markets

Matt Phillips2/3/25

Crypto-adjacent stocks creamed by Trump tariffs

Beneficiaries of the crypto trade since the presidential election are getting a first hand reminder of the reality under a Trump administration: Trump giveth and Trump taketh away.

The worst-performing sector of the markets captured by Goldman Sachs’ thematically organized baskets of stocks on Monday are crypto-adjacent equities, as the uncertainty of newly launched tariff has crushed the frothiest parts of the market, of which crypto is arguably the frothiest.

The 10-stock package consists of shares that “are fundamentally related to Bitcoin across various segments (bitcoin mining, digital payment, crypto investment & block-chain tech).”

Perhaps the best-known of these is MicroStrategy, which has ridden its all-in strategy on bitcoin to an astounding market valuation of more than $84 billion. MARA Holdings, a favorite of risk-seeking online traders, is also in the basket.

Companies with ties to crypto trading are also getting smacked around pretty well on Tuesday. Shares of trading app Robinhood (Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company) were down as much as 7% in the premarket session, though it has cut those losses since the start of trading.

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Futures surge, oil tumbles after President Trump agrees to two-week ceasefire

S&P 500 futures rose 2%, WTI futures tumbled double digits.

President Trump Addresses The Nation On The Conflict In Iran

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks eke out gain ahead of tonight’s deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Traders were jittery ahead of the looming deadline, while President Trump posted on Truth Social that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if an agreement is not reached.

Bull with Nose Ring

Anthropic is releasing its new model to select companies to get a head start on cyber defense

Fortune reported that the Claude developer would be doing this in late March.

Co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei

Stocks sink and oil spikes as traders price in enduring, worsening Mideast war

Stocks and oil are building in more risk premium to deal with the perceived increased probability of a more drawn-out disruption to global energy supplies and shipments.

WH Briefing Iran 4/6/26

markets

Matt Phillips17h

Samsung’s massive Q1 fails to lift Sandisk, other data center plays

Almost all memory stocks slipped Tuesday, despite getting a positive update on the massive flood of money pouring into the sector from the AI build-out, as the potential escalation of the US war with Iran Tuesday evening overshadowed Samsung’s blowout numbers.

Korean chip giant Samsung Electronics reported preliminary Q1 results showing operating profit up by 755% compared to Q1 2025, trouncing pretty elevated expectations for a gain of about 550%.

Samsung is the world’s largest producer of NAND and DRAM chips. Once considered low-value commodity inputs to tech products, NAND and DRAM prices have exploded over the last six months amid a hyperscaler scramble to secure chips that can manage the surfeit of data produced by AI.

The same dynamics have made memory plays like Sandisk, Western Digital, and Micron some of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 over the last 12 months.

But other than Seagate Technology Holdings, those stocks were down Tuesday as of 11:15 a.m. ET, as the surge in oil prices and ongoing war with Iran muted much of the AI data center trade excitement. Bellwethers like Nvidia and hyperscalers like Oracle and Meta were struggling early, as were data center input makers like Corning and Coherent, AI power plays like GE Vernova, Vertiv Holdings, and even hard-hat builders of the shells that house all those AI servers.

On the other hand, some so-called optical stocks — makers of fiber-optic connections that quickly shift data between users, hyperscalers, and all around data centers themselves — were up. Lumentum and Arista Networks, two popular optical stocks, were showing resilience.

Samsung flags eightfold jump in quarterly profit as AI chip demand pumps prices

Samsung flags eightfold jump in quarterly profit as AI chip demand pumps prices

Samsung is the world’s largest producer of NAND and DRAM chips. Once considered low-value commodity inputs to tech products, NAND and DRAM prices have exploded over the last six months amid a hyperscaler scramble to secure chips that can manage the surfeit of data produced by AI.

The same dynamics have made memory plays like Sandisk, Western Digital, and Micron some of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 over the last 12 months.

But other than Seagate Technology Holdings, those stocks were down Tuesday as of 11:15 a.m. ET, as the surge in oil prices and ongoing war with Iran muted much of the AI data center trade excitement. Bellwethers like Nvidia and hyperscalers like Oracle and Meta were struggling early, as were data center input makers like Corning and Coherent, AI power plays like GE Vernova, Vertiv Holdings, and even hard-hat builders of the shells that house all those AI servers.

On the other hand, some so-called optical stocks — makers of fiber-optic connections that quickly shift data between users, hyperscalers, and all around data centers themselves — were up. Lumentum and Arista Networks, two popular optical stocks, were showing resilience.

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