Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa6/16/25

US stocks jump on hopes of de-escalation between Israel and Iran

US stocks rallied as some of the geopolitical risk premium built into markets late last week dissipated amid reports that Iran is seeking a de-escalation with Israel.

The S&P 500 rose 0.9%, the Nasdaq 100 gained 1.4%, and the Russell 2000 ended 1.1% higher on Monday.

Communication services was the best-performing S&P sector ETF, with tech, financials, and consumer discretionary also up more than 1%.

Estée Lauder led S&P 500 gains Monday, rising over 10% after the company announced the passing of Chairman Emeritus Leonard A. Lauder. AMD was also among the top performers, jumping 8.8% as traders bet on its new AI chips to drive faster growth.

Meta rose 2.9% after revealing that its popular WhatsApp messaging platform will soon feature ads for the first time.

Major airline stocks including Delta, United, and American climbed as oil prices dipped on reports of easing Israel-Iran tensions.

Roblox jumped 3.3% and hit a 52-week high after its “Grow a Garden” game (originally created by a teenager) broke records for concurrent users.

Victoria’s Secret shares climbed 2.4% following reports that activist investor Barington Capital Group is building a stake in the struggling lingerie brand.

Palantir rose nearly 3% to a new high in early trading after geopolitical tensions in the Middle East worsened over the weekend.

CoreWeave popped 7.6% after Bank of America hiked its price target on the stock by 143%, to $185 from $76, even as it downgraded the rating from “buy” to “neutral.”

Roku soared 10% after announcing a new partnership with Amazon, giving advertisers access to 80 million households — or 80% of the US connected TV market.

Sarepta Therapeutics sank 42% after disclosing that a second patient treated with its experimental gene therapy died from liver failure.

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Trump’s “impossible trinity” on AI and energy

Everyone loves a good trilemma.

In economics, the most famous of the genre was developed by Fleming and Mundell, which posits that you can only successfully achieve two of the following three objectives: the free flow of capital, a fixed exchange rate, and independent sovereign monetary policy.

George Pollack, senior US policy analyst at Signum Global Advisors, proposed a trilemma of his own to describe the Trump administration’s competing policy aims as a red-hot AI boom devours power and leaves households miffed by rising electricity bills.

He wrote:

This note flags what we believe to be a simple reality whose salience will continue growing in US politics in coming months: the Trump administration, in its remaining three years will face a trilemma as the nation waits for its energy bet to play out – proving able to achieve two, but not all three, of the following objectives:

-Fulfill AI’s energy-appetite.
-Keep repressing renewable sources of energy.
-Appease American electricity consumers.

Trump AI trilemma

As for evidence that the Trump administration is taking a fossil fuels first approach while stunting renewables, Pollack pointed to the One Big Beautiful Act, which shrinks access to tax credits for green energy, as well as the end to the federal pause on LNG export permits. However, it would be “inaccurate and unfair” to blame Trump’s policies for surging electricity prices in recent months, he added.

While the government has pursued the expansion of nuclear power as a way to solve this trilemma, the long lead times involved are incongruent with a short-term fix.

Palantir reports Q3 earnings results

Palantir climbs toward a fresh record high ahead of earnings report

Traders and Wall Street are waiting to see whether Palantir’s latest numbers after market close today will continue to beat expectations.

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Joby’s UAE reported certification delay stokes fears that air taxis may be further off than thought, sending eVTOL stocks down

Commercial air taxi service may be on a slower path than investors previously thought.

Shares of Joby Aviation fell more than 9% on Monday morning amid a report from The National that the company’s UAE certification will be completed by the third quarter of next year. That’s a significant delay from Joby’s own projected timeline in February, when it said it planned to carry passengers in Dubai in “late 2025 or early 2026.”

Rival Archer Aviation, which also recently suffered a hit to its UAE certification timeline, fell more than 9%. Joby and Archer each are expected to report their earnings results later this week.

Also potentially causing some investor pullback is the planned IPO of Beta Technologies on Tuesday. Beta, a manufacturer of electric aircraft, received a $300 million investment from GE Aerospace in September.

Options markets signal “optimism peaks” for Magnificent 7 stocks

“The number of stocks in the S&P top 100 trading with inverted call skew (a sign of extremely bullish sentiment where the OTM call trades at a higher volatility than the ATM call) has surged to a high of ~20% (vs. historical average of just 3%),” per Cboe.

Close-up Of Snow-Dusted Zugspitze Massif Peaks In The Wetterstein Mountains In Tyrol

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Micron jumps on report of surging memory chip prices

Micron, the US memory chip specialist, is up more than 4% in early trading Monday after a report that Samsung Electronics was temporarily pausing new pricing on contracts for the latest version of ubiquitous short-term computer memory: Dynamic Random Access Memory, or DRAM. The chip giant wants to see where the market settles after a recent spike in spot prices for memory chips driven by the AI boom.

DRAM and memory chips of all sorts have pricing power because of how much demand is outpacing supply. Last week, South Korean memory chip behemoth SK Hynix said it had already “sold out” all of its 2026 production.

Such signs of ongoing AI-related demand for IT hardware also gave a lift to other data storage device makers, such as Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital. The duopoly dominate the hard disk drive market, and have ridden a boom in demand for the affordable data storage devices to gains of more than 200% in 2025.

Exclusive: Samsung delays DDR5 contract pricing to mid-November as spot prices triple

Exclusive: Samsung delays DDR5 contract pricing to mid-November as spot prices triple

DRAM and memory chips of all sorts have pricing power because of how much demand is outpacing supply. Last week, South Korean memory chip behemoth SK Hynix said it had already “sold out” all of its 2026 production.

Such signs of ongoing AI-related demand for IT hardware also gave a lift to other data storage device makers, such as Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital. The duopoly dominate the hard disk drive market, and have ridden a boom in demand for the affordable data storage devices to gains of more than 200% in 2025.

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