Aberdeen Angus bull (Getty Images)

Two tech titans singlehandedly drag S&P 500 higher

Alphabet and Apple put the stock market on their broad, multitrillion-dollar shoulders.

9/3/25 4:58PM

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% and the Nasdaq 100 gained 0.8% while the Russell 2000 dipped 0.1% on Wednesday.

More than all of the daily returns in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF were attributable to just two companies: Alphabet and Apple.

Google was the day’s top performer, up 9.1% after the tech giant avoided some of the worst-case antitrust scenarios tied to its dominant position in search. The court decision helped Apple a ton, too: shares rose 3.8% after Bank of America boosted its price target, saying the company will keep pulling in about $20 billion a year from Google to preload its apps as the default setting on iPhones. Near the close, Bloomberg reported that Apple is developing an AI web search tool for the new Siri and reached an agreement with Google to test using its Gemini model to provide the underlying technology. Meanwhile, Dollar Tree led declines after the retailer handily beat Q2 expectations, but fresh sales guidance suggested weakening momentum in the second half of the year.

Macy’s shares soared 20.6% after the department store chain posted knockout Q2 results and raised its full-year guidance.

Hims & Hers spiked 7.2% after a judge dismissed a lawsuit from Eli Lilly against another rival telehealth firm selling knockoff versions of its GLP-1 drugs.

Campbell’s stock climbed 7.2% after the soup maker ladled out solid Q4 results as more cash-strapped consumers cooked at home, but warned that higher costs would weigh on margins.

Plug Power jumped in the premarket amid a surge of trading volume in the hydrogen fuel cell company before closing up 1.4%.

Oscar Health rose after it reiterated its annual guidance and offered positive commentary on cost trends at the Wells Fargo Healthcare Conference.

Oil names including ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, APA Corporation, Diamondback Energy, Devon Energy, Halliburton, and EOG Resources all dipped after reports that OPEC+ is weighing another output hike of 1.65 million barrels per day.

Canopy Growth shares fell another 6.7%, extending Tuesday’s losses after the cannabis company filed for a $200 million equity raise on Friday.

Tasha Matsumoto

13h

Stocks eke out gains on hopes for a path forward for reopening the Strait of Hormuz

Stocks rebounded on news that Iran is drafting a protocol with Oman to “monitor transit” through the crucial Strait of Hormuz.

Matt Phillips15h

AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions takes flight

Small-cap AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions surged Thursday after posting better-than-expected Q2 revenue and profit numbers Wednesday after the close, along with an increase in full-year sales and profit guidance.

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

Its Advanced Computing division designs and sells computers, cabling, and cooling systems, the server racks and clusters of racks AI data centers need. Its other main division sells flash and DRAM memory products.

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

The stock is volatile. Penguin dove during last year’s tariff tantrum that followed “Liberation Day” in April. Then it turned tail and doubled through early October amid a surge of call options activity, which tends to reflect retail interest. From the October peak, it then plunged by about 50%, before Thursday’s renaissance.

For what it’s worth, call options activity in Penguin is pretty busy today, too — relatively speaking — with roughly 2,625 traded as of 1:15 p.m. ET. That’s the most since early January, when the company last reported quarterly numbers. The average volume over the previous 25 trading sessions is about 325 calls a day, FactSet data shows.

Penguin Solutions Stock Takes Off On AI Bolstered Outlook

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

Luke Kawa18h

Momentum returns to optics stocks as the release valve for AI optimism

Potentially imminent end to the war? Buy optics stocks.

Maybe not? Buy optics stocks anyway.

Effectively all the juice left in the AI trade is coming from optics (and memory) stocks. And the latter group is taking a bit of a breather today while the former continues to surge.

Shares of Ciena Corp., Lumentum, and Coherent are building on recent big gains and among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500 near midday, while Applied Optoelectronics is also surging on Thursday.

These companies all provide solutions that help information move around in data centers, and thus are key beneficiaries of the aggressive capex plans of hyperscalers. Nvidia has invested $2 billion apiece in Coherent and Lumentum in deals that also include purchase commitments.

Matt Phillips18h

Space stocks rip during a topsy-turvy day for the equity market

Satellite-services-from-space stocks surged Thursday after reports that Amazon is in talks to buy Globalstar, which provides voice and connectivity services from its satellite network. It also can’t hurt that the general mood around space is ebullient, following the successful launch of Artemis II on Thursday.

Planet Labs and ViaSat also soared on the news.

The gains for EchoStar — seen as a backdoor play at pre-IPO SpaceX exposure — and Rocket Lab were more muted, perhaps because a deep-pocketed competitor like Jeff Bezos getting serious about space services could complicate the plans of the two largest commercial space launch companies.

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the dominant provider of such services, and the early rumors on the company’s planned IPO — expected to be the largest ever — suggest the market is very excited about the prospects for the industry.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

Globalstar surges after FT reports that Amazon is in talks to buy the satellite group

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

Hyunsoo Rim, David Crowther

Can Sandisk do the double?

19h

The S&P 500 just had its worst quarter in years. Here are the biggest winners and losers.

Sandisk and energy stocks soared while software names sank amid a broad sell-off in tech stocks.

Balancing balls of different sizes on pink seesaws creating equilibrium