Markets
Luke Kawa

S&P 500 ends week on down note for first back-to-back weekly losses since Liberation Day

US stocks opened higher but lost ground throughout the day, turning negative after reports of fresh impediments on China’s ability to access semiconductor equipment and that Japan had canceled a meeting with the US after being asked to spend more on defense.

The S&P 500 ended the day down 0.2%, the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.4%, and the Russell 2000 gave back 0.2%.

It’s the first back-to-back weekly decline for the S&P 500 since late March into early April — that is, right before and after the Liberation Day tariff announcements.

Energy was the best-performing S&P sector ETF, while materials, communication services, healthcare, and tech were the notable drags on the day.

Semi equipment makers Lam Research, KLA Corp, and Applied Materials all slumped on the report that the Commerce Department is mulling plans to make it more difficult for US semiconductor equipment to be shipped to China.

Oscar Health was a standout performer as the insurance company enjoys a massive spike in demand from retail traders, with call volumes setting records on Wednesday and again on Friday.

CarMax jumped thanks to a surge in sales that firmly entrenches its dominant position in the used auto market.

Darden Restaurants gained after the Olive Garden parent company posted slightly better-than-expected quarterly results on the top and bottom lines.

Tesla finished virtually flat as its robotaxi launch in Austin looms this weekend, with Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives calling it the start of a $1 trillion market cap addition for the firm.

And a grim outcome for another Musk-led company — SpaceX — was a boon for Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile. Shares of those two companies rose after another SpaceX rocket exploded on Thursday.

Eli Lilly slumped after the UK’s national health provider declined to cover its new Alzheimer’s treatment.

And Microsoft hit an intraday record high but finished in the red.

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Kimberly-Clark to buy Tylenol maker Kenvue, target of Trump’s autism attacks, in a deal worth $48.7 billion

Shares of Kimberly-Clark dropped sharply on the news, while Kenvue jumped.

Nate Becker23m
markets
Luke Kawa

IREN surges on $9.7 billion deal to provide AI cloud capacity to Microsoft

IREN is surging this morning after inking an agreement to provide Microsoft with access to Nvidia Blackwell GPUs at a data center campus in Texas over a five-year period.

The total contract value is approximately $9.7 billion, per IREN, and includes a 20% prepayment. Dell also gets a piece of the action here, as Iren will purchase these GPUs as well as other equipment from the server maker for about $5.8 billion.

The bitcoin miner turned data center company said the GPUs will be deployed in phases through 2026.

“It marks another major step forward for IREN as we continue to expand large-scale GPU deployments across our 3GW secured power portfolio in North America, reinforcing our position as a leading AI Cloud Service Provider,” said IREN co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Roberts. He told Bloomberg that the deal accounts for about 10% of IREN’s total capacity.

That “secured power portfolio” reference in Roberts’ remarks is critical, and a key selling point for IREN here.

In a recent appearance on Brad Gerstner’s Bg2 Pod, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed how the key bottleneck for AI deployment doesn’t concern chips, but rather “the ability to get the builds done fast enough close to power. So if you can’t do that, you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in, and in fact, that is my problem today. It’s not a supply issue of chips, it’s actually the fact that I don’t have warm shelves to plug into.”

Jonathan Tinter, president of business development and ventures at Microsoft, echoed those comments in today’s press release, saying: “IREN’s expertise in building and operating a fully integrated AI cloud — from data centers to GPU stack — combined with their secured power capacity makes them a strategic partner.”

markets
Luke Kawa

US key mineral stocks dip as White House says China’s rollback of rare earth export curbs more comprehensive than previously thought

Shares of US rare earth and key mineral producers are lower in premarket trading after the White House said that China’s rollback of export curbs goes further than previously thought.

Initial news reports suggested that Chinese restrictions on rare earth exports from April would remain intact following last week’s meeting between Trump and Xi, while more recently planned curbs would be delayed. However, the White House’s fact sheet on the trade deal with China published this weekend says that the world’s second-largest economy “will issue general valid licenses” for many key minerals, which “means the de facto removal of controls China imposed in April 2025 and October 2022.”

MP Materials, Lithium Americas, Critical Metals are all more than 1% lower as of 7:10 a.m. ET, while United States Antimony Corp. is off double digits.

Tasha Matsumoto
10/31/25
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The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 continued their streak of monthly wins.

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