01 Stock Market
The U.S. major indexes closed as follows: Dow Jones declined 0.25% to 52,925.15; S&P 500 fell 0.45% to 7,503.85; NASDAQ slid 1.16% to 25,818.69. A pull-back in semiconductor heavyweights outweighed defensive buying in selected large caps, leaving the tech-laden composite firmly in the red.
Semiconductor turbulence dominated the session, while a handful of AI proxies bucked the trend. Leveraged ETF SOXL fell 15.09% at $165.28 as the sector unwound recent gains, mirroring sharp losses in AMD down 6.51% at $516.11, INTC down 9.66% at $110.39, MRVL down 7.45% at $230.70 and foundry giant TSM down 4.25% at $432.57. Memory bellwether MU declined 4.71% at $938.38, while storage peer WDC fell 7.86% at $532.10. By contrast, inverse chip product SOXS surged 15.11% at $4.80, reflecting hedging demand. Among mega-cap techs, NVDA edged up 0.71% at $196.93 and META gained 2.55% at $615.58, but AAPL slipped 0.64% at $310.66. MSFT added 0.54% at $388.84, whereas TSLA retreated 4.02% at $402.90. Data-analytics player PLTR rose 1.38% at $134.37 on expansion news.
Trading breadth skewed negative as investors rotated away from high-beta chip names. Despite the headline weakness, selective buying in software and AI-infrastructure enablers supported pockets of strength, underscoring an increasingly tactical market that is rewarding company-specific catalysts while punishing perceived over-owned themes.
02 Other Markets
U.S. 10-year Treasury yield was unchanged, latest at 4.53%. USD/CNH fell 0.0029% to 6.81; USD/HKD rose 0.0017% to 7.84. U.S. Dollar Index was steady at 101.12. WTI crude futures rose 2.88% to 72.47 USD/bbl; COMEX gold futures fell 1.17% to 4,108.80 USD/oz.
03 Top News
1. FuelCell Energy launched a $200 million common-stock offering, sending shares down about 17% in after-hours trade. The company granted underwriters a 30-day option to buy 15% more shares and plans to use proceeds to expand manufacturing capacity and bolster working capital. Citigroup and Barclays are joint book-runners.
2. U.S. forces conducted airstrikes against Iranian targets in response to attacks on commercial vessels, stoking Middle-East risk and lifting oil prices by nearly 3%. The action followed incidents in the Strait of Hormuz that damaged tankers from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Energy traders cited renewed supply-disruption fears as WTI crude topped $72/bbl.
3. SK Hynix’s planned New York IPO was multiple-times oversubscribed, reflecting strong global appetite for the memory-chip maker’s listing. Around 1,000 retail investors joined a recent marketing call, boosting expectations for robust demand when shares debut. The company seeks fresh capital to expand advanced memory production.
4. DigitalOcean lifted its second-quarter revenue outlook and secured an extra 20 MW of data-center capacity to meet surging AI workload demand. Management now projects revenue growth of about 29% year-over-year and expects remaining performance obligations to exceed $800 million. Shares rose more than 6%.
5. Vertex Pharmaceuticals agreed to acquire Crinetics Pharmaceuticals in a cash deal worth roughly $10 billion, expanding its rare-disease portfolio. The $85-per-share offer implies a 102% premium to Crinetics’ prior close. Vertex expects the transaction to be accretive to operating income within three years.
6. Microsoft announced about 4,800 job cuts as it accelerates an AI-centric restructuring of its commercial and gaming units. Savings are slated for data-center expansion and generative-AI services, highlighting the tech giant’s strategic pivot toward cloud-based artificial intelligence offerings.
7. Palantir signed Mexico’s largest insurer GNP Seguros as its first commercial customer in the country, broadening its Latin American reach. The insurer will deploy Palantir’s Foundry and AI Platform to detect claims fraud and streamline underwriting, reinforcing Palantir’s push beyond government defense contracts.
8. Barclays’ downgrade of Siemens Energy to Sell reverberated across the power-equipment space, knocking GE Vernova shares down over 9% amid worries of peaking AI-driven demand. Despite recent gains, analysts warned that exceptional order cycles could plateau, tempering valuation multiples.
9. A Samsung profit preview sparked a sharp memory-sector sell-off, with SanDisk sliding over 11% and Micron tumbling more than 7%. Investors interpreted the cautious outlook as evidence of fatigue in AI-related hardware spending, exerting broad pressure on semiconductor names.
10. Oppenheimer raised Corning’s price target to $230, viewing the recent 24% pullback as an entry point into its AI-driven optical-fiber growth story. Analysts cited multibillion-dollar data-center supply deals with Amazon, Nvidia and Meta as catalysts for long-term demand, despite near-term sector volatility.
Sources: Reuters, Dow Jones, Tiger Newspress, public market data Disclaimer: This content is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice.
