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CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Getty Images)
not-so-dumb money

Retail traders are getting bulled up on Nvidia and Microstrategy

One potential reason for Nvidia’s massive outperformance of its peers and Magnificent 7 stocks.

Luke Kawa

In Scott Rubner’s recent note, the Goldman Sachs managing director laid out the case for stocks to ramp up into year-end, highlighting the immense support coming from corporate share repurchases. But he also flagged another class of buyer that’s been flexing its muscles lately.

“I am noticing that retail activity on the message boards has started to increase again,” he writes. “Keep an eye on this cohort via options and ETFs.”

According to data from Goldman’s Marquee platform, retail participation in Nvidia is at its highest since the start of the year and at the hottest level of 2024 for bitcoin proxy Microstrategy.

Nvidia retail participation
Source: Goldman Sachs
Microstrategy retail participation
Source: Goldman Sachs

We recently flagged that Nvidia has been massively outperforming its peers (and the rest of the Magnificent 7, at least before Tesla’s blowout earnings) as of late — usually the kind of thing that happens when it’s about to deliver a huge quarterly report (or just did). Rubner’s observation on the return of enthusiastic retail buyers offers one good explanation for why the price action has played out this way.

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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.

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.

markets

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.

markets

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.

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