(Andrew Caballero Reynolds/Getty Images)

The markets saw the debate too

Here’s their verdict.

6/28/24 2:22PM

It’s always a bit dangerous to try to ascribe specific reasons for any particular market move. But it seems pretty obvious that the shockwaves from Thursday’s US presidential debate are emanating through financial markets on Friday.

Popular opinion suggests that the debate had a decisive winner: Donald Trump.

Just look at how Goldman Sachs’ themed basket of stocks that should do well under a Trump administration is doing today compared to a similar basket of stocks that should benefit from a Democratic White House. It’s outperforming by more than 3 percentage points, the most this year.

On PredictIt, the odds of Trump winning the 2024 presidential election rose from 54% before the debate to as high as 64% during the event.

“President Biden and his team now have much more work to do to win re-election than Trump,” writes Kim Wallace, head of Washington Policy Research at 22V Research. “Biden flubbed softball opportunities from questioners and Trump, shocking Democrats and likely many non-Democrats as well.”

Here’s some of what we’re seeing in markets.

Solar sell-off

The most glaring stock-market reaction seems to be in shares of companies that would benefit from policies associated with Democratic priorities. Solar firms like Maxeon Solar Technologies, Sunnova Energy and First Solarare getting creamed as traders seem to be pricing in higher odds of Trump 2.0.

End of Obamacare?

Likewise, health-insurance companies that’ve built large businesses around the Affordable Care Act’s insurance plan exchanges are also suffering Friday. Oscar Health, HCA Healthcare and Tenet Healthcareare all taking it on the chin.

Prisons, private education, and coal companies romp

Conversely, companies investors think will do well under a Republican administration surged on Friday; foremost among them were private prison companies GEO Group, and CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America), as well as private education firms such as Grand Canyon Education, and private college operator Laureate Education. Finally, coal companies Peabody Energy and Arch Resources had very good days, as some price in roll backs of climate-related Biden administration initiatives.

GSE reform back on the agenda

During his term, Trump backed attempts to privatize the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Shares of both are up roughly double digits on Friday.

RIP, Fed independence?

Perhaps the most notable reaction of the day isn’t in the stock market, but rather in the market for US Treasury bonds. Despite really good news on the inflation front — the Fed’s key measure of inflation dropped more than expected to its lowest level since March 2021 — longer-term Treasury bonds tumbled, pushing yields, which move in the opposite direction, sharply higher.

Since long-term bonds typically rise when inflation comes down, this is a bit odd. It seems, at least to me, that some people are pricing in the long-term effect of a second Trump term on the “full faith and credit” of the United States.

Trump allies’ reported plans to fiddle with the Fed’s traditional independence from direct political control would explain some of that move. Efforts, typically by quasi-or-outright dictatorial governments, to control monetary policy usually works out horribly both for investors in those country’s bonds and for the country itself, as surges of serious inflation — see Turkish, Hungarian or Russian inflation rates in recent years — follows from printing money for political reasons.

Of course there are varying explanations for the move in US Treasury yields. The inflation data, though positive, was well telegraphed before its release and in line with economists’ expectations.

And the market could also be pricing in the potential for better growth thanks to more fiscal stimulus in the event of a united Republican government, or higher inflation because of Trump’s tariffs.

Speaking of Russia

One can’t help notice that the ruble — which really isn’t traded on markets much anymore — and Russian stocks were up slightly on the day. Hard to say why, though Trump’s friendliness toward the Kremlin could translate into easing the sanctions the world imposed on Russia for invading and occupying eastern Ukraine, or a potential end to the conflict — as Trump promised would happen if he wins the election, even before his term begins.

Currency confusion

But of course not everything in markets can be perfectly congruent. The most common Wall Street prognostication is that a Trump presidency would lead to a stronger US dollar (primarily because of the risk of tariffs). But the greenback is slightly lower on the day, as judged by the Dollar Spot Index, and lower against every G10 currency besides the Norwegian krone.

Toby Bochan, Luke Kawa

12/12/25

Markets end the week in the red as Broadcom and Oracle concerns drag the entire AI trade down

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 were all negative on Friday.

Matt Phillips12/12/25

Data center trade deep in the red

The data center trade is seeing its steepest sell-off since the market rout that was ignited by President Donald Trump’s Rose Garden tariff announcement back in April.

Goldman Sachs’ themed basket of AI data center shares was down more than 6% at around 12 p.m. ET, putting it on track for its worst day since the tariff announcement.

Losses hammered seemingly every form of input needed for the sprawling concrete server warehouses at the heart of the investment boom.

Hardware makers including data storage companies like Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings, as well as DRAM maker Micron — some of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year — were taking a licking, as were networking stocks Cisco and Arista Networks and data center builders such as Vertiv Holdings and electrical and mechanical contractor Emcor.

Optimism for all things AI has seemed to evaporate throughout the week, as the stock market greeted lackluster quarterly numbers from Oracle and Broadcom with jittery sell-offs and concern about growing debts that could crater cash flows.

Those worries seem to be spreading to ancillary beneficiaries of the AI boom on Friday, gouging a chunk out of charts that retail dip buyers have not — at least so far — stepped in to buy as we head into the weekend.

Luke Kawa12/12/25

Oracle denies Bloomberg report that it’s delaying some data centers for OpenAI to 2028 from 2027

Getting a multi-hundred-billion-dollar backlog for cloud computing revenues from data center projects is easy. Building them is hard.

Oracle extended declines to as much as -6.5% on the day on the heels of a Bloomberg report that the cloud giant has pushed back the completion dates for some of the data centers it’s building for OpenAI to 2028 from 2027, citing people familiar with the work. Oracle denied this report, telling Reuters that there have been no delays to any sites required to meet its contractual commitments and that all milestones remain on track.

Shares had fully pared their report-induced drop ahead of Oracle’s reply, but remain in the red for the day.

Bloomberg said the reported postponement was attributed to labor and material shortages.

Oracle has been spending more on capex than Wall Street had anticipated, leading to higher-than-expected cash burn. Management boosted its full-year capital spending plans by $15 billion after reporting Q2 results earlier this week.

Oracle’s cloud infrastructure sales came in short of estimates in its fiscal 2026 Q2, a signal that markets already had reason to doubt its ability to quickly turn its humungous RPO (that is, remaining purchase obligations) into revenues.

Traders also seem to be of the mind that potential delays to data center completions are going to limit sales for what goes into them.

Some of the bigger losers since the Bloomberg headline hit the wires include:

Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, the latter of which struck a deal to deploy 50,000 of its AI chips in Oracle data centers.
AI REITs like Equinix and Digital Realty.
Server company Dell as well as other AI-geared stocks like Constellation Energy, Arista Networks, Corning, Generac Holdings, Quanta Services, Vistra, and Eaton Corp.

Luke Kawa12/12/25

Broadcom’s post-earnings tumble is weighing on Google’s entire AI ecosystem

Broadcom’s post-earnings plunge is prompting a sharp pullback in Google-linked AI stocks, which had been on fire thanks to the warm reception to Gemini 3.

The stocks getting hit hard:

Celestica, which supports Broadcom’s Tomahawk switch chipset for AI networking.
TTM Technologies, which manufactures the circuit boards that are the foundation for Broadcom’s AI chips.
Lumentum, whose laser technology lets information move around quickly in data centers.

A basket of these Google-linked AI stocks compiled by Morgan Stanley is suffering one of its worst losses of the year. This brisk retreat also follows the release of GPT-5.2 by OpenAI.

Matt Phillips12/12/25

Citi initiates coverage of Planet Labs with “buy” rating

Planet Labs was up after aerospace and defense analysts at Citi initiated coverage with a “buy/high risk” rating and $19 price target.

The stock is up more than 40% this week, after a strong earnings result that spotlighted the company’s growing opportunity in linking its core business of capturing daily images of the planet with AI technologies.

Citi analysts noted the potential for a positive flywheel effect for Planet Labs as it deepens its focus on integrating AI into its offerings:

“AI is accelerating the conversion of pixels to decisions, where Planet’s daily scan and deep archive offer a uniquely large training corpus and broad-area foundation for automation. AI-enabled solutions (MDA/GMS/AMS) are gaining traction with customers such as NATO and the U.S. DoW, validating the approach of integrating AI into broad-area monitoring products... These AI moves create a compounding advantage: more coverage generates more training data, which improves models, which in turn increases product utility and addressable demand.”

The stock has also caught the attention of some of the retail trading crowd, with call options activity spiking on Thursday as traders rode the market reaction to the results.