The Monday Report – 17 August 2026

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This story features CAPRICORN METALS LIMITED, and other companies.
For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: CMM
The company is included in ASX100, ASX200, ASX300 and ALL-ORDS

US markets retreated on Friday, post softer-than-expected retail sales and higher oil prices.

The Australian market retreated on Friday to end the week down -1.6%.

Reporting season moves to full throttle this week. July unemployment data are due on Thursday.

ASX200 futures are pointing to a softer start on Monday morning.

Good Morning,

The ASX200 fell -73 points to 9,115 on Friday, led by Miners, down -2.6%, while Tech rose 2.8%.

When measured from the 9,296.7 high it reached in early August, the ASX200 is now down -148 points, or -1.60% lower, as earnings season last week produced more ‘misses’ than ‘beats’ and the RBA maintained its hawkish bias.

The worst-performing sectors last week were Financials, down -3.23%, Industrials, down -2.99%, Real Estate, down -2.34%,  and Materials down -1.77%.

In contrast, Utilities rose 7.37%, IT lifted 3.59%, Healthcare added 3.00%,  and Energy rallied 2.84%.

August reporting season is now in full swing. To stay in touch with which companies are due to report, check out the the FNArena Calendar https://fnarena.com/index.php/financial-news/calendar/

Don’t forget the FNArena corporate results monitor to track daily progress on earnings reports.

https://fnarena.com/index.php/reporting_season/

Today’s Big Picture, J.L. Bernstein extract

The Consumer Took A Breather In July

Retail sales fell to US$763.6 billion, the biggest monthly drop since May 2025.

Sentiment followed, printing 51 for August against 55.2 in July.

Fewer than one in ten Americans expect their pay to beat prices next year, down from nearly one in five in December 2024.

Soft spending on top of this week’s cool inflation reads means the Fed almost certainly holds in September.

Hyperscaler Spending Passes The Rest Of The Index

Bank of America expects the five hyperscalers to spend US$1.072 trillion on capital projects next year.

The other 495 companies in the S&P500 will spend about US$1.066 trillion combined.

Three years ago the hyperscalers were a sixth of index capex.

Apollo says the funding is shifting toward private lenders now that public bond markets are filling up.

The Record Earnings Season Has An Asterisk

Seaport’s Jonathan Golub says second quarter earnings grew more than half from a year ago, against a historical median near a tenth.

Seven of every ten dollars of Alphabet’s profit came from other income, mostly marking up private stakes in SpaceX and Anthropic.

Amazon booked about two thirds the same way. Strip those gains out and Golub still calls it the strongest season outside a recession rebound.

ANZ Bank, Australian Morning Focus extract

Equity markets were lower, while bond yields rose, led by the long end. The S&P500 closed down -0.2%. The EuroStoxx50 fell -0.1%, while the FTSE100 was down -0.2%.

The yield on the US 10y Treasury note rose 5bp to 4.69%. The active WTI future rose 1.2% to US$82.2/bbl. Gold rose 0.6% to US$4,377/oz.

US retail sales: Headline retail sales fell -0.6% m/m in July, well below the consensus of 0.1% m/m lift. The control group, which feeds into GDP, fell -0.4% m/m, against expectations for a 0.3% m/m rise.

That was the largest fall since January 2025. July’s decline followed six months of solid increases. Six of 13 spending categories declined in the month. 

US consumer sentiment: 

University of Michigan consumer sentiment fell -4.2pts to 51.0 in August, following two months of improvement. Sentiment is very weak and remains not far off May’s record low of 44.8.

The long-run average is 84.4. 1y ahead inflation expectations rose 0.1ppt to 4.3%, while 5-10y ahead inflation expectations were stable at 3.3%, the same as in February, immediately prior to the escalation in the Middle East.

A closer look at the US consumer:

A surprisingly soft July US retail sales report saw markets continue to back away from Fed rate hike expectations.

The report itself is unlikely to change policymakers’ assessments of the growth outlook as it is just one month of data following five months of solid gains.

We have been surprised by the resilience of the US consumer through 2026.

Consumer sentiment is near record lows, amidst acute cost-of-living pressures and growth in disposable incomes failing to keep pace with inflation.

We think the broad resilience in aggregate consumption masks bifurcation. Positive wealth effects tied to stock market gains are a key driver of consumption momentum currently, but they are narrow.

The top 20% of households by income own 87% of US households’ total equity holdings. The personal saving rate as a share of disposable income fell to 2.7% in June.

Outside of pandemic distortions, it has not been that low since immediately prior to the GFC.

For the bottom 80% of households, liquid assets as share of GDP are lower than pre-pandemic. Saving buffers are being eroded.

One month of soft retail sales data alone doesn’t undermine the solid US growth story, but it is a reminder that it is heavily concentrated in the AI-investment cycle.

The energy sector gained as US-Iran peace talks stalled. Precious metals rose on easing expectations of Fed rate hikes. Industrial metals edged up on supply concerns.

Market Hits All-Time Highs, But Should You Chase It? Lance Roberts, The Bull Bear report extract

This past week, stocks pushed to a fresh record, then gave a little back on Friday as inflation came in softer than expected.

Both CPI and PPI prints cooled the case for a September rate hike, and Friday’s weak retail sales report and a softer read on consumer sentiment nudged the index down about -0.2% into the close.

The numbers, however, were good. The S&P500 added 0.4%, its third straight weekly gain. It finished at 7,785.76, roughly 13% higher year over year. The Nasdaq eked out a 0.1% gain to 26,729.16, with Communication Services and Technology leading again, powered by AI and memory names.

The Dow was the laggard, off -0.6% on the week to 53,732.41, and the small-cap Russell2000 finished roughly flat near 3,055. Energy was the soft spot at the sector level even as crude firmed, and the run to record highs was, once again, a tech-driven affair.

Under the tape, the bond market did the talking. The 10-year Treasury yield ticked up to 4.69% as oil prices rose, but the soft data pulled the “Fed on hold” story forward, pushing the 2-year toward 4.13%.

Volatility stayed asleep, with the VIX pinned near 14.6. That is a market priced for calm heading into a data-heavy and seasonally rough stretch. It is exactly the tension we take up in this week’s main story.

There is nothing bearish about the tape, and the overall trend could not be much cleaner. The S&P500 sits above every major moving average and above a rising 200-day line it has not closed beneath since April.

That is a healthy, intact uptrend, and it deserves respect. The problem is not the direction, but the distance from the longer-term trend, which is more concerning.

As is always the case, deviations above the long-term trend eventually “revert to the mean.” We see it almost every year.

At Friday’s close, the index sat roughly 10% above its 200-day moving average. That is one of the widest gaps of this entire cycle, and it sits about 3.7% above the 50-day line, too.

Add our Money Flow and Breadth Indicator at 80%, with 72% of members above their own 200-day average. This market has done a lot of work in a short window. Friday’s quiet fade from record highs is the kind of small caution flag that shows up when a tape gets this extended.

Look at the ceiling first. Price is pressed right against its own record highs, with Thursday’s 7,801 close and 7,817 intraday high just overhead. Above that sits the round 8,000 mark, which also happens to be Goldman’s year-end target.

Round numbers act like magnets until they act like ceilings, so that’s where sellers tend to dig in.

The floor sits much further away. First support is the 20-day line near 7,585, then the 50-day line near 7,510, both comfortably below Friday’s close. The takeaway is the asymmetry. There’s little cushion above, and plenty of open air below, down to those averages.

Neither support level is very far away, and a pullback to either would be routine housekeeping within an uptrend, not a break of it.

The number that matters for risk is lower down. As noted, the gap from here to the rising 200-day line near 7,076 is roughly 10%, and that mean-reversion “air pocket” is the risk.

The trend remains up, but momentum is overbought; therefore, entries here offer poor near-term reward relative to risk.

US Market Call: Roaring Decades, Ed Yardeni & Toby Hearst, Yardeni Quicktakes extract

Last week, we raised our year-end S&P500 target from 8,250 to 8,400. We are sticking with our 10,000 target by the end of the decade, though we might raise it.

Our Roaring 2020s scenario is delivering even better S&P500 earnings than we expected. FEMO (fabulous earnings momentum) is driving the stock market higher!

The S&P500 is up 141.0% so far this decade, making it the sixth-best decade since the Roaring 1920s already. If it rises to 10,000 by the end of the decade, it will be up 209.5%, the fifth-best decade.

In other words, roaring decades are not exceptional for the stock market. (The S&P500 fell during the 1930s and 2000s, and edged up slightly during the 1940s, 1960s, and 2000s.)

To reach 10,000 by the end of the decade requires an additional 28.5% (or 2,201 points) gain in the S&P500. That’s roughly 7.5%-8.0% annualized price growth over the remaining 3.4 years of the decade.

If the S&P500 hits 8,400 by the end of this year, that would make 2026 the fourth consecutive year of 15% or more annual gains. The only previous streak of five consecutive gains occurred during the second half of the 1990s.

Let’s look a bit deeper:

(1) Performance. Both the market-weight and equal-weight S&P500 are at record highs. The latter has been rising to new highs with less volatility than the former after both bottomed at the end of March.

We expected the bull market to broaden this year. So far, so good. The Impressive-493 continues to outperform the Magnificent-7, up 17.6% ytd versus 3.8%. The S&P 500 as a whole is up 13.9%.

The Russell2000 is also at a record high. SmallCaps, which are the most economically sensitive corner of the stock market, suggest that investors are bullish on the economic outlook.

(2) Earnings. S&P500 forward earnings always converge to the coming year’s consensus analysts’ earnings estimate by definition (forward earnings is the time-weighted average of the consensus estimates for this year and next).

The 2027 consensus estimate is still rising. It is up to US$410.25. We estimate that both forward earnings and the 2027 estimate will rise to US$415.00 by year-end. That should take the S&P500 up to 8,400, implying a forward P/E of about 20.2.

Q2 earnings rose 47.3% y/y, up from 19.0% for Q1. Industry analysts’ consensus earnings estimates imply that they expect 23.1% growth in Q3 and 27.3% in Q4.

The Q2 number was inflated by the mark-to-market gains at Alphabet and Amazon that we have flagged. Without them, Q2 earnings growth slips to 25.7%. The Q3 and Q4 estimates carry no such distortion.

The forward profit margin is 16.5%, and the 2027 margin estimate is 16.6%. This is unprecedented. (We impute margin estimates from analysts’ estimates for earnings and revenues.)

During the week of August 13, S&P500 companies had positive 12-month percent changes in forward revenues and forward earnings of 88.5% and 86.1%.

Forward earnings are rising to record highs across the S&P500 LargeCaps, S&P400 MidCaps, and S&P600 SmallCaps. FEMO is broad-based.

(3) Sentiment. The Investors Intelligence bull/bear ratio has climbed to 3.88 against its 2.60 average, while the AAII bull/bear ratio is at 0.92 versus its average of 1.18. Institutional bullishness is getting extended.

(4) Bonds. The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index has dropped sharply to 15.0, with the 10-year Treasury yield up just 7bps over 13 weeks.

Weaker retail sales and employment data drove the CESI down. Bond yields may ease from here, according to the CESI, even though most investors expect them to go higher.

Corporate news in Australia:

• Capricorn Metals ((CMM)) will acquire the Piastri Project tenement package from Latitude 66 ((LAT)) for $1.5m in Capricorn shares
• L1 Group ((L1G)) has launched PXC Advisers, a 50/50 global long short investment management joint venture with Dr Andrew Lin
• Brookfield is conducting due diligence on Colonial First State and considering a $5bn-plus bid, while Mercer has exited the sale process
• Cerberus has launched a $1bn-plus auction of land lease operator Lincoln Place, with Goldman Sachs running the sale process
• Fonterra and a2 Milk ((A2M)) are reportedly considering a take private bid for Synlait Milk ((SM1))
• Oaktree and Anchorage are considering a buyout of Bapcor ((BAP)) following a sharp fall in the auto parts company’s share price and valuation
• T. Rowe Price is considering a bid for Perpetual’s ((PPT)) asset management business
• Ovanti ((OVT)) has launched a 1-for-1 entitlement offer to raise up to $2.29m for working capital and corporate purposes
• Laramide Resources ((LAM)) has completed a $5m private placement with a strategic investor to fund working capital and general corporate purposes

On the calendar today:

-JP 2Q GDP

-JP June Industrial prod’n (final)

-CH July Industrial prod’n

-CH July Retail sales, Unemployment

-US Aug Empire Mfg

-CA July CPI

-CA July CPI

-A2 MILK COMPANY LIMITED ((A2M)) FY26 earnings report

-AUSTRALIAN CLINICAL LABS LIMITED ((ACL)) FY26 earnings report

-AUDINATE GROUP LIMITED ((AD8)) FY26 earnings report

-AUCKLAND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT LIMITED ((AIA)) Qtrly update

-ARENA REIT ((ARF)) FY26 earnings report

-PT ANTAM (PERSERO) TBK ((ATM)) FY26 earnings report

-AURIZON HOLDINGS LIMITED ((AZJ)) FY26 earnings report

-BENDIGO & ADELAIDE BANK LIMITED ((BEN)) FY26 earnings report

-BLUESCOPE STEEL LIMITED ((BSL)) FY26 earnings report

-CONTACT ENERGY LIMITED ((CEN)) ex-div 19.40c

-DOWNER EDI LIMITED ((DOW)) FY26 earnings report

-FREIGHTWAYS GROUP LIMITED ((FRW)) FY26 earnings report

-GROWTHPOINT PROPERTIES AUSTRALIA ((GOZ)) earnings report

-GPT GROUP ((GPT)) FY26 earnings report

-IMDEX LIMITED ((IMD)) FY26 earnings report

-IRESS LIMITED ((IRE)) 1HFY26 earnings report

-JB HI-FI LIMITED ((JBH)) FY26 earnings report

-L1 GROUP LIMITED ((L1G)) FY26 earnings report

-LENDLEASE GROUP ((LLC)) FY26 earnings report

-NATIONAL AUSTRALIA BANK LIMITED ((NAB)) 3Q26 quarterly report

-NEW HOPE CORPORATION LIMITED ((NHC)) FY26 earnings report

-SUNCORP GROUP LIMITED ((SUN)) ex-div 10.00c (100%)

-SUNCORP GROUP LIMITED ((SUN)) ex-div 52.00c (100%)

FNArena’s four-weekly calendar: https://fnarena.com/index.php/financial-news/calendar/

The Australian share market over the past thirty days…

For more detail go to FNArena’s Australian Broker Call Report, which is updated each morning, Mon-Fri.

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