Key Bullet Points:
- Palantir reported Q2 revenue of $1.935 billion, up 93% year over year, with US commercial revenue up 149%, GAAP net income of $1.062 billion, and both GAAP and adjusted EPS at $0.41
- The company raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $8.150–8.158 billion, an 82% growth rate — an 11-point increase over the prior quarter's guide and the largest guidance raise in company history. US commercial guidance went to above $3.424 billion, up 134%
- The Dow closed Monday at a record 53,178.41, up 693.38 points (1.32%), surpassing its July 6 record of 53,055.91. The S&P 500 rose 110.78 to 7,600.50 and the Nasdaq jumped 540.04, or 2.13%, to 25,913.90 — a third straight day of gains, with megacaps adding roughly $537 billion and Amazon topping $3 trillion
- Treasury Secretary Bessent said a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could come as soon as Wednesday, and Qatar confirmed a draft proposal is circulating. Brent slipped to a three-week low near $83.64, down about 5% on the week
- But Tehran continues to deny that any negotiations are under way, and a dry bulk cargo ship was struck by a projectile off Oman's coast Monday night. The crew abandoned the vessel and one seafarer is missing
- June job openings fell 178,000 to 7.359 million, a larger drop than expected, from a revised 7.54 million in May — which had been the highest level since May 2024
Ninety-Three Percent
Palantir does not report quietly, and Monday night's numbers did not require interpretation.
Revenue grew 93% year over year to $1.935 billion. GAAP net income came in at $1.062 billion — a billion dollars of accounting profit, not adjusted profit, from a company that spent most of its public life explaining why it did not have any. US commercial revenue, the segment that has always been the bull case, grew 149%.
Then management raised full-year revenue guidance to between $8.150 and $8.158 billion, an 82% growth rate. That is an eleven-point increase over what they guided just three months ago, and it is the largest guidance raise Palantir has ever issued. US commercial guidance moved above $3.424 billion, up 134%. For the third quarter, the company guided revenue to $2.16–2.164 billion with adjusted income from operations of $1.292–1.296 billion.
The stock soared in after-hours trading. Given the print, that was not a surprise.
What Makes This One Different
Plenty of companies have beaten estimates this earnings season. Roughly 71% of the S&P 500 had reported entering this week, with consensus Q2 operating earnings growth running at 37% year over year. Beating is close to normal right now.
Raising your own annual forecast by eleven percentage points in a single quarter is not normal. That is a company telling you its own model of the next six months was materially too conservative ninety days ago — and doing it at a scale where the revision itself is larger than most software companies' entire revenue base.
The acceleration is the signal worth sitting with. Growth rates at this revenue level are supposed to decay. Palantir's went up. That happens when demand is arriving faster than the company can forecast it, which is a genuinely different condition from simply executing well, and it is why the next phase of the AI trade may not belong to the names everyone already owns.
The government side deserves a mention too, because it is the half of the business that gets treated as the boring half. Defense and intelligence procurement has been expanding through this entire five-month conflict, and the contracts flowing out of it are public information for anyone willing to read the filings, which the market persistently underrates.
The Dow Made a Record. The War Did Not End.
Monday was the strongest session of the young month. The Dow closed at a record 53,178.41, up 693.38 points, clearing the July 6 high of 53,055.91. The S&P 500 added 110.78 to 7,600.50, leaving it just short of its June 2 closing record of 7,620.90. The Nasdaq rose 540.04, or 2.13%, to 25,913.90.
Critically, breadth was there this time. The Russell 2000 rose 1.73% to 2,981.91 — a real change from Friday, when small caps fell while the Nasdaq gained 1%. Megacaps added about $537 billion in market value, and Amazon crossed $3 trillion.
Tuesday extended it. The Dow was up more than 1,000 points intraday and the S&P traded to a new all-time high after Bessent said a Hormuz agreement could arrive as soon as Wednesday. Qatar said mediators were making progress and that a draft proposal was circulating, covering two tracks: reopening the strait, and Iran's nuclear program.
And then there is the other set of facts.
Tehran again denied that talks are taking place, directly contradicting Trump's statement that negotiations are "going on right now" and that this is Iran's "last chance." Monday night, a dry bulk cargo ship was struck by an unidentified projectile off the coast of Oman. The crew abandoned ship. One seafarer is missing.
Brent, notably, gave up its earlier decline on Tuesday and bounced. The oil market noticed the vessel even as the equity market did not.
The Labor Data Is Quietly Softening
Tuesday's JOLTS report went largely unmentioned in the celebration. June job openings fell by 178,000 to 7.359 million, a bigger decline than economists expected, down from a revised 7.54 million in May — which had been the highest reading since May 2024.
Underneath, the composition is the story. Layoffs and discharges were unchanged at 1.8 million, a rate of 1.1%. The hiring rate sits at 3.4% and the quits rate at 2.0%. Nobody is being fired, and nobody is being hired, and nobody is leaving voluntarily because there is nowhere obvious to go.
That is a labor market that looks stable in the headline and frozen underneath — and headline stability in employment data has a way of being revised into something less comfortable, which is exactly the trap in the numbers that looked reassuring last week.
What Lands Next
AMD's second-quarter results landed after Tuesday's close, and the setup was extreme: the stock ran up roughly 8.8% during the session to around $527 ahead of the print, options were pricing a move of roughly 12% in either direction, and the company had guided Q2 revenue to $11.2 billion plus or minus $300 million — about 46% growth — with the data center segment expected to supply the overwhelming majority of it. Whatever the number, the reaction will tell you how much AI optimism is already in the price.
SanDisk reports Wednesday, with the stock down roughly 47% from its high — the first clean read on whether the memory shortage is a real supply story or a narrative. ADP lands Wednesday, and July nonfarm payrolls arrive Friday, following June's soft 57,000.
The market has now priced a Hormuz reopening, a cooling in inflation, and an AI cycle that keeps accelerating. Two of those three are still claims rather than facts, and the gap between what Wall Street has decided and what has actually been confirmed is where the real positioning mistakes are being made.
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