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Luke Kawa7/17/25

Archer-Daniels-Midland drops as Trump claims Coca-Cola will use “REAL Cane Sugar”

Archer-Daniels-Midland is slumping and Coca-Cola is modestly higher after President Donald Trump touted his alleged progress in changing a key ingredient in one of America’s most iconic beverages.

“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”

Coca-Cola did not confirm this news, but rather said that it appreciated the president’s enthusiasm and would offer “more details on new innovative offerings” soon.

Archer-Daniels-Midland produces, among other things, high-fructose corn syrup, which is right behind “carbonated water” in the list of Coca-Cola Original ingredients. Its starches and sweeteners business booked $207 million in operating profit in Q1, down 21% from a year earlier, and accounted for about 28% of total operating profits in the first three months of 2025.

The president did not say that Coke would no longer be using any corn syrup in its American formulation of Coca-Cola.

High-fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper than cane sugar in the US thanks in large part to government subsidies, has been a target of health advocates, who contend that its low price point leads to a wider array of inexpensive, unhealthy processed foods on the market. Some consumers, including many in the so-called “Make American Healthy Again” coalition, contend that high-fructose corn syrup is inextricably less healthy than cane sugar, despite the two ingredients being chemically nearly identical.

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Tasha Matsumoto

Large caps waver ahead of next week’s Fed meeting; small caps notch record close

Stocks are in holding pattern as investors await tomorrow’s release of September PCE for further insight into next week’s Fed decision.

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Report: US Senators plan to introduce bill blocking Nvidia from selling advanced chips to China for 30 months

US Senators are on the verge of introducing a bill that would block Nvidia from selling its H200 or Blackwell chips to China for 30 months, the Financial Times reports. The H200 is Nvidia’s best chip from the Hopper generation, while the Blackwell line is its current flagship offering.

Shares of the chip designer are little changed in the wake of this report, still up more than 1% on the session. The reaction makes sense, seeing as previous positive indications on Nvidia’s ability to sell advanced chips to China failed to inspire much positive momentum in its shares.

The stock got a brief-lived jolt higher (that didn’t last the day!) on November 21 after Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration had discussed the possibility of selling its H200 chips to China.

Nvidia has effectively been shut out of China’s AI market in 2025. First, export restrictions meant it could no longer sell the H20, a nerfed version of its Hopper chip, to the world’s second-largest economy. After that export ban was lifted, demand from China “never materialized,” per Nvidia CFO Colette Kress. Reports indicate that China banned its leading technology giants from purchasing these semiconductors, instead pushing them towards domestic alternatives.

President Donald Trump had mused about allowing Nvidia to sell Blackwell chips to China prior to his meeting with Chinese President Xi in late October, but failed to do so. The two leaders did not discuss the topic at that time.

Per the FT, this upcoming bill would be a bipartisan effort, being co-sponsored by the leading Republican and Democrat members of the Senate Foreign Relations east Asia subcommittee.

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AI energy plays soar on an explosion of call buying

Like their quantum computing counterparts, AI-linked energy plays are benefiting from an explosion of bullish options activity on Thursday.

Oklo is up double digits with call volumes above 106,000 as of 2:46 p.m. ET, more than double its 20-day average for a full session, with a put/call ratio of about 0.6. Call options with a strike price of $110 that expire this Friday (which are now in-the-money thanks to today’s surge) are seeing the most activity.
Nuscale, another nuclear energy play, seen nearly 140,000 call options change hands versus a 20-day average of 51,073.
And fuel cell company Bloom Energy has traded nearly 80,000 calls, roughly twice its 20-day average, with a put/call ratio of about 0.3.

During his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast released on Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talked up the potential for nuclear energy, saying, “In the next 6-7 years I think you are going to see a whole bunch of small nuclear reactors.”

This adds to the evidence that the speculative bid is back in a big way after smaller stocks tied to the AI boom and quantum computing cratered from mid-October through most of November as credit risk began to seep into the AI trade.

Old electronic items tossed on ground for disposal, Hudson

Technology giants don’t look like they used to, as the asset-light era fades

Oracle and Meta are now some of the most capital-intensive businesses in the S&P 500, spending more than energy giants. I guess data really is the new oil?

David Crowther3h

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Matt Phillips3h

Space stocks rip amid speculation on Altman joining race

Space stocks AST SpaceMobile, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab all soared Thursday amid a recovery in the high-beta momentum class of shares coveted by some retail traders.

(High-beta momo stocks are basically shares that have been on a winning streak for a while, and tend to go up a lot more than the overall market on positive days. Goldman Sachs includes all three of the aforementioned space stocks in its themed basket of such shares.)

There’s little other fundamental news out there on the companies themselves.

But a Wall Street Journal report that OpenAI impresario Sam Altman has been toying with the idea of entering the space industry, potentially standing up a rival to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service, may also be contributing.

As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, sometimes these stocks seem to trade on a what’s-bad-for-the-Musk-empire-is-good-for-us-and-vice-versa vibe.

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