Midday Market Intelligence: fed watch (& listen)

Research evidence excerpt

Midday Market Intelligence: fed watch (& listen)

Equity Research

29 July 2026 | 2:36PM EDT

US stocks are trading modestly lower Wednesday at 2:15PM as investors react to the Chris Hussey

+1(212)902-7564 |

just-released FOMC statement that kept rates unchanged with no change to the chris.hussey@gs.com

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

composition of which governors wanted a hike and which ones did not — the press

Sarah Herr

conference is still to come. +1(212)357-0094 | sarah.herr@gs.com

Kshitij Garg

... but its still all about AI froth +1(212)934-7434Goldman Sachs India| kshitij.garg@gs.comSPL

While investors today necessarily have to pay attention to what the Fed is saying and

what’s happening to oil prices, the real focus appears to still be more on what to do

about the AI trade than anything else. A variety of stocks tied to data center

construction from cooling suppliers (LII) to companies that put together server racks

(FLEX) are gapping down today as investors continue to assess how much to pay for

the building blocks of the AI revolution. See Joe Ritchie’s “LII: 2Q26 First Take: Resi

HVAC drives 2Q miss, FY26 guide lowered” and Mark Delaney’s “FLEX: 1QFY27 First

Take.”

Earnings season, of course, is also playing a role here as investors position just ahead

of results from 4 mega-cap Tech stocks over the next two nights (MSFT and META

tonight; AMZN and AAPL Thursday night — click on each ticker for the link to our

preview). How much the hyperscalers can continue to invest in datacenter capacity

and whether this investment is on a reasonable path to generating strong returns are

critical questions to be addressed over the remainder of this week.

As we wait, we have oil and rates to watch.

n On oil, renewed tensions in the Middle East overnight has led to a $6/bbl increase