On Thursday's edition of Asking for a Trend, Host Josh Lipton breaks down some of the biggest stories and themes impacting markets.

The auto sector is grabbing investor attention as major companies like Stellantis (STLA) and Ford (F) report underwhelming second-quarter earnings. CarGurus director of industry insights and analytics Kevin Roberts explains that despite disappointing earnings, the auto industry is still "quite healthy." He notes that the earnings suggest the sector is going through "a bit of a rebalancing right now."

The major indexes (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) closed mixed on Thursday as they try to recover from a three-day tech sell-off. This downturn was triggered by disappointing earnings reports from Tesla (TSLA) and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) — two of the "Magnificent Seven" tech giants. Yahoo Finance reporter Jared Blikre analyzes the day's top market trends, discussing the rotation into small-cap stocks and Japan's financial markets, which appear to be going through a "capitulation."

The future of regulation for startups and big businesses rests on the 2024 election, as former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have vastly different agendas. Tusk Venture Partners co-founder and managing partner Jordan Nof says that a new administration will likely bring a new leader to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) "and potentially a different posture that the FTC takes with antitrust specifically." He notes that many investors are worried that Big Tech "just does not want to transact right now," and that fear "really takes a lot of the wind out of the sails in terms of how you can underwrite a deal to an exit." He also explains that investors and early-stage fund managers prefer Trump-era policies compared to Biden's current policies and are most likely to vote with their pocketbooks in this election.

Josh Lipton then breaks down what to watch on Friday, July 26th, before turning to some of the biggest movers in after-hours trading, from Skechers (SKX) to L3Harris Technologies (LHX).

This post was written by Melanie Riehl