Lululemon store window (Mike Kemp/Getty Images)

Retail stocks clobbered as Trump’s tariffs send shockwaves through supply chains

It’s a retail rout with Nike, Lululemon, Best Buy, and more slumping.

4/3/25 9:53AM

Retail stocks are taking a beating Thursday, with the SPDR S&P Retail ETF down more than 6% as retailers and traders alike scramble to assess the fallout from President Trump’s latest round of tariffs. The new duties, targeting major manufacturing hubs, have raised alarm across the sector.

Nike and Lululemon took a huge hit, falling double digits as factories in China, Taiwan, and Indonesia are caught in the tariff crossfire.
Target slid more than 8% in early trading as the tariffs threaten to push prices higher on goods heavily reliant on suppliers in China and other Asian countries.
Discount retailers aren’t immune either. Dollar Tree dropped 12%, with 40% of sales tied to imports from China.
Deckers, parent of Uggs and Hoka, suffered a 13% plunge, as most of its production is sourced from Asia.
Best Buy, which flagged tariff-related price hikes last month, saw shares sink about 14%, as much of its inventory comes from China and Mexico.

With tariffs set to hit April 9, retailers are bracing for the ripple effect. Bernstein analysts, in a note Thursday, raised red flags for apparel and specialty retailers, warning that the new levies will “significantly drive up inflation” and spike the prices of all imported goods. The move is also expected to reverse any burgeoning positive consumer trends.

J. Edward Moreno2h

The FDA is expected to lift restrictions on certain peptides, the NYT reports

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to lift restrictions on certain peptides, allowing the experimental, often injectable substances to be sold by compounding pharmacies, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The potential move was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, and teased by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in late February.

Peptides have boomed in popularity recently, with search interest for “peptides” surpassing “ozempic” this month. Many of them are currently understudied and not approved for human use, a rule consumers are able to bypass by purchasing them from suppliers that sell them for, ostensibly, research purposes only.

As reports of the FDA changing its stance of peptides mount, consumer health companies like Hims & Hers and Superpower have been getting ready to roll out their peptide offerings as soon as they get the FDA's blessing.

The peptide gold rush: How impending deregulation could supercharge a shadow industry

Matt Phillips3h

Memory stocks bounce as Bernstein analyst calls TurboQuant fears “overdone”

Memory stocks rose Tuesday, after Bernstein analysts called the recent panic over Google’s TurboQuant AI algorithm “overdone.”

Bernstein analyst Mark Newman wrote:

“[Hard disk drive] and Memory stocks have sold off significantly due in part to fears from Google’s TurboQuant report. This however, should have zero impact on HDD demand and negligible impact on NAND demand. Given the stock sell-off we see this as an attractive entry point for Seagate Technology Holdings, Western Digital and Sandisk’s and upgrade WDC to Outperform.”

All three stocks were up early Tuesday, as was memory chip maker Micron.

Today’s rally stands in stark contrast to the pummeling these shares have endured over the last week, after Google Research published a technical paper on March 24 detailing its TurboQuant AI algorithm, which compresses the amount of data associated with AI operations without affecting the accuracy of AI models.

That was seen as a threat to surging AI demand for memory storage, which has supercharged prices for memory chips and memory-related stocks over the last year.

Matt Phillips4h

Constellation tumbles after posting underwhelming guidance, failing to announce new data center deals

AI power trade Constellation Energy tumbled early Tuesday after issuing an investor day update the market seemed to find unsatisfactory.

The company introduced full-year 2026 operating earnings guidance of between $11 and $12 a share, the midpoint of which is shy of consensus expectations for $11.73, according to FactSet.

Over at Barron’s, Avi Salzman suggested that the company’s failure to unveil any new data center deals as part of the festivities is also adding the the sell-off. He wrote:

“Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez said at the event that he anticipates signing major new deals to provide power to tech companies, but doesn’t want to announce anything too early given the increasing spotlight on data centers today and some changing regulations.

‘I recognize that the last time we spoke, I indicated that we expected to be done with an important transaction by this call, but we’re not ready to announce anything today,’ Dominguez said.

‘There is clearly more scrutiny on data center development,’ he added.”

It’s clear that growing public pushback on data centers is becoming a limiting factor in the AI investment binge.

Constellation Stock Falls. Investors Didn’t Get What They Really Wanted.

Over at Barron’s, Avi Salzman suggested that the company’s failure to unveil any new data center deals as part of the festivities is also adding the the sell-off. He wrote:

“Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez said at the event that he anticipates signing major new deals to provide power to tech companies, but doesn’t want to announce anything too early given the increasing spotlight on data centers today and some changing regulations.

‘I recognize that the last time we spoke, I indicated that we expected to be done with an important transaction by this call, but we’re not ready to announce anything today,’ Dominguez said.

‘There is clearly more scrutiny on data center development,’ he added.”

It’s clear that growing public pushback on data centers is becoming a limiting factor in the AI investment binge.

Luke Kawa4h

CoreWeave jumps after closing unique financing deal to borrow $8.5 billion backed by its chips and Meta’s AI compute purchases

Shares of CoreWeave are spiking on Tuesday after the company announced that it closed an $8.5 billion loan backed by its chips and what Meta is willing to pay to use them.

Last September, the neocloud reached an agreement to provide $14.2 billion worth of AI compute to the social media giant.

CoreWeave said the loan agreement is “the first investment-grade rated financing secured by HPC infrastructure and an associated customer contract.”

These terms helped to reduce CoreWeave’s cost of borrowing: this facility includes a floating rate (SOFR plus 2.25%, or about 5.9%) as well as a fixed rate tranche (at 5.9%). Last July, CoreWeave raised fixed-rate debt with a coupon of 9%.

In a world where Oracle’s five-year credit default swap spreads recently exceeded their 2008 peak, it’s nice to get some positive debt-related news in the AI realm.

Luke Kawa5h

Traders pay a premium for defense ETF that US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s broker reportedly attempted to buy before the war

The iShares Defense Industrials Active ETF is spiking this morning after the Financial Times reported that US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s broker attempted to make a multimillion-dollar purchase of the ETF ahead of US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

Per the FT, this purchase attempt did not go through after being flagged internally by BlackRock. (The chief Pentagon spokesperson has called this report false and fabricated.)

The actively managed ETF has actually performed poorly since the start of the war, down more than 12% since the end of February versus a less than 8% decline for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF.

But as of about 8:30 a.m. ET, it was up almost 4% in premarket trading. Even more curiously, as of 8:39 a.m. ET, only one of this actively managed ETF’s constituents (Rocket Lab) was up more than the ETF itself.

In other words, in what appears to be an amazing twist, traders are now seemingly willing to pay a premium for IDEF because it got a pseudo seal of approval from Pete Hegseth...

...except it didn’t, because the FT reports that the broker’s purchase order never went through after being flagged internally by BlackRock.