GoodWhale Weekly: S&P 500 Record — Palantir +29%, AMD Beats, Oil Slides on Iran De-Escalation

The Week in 30 Seconds

• [TECH] Palantir ripped +29%. Q2 revenue grew 93% to $1.94B, EPS $0.41 vs $0.33. AI-sovereign demand drove the beat. Loudest AI-software signal of the year.
• [TECH] AMD posted record $11.5B quarter. Revenue +50% YoY, data-center segment more than doubled. But stock slipped on softer Q3 guide.
• [OIL] Trump called off Iran strike, oil dropped 5%. WTI to $80.34, Brent to $83.77. Talks flagged to restart. Strait of Hormuz premium eased.
• [MEDIA] Disney beat on streaming and parks. Revenue +7% to $25.25B, streaming +11% to $5.53B, Toy Story 5 crossed $1B global. EPS missed but engines are working.
• [MACRO] S&P 500 record at 7,600, Dow all-time 53,178. Q2 EPS growth tracking +47.4% YoY — strongest since 2021. STI and KLCI lagged the US highs.

1. Stocks record high: Palantir’s 29% Rip: The Loudest AI-Software Signal in a S&P 500 Record Week

Meanwhile, the single biggest single-stock move of the week — and the biggest catalyst behind the fresh stocks record high print — was Palantir. On Aug 4, PLTR jumped 29% in one session, nearly its best day ever, after Q2 earnings that CEO Alex Karp himself called “otherworldly.” Revenue grew 93% year-on-year to $1.94 billion, comfortably above the roughly $1.8 billion LSEG consensus, and EPS of $0.41 crushed the $0.33 Street estimate.

The narrative that mattered wasn’t the numbers, though — it was the driver behind them. Palantir pinned the blowout on surging demand from governments and enterprises for AI sovereignty tools: the ability to run capable AI on their own infrastructure with their own data. That’s a meaningful pivot for the whole enterprise-AI thesis, because it says the payback for AI investment is now showing up in software revenue, not just in chip orders. For SG/MY investors, the read-across is real: Sea Limited’s AI tooling, Grab’s engineering-cost trajectory, and SGX/Bursa-listed enterprise-software names all trade on that same underlying belief — that the AI capex the hyperscalers keep announcing eventually converts to real software P&L. Palantir just gave the market a giant data point that it does.

2. AMD’s Record Quarter: A Second Engine for the AI Chip Trade

Notably, aMD delivered its own AI-era milestone this week. Q2 revenue came in at a record $11.5 billion, up 50% year-on-year, and the data-center segment — home to the MI-series AI accelerators — more than doubled versus the prior year. That’s the strongest signal yet that AI compute demand is broadening beyond Nvidia into a genuine two-horse race for the enterprise GPU dollar.

The stock reaction was more mixed than the headline suggested. Even with a clean top-and-bottom beat, AMD shares actually slipped after the print as investors focused on a Q3 guide that came in a touch softer than the most aggressive bulls wanted. That’s the caveat inside an otherwise strong AI-chip week — the trade now has to navigate a real digestion window rather than endless linear upside. For SG/MY investors, the more important signal is the read-across into the local chip supply chain: AMD’s more diversified customer set pulls harder on Southeast Asian assembly, testing and packaging capacity than Nvidia’s concentrated hyperscaler demand does. That matters directly for AEM Holdings, UMS Holdings, Frencken, Inari Amertron and Vitrox as September-quarter order books get built. Two AI-chip engines running in parallel is a healthier setup than one — even if the stock action doesn’t always reflect it in real time.

3. Trump Backs Off Iran: Oil Falls 5% and Feeds the S&P 500 Record

However, the macro story that let the equity rally run this week wasn’t a data print — it was a phone call. On Aug 3, President Trump publicly called off a planned strike on Iran, citing a request from Tehran and pressure from other Middle Eastern governments, and signalled that US-Iran negotiations would restart within days. The market reacted in real time: WTI crude fell about 5% to $80.34 a barrel, Brent dropped 4.7% to $83.77, and the Strait of Hormuz tail-risk premium that had been fattening the oil curve for months finally started to bleed out.

That single move did more for the fresh US stocks record high print than any earnings call. Lower crude pulled Treasury yields off their highs, opened a window for risk assets, and let the Dow close at an all-time high of 53,178.41 on the same session. For SG/MY investors, the practical read-across cuts both ways: Singapore Airlines, Cebu Pacific and regional logistics names get relief on fuel input costs, and MAS and Bank Negara Malaysia get a small breather on the imported-inflation channel. But the SG/MY oil-and-gas complex — Sembcorp Industries, Petronas Chemicals, Dialog Group, Hibiscus Petroleum, Yinson — gives back some of the geopolitical premium. The important caveat is that Tehran denied that talks were formally scheduled, so this is a de-escalation, not a resolution. Oil at $80 with an unresolved Iran overhang is still a very different regime from oil at $75 with a signed deal — and any headline can flip it back overnight.

4. Disney’s Streaming + Parks Beat: The Reopening Trade Still Has Legs

Additionally, disney’s fiscal Q3 was the media print of the week and the one that gave the reopening-consumer trade a fresh talking point. Revenue rose 7% to $25.25 billion, a touch light versus the $25.4B consensus, but the internal mix was the story. Direct-to-consumer streaming revenue grew 11% to $5.53 billion, powered by a combination of ad-tier subscriber additions, price hikes and stronger ad-revenue monetisation — exactly the flywheel management has spent two years promising the market. On the studio side, Toy Story 5 crossed $1 billion at the global box office, giving the theatrical business its cleanest tentpole win in more than a year.

The blemish was earnings quality: EPS of $1.51 missed the $1.86 estimate, and net income of $2.64 billion came in below plan on higher costs. That’s why the stock reaction was muted rather than euphoric. But the direction of the two flagship engines — streaming and parks — is now clearly the right way, which is the setup Disney bulls have been waiting on since the reopening trade started to tire in early 2025. For SG/MY investors, the read-across is squarely into the region’s consumer-discretionary and travel complex: Genting Singapore and Genting Malaysia on the destination-entertainment thesis, Resorts World Sentosa and SATS on the family-travel channel, and mm2 Asia and Golden Screen Cinemas for tentpole box-office pull. Disney at 7% top-line growth with streaming flywheel intact is a small-but-real vote of confidence in the whole reopening-consumer trade heading into the year-end travel season.

5. S&P 500 Record: The Tape Wants to Go Up Despite the Yield Curve

On the other hand, the single most important market fact of the week was a number on a screen: a fresh stocks record high with the S&P 500 closing at 7,600.50, alongside the Dow at an all-time 53,178.41 and the Nasdaq Composite up 2.1% to 25,913.9. That combination — all three major US indices printing highs in the same week — is the tape voting decisively that the AI-earnings trade is intact and the Iran de-escalation was enough to reset the geopolitical premium.

The underlying fundamentals broadly support the move. FactSet is tracking Q2 S&P 500 earnings growth at +47.4% year-on-year, the strongest quarterly print since Q2 2021, and this week’s marquee beats — Palantir at +29%, AMD’s record $11.5B quarter, Disney’s streaming pickup — reinforced the earnings-are-real narrative. The Fed’s decision two weeks ago to hold rates at 3.50-3.75% on a contested 9-3 vote hasn’t gone away as a discount-rate anchor, but it also hasn’t stopped the earnings-growth story from doing the heavy lifting. For SG/MY investors, the trickier point is that Asia hasn’t fully participated. STI closed the week near 5,640 after a five-day losing streak that shed 130+ points, and KLCI at 1,736 is up only 2.1% year-to-date. That US-record / Asia-lagging divergence is the setup to watch closely — either Asian indices mean-revert higher (bullish for SGX/Bursa banks, REITs, and the tech supply chain) or the US pulls back to close the gap. Friday’s US jobs print and the next US CPI reading are the two catalysts most likely to break the setup one way or the other.

What I’m Watching Next Week

Source: Palantir stock skyrocketed 29% after otherworldly Q2 earnings