Yes, the US stock market’s juice is coming from companies with poor fundamentals that traders love

A Deutsche Bank note from strategists led by Parag Thatte confirms the market narrative of last week, which is also the narrative du jour: the dial on speculative fervor has been cranked up to 11.

“The pockets of exuberance are growing,” they wrote. “A basket of stocks with very high net call volume in the previous week, a good indicator in our view of buying driven by momentum and risk appetite, outperformed sharply again this week. The stocks benefiting are highly volatile and have poor profitability.”

More Markets

See all Markets

Luke Kawa4h

Corning spikes after Nvidia invests $500 million in the fiber-optics company

Corning is spiking after Nvidia dropped $500 million for the right to buy up to 18 million of its shares.

The deal comes as part of a multiyear partnership that will see Corning “increase its U.S.-based optical connectivity manufacturing capacity by 10x and expand its U.S. fiber production capacity by more than 50% to meet the accelerating demand driven by AI factory buildouts,” per the press release.

The deal is structured around Corning issuing Nvidia two types of warrants:

“Pre-funded” warrants for 3 million Corning shares (which account for the bulk of the $500 million to the fiber-optics company).
“Traditional” warrants that enable Nvidia to buy 15 million shares at $180, thereby benefiting from Corning’s share price trading above that level within three years’ time (unless this partnership is terminated or Corning makes a “fundamental transaction” before that). If and when Nvidia exercises those warrants in full, CEO Jensen Huang will be cutting a much heftier check to Corning.

So while on the surface this deal may not look as big as Nvidia’s recent $2 billion investments in Marvell Technology, Coherent, and Lumentum, once all the dust settles, it could turn out to be considerably more!

Luke Kawa

AMD’s spike reveals just how central CPUs are to the AI boom

“The world has changed, amid sentiment that the CPU growth trajectory has changed,” wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Processor close up in the black motherboard CPU socket. Advanced Micro Devices is an American semiconductor company

Helena Cheng6h

AMC gains as strong Q1 results give breathing room for balance sheet improvements

AMC shares are rising in early Wednesday trading after the theater chain reported Q1 earnings results with revenue exceeding estimates after the bell Tuesday.

Key numbers:

Revenue of $1.05 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $972.6 million).
Adjusted EBITDA of $38.3 million (estimate: $7.7 million).

Attendance reached 30.7 million in the US and 16.9 million internationally, with improving demand thanks to recently released movies like “Project Hail Mary,” “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” and “Michael.”

A prolonged string of positive operating results like these will be needed to improve AMC’s balance sheet over time. AMC is still carrying around $4 billion in debt, which management is aiming to refinance and pay down over time.

“Refinancing has bought time to delever amid the stop-and-go box-office rebound as film supply is set to improve,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Kevin Near and Geetha Ranganathan wrote in the wake of this release. “AMC expects to close more underperforming theaters this year and hinted that positive free cash flow may hinge on a strong 2027 movie slate.”

Analysts at Benchmark upgraded the stock to “buy” from “hold” following these Q1 results.

Rani Molla

Uber Q1 earnings, Q2 guidance come in above Wall Street estimates

Uber reported earnings before the bell Wednesday.

Disney rises after quarterly revenue beat, boosted by streaming and theme park growth

Disney reported its second-quarter results before markets opened on Wednesday.

Max Knoblauch8h

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC. Futures and event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC.