Luke Kawa6/11/24

US stocks close at record highs as investors decide they actually like Apple’s AI plans

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 both closed at all-time highs with gains of 0.3% and 0.7%, respectively.

It was all tech on Tuesday. The only two sector ETFs that traded higher on the day were tech and communication services (which includes Google and Meta, both of which rose). Financials fared the worst, down 1.1%.

Only 182 stocks in the S&P 500 advanced. It’s been nearly a year since the S&P 500 posted a bigger gain with a lower number of stocks moving higher.

Apple spiked 7.3% in its best day since November 2022 as investors decided its approach to implementing AI features across its products — which they disliked yesterday — was good after all. Options buyers got busy, with call volumes the highest since 2021. It’s the first time this year that more money has changed hands trading Apple than Nvidia.

Berkshire Hathaway, despite being the third-largest owner with more than $150 billion worth of Apple stock, fell 0.6%. The gap between the two stocks’ excess returns was the largest since July 31, 2020, a session which followed a blowout earnings report from the iPhone maker.

Shares of private prison operator CoreCivic and services provider Target Hospitality were smashed, falling 19.7% and 31.5% respectively, on news that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement will close their particularly costly detention center in Texas.

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Matt Phillips12h

DraftKings moves to counter prediction market threat

DraftKings is holding onto its gains from after the bell yesterday, trading 6% higher in the pre-market, following news that it is buying Railbird in an effort to address the competitive threat from prediction markets that has weighed on its share price — and that of FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment — for weeks.

The deal is then latest example of the increasing linkages and overlap between worlds of financial markets, gambling, and prediction markets.

Earlier this month, ICE — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and the ICE futures markets, among others — announced it would invest up to $2 billion in prediction markets company Polymarket.

And Robinhood shares have recently gotten a lift from its ongoing partnership with prediction market platform Kalshi, which has seen growing uptake of its events contracts that allow buyers to take positions on football games.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

By and large investor excitement over prediction markets — which has picked up since the start of football season — has seemed to come at the expense of Flutter and DraftKings, the two companies that dominate US sports betting.

Over the last three months through the end of regular trading on Wednesday, DraftKings and Flutter were down 23% and 18%, respectively, while the S&P 500 is up about 7%.

DraftKings acquires predictions platform Railbird

DraftKings acquires predictions platform Railbird

The deal is then latest example of the increasing linkages and overlap between worlds of financial markets, gambling, and prediction markets.

Earlier this month, ICE — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange and the ICE futures markets, among others — announced it would invest up to $2 billion in prediction markets company Polymarket.

And Robinhood shares have recently gotten a lift from its ongoing partnership with prediction market platform Kalshi, which has seen growing uptake of its events contracts that allow buyers to take positions on football games.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

By and large investor excitement over prediction markets — which has picked up since the start of football season — has seemed to come at the expense of Flutter and DraftKings, the two companies that dominate US sports betting.

Over the last three months through the end of regular trading on Wednesday, DraftKings and Flutter were down 23% and 18%, respectively, while the S&P 500 is up about 7%.

As Netflix drops on earnings miss, it’s investing just $0.40 into content for every $1 of revenue

Netflix shares fell in after-hours trading on Tuesday, following the release of the streamer’s third-quarter earnings report.

Toby Bochan, Luke Kawa

US stocks go nowhere amid big rotation out of gold and into fake meat

The calmest session for the S&P 500 in over a month.

a sunny field

OpenAI releases Chrome-competitor browser “ChatGPT Atlas,” sending Google shares down

ChatGPT currently poses little threat to Google’s search business, but an OpenAI browser — and the data that comes with it — could change everything.

Screenshot of ChatGPT Atlas browser

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The no-fundamentals, high-volatility winning trades are reversing hard

The volatile, speculative momentum trades that have been on fire in recent months are getting smoked.

The SPDR Gold Shares ETF is on track for its biggest daily loss since April 2013, as of 10:28 a.m. ET.

And Goldman Sachs’ baskets of “high beta momentum longs” and “non-profitable tech” stocks, which have pretty much been the exact same line for two months, got dumped last Thursday and are down big again today.

D-Wave Quantum, Planet Labs, and Navitas Semiconductor are some of the stocks that feature in both of Goldman’s baskets and are down more than 2% as of 10:24 a.m. ET.

All of these groups have been handily outperforming the S&P 500 for an extended period of time despite by their very nature having more hype than actual track records — in terms of producing profits for shareholders — to speak of. Gold, obviously, generates no income. Nonprofitable tech stocks aren’t really in a position to spin off cash they don’t have to their owners. And, as mentioned, high-beta momentum and nonprofitable tech stocks have pretty much traded the same!

It’s difficult to pinpoint a fundamental catalyst for why speculative momentum trades suddenly turn on a dime, just as it’s often tricky to identify why they went on such a mammoth run in the first place. Perhaps the onset of earnings season — which gives us the opportunity to assess fundamental progress — means that right now, there’s more attention being paid to “line go up” when it comes to revenues and profits, and that’s taking away from the mindshare on “line go up” with respect to recent share price performance.

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