August 13 Hour by Hour: PPI at 8:30am, Applied Materials After the Bell

TL;DR

• July PPI and initial jobless claims are released together at 8:30am ET on Thursday, August 13. Consensus wants +0.2% on headline PPI and +0.3% on core, after June printed -0.3%. Claims are seen at 202,000 against 199,000.
• Applied Materials reports after the close, with the call at 4:30pm ET. Management guided $8.95 billion of revenue plus or minus $500 million and $3.36 of adjusted EPS plus or minus $0.20, and the Street sits on the midpoints, so the fiscal Q4 guide is the event.
• Four earnings calls share the 8:00am hour: Tapestry, JD.com, Birkenstock and Bending Spoons all report before the open. Nu Holdings joins Applied Materials after the close.
• June's PPI was the softest wholesale print of the year and two thirds of the goods decline traced to gasoline falling 12%. That base effect is spent, which is why I care more about Thursday's core line than the headline.
• The market goes in near its high. Wednesday closed at 7,748.50 on the S&P 500, up 0.26%, about 0.1% below the August 7 record of 7,757.64.

What Time Is the PPI Report on Thursday?

8:30am ET on Thursday, August 13, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, covering July. Initial jobless claims are published at the same minute, so the labour reading and the inflation reading hit the tape together and futures have to price both at once.

This is the middle leg of a three-day macro run: July CPI landed in line on Wednesday, PPI comes Thursday, and July retail sales close it out Friday at 8:30am. The whole week sits in the week-ahead hub, and the rest of the earnings slate is in the earnings calendar.

The Board

Six scheduled events, one 8:30am print that reaches all of them.

Thursday, Hour by Hour

• 8:00am ET: four calls at once. Tapestry reports fiscal Q4 with Coach now around 89% of group revenue. JD.com laps the worst of the China delivery war. Birkenstock reports fiscal Q3, and Bending Spoons files its first quarter as a public company with no prior print to compare against.
• 8:30am ET: July PPI and initial jobless claims. Headline PPI is seen at +0.2% and core at +0.3%, per the Investing.com economic calendar, which was the only consensus table I could source for the monthly figures. June's annual rates were 5.5% headline and 4.7% core.
• 9:30am ET: the open. The cash market trades an hour-old reaction rather than the print itself.
• 4:00pm ET: the close.
• 4:30pm ET: Applied Materials. The fiscal Q3 preview is here, and the verdict piece on whether to own it into the print is here.
• After the close: Nu Holdings. Consensus is $0.19 on $5.48 billion, with a computed whisper slightly below it, which is unusual for this name.

June's PPI Fell on Gasoline, and That Help Is Spent

Start with what made June look good. Wholesale prices fell 0.3% on the month, the first negative print of the year, and about two thirds of the goods decline was gasoline collapsing 12%. That was June capturing oil at pre-war lows below $71. Brent has since climbed back above $84.

So July is the first month in this series that prices oil on the way up instead of on the way down. Consensus at +0.2% is the arithmetic of that flip, and it would still leave headline wholesale inflation running well above the Fed's target on an annual basis.

The line I would actually read first is core, expected at +0.3% against June's +0.2%. Strip fuel out and June was ordinary rather than disinflationary: services rose 0.2% and annual core sat at 4.7%. An acceleration there is the tariff-and-services story showing up at the wholesale level, and it matters beyond the headline because PPI components feed directly into the PCE index the Fed actually targets.

Wednesday's CPI did not settle September. It came in at 3.4% headline, +0.1% on the month, core +0.2%, matching consensus on every line, and September pricing barely moved off a coin flip. The Fed's target sits at 3.50-3.75%, July's hold drew three dissents in favour of a hike, and Chair Kevin Warsh has stripped forward guidance out of the statements. With no verbal cushion, Thursday's two 8:30am numbers do more work than a PPI Thursday normally does.

Claims deserve a glance for the same reason. 202,000 expected against 199,000 is a historically low number, and it keeps sitting next to a July payrolls report that lost 23,000 jobs. I am not convinced those two can stay consistent much longer, and a claims print with a four in front of the second digit would move rate pricing harder than the PPI headline.

Applied Materials Carries the Evening

The guide is the consensus. Management's $8.95 billion and $3.36 are almost exactly where the Street landed, so a beat on the quarter itself would tell you little. The fiscal Q4 outlook is what gets traded, and it arrives on a call at 4:30pm ET rather than in the release.

The setup is uncomfortable. Applied Materials rallied 4.29% to $548.15 on Wednesday into a two-sided event, at roughly 43x forward earnings against Nvidia near 24x, while options price a move of only about 7.5%. This stock printed +13.42% on June 25 and roughly +15% on July 30. Twice inside seven weeks it has gone double digits in a day, which is my reason for thinking a straddle is the more interesting expression here than the shares. The logged play and its price sit in the decision piece; no new play is being logged in this timetable.

One caveat on the price. Aggregators are quoting Wednesday's close anywhere between $525.61 and $548.15, and the low end matches what the arithmetic implies was Tuesday's close, so some feeds appear to be a day behind. I am using $548.15 for consistency with the rest of the site.

The One-Line Read

The 8:30am print is the one event on Thursday that can move every name on the board, and Applied Materials at 4:30pm is the one that can move the chip complex. Everything in between is reaction.