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Luke Kawa

Nvidia gains after launching new suite of open models

Nvidia extended gains in early trading after announcing an updated edition of its open models, the Nemotron 3.

This family of models comes in three “sizes”: Nano (available today), Super, and Ultra (both expected to be launched in the first half of next year). These sizes reflect the different parameters of each model, which govern the complexity of a given request it can handle.

The company highlighted the flexibility benefits of these models, saying they can be integrated with proprietary counterparts to produce cost savings.

“As multi-agent AI systems expand, developers are increasingly relying on proprietary models for state-of-the-art reasoning while using more efficient and customizable open models to drive down costs,” per the press release. “Routing tasks between frontier-level models and Nemotron in a single workflow gives agents the most intelligence while optimizing tokenomics.”

This strong start to the week helps reverse a substantial run of underperformance from Nvidia versus its peers. It’s the only member of the VanEck Semiconductor ETF that’s declined since the S&P 500 closed at an intermediate bottom on November 20.

Last week, the chip designer closed at its lowest level compared to this fund of 2025, falling below the trough seen in the wake of the DeepSeek freak-out, where nearly $600 billion in market cap was obliterated in a single session.

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Oil’s retreat propels US stocks higher

Front-month West Texas Intermediate futures are down more than 4%, while Brent futures are off more than 2% as of 1:25 p.m. ET as traders glom on to some optimistic signs about the flow of oil through the all-important Strait of Hormuz:

  • A Pakistani-owned tanker passed through the strait this weekend while broadcasting its signal, per Reuters, “indicating ‌that some countries are able to negotiate safe passage for their vessels despite the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.”

  • US President Donald Trump said that some “fairly local” countries would soon be helping ships traverse the strait (while having added that other countries are “not enthusiastic” about the prospect of participating).

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF and Invesco QQQ Trust are both up over 1% amid oil’s retreat.

That being said, the news flow is far from universally positive.

Reuters reports that the UAE’s crude output has been cut in half since the Mideast conflict started; Bloomberg says Kuwait’s production has suffered a similar decline.

  • A Pakistani-owned tanker passed through the strait this weekend while broadcasting its signal, per Reuters, “indicating ‌that some countries are able to negotiate safe passage for their vessels despite the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.”

  • US President Donald Trump said that some “fairly local” countries would soon be helping ships traverse the strait (while having added that other countries are “not enthusiastic” about the prospect of participating).

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF and Invesco QQQ Trust are both up over 1% amid oil’s retreat.

That being said, the news flow is far from universally positive.

Reuters reports that the UAE’s crude output has been cut in half since the Mideast conflict started; Bloomberg says Kuwait’s production has suffered a similar decline.

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Sandisk and memory stocks rip ahead of Nvidia CEO’s speech

Memory stocks such as Sandisk, Micron, and disk drive makers Western Digital and Seagate sprinted ahead Monday, as this week’s big AI conference for tech bellwether Nvidia gets underway with a speech from the CEO slated for this afternoon.

As Luke Kawa pointed out earlier, CEO Jensen Huang’s speechifying at high-profile company announcements or industry events hasn’t always been a good thing for Nvidia shares. (The chip designer is holding its GPU Technology Conference, or GTC, this week.)

But Huang’s pronouncements have, at times, been pretty dang helpful for share prices of some companies in the orbit of the AI gods. Perhaps foremost among them are the memory stocks that have blasted toward the top of the S&P 500 in terms of price performance in recent years.

Case in point: the nearly 30% gain that Sandisk posted on January 6, the day after Huang’s keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in which he spotlighted memory as a key bottleneck constraining the AI build-out. (Fellow memory plays Western Digital, Seagate Technology Holdings, and Micron also posted double-digit gains that day.)

Memory stocks have been the highest-profile outlet for bullish AI industry impulses this year, and notable comments from Huang could put the wind back in their sails after they had slowed in recent weeks.

Of course, there are also other things happening in the sector, such as Micron’s announcement Sunday that it completed an acquisition of a new manufacturing site in Taiwan.

Either way, memory stocks are pushing higher after having exhaled a bit lately.

But Huang’s pronouncements have, at times, been pretty dang helpful for share prices of some companies in the orbit of the AI gods. Perhaps foremost among them are the memory stocks that have blasted toward the top of the S&P 500 in terms of price performance in recent years.

Case in point: the nearly 30% gain that Sandisk posted on January 6, the day after Huang’s keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in which he spotlighted memory as a key bottleneck constraining the AI build-out. (Fellow memory plays Western Digital, Seagate Technology Holdings, and Micron also posted double-digit gains that day.)

Memory stocks have been the highest-profile outlet for bullish AI industry impulses this year, and notable comments from Huang could put the wind back in their sails after they had slowed in recent weeks.

Of course, there are also other things happening in the sector, such as Micron’s announcement Sunday that it completed an acquisition of a new manufacturing site in Taiwan.

Either way, memory stocks are pushing higher after having exhaled a bit lately.

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