this week showed you that returns are unpredictable in the short run. The Google Trends this week showed you that life is unpredictable in the short run. Only one thing can be predictable, your plan written on paper. That is exactly why we build the One of a Kind Financial Plan. We're not chasing returns as much as building a plan that survives the noise.
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Next week we'll get the first full week of trading in August. On Monday, Palantir Tech reports after the close. That's the highest profile AI software report of the week in the market's next test of, is AI— does AI have real revenue? Tuesday and Wednesday, a deep bench of earnings include AMD, Pfizer, Disney, Uber, McDonald's. AMD is the one that closes the loop on this past week's chip story. And then Friday, the July nonfarm payroll reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the first major inflation and labor data point after Wednesday's 9-3 Fed rate hold. That is the number that could either validate Warsh's position or hand the 3 dissenters the argument for September. Bookend on the week, a solo AI test at the front and an inflation test on the back. Well, this has been the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily, and that is That wraps this week. That wraps July. Wall Street reset after Wednesday's crash. Apple posted a June record, got sold. Amazon's AWS hit its fastest growth in 18 quarters. It got bought. And as we tape, Seoul is up big overnight with this biggest single day rally in South Korean stock market history. And America was searching Google for war, politics, and the weight of everyday life. You are one of a kind. Never miss a moment, folks. If you're ready to turn the noise of this week into a written, one-of-a-kind financial plan you can actually hold, touch, and make decisions based off of, text the word ideas, I-D-E-A-S, to the number 600-700, or call us at One Oak Financial at 757-909-7151. And if you want to hear my weekend radio show this weekend, the One of a Kind Financial Show, go to oneoakradio.com. That's the number oneoakradio.com. And it's played nationwide over the internet or in local stations in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Midland, Odessa, Honolulu, Wisconsin, Nashville, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Estoy aprendiendo. I am learning. So are you. My job's to educate, coach, play, and my motto is to never miss a moment. Have a beautiful weekend with your family. I'll see you on Monday.
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