markets

Claire Yubin Oh6h

Gold tops $5,000 per ounce for the first time

Gold stormed past the $5,000-per-oz threshold for the first time ever, extending a historic rally fueled by growing geopolitical tensions, central bank buying, and a weaker dollar.

After first crossing the milestone in trading on Sunday, bullion pushed even higher in early action on Monday, topping $5,110. The latest extension of the shiny metal’s blinding rally has been boosted by the continued sell-off of the US dollar. Indeed, the US Dollar Index has now hit its lowest mark since 2021, following weekend speculation over a joint US-Japan intervention on the yen after the New York Federal Reserve reportedly conducted rate checks — where officials ask dealers what price they would get were they to enter the market — on Friday. The US dollar has shed ~3.2% against the Japanese currency since Thursday.

The surge in precious metals continues to be buoyed by enhanced retail attention, with the iShares Silver Trust and SPDR Gold Shares ETF far and away the most referenced tickers on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit over the past 12 hours.

Gold Silver Top Trending 1/26/26 — Source: SwaggyStocks

Geopolitical tensions between the US and NATO over Greenland, increased American pressure against Iran, and the Trump administration seizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have also helped pushed the price of gold in recent months, contributing to a blockbuster 68% rally in the past year. Other precious metals like silver, which has become a favorite among retail traders in its own right, also surged to a record $110 per ounce on Monday.

Last week, Goldman Sachs hiked its year-end gold price forecast to $5,400 per ounce, as analysts at the investment bank expect continued rampant central bank buying, as well as increased retail attention and ETF inflows, to drive further demand.

More Markets

See all Markets

markets

Goldman Sachs: Megacap tech stocks’ relative valuations are near their 2022 lows

With Microsoft and Meta jump-starting the megacap tech reporting period this Wednesday, Goldman Sachs equity derivatives and flows specialist Cullen Morgan commented on a relative rarity for the cohort of behemoths: they’re not really that expensively priced. He wrote:

“Valuations of the mega-cap tech stocks have declined substantially in recent months. The group now trades at a forward P/E of 27x, which ranks in the 59th percentile relative to the past decade. Relative to the rest of the S&P 500, the 31% P/E premium ranks in the 24th percentile during the past 10 years...

While elevated FCF multiples leave room for further de-rating, the current PEG ratio of 1.4x nearly matches the trough from late 2022.”

Goldman Mega Cap Tech Valuations

This is exactly why we suggested keeping an eye on hyperscaler valuations coming into this year, particularly this divergence between price-to-earnings ratios and price-to-free cash flow ratios, as a way to monitor whether profit expectations surrounding the transformative potential of AI were getting extrapolative or not:

“One way to square this circle between elevated, not crazy forward valuations based on one metric and sky-high ones based on another is to conclude that the lack of runaway forward price-to-earnings ratios suggests that the market does continue to have some skepticism about the long-term earnings power associated with all these capital outlays.

Less doubt would equal higher valuations and higher stock prices. No doubt and unbridled optimism about how much these first movers in AI will reap rewards for years if not decades to come… that’s how we really get a bubble.”

So far in 2026, the market has been squarely focused on rewarding companies that are poised to benefit from near-term shortages and excess profit opportunities brought about by the AI boom, rather than its potential long-term winners. We’ll see if that changes as megacap tech leaders start to step up to the plate this week.

markets

Matt Phillips1h

Booz Allen Hamilton dives after Treasury Department cancels contracts over leak

Large defense-centric government consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton dove Monday after the US Treasury Department announced it was canceling all its contracts with the firm, citing a former employee who pleaded guilty to leaking tax information about President Donald Trump and thousands of the country’s richest people to media outlets like The New York Times and Propublica between 2018 and 2020.

The man, Charles Edward Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison in January 2024.

The US government accounts for nearly all revenues generated by Booz Allen, with more than 70% coming from defense and intelligence clients as of its most recent earnings report. The remainder comes from civil clients, a division that includes the Treasury.

The Treasury Department said it canceled all 31 contracts it had with the company, which were worth a total of $21 million.

“Booz Allen failed to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data, including the confidential taxpayer information it had access to through its contracts with the Internal Revenue Service,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

Just last week, management had raised its annual profit outlook after reporting better-than-expected third-quarter earnings.

Treasury Cancels Contracts with Booz Allen Hamilton

Treasury Cancels Contracts with Booz Allen Hamilton

The man, Charles Edward Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison in January 2024.

The US government accounts for nearly all revenues generated by Booz Allen, with more than 70% coming from defense and intelligence clients as of its most recent earnings report. The remainder comes from civil clients, a division that includes the Treasury.

The Treasury Department said it canceled all 31 contracts it had with the company, which were worth a total of $21 million.

“Booz Allen failed to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data, including the confidential taxpayer information it had access to through its contracts with the Internal Revenue Service,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

Just last week, management had raised its annual profit outlook after reporting better-than-expected third-quarter earnings.

markets

Matt Phillips1h

Morgan Stanley jacks up its Sandisk price target

Sandisk climbed early Monday after a hefty target price hike from analysts at Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley semiconductor analysts upped their price target from the significantly under market level $273 (the shares are currently hovering around $473) to $483. Morgan Stanley’s big hike might be the start of a trend, as the velocity of the rally in Sandisk has left Wall Street’s average price target of $394 in the dust. The bank kept its “overweight” rating on the stock, which it first applied in March 2025.

Once primarily known as a stodgy maker of USB thumb drives, Sandisk has seen interest explode over the last year alongside prices for NAND memory chips, which its devices rely on. Sandisk was the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 last year, after it was added to the index in November. The shares are up a remarkable 1,255% over the last 12 months, with most of that gain coming since the beginning of September.

NAND chips have long been considered a relatively cheap and ubiquitous commodity in the world of semiconductors. But prices for NAND chips have surged of late because of voracious demand for AI data centers, especially for “enterprise solid state drives” or eSSDs — bulky data storage devices that use more NAND than other storage products and have gobbled up supply of the chips.

Morgan Stanley analysts wrote:

“NAND fundamentals remain exceptional, driven by the surge in enterprise solid state drives that we highlighted a few months ago (with 2 cloud customers ordering close to 10% of global supply for all of 2025 for 4q delivery); that has meaningfully tightened the consumer markets as well.”

markets

Micron dips on report Samsung is taking the early lead in HBM4 supply

Shares of Micron are starting the week lower after Reuters reported that Samsung is poised to begin production of HBM4 chips — the new standard for high-bandwidth memory — next month, with the output heading to Nvidia.

South Korea’s SK Hynix fell 3% in local markets, while Samsung finished only marginally higher.

Pretty much all news about memory chips, from reported price hikes to production increases, has been treated as universally positive for all members of the triumvirate. This is the first time in recent memory we’ve seen some more idiosyncratic treatment of these names.

Perhaps this is just a bit of a cooling-off period after Micron’s 40% year-to-date gains through Friday. By all accounts, high-bandwidth memory is in tight supply, so there’ll be eager buyers for all the supply these companies are able to bring to market.

Following Micron’s blockbuster earnings report, Executive Vice President of Global Operations Manish Bhatia said that he anticipates starting to ship HBM4 chips in the second quarter.

markets

CoreWeave spikes after Nvidia buys an additional $2 billion of the neocloud’s shares

Shares of CoreWeave are spiking after Nvidia purchased an additional $2 billion of the neocloud’s stock investment at a purchase price of $87.20 per share.

This “expanded relationship” between the two parties is intended to help CoreWeave build more than 5 gigawatts of AI factories by 2030, in part by using the chip designer’s financial might to help the neocloud secure power, land, and other infrastructure to develop these facilities.

As part of this enhanced pact, CoreWeave will be utilizing CPUs specifically developed by Nvidia for the data center environment, a challenge to the likes of Intel (which the chip designer has also invested in) and AMD.

Nvidia still books a record amount of free cash flow despite spending the most on buybacks and capital expenditure in its history. As such, management has ample opportunities to invest in the AI ecosystem as a means of implicit vertical integration as well as to fortify demand for its offerings and boost the potential size of the market.

Nvidia anchored CoreWeave’s 2025 IPO, and its most recent 13F filing showed 86% of its public equity holdings were in CoreWeave as of the end of Q3.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.

©2026 Sherwood Media, LLC