Levi, Pepsi, Delta earnings land as the market rotates out of AI winners. Fed minutes and services PMIs add context. Watch whether the rotation has legs.
The first full week of July is light on the calendar. Three earnings reports – Levi Strauss Wednesday evening, PepsiCo Thursday morning, Delta Air Lines before Friday's open – land in a window where the market is rotating out of AI winners and into laggards. The June jobs report came in cooler than expected, reviving rate-cut bets. The question is whether that rotation has legs or the selloff in semiconductors is a dip to buy.
Levi Strauss is the consumer read. The company reports after the close Wednesday. The macro question: how much of the recent drop in crude prices has reached shoppers? WTI crude is down 27% from a month ago, the national average for a regular gallon of gas only 10.5% lower, per AAA data through Thursday. The shock of higher pump prices may still be coloring discretionary spending. On the company-specific side, listen for commentary on the World Cup marketing push – FIFA forced Levi's to cover its logo at Levi's Stadium in California – and whether that translated into sales. CEO Michelle Gass has talked about winning more female shoppers on "Mad Money" in prior quarters. The earnings call should show whether that effort is gaining traction.
PepsiCo reports Thursday morning. The food-and-beverage giant offers a window into input-cost inflation and demand elasticity. The GLP-1 overhang is real: obesity drugs change snacking patterns, and Pepsi is leaning into protein-infused products to adapt. The company's commentary on volume trends and pricing power will matter more than the headline EPS number. Food inflation squeezes the wallet. If Pepsi sees consumers trading down, that ripples to the rest of consumer staples. The PEP stock page tracks the setup.
Delta Air Lines is the most informative of the three. Flight travel is a large discretionary cost, so Delta's commentary on booking trends and fare pricing reveals consumer appetite better than a jeans maker can. The airline also owns an oil refinery – a unique advantage among U.S. carriers – which gives it a buffer on jet fuel costs. Jet fuel and diesel belong to the same refined-products group (middle distillates), so Delta's fuel-cost commentary offers a read-through to freight costs for FedEx and other logistics names. The crude-to-jet-fuel pass-through is worth watching. The DAL stock page has the details.
Economic data and the Fed minutes
Monday brings two services-sector PMI readings: S&P Global at 9:45 a.m. ET, then the ISM services index at 10 a.m. ET. Both are monthly checkups on business activity across healthcare, real estate, finance, and food services. The ISM report includes anonymized respondent commentary, which often adds color the headline number misses. We do not make buy or sell decisions on a single PMI print. They feed into the broader picture alongside government data and company results.
Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET, the Federal Reserve releases the minutes from its June policy meeting. The June jobs report came in below consensus, pushing rate-cut expectations forward. The minutes will show how much weight the committee put on the softening labor data versus the still-sticky inflation prints from earlier in the spring. The key question: did the majority lean toward patience, or was there serious discussion of a July cut?
Thursday brings existing home sales for June from the National Association of Realtors. The housing market remains sluggish. Our position in Home Depot is a bet that lower mortgage rates eventually unlock pent-up demand. Any sign of a pickup in existing-home sales would support that thesis.
The AI trade and the rotation
The final two trading days of last week brought sharp selling across semiconductors and AI beneficiaries. The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) and VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) both traded back toward their 50-day moving averages. That level is a technical reference point traders watch. The question this week is whether buyers step in to support the semiconductor trade that drove much of the market's first-half gains, or whether the cooler jobs report keeps the rotation into laggards alive.
The rotation was visible in our portfolio across Wednesday and Thursday. AI winner Corning sold off hard after a parabolic run – we trimmed the position Tuesday before the stock fell 23% across two days. Johnson & Johnson, by contrast, finished the week at a record close. The divergence is a reminder of why diversification matters. On AlphaScala's scoring, JNJ carries a Mixed 45, suggesting the rotation into defensive names has room to run if the AI trade continues to unwind. The stock market analysis page tracks these shifts in real time.
The week ahead calendar
Monday, July 6: S&P Global services PMI at 9:45 a.m. ET; ISM services PMI at 10 a.m. ET.
Tuesday, July 7: No reports of note before the bell. Penguin Solutions (PENG) reports after the close.
Wednesday, July 8: Census Bureau wholesale trade report for May at 10 a.m. ET; Fed June meeting minutes at 2 p.m. ET. Helen of Troy (HELE) reports before the bell; Levi Strauss (LEVI) and AZZ (AZZ) after the close.
Thursday, July 9: Initial jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET; existing home sales at 10 a.m. ET. PepsiCo (PEP) and Simply Good Foods (SMPL) before the bell; WD-40 (WDFC) after the close.
Friday, July 10: Delta Air Lines (DAL) before the bell. No reports of note after the close.
(Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long FDXF, FDX, HD, HONA, JNJ, GLW and CAH. See here for a full list of the stocks.)
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Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.