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Luke Kawa
4/7/25

Super Micro tops S&P 500 as server company screens as a rare ultracheap tech stock

The US stock market as a whole still isn’t cheap, even after the mammoth losses inflicted by President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

But investors are zeroing in on one AI-linked tech stock that certainly screens as inexpensive, if you trust analysts’ projections.

Super Micro Computer is the top performer in the S&P 500 on Monday, up more than 8% shortly after noon ET. The server company, which is aiming to hitch its wagon to Nvidia’s Blackwell rollout, was bedeviled by short sellers’ reports and accounting issues in 2024 that nearly resulted in shares getting delisted from the Nasdaq earlier this year.

And during that prolonged time in the wilderness, the stock became very cheap.

At its peak in March 2024, Super Micro was trading at a price-to-expected-sales ratio of 3.56x. That measure of market cap divided by prospective sales over the next 12 months is now down to 0.6x. By contrast, the S&P 500 is currently trading with a forward price-to-sales ratio of 2.52x.

Analysts project that the company will deliver more than $31 billion in sales over the next 12 months. Management is looking for $40 billion in sales for its fiscal 2026, which begins in July.

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Walmart hits all-time high following Bank of America boosting its price target

Walmart shares touched an intraday all-time record of $106.11 before settling lower for the close, missing its previous record closing price of $105.05 on February 13 of this year.

The rally came after Bank of America lifted its price target on Walmart to $125 from $120 and stuck with its “buy” rating. Analysts said Walmart is emerging as a leader in “agentic AI commerce,” pointing to its GenAI assistant, Sparky, which offers occasion-based recommendations and help shoppers plan, compare, and buy products.

Analysts also flagged Walmart’s sheer scale, backed by data from 180 million customers, and its fast-growing delivery business as major competitive advantages. Beyond AI, the fundamentals are catching eyes, too. Walmart’s food delivery arm is already profitable, reaching 95% of US households within three hours and a quarter of customers in under 30 minutes.

The note also highlighted Walmart’s cushion against tariffs, since two-thirds of its products are sourced domestically, and pointed to its new Synchrony Financial-backed credit card as another way to juice membership growth.

The stock is up over 16% year to date and has more than doubled since 2020.

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Federal Reserve cuts rates by 0.25%, signals 50 basis points of additional easing by year-end

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time this year, lowering its policy rate to a range of 4.25% to 4.5%, as anticipated.

The “dot plot” from the Summary of Economic Projections shows the median Fed official thinks it will be appropriate for the policy rate to end this year at 3.625% (expected 3.875%) and 3.375% in 2026 (expected 3.375%) if the economy evolves in line with their expectations.

Stocks slid during Fed Chair Jay Powell’s press conference, where he described the reduction as a “risk-management cut,” didn’t rule out that the US economy might still warrant restrictive monetary policy, and signaled there was not wide support for a larger 50-basis point cut at this meeting.

The iShares Russell 2000 ETF, which was up nearly 2.5% at the highs, fell into negative territory before rebounding. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF traded down as much as 0.9% before paring those losses to end up right around where it was when the rate cut was announced.

The US central bank raised its forecast for how high core PCE inflation will be next year to 2.6% from 2.4% in June, which heavily implies that monetary policymakers are willing to look through the near-term inflationary impulse from tariffs and that softening job growth has assumed more prominence in their decision-making process.

There was only one dissent: newly added Fed Governor Stephen Miran, who favored a 50-basis point cut at this meeting and appears to be the outlier Fed official who thinks the policy rate should end the year at 2.875%.

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