(Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

Starbucks has best. day. ever.

The market loves the CEO switcheroo

8/13/24 4:20PM

If you’re planning a management coup, this is about as good a market reaction as you could hope for.

Shares of Starbucks soared 24.5% on Tuesday, their best single-day gain since the shares went public in June 1992. The stock price careened higher after the Wall Street Journal broke the story that the company is replacing Laxman Narasimhan, CEO for about 16 months, with Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol in September.

The rise added roughly $20 billion to Starbucks’ market cap in a single session.

For sheer drama, the only session that could rival Tuesday occurred on July 1, 1999, when then-CEO Howard Schultz introduced a half-baked idea to expand the company’s costly and distracting foray into internet retailing, resulting in a cataclysmic collapse of 28%, which remains its worst day ever. The lede of the the Wall Street Journal’s story the next day: “Earth to Howard Schultz: Return from cyberspace. Your coffee needs you.”

But even after the surge in Starbucks shares on Tuesday, the stock still has been a clear money-loser for investors in recent years. Over the last five years it’s down roughly 1%, while the S&P 500 was up about 85% and the S&P 500 restaurants subdivision up 25% over the same period.

Tasha Matsumoto

35m

Stocks rebound as the price of oil retreats

Every sector traded higher with tech leading gains on increased optimism that tankers will be able to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Luke Kawa

Nvidia briefly spikes after Jensen Huang sees at least $1 trillion in AI chip sales through 2027

The stock then gave it all up and then some.

Luke Kawa3h

Oil’s retreat propels US stocks higher

Front-month West Texas Intermediate futures are down more than 4%, while Brent futures are off more than 2% as of 1:25 p.m. ET as traders glom on to some optimistic signs about the flow of oil through the all-important Strait of Hormuz:

A Pakistani-owned tanker passed through the strait this weekend while broadcasting its signal, per Reuters, “indicating ‌that some countries are able to negotiate safe passage for their vessels despite the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.”
US President Donald Trump said that some “fairly local” countries would soon be helping ships traverse the strait (while having added that other countries are “not enthusiastic” about the prospect of participating).

First non-Iranian cargo transits Strait of Hormuz with AIS on

The Aframax tanker Karachi, carrying Abu Dhabi’s Das crude, has become the first non-Iranian cargo to transit the chokepoint while broadcasting its AIS signal, suggesting that select shipments may be receiving… pic.twitter.com/Q6j6W3Cxz3
— MarineTraffic (@MarineTraffic) March 16, 2026

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF and Invesco QQQ Trust are both up over 1% amid oil’s retreat.

That being said, the newsflow is far from universally positive:

Reuters reports that the UAE’s crude output has been cut in half since the Mideast conflict started; Bloomberg says Kuwait’s production has suffered a similar decline.

Trump urges allies to help reopen Strait of Hormuz as tanker traffic nearly vanishes

A Pakistani-owned tanker passed through the strait this weekend while broadcasting its signal, per Reuters, “indicating ‌that some countries are able to negotiate safe passage for their vessels despite the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.”
US President Donald Trump said that some “fairly local” countries would soon be helping ships traverse the strait (while having added that other countries are “not enthusiastic” about the prospect of participating).

First non-Iranian cargo transits Strait of Hormuz with AIS on

The Aframax tanker Karachi, carrying Abu Dhabi’s Das crude, has become the first non-Iranian cargo to transit the chokepoint while broadcasting its AIS signal, suggesting that select shipments may be receiving… pic.twitter.com/Q6j6W3Cxz3
— MarineTraffic (@MarineTraffic) March 16, 2026

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF and Invesco QQQ Trust are both up over 1% amid oil’s retreat.

That being said, the newsflow is far from universally positive:

Reuters reports that the UAE’s crude output has been cut in half since the Mideast conflict started; Bloomberg says Kuwait’s production has suffered a similar decline.

Matt Phillips3h

Sandisk and memory stocks rip ahead of Nvidia CEO’s speech

Memory stocks such as Sandisk, Micron, and disk drive makers Western Digital and Seagate sprinted ahead Monday, as this week’s big AI conference for tech bellwether Nvidia gets underway with a speech from the CEO slated for this afternoon.

As Luke Kawa pointed out earlier, CEO Jensen Huang’s speechifying at high-profile company announcements or industry events hasn’t always been a good thing for Nvidia shares. (The chip designer is holding its GPU Technology Conference, or GTC, this week.)

But Huang’s pronouncements have, at times, been pretty dang helpful for share prices of some companies in the orbit of the AI gods. Perhaps foremost among them are the memory stocks that have blasted toward the top of the S&P 500 in terms of price performance in recent years.

Case in point: the nearly 30% gain that Sandisk posted on January 6, the day after Huang’s keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in which he spotlighted memory as a key bottleneck constraining the AI build-out. (Fellow memory plays Western Digital, Seagate Technology Holdings, and Micron also posted double-digit gains that day.)

Memory stocks have been the highest-profile outlet for bullish AI industry impulses this year, and notable comments from Huang could put the wind back in their sails after they had slowed in recent weeks.

Of course, there are also other things happening in the sector, such as Micron’s announcement Sunday that it completed an acquisition of a new manufacturing site in Taiwan.

Either way, memory stocks are pushing higher after having exhaled a bit lately.

What Wall Street’s looking for from Jensen Huang’s keynote GTC address

Of course, there are also other things happening in the sector, such as Micron’s announcement Sunday that it completed an acquisition of a new manufacturing site in Taiwan.

Either way, memory stocks are pushing higher after having exhaled a bit lately.

Luke Kawa

What Wall Street’s looking for from Jensen Huang’s keynote GTC address

GTC may stand for GPU Technology Conference, but investors are looking for Nvidia to go beyond GPUs.