Market & Mainstreet
Stocks Rally, the World Bank Pushes Out Its Timeline, and Amazon’s $3 Trillion Moment
The Daily Scan – August 04, 2026 (Tue)
Local stocks jumped 1.58% on strong earnings and steady economic data, even as the World Bank held its 2026 growth forecast at 3.7% and pushed its expected recovery further into 2027. San Miguel pulled off the market’s biggest share offering in seven years, and motorists get a small break as fuel prices roll back after five weeks of hikes. Globally, Amazon became the fifth company in history to cross the $3 trillion market cap threshold, memory chip giants posted record AI-driven profits, and AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb are reportedly weighing a $400 billion merger.
| PSEi | World Bank 2026 Forecast | SMC Share Offer |
| +1.58% to 6,334.72 on Monday | Held at 3.7%, 2027 cut to 5.2% | P30B raised, 3.27x oversubscribed |
THE SNAPSHOT
The World Bank held its 2026 growth forecast at 3.7% but pushed out its recovery timeline, while local stocks rallied 1.58% on strong earnings and steady economic data. San Miguel raised a record P30 billion in oversubscribed preferred shares, and motorists got a small break as fuel prices rolled back after five weeks of hikes. Globally, Amazon crossed $3 trillion in market value, memory chip makers posted record AI-driven profits, and AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb are reportedly discussing a $400 billion merger.
SECTION 1 · Philippines
● World Bank holds 2026 growth forecast at 3.7%, flags a slower 2027 recovery
WHAT HAPPENED
The World Bank kept its 2026 Philippine GDP growth forecast unchanged at 3.7%, near the bottom of the government’s own downwardly revised 3.5-4.5% target, but lowered its 2027 projection to 5.2% from 5.6% in June. World Bank division director Zafer Mustafaoglu told an economic forum that uncertainty around infrastructure procurement has made both public and private investors hesitant, while rising global energy prices tied to the Middle East conflict have pushed up the cost of living for ordinary Filipinos. The bank’s 2026 figure is also below the 4.1% average expected across developing East Asia and the Pacific economies.
UNCERTAIN
The World Bank’s 3.7% figure sits well below the IMF’s 5.6% and the OECD’s 5.1% projections for the same year, reflecting genuine disagreement among multilateral lenders about how much weight to put on the infrastructure procurement slowdown versus other growth drivers.
WHY IT MATTERS
A weaker 2027 outlook, not just a soft 2026, signals the World Bank doesn’t expect the current headwinds, procurement uncertainty and elevated energy costs, to resolve quickly. That matters more for medium-term business planning than a single bad quarter would, since it pushes any expected recovery further out.
RISK
Businesses planning multi-year investments or expansion tied to an economic recovery should treat 2027, not 2026, as the more realistic point to watch for a genuine turnaround, based on this outlook.
NEXT MOVE
Monitor whether uncertainty in infrastructure procurement eases in the coming months. The World Bank explicitly named it, not just external energy prices, as a key reason both public and private investors remain hesitant.
● Local stocks jump on strong earnings and steady economic data
WHAT HAPPENED
The Philippine Stock Exchange index climbed 1.58% to close at 6,334.72 on Monday, while the broader All Shares index rose 1.03% to 3,430.16. Total turnover reached P5.8 billion, with advancers beating decliners 109 to 79. Analysts pointed to the third straight month of manufacturing PMI expansion, expectations of steady July inflation, and strong earnings from index heavyweights as the main drivers. ICTSI led actively traded stocks, up 4.36% to P1,005 per share, while Meralco and Converge also gained. ABS-CBN shares jumped 7.27% amid a report of a potential deal involving tycoons Ramon Ang and Manuel Pangilinan, which the company later called inaccurate.
UNCERTAIN
ABS-CBN publicly disputed the report that triggered its stock jump, including denying claims about a management handover and a P10-billion capital infusion, so the specifics behind that particular rally remain contested even as the broader market gain looks more broadly supported.
WHY IT MATTERS
A market rally built on manufacturing strength and earnings beats, not speculation, is a different and more durable signal than a one-off news-driven spike. It suggests investors are willing to look past the weak GDP and infrastructure headlines elsewhere this week when specific sectors and companies show real results.
OPPORTUNITY
Positive market breadth, more advancers than decliners across the board, suggests the rally isn’t confined to one or two large caps, which is generally a healthier signal for broader investor sentiment than a narrow, index-heavy gain.
NEXT MOVE
If you’re tracking market sentiment as a proxy for business confidence, watch whether this week’s key macroeconomic data releases sustain the rally or reverse it, since Monday’s gains were explicitly built on optimism ahead of those numbers.
● Fuel prices finally roll back after five straight weeks of hikes
WHAT HAPPENED
Oil companies cut pump prices starting Tuesday, August 4, the first rollback after five consecutive weeks of increases. Diesel drops by about 60 centavos a liter and gasoline by roughly 70-73 centavos, with kerosene down over P2. That’s a modest relief compared to last week’s hikes of P7.30 per liter on diesel and P6.80 on gasoline. The rollback follows a pullback in global oil and refined product prices tied to easing, though still fragile, US-Iran tensions. Energy Secretary Sharon Garin called the rollback a welcome sign but said her office will keep monitoring the Middle East situation closely.
UNCERTAIN
The Department of Energy’s own monitor shows Dubai crude and refined product prices rose sharply just the week before this rollback, and officials have repeatedly flagged that renewed Strait of Hormuz disruptions or Red Sea attacks could reverse the trend just as quickly.
WHY IT MATTERS
This rollback recovers only a small fraction of the P7-plus per liter added just last week, so businesses with fuel-heavy operations are still absorbing net higher costs than a month ago. It’s a genuine easing, not a reversal, of the pressure that’s been driving July’s inflation numbers.
RISK
Transport groups have already been pushing for fare increases after weeks of hikes, even with this rollback, pressure for fare adjustments may not fully reverse, which affects any business relying on logistics or commuting costs.
NEXT MOVE
Don’t treat this week’s rollback as a trend. Track the DOE’s weekly price watch directly if fuel is a meaningful input cost, since the underlying geopolitical risk hasn’t resolved.
● San Miguel raises a record P30 billion in the market’s biggest share offering in 7 years
WHAT HAPPENED
San Miguel Corp. completed a P30 billion follow-on offering of preferred shares, listing three new series on the Philippine Stock Exchange with dividend rates between 8.04% and 8.65%. PSE president Ramon Monzon called it the largest amount raised through a follow-on offering in the local market in seven years, and said the offer was oversubscribed by 3.27 times. Including this round, SMC has now raised a total of P146.65 billion across 11 preferred share subseries over five separate offerings since 2020. Proceeds will mainly refinance existing obligations, including redeeming older preferred shares and repaying bonds maturing in 2027.
UNCERTAIN
The offering is primarily refinancing rather than new investment capital, so it doesn’t necessarily signal fresh expansion; how much, if any, of the proceeds eventually flow into new projects versus simply retiring existing debt isn’t fully broken out.
WHY IT MATTERS
A 3.27-times oversubscription during a week when GDP forecasts are at a post-pandemic low shows real investor appetite for fixed-income-like instruments from a large, diversified conglomerate, even amid broader economic uncertainty. That’s a useful read on where institutional and retail capital is still willing to go when growth headlines are weak.
OPPORTUNITY
The strong demand for SMC’s preferred shares suggests local capital markets still have appetite for well-structured debt-like instruments, a signal worth watching for other large Philippine issuers considering similar offerings later this year.
NEXT MOVE
If you’re an investor or a business watching capital market conditions, this level of oversubscription is a useful gauge of appetite for Philippine corporate debt instruments right now, separate from what the equity market is doing.
SECTION 2 · Worth Knowing
● Amazon becomes the fifth company ever to hit a $3 trillion market cap
WHAT HAPPENED
Amazon’s market value topped $3 trillion on Monday, with shares rising as much as 5.3% to a record high, joining Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Apple as the only companies to ever reach that size. The rally builds on a Q2 earnings report from July 30 that showed AWS revenue growing 37% to $42.2 billion with a 39% operating margin. CEO Andy Jassy raised full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance from $200 billion to $220 billion, and said demand for AI and cloud infrastructure remains bigger than Amazon can currently supply, extending into 2027 and 2028.
UNCERTAIN
Amazon and Microsoft are so far the only two of the major AI-focused tech companies whose heavy AI spending was rewarded by investors this earnings season; Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla all saw their shares fall after reporting similarly large AI investments, meaning the market is drawing distinctions rather than rewarding AI spending across the board.
WHY IT MATTERS
A single company committing $220 billion in one year to cloud and AI infrastructure is a scale of investment most competitors cannot match, and it signals sustained, not temporary, demand for the underlying compute, data centers, and specialized chips. That has downstream effects on global supply chains for servers, memory, and components that businesses everywhere eventually feel in cost and availability.
OPPORTUNITY
Businesses building on AWS or evaluating cloud providers can take Amazon’s guidance as a signal that capacity constraints, not falling demand, are the bottleneck; locking in commitments or reserved capacity earlier may be worth exploring before pricing tightens further.
NEXT MOVE
If your business relies on cloud infrastructure or hardware with AI-driven components, expect continued upward pressure on costs as long as capex at this scale keeps accelerating across the industry.
● AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb held talks on a $400 billion pharma megadeal
WHAT HAPPENED
The Financial Times reported that UK drugmaker AstraZeneca and US rival Bristol Myers Squibb held preliminary talks in recent months about a possible combination that would create one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, with a combined value near $400 billion. Neither company confirmed the report; AstraZeneca declined to comment and Bristol Myers didn’t immediately respond. AstraZeneca shares fell as much as 7% on Monday after the news broke, with analysts calling both the deal and its timing surprising given AstraZeneca’s strong standalone growth.
UNCERTAIN
The report is based on preliminary discussions, not a signed agreement, and could still be delayed or fall apart entirely; both companies’ cancer treatment portfolios overlap significantly, which one antitrust lawyer said would likely draw serious regulatory scrutiny and require major divestitures.
WHY IT MATTERS
A combination this size would reshape competition in oncology, where both companies are major players, and signals that even strongly performing pharmaceutical companies are looking at consolidation as a growth strategy. For any business connected to healthcare supply chains, distribution, or related services, a merger of this scale would take years to play out but could eventually affect drug pricing, availability, and market structure.
RISK
Regulatory scrutiny of pharma megadeals has been consistently strict across recent administrations, so businesses shouldn’t assume this deal, if finalized, would close quickly or without significant forced divestitures.
NEXT MOVE
Treat this as an early-stage story to watch rather than a done deal. If you’re in pharmaceutical distribution or adjacent healthcare services, the eventual shape of any divestitures could matter more than the headline merger value.
● Samsung and SK Hynix post record profits as AI-driven memory chip prices surge
WHAT HAPPENED
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which together make up roughly 80% of the global memory chip market, posted a combined 150 trillion won ($104 billion) in operating profit for the June quarter, driven almost entirely by AI-fueled demand for advanced memory and storage. SK Hynix reported DRAM prices rose about 30% during the quarter, with NAND flash prices surging into the mid-50% range, pushing its operating margin to a record 76%. Shares of both companies later staged one of their sharpest rallies on record, with Korea’s Kospi index jumping a record 18% in a single session after strong earnings from Amazon and Microsoft reinforced expectations that AI infrastructure spending will keep accelerating.
UNCERTAIN
Memory chip stocks have swung violently in both directions this year, including a sharp sell-off into bear-market territory just weeks before this rally, so how durable current pricing and profit levels are remains genuinely contested among analysts.
WHY IT MATTERS
This is the same structural memory-chip shortage driving up costs for laptops, tablets, and other hardware globally, now confirmed directly by the two companies that supply roughly 80% of the world’s memory chips. Record profits for suppliers generally mean sustained, not temporary, price pressure for anyone buying computers, servers, or components downstream.
RISK
Businesses planning hardware purchases or fleet upgrades should expect memory-driven price increases to persist as long as AI infrastructure spending keeps growing at its current pace; this isn’t a short-term supply hiccup.
NEXT MOVE
If your business budgets for computer hardware or IT equipment, build higher costs into 2026-2027 planning rather than assuming prices normalize once current AI investment cycles complete.
SECTION 3 · THE OPPORTUNITY BEHIND THE NEWS
A 3.27x Oversubscribed Offer Says Capital Still Trusts Big, Diversified Names
San Miguel’s P30 billion preferred share offering landing 3.27 times oversubscribed, in the same week the World Bank held its growth forecast at a weak 3.7% and pushed its recovery timeline out to 2027, is a genuinely useful signal. Investors aren’t waiting for the macro picture to clear up before putting capital into well-structured instruments from large, diversified issuers; they’re pricing specific credit and yield, not the broad economy.
For businesses and investors alike, that’s a distinction worth holding onto: weak GDP headlines don’t automatically mean weak appetite for capital across the board. The opportunity is in recognizing that specific, well-structured offerings can still attract strong demand even when the general growth narrative is gloomy, if the underlying credit and terms are solid.
SECTION 4 · FOUNDER’S LESSON
Record Demand Doesn’t Fix a Broken Warehouse
The Philippines’ semiconductor and electronics exporters just posted a record $8.8 billion export month, driven by surging AI-linked chip demand. But China Banking Corp. chief economist Domini Velasquez flagged that the strong growth came despite ongoing warehouse congestion, which disrupted production schedules, raised logistics and storage costs, and put pressure on exporters’ delivery commitments. In other words, the demand story is excellent; the operational story underneath it is straining to keep up.
That’s a familiar pattern for any growing business: a surge in demand can mask, and eventually expose, weaknesses in the operational plumbing that was fine at a smaller scale. The lesson isn’t to slow down when demand is this strong, it’s to treat the operational bottleneck as seriously as the sales number, because the businesses that fix logistics while demand is high are the ones still capturing that demand a year from now.
SECTION 5 · ONE REAL SIGNAL
Philippine Exports Just Hit an All-Time High, Riding the Same AI Boom That Lifted Amazon
Philippine merchandise exports reached a record $8.8 billion in June, up 24.1% year-on-year, the highest monthly figure since the Philippine Statistics Authority’s data series began in 1991. Semiconductor and component exports rose 33.4% to $3.8 billion, driven by rising global investment in AI infrastructure, data centers, and connected devices. First-half exports totaled a record $46.72 billion, up 13.1% from a year earlier, with nine of the country’s ten largest export markets posting double-digit growth.
The signal worth sitting with: the same AI infrastructure buildout that just pushed Amazon’s market cap past $3 trillion globally is also the direct driver behind the Philippines’ record export month. This isn’t two unrelated stories in one edition, it’s the same demand wave showing up at both ends of the AI supply chain, from the chips being assembled here to the cloud capacity being built abroad.
Summarized in our own words with links to every source. We don’t reproduce full articles or bypass paywalls. Interpretation is labeled as such and kept separate from reported fact.
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