Chicago Bulls Mascot Benny the Bull dunks the ball during the halftime show of the Missouri Valley Conference college basketball game between the Loyola-Chicago Ramblers and the Illinois State Redbirds on February 2, 2019.

(Michael Allio/Getty Images)

Stocks trade higher as tech rebound continues

Tech was the best-performing sector for the second consecutive session.

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all climbed higher, with the benchmark index trading just below its record closing high. Tech was the best-performing sector for the second consecutive session.

The price of bitcoin stabilized after sinking below $70,000 this morning, but meme coins pepe, shiba inu, bonk, pengu, dogwifhat, and trump continued to slide.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 soared to a record high after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party won the lower house election in a landslide victory.

This week brings delayed economic data, including the January jobs report on Wednesday and January’s consumer price index on Friday, both of which could offer clues into the Fed’s interest rate plans.

Stocks that moved higher:

Oracle powered higher as DA Davidson gave the stock a “buy” rating on the belief that OpenAI is increasingly likely to be able to make good on billions of dollars’ worth of planned spending on computing power at Oracle.
AppLovin jumped after CapitalWatch announced “significant revisions” to the report that alleged AppLovin is a money-laundering operation for “transnational criminal kingpins.” However, CapitalWatch says its stance on company “remains unchanged.”
Roblox spiked as Roth Capital upgraded the stock and hiked its price target, citing growth in 18-plus users.
Kroger gained on a report that it plans to name former Walmart US executive Greg Foran as its CEO.
SoFi Technologies rose after Citizens upgraded its stock to “market outperform” from “perform,” with a price target of $30.

Stocks that moved lower:

Hims & Hers tumbled after being sued by Novo Nordisk, which is accusing Hims of infringing on one of its key patents for semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy.
AMC sank following its filing to sell up to $150 million in stock.
Workday slid as CEO Carl Eschenbach stepped down, with cofounder Aneel Bhusri returning as CEO.
Micron and Sandisk dipped after a weekend report that Samsung is beginning “mass production” of its latest memory product, HBM4, slightly earlier than expected.

Matt Phillips5h

Sandisk and Micron slip as Samsung rushes new product into production

Sandisk and Micron, which have boomed along with prices for the memory chips needed for the AI data center build-out, are limping behind the broader market Monday after a weekend report that South Korean chip giant Samsung is beginning “mass production” of its latest memory product, HBM4, slightly earlier than expected.

US memory chip maker Micron also makes HBM (high-bandwidth memory), which is essentially a large memory product designed for AI applications.

Sandisk doesn’t make HBM. But it is developing a kind of high-bandwidth flash NAND memory product that is intended to function as an HBM option for AI data centers.

More broadly, signs that Asian production giants are responding to high prices by ramping up supply means that the nosebleed pricing of memory chips that quintupled Sandisk’s profit over the last year might not last forever.

Samsung to begin mass production of HBM4 chips later this month: sources | Yonhap News Agency

Samsung moves first on HBM4 in bid to regain AI memory edge

US memory chip maker Micron also makes HBM (high-bandwidth memory), which is essentially a large memory product designed for AI applications.

Sandisk doesn’t make HBM. But it is developing a kind of high-bandwidth flash NAND memory product that is intended to function as an HBM option for AI data centers.

Hyunsoo Rim

GLUTIDE TURNED

Novo Nordisk has lost most of its post-Wegovy market cap gains

A weak sales outlook and a copycat scare capped a brutal week for Europe’s one-time most valuable company.

Still life of a bottle of the new Wegovy semaglutide tablets on a womans hand.

Matt Phillips8h

Oracle rises as DA Davidson gives it a “buy” rating because of OpenAI positivity

Oracle rose after receiving an upgrade to start the week. Analysts at DA Davidson bumped up their view on the stock from “neutral” to “buy” and kept their $180 price target on the shares. That’s about 27% higher than Friday’s close.

Their shift isn’t so much about Oracle but about OpenAI, which Davidson folks now think is increasingly likely to be able to make good on billions of dollars’ worth of planned spending on computing power at Oracle and other hyperscalers. They wrote:

“We are now more positive on OpenAI, based on changes in strategy, new frontier models, the pressure on Google’s competitors from its recent ascent, and progress on its fundraising efforts. Most importantly, we believe OpenAI already has as much as $40B of cash on hand and may be raising as much as another $100B by the end of the quarter, which should help pay for the data centers Oracle is building for OpenAI. Since the market is currently assigning the OpenAI relationship a negative value, we believe the fundraise will serve as a catalyst for outperformance.”

For OpenAI’s part, CEO Sam Altman just told employees that the company was “back to exceeding 10% monthly growth,” according to CNBC reporting.

Max Knoblauch8h

Roblox rises following upgrade and price target hike from Roth Capital as growth in older players boosts optimism

Shares of Roblox are up in early trading on Monday following a price target hike and an upgrade from “neutral” to “buy” from Roth Capital.

Roth bumped its price target up from $78 to $84, with analyst Eric Handler citing the company’s “sustainable virtuous circle where continuously improving creator/development tools are producing higher quality games, which enhances the user experience, and drives higher engagement.”

Handler also noted Roblox’s success in growing its 18-plus player base, which increased 50% last year and, per Roth, “monetized 40% higher than under-18-users.”

The platform surged after reporting its fourth-quarter earnings last week, with stronger-than-expected full-year bookings guidance. Still, the stock remains below levels in January, before the debut of Google’s AI interactive worlds generator, Project Genie.

Luke Kawa10h

AppLovin jumps after CapitalWatch announces “significant revisions” to negative report but says stance on company “remains unchanged”

AppLovin is trading to the upside on Monday morning after a financial research agency issued a “correction and apology” regarding some of the claims in its negative report on the company and its principals.

Shares of the ad tech firm tumbled in January as CaptialWatch called it “the ultimate monument to 21st-century new-type transnational financial crime.”

But after “a rigorous internal review,” CapitalWatch determined that the allegations of money laundering directed at one of AppLovin’s largest shareholders, Hao Tang, were based on a judicial document that was interpreted erroneously, and that his connections with other parties in the report “were inaccurate and failed to meet our publication standards.”

However, the outlet still argues that it’s right on the company, but just didn’t have enough evidence to single out Tang individually. Per CapitalWatch:

“Our review concluded that while the macro data and transaction structures highlighted in the original report warrant market scrutiny, the information currently available is legally insufficient to attribute these complex capital operations directly and exclusively to Mr. Tang. We have chosen to retract the allegations directed at Mr. Tang personally out of strict adherence to evidentiary principles, not as a denial of the objective market phenomena observed.”

“Our stance regarding the complex financial structure of AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP) remains unchanged.”

AppLovin forcefully denied the original report, saying it was “rife with false, misleading, and nonsensical allegations.”

The firm, like most in the software space, has floundered recently amid potential disruptive threats from AI tools and new entrants.