Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa7/17/25

S&P 500, Nasdaq 100 close at records on solid earnings and strong economic data

Better-than-expected retail sales for June and robust Q2 earnings propelled major indexes to record closing highs on Thursday. The S&P 500 rose 0.5%, the Nasdaq 100 gained 0.7%, and the Russell 2000 led the way with a 1.2% advance.

The day’s gains were led in part by Albemarle, which jumped 7.6% after Chinese mining giant Zangge ordered a surprise halt on lithium production. Elevance was the biggest decliner after slashing its full-year profit outlook.

Pepsi was also a top performer after the snacks and beverage giant topped Q2 earnings even as overall name brand demand cools. Sticking with soda…

Coca-Cola rose 2% while Archer-Daniels-Midland dipped after President Donald Trump touted his alleged progress in getting Coke to use cane sugar.

Taiwan Semiconductor shares rose more than 3% after the world’s leading chip supplier topped profit expectations for the second quarter and raised its full-year sales outlook.

Shares of railroad giants CSX and Norfolk Southern rose nearly 4% after a report said Union Pacific is working with Morgan Stanley to explore a potential acquisition. Union Pacific fell almost 2%.

Lucid shares soared 36% after Uber said it would make “multi-hundred-million dollar investments” in the EV maker as well as autonomous driving company Nuro.

Steve Madden jumped more than 6% after Citi upgraded shares of the struggling Y2K footwear brand to “buy” and raised its price target to $32 as fashion trends swing back in its favor.

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Poet Technologies surges as CFO confirms purchase order from Marvell, calls short sellers “maggots”

Shares of POET Technologies are continuing their parabolic surge after CFO Thomas Mika confirmed to StockTwits that the company would be booking revenues from custom chip and networking specialist Marvell Technology.

“We’re a supplier to Marvell now that they’ve acquired Celestial AI who has been a customer of ours for a couple of years,” he said. “And what we supply to Celestial AI are light sources, high-bandwidth, multi-frequency, high-power light sources that light up the photonic fabric that Celestial AI talks about as being the communication device between GPUs and one GPU and another GPU, a GPU and a memory device.”

Mika also said “I hate shorts” when asked about Wolfpack Research’s bet against the company, and said that short sellers were “maggots.” Wolfpack alleged that Poet’s US-based investors would be exposed to an “IRS tax nightmare.”

Personally, this explanation strikes me as pretty thin gruel. We’ve known since early December that Marvell was buying Celestial AI, and that Celestial AI is a Poet customer. Indeed, the stock got to surge when the deal was announced for that very reason! I can confirm that the sky is blue, I don’t know if that should be considered a catalyst to bid up the atmosphere.

On the other hand, you could do worse for a thesis these days than, “Hey, everything in the AI infrastructure supply chain seems to have mooned at one point or another recently, maybe let’s look for some names that mooned in 2025 that haven’t had their time in the sun in 2026!”

Poet’s in the connectivity space, which has been on fire in 2026. But shares had been down year-to-date before more than doubling over the past nine sessions.

The company’s rally once again includes massively bullish options action:

On a related note, Navitas Semiconductor is up double digits today and nearing its closing high from October, the latest in a series of current conditions we’re flagging as being eerily reminiscent of the market backdrop six months ago. Navitas is up more than 80% over the past nine sessions.

4 charts that show the speculative boom is back on

We’re so back.

BRITAIN-LONDON-FIREWORKS-NEW YEAR-CELEBRATION

The Future of the AI boom is coming into view

GE Vernova and Vertiv are giving us a glimpse into the future of the AI boom

GEV’s backlogs are bursting at the seams. One analyst told us he thinks that by the end of this year, GEV could be completely sold out of production capacity for heavy-duty turbines until 2029 or 2030.

Matt Phillips4h

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Max Knoblauch4h

Low-cost airlines plunge on report Trump administration is close to $500 million rescue deal for Spirit

Low-budget US airlines are sinking on Wednesday morning following a Wall Street Journal report that the Trump administration is close to making a rescue deal for Spirit Airlines, which is said to be nearing liquidation amid high fuel costs.

Shares of Frontier, Allegiant, JetBlue, and Southwest Airlines all dropped notably.

Per the WSJ, the US government could soon loan Spirit up to $500 million in return for warrants to take a sizable stake in the airline, which has filed for bankruptcy twice since late 2024. Those warrants could give the US government the ability to purchase as much as 90% ownership of Spirit, Bloomberg reports. The carrier has made efforts to emerge from its latest bankruptcy, filed in August, but fuel costs amid the war in Iran have upset the math.

On Tuesday, President Trump told CNBC he would “love somebody to buy Spirit.”

Exclusive | Trump Administration Nearing Rescue Deal for Spirit Airlines

Exclusive | Trump Administration Nearing Rescue Deal for Spirit Airlines

Per the WSJ, the US government could soon loan Spirit up to $500 million in return for warrants to take a sizable stake in the airline, which has filed for bankruptcy twice since late 2024. Those warrants could give the US government the ability to purchase as much as 90% ownership of Spirit, Bloomberg reports. The carrier has made efforts to emerge from its latest bankruptcy, filed in August, but fuel costs amid the war in Iran have upset the math.

On Tuesday, President Trump told CNBC he would “love somebody to buy Spirit.”

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Max Knoblauch7h

Boeing reports better-than-expected Q1 earnings, revenue

Plane maker Boeing reported its first-quarter earnings before the market opened on Wednesday. Its shares climbed more than 3% in premarket trading.

For Q1, Boeing reported:

An adjusted loss of $0.20 per share, compared to the loss of $0.68 per share expected by Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet.
Revenue of $22.22 billion, compared to estimates of $21.85 billion.

Boeing reported -$1.45 billion in free cash flow in Q1, compared to the -$2.34 billion expected by Wall Street. Prior to Wednesday, Boeing had reported two consecutive quarters of positive FCF following six straight quarters of negative results. The company is still guiding for full-year FCF of between $1 billion and $3 billion.

Earlier this month, Boeing announced it had delivered 143 commercial jets in Q1, up 10% from the same period last year and ahead of rival Airbus, which delivered 114. This was Boeing’s first time outdelivering Airbus since 2018.

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