Luke Kawa6/20/25

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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Samsung’s massive Q1 fails to lift Sandisk, other data center plays

Almost all memory stocks slipped Tuesday, despite getting a positive update on the massive flood of money pouring into the sector from the AI build-out, as the potential escalation of the US war with Iran Tuesday evening overshadowed Samsung’s blowout numbers.

Korean chip giant Samsung Electronics reported preliminary Q1 results showing operating profit up by 755% compared to Q1 2025, trouncing pretty elevated expectations for a gain of about 550%.

Samsung is the world’s largest producer of NAND and DRAM chips. Once considered low-value commodity inputs to tech products, NAND and DRAM prices have exploded over the last six months amid a hyperscaler scramble to secure chips that can manage the surfeit of data produced by AI.

The same dynamics have made memory plays like Sandisk, Western Digital, and Micron some of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 over the last 12 months.

But other than Seagate Technology Holdings, those stocks were down Tuesday as of 11:15 a.m. ET, as the surge in oil prices and ongoing war with Iran muted much of the AI data center trade excitement. Bellwethers like Nvidia and hyperscalers like Oracle and Meta were struggling early, as were data center input makers like Corning and Coherent, AI power plays like GE Vernova, Vertiv Holdings, and even hard-hat builders of the shells that house all those AI servers.

On the other hand, some so-called optical stocks — makers of fiber-optic connections that quickly shift data between users, hyperscalers, and all around data centers themselves — were up. Lumentum and Arista Networks, two popular optical stocks, were showing resilience.

Samsung flags eightfold jump in quarterly profit as AI chip demand pumps prices

Samsung flags eightfold jump in quarterly profit as AI chip demand pumps prices

Samsung is the world’s largest producer of NAND and DRAM chips. Once considered low-value commodity inputs to tech products, NAND and DRAM prices have exploded over the last six months amid a hyperscaler scramble to secure chips that can manage the surfeit of data produced by AI.

The same dynamics have made memory plays like Sandisk, Western Digital, and Micron some of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 over the last 12 months.

But other than Seagate Technology Holdings, those stocks were down Tuesday as of 11:15 a.m. ET, as the surge in oil prices and ongoing war with Iran muted much of the AI data center trade excitement. Bellwethers like Nvidia and hyperscalers like Oracle and Meta were struggling early, as were data center input makers like Corning and Coherent, AI power plays like GE Vernova, Vertiv Holdings, and even hard-hat builders of the shells that house all those AI servers.

On the other hand, some so-called optical stocks — makers of fiber-optic connections that quickly shift data between users, hyperscalers, and all around data centers themselves — were up. Lumentum and Arista Networks, two popular optical stocks, were showing resilience.

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