Morning Read: Intel's $20B share sale meets firmer oil

Snapshot: 11 August 2026, 03:58–04:10 ET. U.S. equity futures were nearly flat before the cash open: S&P 500 futures were unchanged on CNBC's rounded feed, Nasdaq-100 futures added 0.13%, and Dow futures slipped 0.10%. Oil was the clearer cross-asset move, while a newly priced Intel equity sale and fresh results from Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile supplied the portfolio-specific news.

Macro overnight

Asian trading was mixed. Shanghai closed at 3,934.093, down 0.82%. The Hang Seng was near 25,670; Yahoo's series was effectively flat while CNBC showed -1.02% because the feeds used different prior closes. The Nikkei's latest available verified close remained 66,970.22, up 2.08%, so it is labelled as the last close rather than a fresh Tuesday move.

Europe opened without a broad risk surge. The Euro Stoxx 50 was near 6,535 and essentially flat across the feeds. The FTSE 100 was near 10,837 and the DAX near 26,268, both lower. Different prior-close baselines made the exact FTSE percentage inconsistent, so the article preserves the direction instead of forcing a false precision.

WTI was the strongest verified macro move: September crude traded at $83.96, up 2.23% on both structured feeds. The U.S. Dollar Index was near 99.89, up roughly 0.07% to 0.09%. Gold feeds disagreed on the daily baseline—Yahoo showed $4,416.80 and +1.26%, while CNBC showed $4,416.20 and -0.08%—so the level is useful but a single daily direction is not. Cboe's delayed feed put the VIX at 15.41 at Monday's close, down 0.32% from 15.46.

Official Treasury data for the 10 August close showed 4.25% at 2 years and 4.72% at 10 years, a positive 47-basis-point slope. The BLS schedule lists no release on 11 August; July CPI and real earnings are due 12 August at 08:30 ET, followed by July PPI on 13 August at 08:30 ET. BEA lists no release today and shows its next releases on 26 August at 08:30 ET. Direct Nasdaq earnings-calendar requests timed out, so no unsupported consensus estimate is included.

Your tickers

INTC: Intel priced an underwritten sale of 210,526,315 common shares at $95 per share, increasing the base offering to $20 billion from $15 billion. The underwriters have a 30-day option for up to 31,578,947 additional shares. Intel expects about $19.7 billion of net proceeds before any option exercise, for general corporate purposes that may include capital spending and working capital; closing is expected on 12 August, subject to customary conditions.

RKLB: Rocket Lab's SEC-filed release reported record Q2 revenue of $234 million, up 62% year over year, and a record backlog of $2.36 billion. Its Q3 outlook calls for revenue of $250 million to $265 million, GAAP gross margin of 29% to 31%, and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $17 million to $23 million. The mix of record demand and continuing expected losses is the key tension to track after the print.

ASTS: AST SpaceMobile reported Q2 revenue of $31.5 million and said backlog reached approximately $1.30 billion. It retained full-year 2026 revenue guidance of $150.0 million to $200.0 million and said BlueBird satellites 17 through 46 were in various stages of production and assembly. Execution against that manufacturing sequence matters more than an unsourced after-hours percentage.

CRWV: CoreWeave said it closed a $2.6 billion delayed-draw term-loan facility to support AI-cloud infrastructure and committed customer deployments. The facility has an approximate 5-year maturity versus an average 3-year term for the underlying customer contracts, extending the financing horizon but also adding another obligation that readers should weigh alongside growth.

What to watch today

• Before the open — INTC: watch how the market digests a $20 billion capital raise, the $95 issue price and the roughly 4.17% base-share comparison.
• 09:30 ET — breadth: compare flat S&P futures and +0.13% Nasdaq-100 futures with actual cash-market participation.
• Energy: test whether WTI can hold the verified $83.96 level and +2.23% move; the oil signal is larger than the index-futures signal at this snapshot.
• RKLB / ASTS: focus on revenue, backlog, guidance and production execution rather than retrospective headline reactions.
• 12 August at 08:30 ET: CPI is tomorrow's scheduled macro event; today's tape may still reflect positioning ahead of it.

The morning setup is not a single-direction story: index futures are calm, oil is firmer, Asia and Europe are mixed, and the live ticker universe has several large financing and earnings updates. This article is educational information, not personalized financial advice or an order recommendation.