Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) has been given a “Sell” rating, citing ongoing losses, significant shareholder dilution and a gross margin that has remained stuck around 30%. While AI-driven hyperscale data center orders have lifted revenue sharply, the quality of earnings has not improved. Risks tied to customer concentration—such as Amazon—and technology shifts, alongside an unsupported valuation, are seen as creating meaningful downside.

Amazon is scheduled to report 2024 second-quarter earnings on July 30. Barclays raised its revenue and operating profit expectations and lifted its AWS year-over-year growth forecast to 33% from 31%, citing rising demand for Bedrock services driven by AI customers such as Anthropic. Analysts also estimate Anthropic-related workloads could add more than $1.5 billion in sequential AWS revenue growth for the quarter, while 2026 capital spending could rise to about $210 billion.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI) said its stablecoin USD1 is now the settlement currency for BTC and ETH perpetual futures on Binance. USD1 is custody-held by BitGo Trust and backed 1:1 by U.S. government money market funds, and it is now deployed natively on Solana, Aptos, and Monad. The company said its WLFI Markets lending platform is live and that it has filed for a trust bank charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). WLFI put its market cap at $1.8B, with $550M raised and a community of 770K users.

GE Vernova (GEV) posted second-quarter results with earnings of $2.47 per share, below the analyst consensus estimate of $3.13, while revenue came in at $11.104 billion versus expectations of $10.734 billion. The stock fell about 6%. Oil climbed 2.1% to $86.06 a barrel and gold rose 1.8% to $4,149.80 an ounce. The Dow and S&P 500 edged higher, while the Nasdaq was slightly lower.

Palantir shares fell 4.93% on Wednesday to $126.12 after the UK’s Office for Statistics Regulation raised concerns about how performance metrics were communicated for the NHS Federated Data Platform contract. The watchdog said NHS England had not controlled for other variables and therefore could not draw cause-and-effect conclusions, calling for clearer statistical caveats, while several regional health bodies have declined to adopt the platform. Palantir is set to report Q2 results on Aug. 3, with the market expecting revenue of $1.81 billion and EPS of 33 cents.

Improving monsoon rains in India eased fears of a smaller sugar crop, after the cumulative rainfall deficit narrowed to -19% by July 22 from -42% at the end of June. New York and London raw sugar futures fell 1.28% and 1.11%, respectively. WTI crude oil jumped more than 2%, supporting ethanol economics, but funds’ sugar net-long positions are at historical highs, adding to near-term downside pressure. The market faces a tighter short-term supply-demand tug-of-war, while longer-term risks remain tied to the potential impact of El Niño.

S&P Dow Jones Indices announced the launch of its first-ever crypto-asset index on 2026-07-23. The index does not include bitcoin:native and is instead composed of 22 tokens, including Ethereum (ETH), BNB (BNB), Solana (SOL), TRX (TRX) and Hyperliquid. It is designed to provide institutional investors with an investable benchmark for the crypto market and may later underpin ETFs, ETNs and index-linked products. BingX has listed ETH, BNB, SOL and TRX trading pairs, and these tokens are core constituents of the index with a potential pathway for passive inflows.

A Goldman Sachs report says Turkey’s policy focus has shifted from “cutting rates” to “repairing external imbalances,” and that policymakers will tolerate faster lira depreciation to lift real rates while inflation takes a back seat. The approach implies the USD/TRY exchange rate could strengthen markedly in the near term. It also suggests the central bank may later move its policy-rate corridor sharply higher. The piece frames the shift as a change in policy narrative rather than routine fine-tuning.