Good morning! Despite a bunch of news, markets were mostly treading water on Monday as they looked toward Wednesday's inflation release.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) closed Monday little changed, the Dow (^DJI) fell about 0.1%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq (^IXIC) fell 0.3%.

What we're watching Tuesday: The cloud computing company CoreWeave (CRWV) is set to report later today, offering another glimpse of the health of the AI transformation along with Super Micro Computer (SMCI). We'll also have an eye on Slop Bowl Summer as the Mediterranean fast-casual chain Cava (CAVA) opens the books on how increasingly choosy consumers spend their lunch money. 

Yahoo Finance Morning Brief is written by Ethan Wolff-Mann and Hamza Shaban.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., July 9, 2026. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)

A lot of manifestos get posted on various Meta platforms. This time, it's Mark Zuckerberg himself doing the posting. And like a good manifesto, it's looong.

In 6,500-plus words, Zuckerberg details his vision of democratizing superintelligence and AI for everyone while criticizing rival AI labs. In short, the idea is to provide free access to AI to billions of people while using “distillation,” which involves using existing AI models to help develop new ones. 

What’s notable here is that Zuckerberg is relying on a familiar Facebook playbook: Place his company at the center of a glorious, unfurling transformation that empowers users. 

Sure, almost anyone can post almost anything on Facebook and Instagram. You could describe that as liberating the public sphere, or you could consider this more of a corporate success, given it’s also a giant advertising machine whose expanding surface area Meta controls. 

This is also a company talking its book: Meta’s business model lends itself to railing against too much AI centralization. The company has long run with an open-source game plan and is planning on selling its data center compute. It’s also playing defense as it launches some new OpenAI and Claude competitors. 

Big Tech earnings showed a glimmer of how they are going to make a sustainable living off of the AI build-out. 

But Meta’s advertising prowess and its ability to present its private platforms as public utilities may be a key tool in its toolbox as it searches for its own return on investment. In the meantime, we're asking ourselves, who is this manifesto for?

Shareholders line up to take pictures with depictions of Berkshire Hathaway's new CEO Greg Abel and Chairman Warren Buffett on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)

“I hate cash,” Warren Buffett quipped 10 years ago, noting that it "is a holding position until you find something else." Berkshire Hathaway has been in that holding position for quite some time.

But under its new CEO, Greg Abel, they’ve finally found something else: $10 billion of Alphabet (GOOG) stock.

For bulls of the conglomerate built by legendary investor Warren Buffett, the newfound shelling out is a vote of confidence for the Google parent but also itself, as the company also bought back $4.5 billion of its own stock. 

CFRA Research analyst Cathy Seifert said investors should be encouraged by “the fact that they bought back shares after not having done things of this magnitude for several years now.”

But that’s not good enough for “The Big Short” investor Michael Burry. In a post on Substack, he said he no longer finds "Berkshire an attractive investment going forward," critiquing the company’s cash pile size and opining that Abel, who’s in his first year at the helm, may not have Buffett’s discipline.

Shares of the conglomerate are up roughly 6% year to date, compared to the overall market’s 13% gain. 

A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., August 4, 2026. (REUTERS/Jeenah Moon)

The second quarter earnings season is (mostly) in the books. And about a month since Delta and the big banks kicked things off you can see the report card right on our S&P 500 ticker page: We're up 2.4% over the past month.

There are multiple reasons for the success, and the first one is a simple truth of the financial markets: Earnings drive the stock market, and corporate profits are on pace for their fastest growth since 2021. 

As Creative Planning chief market strategist Charlie Bilello put it, "We've never seen earnings growth this high outside of post-recessionary rebounds.” 

Add in strong outlooks, the fact that this was done amid the Iran conflict, and seemingly invincible inflation, and it doesn’t really seem like a surprise — though would a correction surprise anyone either?

We’d note that there’s momentum here, both from the FOMO of it all — this emotion is squarely at the forefront right now — and from yet another S&P 500 price target upgrade from JPMorgan.

That strategy team now sees 8,000 by year's end, which would be a 3% run, largely stemming from the feeling that the big AI capex bets are paying off. Another lesson we learned this earnings season.

 A live feed shows SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on the day of SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO) at the Nasdaq MarketSite, in New York City, U.S., June 12, 2026. (REUTERS/Jeenah Moon)

Last week, we noted that individual investors in SpaceX (SPCX) wholeheartedly bought the dip, steadfast in their belief in a lucrative Musk space age and happy to buy the stock on sale.

But on Monday, a report from Vanda Research, which tracks retail investors, noted that these individuals were net sellers for the very first time, dumping $4.5 million in SpaceX shares on Friday. (In comparison, its biggest day was $145 million in net buying.)

Next to institutional investor money, retail investors may be somewhat small potatoes. But it’s an interesting sign to see a day of net selling, given that this cohort may represent something of a sentiment barometer. SpaceX’s trip to the public markets began with significant retail interest — and partnership, with the company even putting aside 20% of shares for enthusiasts looking for a taste.

Whether this continues will be a key trend to watch.