Markets
Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

US stocks power higher on Apple’s US investment plans, solid corporate earnings

Tuesday’s drop was just another opportunity to buy the dip.

The S&P 500 rose 0.7% and the Nasdaq 100 outperformed with a 1.3% advance, while the Russell 2000 once again bucked the trend, dropping 0.2%.

The day got off to a strong start when the White House touted an additional $100 billion in domestic investment from Apple ahead of the market open, which fueled the iPhone maker’s 5% rise on Wednesday.

The S&P sector ETFs for consumer discretionary, consumer staples, and tech all rose at least 1%. On the other side of the spectrum, materials and healthcare were down more than 1%.

Gains were led by Arista Networks, which rose 17% after delivering stellar earnings after the close on Tuesday and enjoyed a host of price target hikes across Wall Street thereafter. Declines were led in part by AMD, which fell 6% after the chip company delivered a modest bottom-line miss and a big beat on sales for the second quarter.

Elsewhere…

Shopify soared 22% after the e-commerce giant missed Q2 revenue estimates but said it expects revenue to grow at a mid- to high 20s percentage rate.

Match Group rose double digits after the Tinder and Hinge parent topped analysts’ revenue estimates after the bell Tuesday and told Wall Street to expect more of the same in Q3.

McDonald’s rose nearly 3% after the Big Mac maker posted a US sales rebound in the second quarter — a comeback after a rough start to the year.

IonQ finished virtually flat ahead of earnings tech juggernaut Amazon reporting that it held 854,207 shares of the quantum computing stock at the end of Q2.

Power producer and energy trader NRG dove double digits after adjusted earnings fell short of Wall Street expectations and GAAP results swung to a surprise loss.

Disney shares fell 2.7% even as the media giant beat Q3 estimates, raised its full-year outlook, and reportedly struck a $1.6 billion streaming deal between ESPN and WWE. Shares of TKO, which owns WWE, dropped 5%.

Astera Labs surged nearly 30% after the chips, boards, and integrated circuit maker delivered strong top- and bottom-line Q2 results after the bell Tuesday.

Uber closed flat even after the ride-hailing giant posted upbeat second-quarter results and unveiled a beefy new stock buyback plan.

Shares of Super Micro Computer tumbled 18% after disappointing fourth-quarter results, which saw the server company whiff on sales and earnings.

Rivian shares dipped 4% after the EV maker topped revenue estimates for the second quarter but losses came in higher than expected. Meanwhile, Lucid shares fell 10% after the luxury EV maker also saw Q2 losses pile up.

Snap’s stock plunged 17% after the social media company narrowly missed earnings expectations and ad revenue slowed.

Oscar Health managed to rise almost 4% despite the health insurance company reporting earnings that missed estimates, even after giving investors a look under the hood last month.

Novo Nordisk slipped nearly 4% after it reported growing sales of its blockbuster GLP-1 drugs but reiterated that knockoffs were eating at its weight-loss business.

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markets
Luke Kawa

Super Micro soars on heavy call volume as management trumpets its work with Taiwan to avoid chip smuggling into China

Super Micro Computer is spiking on elevated call demand amid the company’s push to show it’s part of the chip-smuggling solution, rather than the problem.

Call volumes are running at 392,857 as of 12:16 p.m. ET, already well north of the 214,893 average over the past 20 sessions. The put/call ratio of 0.16 is also well below the 20-day average of 0.29, underscoring the bullish tilt in options.

This morning, management put out a statement saying that the company had “worked closely with Taiwanese authorities” to help prevent its servers (which contain Nvidia’s AI chips) from making their way into China in violation of export controls, and that this collaboration “resulted in the arrest of three suspects and the seizure of 50 servers that had been deceptively acquired after being sold by Supermicro to an authorized reseller.”

The company also aimed to emphasize that none of this was its fault.

“This case highlights the challenges that can arise when products are resold through multiple downstream parties beyond direct manufacturer control,” per the statement.

Back in March, Super Micro’s cofounder was among those charged by US prosecutors for allegedly attempting to sell $2.5 billion in servers with Nvidia GPUs to China. The stock had swooned on the news and lifted fellow server companies that weren’t tainted by this association. One analyst even suggested that Super Micro lost a billion-dollar contract with Oracle in part because of these allegations.

Shares have since recovered all those losses, and then some.

On the conference call following Super Micro’s big Q3 earnings beat, CEO Charles Liang said he didn’t “feel a negative feeling” from customers at the time despite these charges.

CFO David Weigand added that the company also hasn’t seen a decrease in its allocation of chips from Nvidia in the wake of this news.

markets
Luke Kawa

Retail traders are making stock picking look easy

Study after study tells us that stock picking is incredibly difficult, with the lion’s share of active fund managers underperforming the S&P 500.

To that, retail traders say: “What, like it’s hard?”

According to JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain, retail investors’ stock picks are trouncing strategies that would employ dollar-cost averaging into the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 and even the best-performing slices of the AI trade so far this year.

Within ETFs holdings specifically, retail’s relative performance is more mixed: besting the S&P 500 year to date, but lagging the Nasdaq 100 (again, assuming dollar-cost averaging strategies).

“In single stocks, retail has unsurprisingly outperformed benchmarks over the past month or so, consistent with a concentrated tilt toward MU, AMD, and NVDA,” Jain wrote.

JPM Retail PnL

Of course, as the old saying goes, don’t confuse brains with a bull market.

But there’s another saying that tells us to make hay while the sun shines. And it seems retail traders are making some serious hay.

markets
Helena Cheng

Dell jumps after landing a $9.7 billion Pentagon contract

Dell is surging after the company won a five-year $9.7 billion software agreement with the US Department of Defense to consolidate and manage Microsoft software licenses across the American military ecosystem.

It’s a big win for the company ahead of its earnings release after the close on Thursday.

This massive award has also drawn attention to Dell’s relationship with President Donald Trump and his administration. On Giving Tuesday in December, Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, appeared alongside Trump at the White House and announced a $6.25 billion charitable commitment to fund investment accounts for older kids who would not be eligible to receive money through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Trump has also publicly championed the IT firm on multiple occasions. At a Mother’s Day event at the White House earlier this month, Trump publicly endorsed Dell, saying, “Go out and buy a Dell. They’re great.” Filings showed the president’s trust owned Dell shares during Q1.

Dell’s stock has skyrocketed over 145% year to date.

Per CNBC, Department of Defense Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies said at a Pentagon press briefing that Dell Federal Systems beat out multiple competitors for this agreement, with the Pentagon expecting this arrangement to provide $422 million in annual savings.

Luke Kawa
2h
IBM rallies after committing to spend $10 billion to pursue the holy grail of quantum computing

IBM boasts of “more quantum computers than reported by all other industry players combined.”

Scholz Inaugurates Europe's First IBM Quantum Data Center
markets
Max Knoblauch

Best Buy surges on better-than-expected Q1 sales, earnings

Best Buy is on pace for its best trading day in more than a year in premarket trading Thursday, following Q1 earnings that beat Wall Street’s expectations.

In its first quarter, the retailer reported:

  • Adjusted earnings of $1.28 per share, compared to estimates of $1.23 per share from analysts polled by FactSet.

  • $8.94 billion in sales, versus the $8.82 billion consensus estimate.

Best Buy reaffirmed its full-year guidance and said it expects comparable sales growth of 1% in Q2. (The same quarter last year saw the launch of Nintendo’s Switch 2.)

The company will replace CEO Corie Barry with company veteran Jason Bonfig in October of this year.

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