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Stocks fall again, but finish well off their lows

The S&P 500 gave back 0.2%, the Nasdaq 100 underperformed with a 0.6% drop, and the Russell 2000 dipped 0.3%.

8/20/25 3:29PM

What was shaping up to be a repeat of Tuesday’s AI momentum wreck seemingly turned on a dime into another buy-the-dip moment. Though major indexes all retreated on the session, they turned around sharply shortly before 11 a.m. ET to finish well off their lows. The S&P 500 gave back 0.2%, the Nasdaq 100 underperformed with a 0.6% drop, and the Russell 2000 dipped 0.3%.

Consumer discretionary, tech, and communication services — the sector ETFs home to the Magnificent 7 cohort — were the worst-performing S&P 500 groups on the day.

Analog Devices was the biggest gainer in the S&P 500, rising 6.3% after posting stronger-than-expected Q3 results. Intel led declines, falling 7% and reversing Tuesday’s gains on reports that the Trump administration may seek equity in chipmakers that receive federal grants under the Biden era CHIPS Act. Elsewhere...

Target sank 6.3% after the retailer topped Q2 estimates but reiterated expectations for a sales drop this year. The company also announced that longtime CEO Brian Cornell will step down.

Shares of Micron fell 4% after the Seoul Economic Daily said that Samsung Electronics’ new memory chip “passed reliability testing” from Nvidia and is poised to enter the preproduction stage.

Estée Lauder tumbled 3.6% after the MAC and Bobbi Brown parent matched Q4 estimates but painted a tougher profitability outlook over the coming year.

Airbus shares were down 2.2% as thousands of UK union workers plan to strike for 10 days in September amid a contract dispute.

CoreWeave fell 1.4% after filings showed top shareholder Magnetar Financial has sold over $147 million worth of shares since the company’s post-IPO lockup period expired.

Hertz rose 6% after the rental car giant announced it will begin selling some of its more than 540,000 used vehicles on Amazon. Conversely, Carvana and CarMax fell 1.6% and 2.6%, respectively, on the news.

TJX shares climbed 2.7% and hit an all-time high after the T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods parent topped Q2 estimates and raised its full-year forecast.

Luke Kawa7h

Applied Digital whipsaws after posting quarterly revenue beat in Q1

Shares of Applied Digital are gyrating down and up and down again in postmarket trading after the company reported better-than-expected results for its fiscal Q1, the three-month period ended August 31.

The data center company, which counts Nvidia and CoreWeave among its major share and warrant holders, booked $64.2 million in revenues (estimate: $46.1 million) with an adjusted diluted loss per share of $0.03 (estimate: loss of $0.13).

“With hyperscalers expected to invest approximately $350 billion into AI deployment this year, we believe we are in a prime position to serve as the modern-day picks and shovels of the intelligence era,” Chairman and CEO Wes Cummins said.

The options-implied move for the stock on earnings is a whopping 17.6%, per Bloomberg data.

Applied Digital is also one of the components in the Roundhill Meme Stock ETF, which relaunched this week.

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks retreat from records

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all closed lower.

Mascot Clark the Cub poses before a Spring Training game between the Chicago Cubs a the Seattle Mariners at Sloan Park

Matt Phillips8h

AST SpaceMobile soars again, up 80% in October

Another day, another giant gain for satellite services provider AST SpaceMobile, which continues to get a lift from its announcement earlier this week that it has signed a deal with telecom giant Verizon to provide some cellular broadband services from its satellites by 2026.

Retail enthusiasm for the stock, despite the fact that it has posted growing losses over the last four years, is high, helped out by a fair amount of online boosterism.

JPMorgan analysts have AST on their list of “most hyped stocks on social media,” which they included in their “Retail Radar” note published Thursday. A quick glance at r/WallStreetBets or volumes of call options — which hit their highest level in over a year yesterday — would seem to confirm retail participation.

It’s been a good trade. AST SpaceMobile is up more than 2,500% over the last two years, a rally that has created more than $20 billion in stock market wealth. To the moon, indeed.

$8.5T

Matt Phillips11h

Analysts at consulting firm Pantheon Macroeconomics estimate that the stock market’s enthusiasm for all things AI has added some $8.5 trillion to aggregate US household wealth since late 2022. They wrote:

“The S&P 500 returned about 70% between the start of ChatGPT mania around the end of 2022 to the end of Q2 2025, with roughly half of those returns generated by the ‘magnificent seven’ tech stocks, a very rough proxy for the stock market boost from AI euphoria.

We estimate that translates into a lift to household wealth held in stocks of about $8.5T.”

As my colleague Luke Kawa recently wrote, stock market wealth seems to be underpinning US consumer spending, especially among the richest Americans. Some of that spending may retrench if AI is indeed a bubble — as some have recently mooted — and eventually pops.

Matt Phillips

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Stocks fall again, but finish well off their lows

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