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Claire Yubin Oh2h

Rocket Lab builds on Friday’s gain after landmark $816 million satellite contract and record Electron rocket launches in 2025

Rocket Lab is ending the year with a timely boost to its fortunes.

The company is up another ~4% in pre-market trading on Monday, building on Friday’s ~18% gain which came after the company announced an $816 million deal to design and manufacture 18 satellites for the US Space Development Agency on Friday, marking the company’s largest single contract to date.

Per Rocket Lab’s press release, CEO Peter Beck commented that, “As the only commercial provider producing both spacecraft and payloads in-house for the SDA Tracking Layer, Rocket Lab is delivering a truly disruptive solution that combines speed, resilience, and affordability,” emphasizing the company’s vertically integrated manufacturing approach, with all of the major components of its satellites designed and produced in-house.

In a separate announcement on Monday, Rocket Lab also shared the successful launch of its 21st Electron rocket of the year, and the seventh for Japanese Earth imaging company Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space, Inc., finishing the year with a 100% mission success for its flagship spacecraft and establishing it as the world’s most frequently-launched small-lift orbital rocket, according to the company. The company has plans for five additional Electron launches for iQPS 2026.

Another name in the space arena, satellite peer AST SpaceMobile, is also trading higher after spiking at the end of last week. Following a 15% gain on Friday, ASTS is up another 4% early on Monday as optimism builds for its BlueBird 6 launch, pivotal to the company’s direct-to-smartphone strategy, scheduled to launch on December 23, 2025 at 10:24 p.m. ET.

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Max Knoblauch4m

Paramount bolsters its Warner Bros. offer with a $40.4 billion personal guarantee from Larry Ellison

Paramount’s $30 per share offer for Warner Bros. Discovery now includes a $40.4 billion personal guarantee from Larry Ellison, the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, according to a fresh filing on Monday.

“Larry Ellison has agreed to provide an irrevocable personal guarantee of $40.4 billion of the equity financing for the offer and any damages claims against Paramount,” said Paramount in a news release following the filing.

Ellison’s backing directly addresses a concern that the Warner Bros. board cited when encouraging its shareholders to turn down Paramount’s offer — that the offer was backed by a revocable trust. According to the board, that meant Paramount could back out of the contract if it so chose.

Netflix also got more of its ducks in a row for its WBD offer on Monday, refinancing part of its $59 billion bridge loan with longer-term and lower-cost debt.

Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery are climbing in premarket trading, and event contracts showed increased optimism in Paramount’s likelihood to end up buying WBD (50% as of 8:43 a.m. ET, up from 27%).

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. Event contracts trading is offered by Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, a registered futures commission merchant with the CFTC.)

AI trade gets its momentum back

Baskets of different parts of the AI ecosystem have reclaimed their 50-day moving averages as of Friday’s close.

4th of July Fireworks in Long Beach

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Nvidia plans to begin shipping H200 chips to China by mid-February, per Reuters

Chinese buyers can get their hands on the best chips from Nvidia’s Hopper generation before the new year — their Lunar New Year, that is, which starts on February 17.

Reuters reports that the chip designer has told customers in the world’s second-largest economy that it plans to ship about 40,000 to 80,000 H200 chips to China by mid-February, citing a trio of people familiar with the matter. Shares of Nvidia extended gains to be up nearly 2% in premarket trading on Monday, as of 8 a.m. ET.

Earlier this month, President Trump said that Nvidia could begin to sell these processors to China, with 25% of the proceeds going to the US government. H200s are the top offering from Nvidia’s Hopper generation, which preceded its current Blackwell flagship products. Providing China with this high-powered US AI technology has been critiqued by both sides of the aisle in Congress.

The report also notes that Chinese authorities have yet to approve these purchases, and previous reporting from the FT suggests potential buyers would need to show what the Nvidia chips can do that domestic chips can’t. Based on what experts say about the performance gap between H200s and the top Chinese processors, that might not be too difficult a hurdle to clear.

Reuters had previously indicated that Nvidia had told Chinese buyers that it was considering boosting H200 production in light of firm demand. Monday’s report cites a source that says orders for this fresh capacity should open in Q2.

Analysts never gave Nvidia much credit for a potential recovery in H20 sales after the Trump administration lifted curbs on sending those chips to China (and wouldn’t you know it, they were right!). Given the technology gap between those nerfed Hopper (H20) chips and these top-of-the-line ones (H200), however, this looks to be a different story.

Markets close out 2025’s last full week of trading on a cheerful note

Stocks rallied for the second day in a row, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all closing higher, giving traders the early Christmas gift they desired.

Man is happy about his saw

markets

Nate Becker12/19/25

Health insurance stocks lose steam as Trump says he’ll lobby insurers for lower prices

Shares of health insurance companies dropped Friday afternoon, as President Trump said he would ask insurers to meet with him in the coming weeks to seek lower prices.

Stocks including Humana, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, CVS Health, and Elevance Health all either pared gains or went further into the red after Trump’s remarks, which came at the end of a press event to announce pricing deals with nine drugmakers.

“I’m going to call a meeting of the big insurance companies that have gotten so rich,” Trump said, noting that he would lobby them for lower prices.

“I would say that maybe with one talk, they would be willing to cut their prices by 50, 60, or 70%. They’ve made a fortune.”

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