Ahead of the market opening: The stock exchange prepares for dramatic data from the US

The local stock exchange provided an interesting day yesterday: after trading in the red for most of the day, it turned to slight gains at the close. The TA-35 rose 0.3% and the TA-125 added 0.2%, as banks led the turnaround with a 1.3% rise (Leumi jumped 2.5%). At the close, unusually high volumes were recorded due to the quarterly index update, a technical event that moves large amounts of money between stocks and explains some of the volatility.

Earnings reports continued to move individual stocks sharply. Ormat, the geothermal energy producer, surged 9% and led the TA-35 after beating analyst expectations and improving its annual forecast. On the other hand, Strauss weakened 3.3%, Gilat retreated 4.6%, and Nova fell 2.7% after its report. Golf stood out positively with a jump of 5.1%.

Wall Street, by contrast, closed with slight declines. The Dow fell 0.9% from its peak, the S&P 500 retreated 0.2%, and the Nasdaq barely moved. The main factor: bond yields continued to climb (the 30-year yield to 5.21%) against the backdrop of high oil prices (Brent above 83 dollars) and fears of a month of inflation. Memory stocks SanDisk and Western Digital disappointed, and software stocks like Datadog and Figma also fell after their reports — a continuation of the high bar the market sets.

Also on Wall Street, SpaceX provided an example of supply pressure: the stock rose at the start of trading but erased most of the gains when the first lock-up period on employee restricted stock expired and released insider shares for sale.

Do not forget about SolarEdge — the story worth delving into. The Israeli company crashed about 30% in one day, precisely on the day it reported a transition to adjusted profit for the first time in almost three years. Revenue grew about 20% to 346 million dollars and beat expectations, and gross margins jumped from 11% a year ago to 27.5%. So what disappointed? The forecast. For the next quarter, the company expects revenue about 10% lower than expected, and the market, which looks ahead, voted with its feet.

The attention in the special interview of CEO Shuki Nir to ice was directed precisely at this gap. Nir, who took office about a year and eight months ago and led the stock to a jump of about 160%, chose to focus on the long term:

"In the short term, I do not deal with what the stock does. The stock price in the long term follows the business results."

He pointed to two future growth engines — storage, which has already become the company's largest source of income with 126 million dollars in the quarter, and the SST, a semiconductor-based transformer that may connect SolarEdge directly to Nvidia's data center market.

According to Nir, the next generation of Nvidia chips will require a voltage supply that SolarEdge's technology is almost identical to, and the company sees here "an opportunity of hundreds of millions of dollars a year for every data center — if it happens."

But this "if" is precisely the point. According to the roadmap, significant revenue from the SST and "Safe Harbor" deals (a mechanism that locks in a 30% American tax benefit) will only arrive in 2028.

Until then, SolarEdge will have to prove that it is capable of standing on its own feet, with the pain point in the short term being the American domestic market, which is frozen until regulatory clarity arrives. Nir himself admitted: "I make many mistakes. The wisdom is to learn and fix quickly."

The focus today will be on the US employment report to be published in the afternoon — the most important figure ahead of the Fed's interest rate decision in September. Labor market data published yesterday were mixed: layoffs in July fell to a two-year low, but initial jobless claims rose slightly. High oil and rising bond yields add to the tension.

For the Israeli saver, the SolarEdge story is an excellent reminder of the rule that repeats throughout the earnings season: the market trades on the forecast, not the past. A company can turn to profit after three years — a real achievement — and still be punished 30% because of a single quarter that looks weak ahead.

Anyone holding such stocks through pension savings should remember that a one-day fluctuation is not the end of the story, but a chapter in it. The real question, as Nir himself said, is whether this profitability will be maintained over time — and that will only become clear in the coming quarters.