Our top 10 things to watch in the stock market Friday

Stocks were indicated lower, with WTI crude back at $100 a barrel amid Middle East escalation concerns and Treasury yields higher after the prior session’s sharp 10-year yield decline. Company news was mixed: SLB beat revenue and earnings estimates, while Deckers cut its full-year sales outlook after Hoka and UGG missed estimates; Western Digital and Bloom Energy reported beats and raised outlooks but their shares fell. Apple’s iPhone Duo launched amid demand exceeding limited supply, while concerns about AI funding and SpaceX’s reported tower-leasing talks weighed on related stocks.

Analysis

The more consequential signal is a financing bottleneck, not a collapse in AI demand: if the cost or availability of capital slows data-center projects, orders can be deferred across accelerators, power systems, networking and storage. WDC’s customer visibility may support near-term planning, but it does not guarantee funded projects through 2030; customer concentration makes that distinction important. Treat the strong results as company-specific until capex plans and order conversion confirm the broader cycle.

Oil near $100 alongside higher yields is an adverse cross-asset combination: renewed inflation pressure can limit rate relief while raising input and financing costs. That could prolong pressure on capital-intensive AI infrastructure and consumer discretionary names. SLB may benefit from activity broadening, but the earnings decline despite revenue growth argues against treating higher crude alone as proof of improving service-sector profitability.

Wireless competition is a longer-dated risk, not yet a demonstrated earnings shock. SpaceX’s tower leasing could support tower demand initially; the threat to T, VZ and TMUS depends on spectrum deployment, coverage, pricing and subscriber uptake. Likewise, AAPL’s constrained launch supply makes early sell-through a poor standalone measure of eventual earnings contribution. The apparel weakness is a demand warning, but DECK’s guidance cut is the clearest company-specific negative; do not assume identical exposure across NKE, ONON and LULU.

Contrarian angle: positive AI demand narratives may be overvalued if investors underweight project financing. Conversely, selling every AI-linked name on that risk could overlook firms with funded, durable customer commitments. Reassess on capex guidance, order conversion, oil and yields—not headlines alone.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Prefer selective WDC exposure over a broad AI-infrastructure basket, adding only on weakness if management maintains customer commitments and subsequent results show order conversion. Cut the thesis if customer capex is deferred or guidance weakens; visibility is not a guarantee of funded demand.
• Avoid chasing BE’s improved outlook or SLB’s beat as a simple growth trade. For SLB, monitor whether EPS stabilizes as activity broadens; for BE, require evidence that raised revenue expectations convert into durable earnings before adding.
• Keep T, VZ and TMUS on a watchlist rather than shorting on tower-lease talks alone. Revisit only with evidence of a viable SpaceX service launch, pricing pressure or subscriber losses; tower lease economics could partly offset competitive risk.
• Treat DECK’s outlook reduction as a negative catalyst and wait for evidence of demand stabilization before buying the dip. Use NKE, ONON and LULU as read-throughs, not automatic shorts; broad sector weakness may already be reflected unevenly.
• Near term, track crude and Treasury yields as a joint risk signal: further increases would strengthen the case to reduce exposure to long-duration, capital-intensive growth; a sustained reversal would weaken that hedge rationale.