Big tech earnings week closed with a strange scoreboard. Most companies beat Wall Street’s estimates, yet almost every stock fell, and hundreds of billions of dollars in market value vanished in two sessions.
Four signals explain it better than the headlines. Price reaction, money flow, options positioning, and analyst revisions show who actually won the week.
Seven heavyweights reported in four days. Texas Instruments opened on July 21, Alphabet, Tesla, IBM, and ServiceNow followed on July 22, and Intel and SAP closed the set on July 23.
The week doubled as the first real test of AI capital spending at scale, after earlier calls to dump tech into the reports. Investors wanted proof that record data center budgets are turning into profit.
Commentators estimated the megacap group shed $800 billion in a single day, the worst since April 2025.
A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY.Here's a full recap:1. Tesla $TSLA was down 14% today, its worst day since January 2024, while Google $GOOGL was down 7% after posting its first negative free cash flow quarter since 2004. The macro backdrop is not helping…
— amit (@amitisinvesting) July 24, 2026
Spending guidance now moves these stocks more than earnings do.
Only two names left the week stronger. One won loudly on results, while the other won quietly on positioning.
Intel delivered the cleanest beat. Revenue rose 25% to $16.1 billion, its fastest growth in almost 15 years, and earnings of $0.42 per share doubled estimates. Consequently, the stock jumped more than 12% after hours.
Money tells a more cautious story. Chaikin Money Flow (CMF), a proxy for institutional money flow, sat at −0.13 into the print.
Barchart showed put/call open interest, the tally of contracts still held, at 0.96.This is a clear case of growing bearish hedging against Intel’s 0.6-0.75 baseline.
Analysts lifted targets without lifting ratings. Morgan Stanley kept its Hold at $84, and JPMorgan stayed at Sell at $85, per TipRanks.
ServiceNow fell 3.7% in the session after its report, which looks like a defeat. The details argue otherwise. It beat on earnings, grew subscription revenue 24.5%, and raised its outlook.
SERVICENOW $NOW Q2’26 EARNINGS HIGHLIGHTS🔹 Subscription: $3.88B; +24.5% YoY, +23% cc🔹 Total Revenue: $3.99B (Est. $3.92B) 🟢; +24% YoY, +22.5% cc🔹 Adj. EPS: $0.90 (Est. $0.86) 🟢🔹 cRPO: $13.20B (Est. ~$13.03B) 🟢; +21% YoY, +21.5% ccQ3 Guide:🔹 Subscription:… pic.twitter.com/7sgK7CjWS0
— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) July 22, 2026
CMF slipped to −0.10, so big money has not yet confirmed a recovery.
However, both put/call ratios fell after the print, from 0.54 to 0.42 on volume and 0.83 to 0.80 on open interest, showing bullish buildup.
Analysts raised targets at Bernstein and Evercore against a single KeyBanc Sell. Positioning treated the dip as an entry.
The losers shared one flaw, and it was not weak demand. Markets punished heavy spending harder than soft results.
Tesla failed all four tests. Earnings of $0.33 per share missed the $0.51 consensus, free cash flow turned negative, and capital spending jumped 142%. The stock fell 14.5%, its worst session in over a year, capping a tense Tesla earnings preview week.
BREAKING: Tesla $TSLA delivered a record quarter and still missed on profit.$28.24 billion in revenue, beating the $26.32 billion estimate, on record deliveries of 480,126 vehicles, up 25% YOY.Adjusted EPS came in at 33 cents, well below the 51 cent estimate. Gross margin… pic.twitter.com/3o9kzLbfLJ
— Bull Theory (@BullTheoryio) July 22, 2026
Money confirmed the damage. CMF worsened from −0.06 to −0.12, meaning sellers pressed harder on record deliveries.
Put volume climbed from 0.78 to 0.83 times calls, and at least six firms cut targets, including JPMorgan and UBS.
$TSLA is plunging more than 12% after a huge wave of downgrades from WS 🤯⚠️ Canaccord Genuity lowered Tesla's target price from $450 to $410⚠️ JPMorgan lowered Tesla's target price from $475 to $445⚠️ TD Cowen lowered Tesla's target price from $490 to $460⚠️ Truist… pic.twitter.com/w6ZLZyyNhT
— Ming (@tslaming) July 23, 2026
Alphabet posted the week’s best numbers and still lost. Alphabet’s July earnings showed revenue up 24% to $119.8 billion, with Cloud growing 82%, per CNBC. Yet management raised 2026 capital spending guidance to as much as $205 billion, and the stock dropped 7.1%.
That spending pushed quarterly free cash flow negative for the first time in over two decades, analysts noted, so shareholders are funding the AI buildout upfront.
$GOOGL just delivered one of the strongest quarters of the AI cycle with Cloud revenue growing 82% and operating margins reaching 36%.But the market focused on several shock factors including another $15B capex increase in just three months, a further step-up expected in 2027… pic.twitter.com/pQ5M5nzEwA
— Shay Boloor (@StockSavvyShay) July 23, 2026
The money left before the headlines did. CMF faded from 0.14 on July 20 to 0.03 after the report, so institutional buyers were stepping back all week. Analysts kept Buy ratings while JPMorgan, Piper Sandler, and UBS cut targets, and open interest edged up from 0.68 to 0.70.
Investors who had priced big earnings swings got exactly that, weeks after AI spending faced scrutiny.
Three names finished in between, with signals pointing in opposite directions. That tension makes them the ones to watch.
Texas Instruments: The week’s broadest analyst raises, with JPMorgan going to $340, could not stop put volume doubling from 0.38 to 0.76.
Yet CMF improved to −0.03, so buyers absorbed the profit-taking dip. A mixed reaction, indeed.
IBM: It missed, cut guidance, and took the sharpest target cuts, including Morgan Stanley’s move to $190. Still, the stock closed green and CMF improved to −0.09, because the July 14 crash of 25% had already priced the pain.
The Put-Call ratio remains bullish.
Moreover, several Wall Street analysts still hold higher targets. Jefferies even assigned a post-result Buy.
SAP: Earnings on its American Depositary Receipt (ADR), the US-listed version of the German stock, missed while cloud backlog grew 27%.
$SAP Q2’26 EARNINGS HIGHLIGHTS🔹 Non-IFRS EPS: €1.59 (Est. €1.75) 🔴🔹 Revenue: €9.88B (Est. €9.85B) 🟢; +9% YoY🔹 Cloud Revenue: €6.28B (Est. €6.26B) 🟢; +22% YoY🔹 Cloud ERP Suite Revenue: €5.53B; +25% YoY🔹 Current Cloud Backlog: €22.93B; +27% YoYFY26 Guidance:…
— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) July 23, 2026
Put volume collapsed from 1.99 to 0.60 as speculators exited, yet hedges rose to 1.10.
Here are all the key analyst targets, sourced directly from TipRanks.
The pattern from big tech earnings week is hard to miss.
Markets now reward companies that collect AI spending and punish those that write the checks. The week ahead will show whether money flow and fresh options data confirm Intel as the week’s loudest winner.