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Luke Kawa

Trump Media falls by most since opening week after bearish options bets pile up

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group fell as much as 24% on Wednesday in what’s shaping up to be their worst session since their first week of trading: an April day when news broke that at least one of the people who took the company public intended to plead guilty to securities fraud.

It sure looks like options traders took advantage of Tuesday’s 8.8% gain to place bets that the party would soon be over — or at least be interrupted. Open interest in puts climbed by over 180,000 contracts on Tuesday, by far the biggest one-day jump on record. More puts than calls traded for the first time in over a month.

We’ve been seeing some massive price action with DJT lately in monumental volumes. On Monday, the stock jumped more than 20% and traded more dollar volume than the most active small-cap ETF, reaching a market capitalization that exceeded Fidelity’s estimate for the value of Elon Musk’s X. For an encore, the stock traded more dollar volume than any other US stock in the premarket on Tuesday (and more than twice as much as Nvidia!) and set crushed the previous day’s record for volume traded.

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Luke Kawa
10h
The early rally in US stocks ran out of steam as government shutdown looms

Stocks still ended the day in the green, pulled higher by tech.

Close up of a majestic brown and black horned bull lying near a large boulder
J. Edward Moreno
10h
Pharma company Aurinia falls after FDA official uses LinkedIn to call out lupus drug

Lupkynis, which was approved in 2021, is Aurinia’s primary source of revenue.

Food And Drug Administration Headquarters In Maryland
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Luke Kawa

Cava may be an unlikely victim of a potential US government shutdown

Government shutdowns typically aren’t a big deal for the stock market as a whole.

But for Cava, which was founded in Maryland and is headquartered in Washington, DC, there’s the prospect of forgone sales in the event that government employees suddenly have no cause to frequent the fast-casual Mediterranean chain, which means emptier tills as bellies get filled elsewhere.

At the end of Q2, Cava had 398 locations. It currently boasts seven in the district proper, at least 14 a close drive away in Virginia, and 25 in Maryland.

Cava’s annual report singled out the Washington, DC/Maryland/Virginia metropolitan area as having “a high concentration of restaurants” in discussing risk factors for the company. And it may be a particularly bad time to be a slop bowl seller around the nation’s capital.

The potential shutdown would be the latest challenge for Cava as it struggles to stand out amid a myriad of lunch options for working professionals and following the recently announced departure of COO Jennifer Somers.

For what it’s worth, this is not the first time this year Cava has faced concerns about potential weakness in DC. During its Q1 earnings call, Bank of America analyst Sara Senatore questioned Cava’s leadership about a potential impact from DOGE given its “fairly big footprint” in the metro area, and at the time CFO Tricia Tolivar said the company hadn’t really seen evidence of metro-specific softness.

markets
Matt Phillips

Robinhood surges as prediction markets gain traction

Robinhood jumped to an all-time intraday record of more than $132 late Monday morning on growing optimism about the brokerage’s prediction markets business both on Wall Street and within the company’s own executive suite.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. I own stock as part of my compensation.)

Earlier in the day, Robinhood Chief Executive Vlad Tenev posted this tweet spotlighting that more than 4 billion event contracts have been traded on the platform since they began to be offered in February.

Analysts have also been focusing on the uptick in activity in the events contract business as a potential boon for the shares.

Piper Sandler analyst Patrick Moley published a note on Monday highlighting how trading volumes at prediction market company Kalshi soared to new records over the weekend as traders took positions on the outcomes of college and pro football games using event contracts.

Moley estimates that users at Robinhood — which partnered with Kalshi to offer contracts on games — account for between 25% and 35% of Kalshi’s daily event contract activity.

“We continue to expect HOOD will report ~2.5B of event contracts traded in 3Q25 which, at $0.01/contract, translates to ~$25M in revenue,” Moley wrote.

Luke Kawa
14h
“Follow the feds” replaces “follow the Fed” as financial market maxim

Taking a position in companies the US government has exposure to has worked out handsomely so far.

Donald Trump Campaigns For President In Arizona's Prescott Valley

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