Articles by Dennis Singleton
Page 6 of 12
Fed rate hike odds went from 10.7% to 38% in nine days. AI stocks are the most exposed.
Odds of an increase at Wednesday's meeting stood at 38% on July 24, against 10.7% on July 15. Nine of 18 FOMC participants projected a hike this year back in June, and Chair Kevin Warsh says policymakers have no tolerance for elevated inflation. June CPI came in cooler than forecast, but oil has since gone back over $100, and the AI trade is the part of the market most exposed to what happens next.
US strikes on Iran paused. Oil fell more than 3%, and Micron (MU) and Nebius (NBIS) rose over the weekend
US Central Command has gone two straight nights without striking Iran, and a Defense Department source told CNN operations are on a hold. Polymarket puts an effective ceasefire at 75% by August 31. US markets were shut all weekend, but the tokenized stock market never closed, and it spent Sunday buying the AI trade and selling oil.
SoundHound (SOUN) is paying $42.8 million for LivePerson. LivePerson's own bankers valued its equity at almost nothing.
SoundHound AI (SOUN) cleared its last regulator on July 20 and LivePerson (LPSN) stockholders vote August 20. The proxy puts the price at $42,784,532.64, well under the figures circulating, and both of its valuation analyses value LivePerson's equity at de minimis.
The busiest stock on Hyperliquid isn't Nvidia. It's SK Hynix (SKHY), and it out-traded Ethereum
Real world assets did $25.1 billion on Hyperliquid in the week of July 13 to 19, out-trading crypto on the venue for the first time. The busiest contract is not Nvidia or Tesla. It is SK Hynix, which passed Ethereum for second place on the whole exchange, and whose Nasdaq listing (SKHY) fell 8.8% on Friday.
Nvidia (NVDA) and 34 other companies told Washington not to restrict open-weight AI. OpenAI signed a day late. Anthropic still hasn't.
The Open Weights and American AI Leadership letter asks Washington not to restrict AI models anyone can download. It went from 25 signatures to 35. OpenAI added its name after sitting out the launch, Google's CEO backed it without signing, and Anthropic declined to comment. Update, July 27: the list has since grown to 133 names, and both Google and Amazon signed.
SK Hynix (SKHY) sells the memory in Nvidia's (NVDA) Rubin racks. SK Group is committing $1.44T USD to the chips and data centers around them.
Nvidia and SK Hynix signed a multiyear memory partnership with no dollar figure attached. SK Group then committed 2,100 trillion won ($1.44T USD) to chip capacity and 15 gigawatts of AI data centers, built on Nvidia's Vera Rubin reference design. Nvidia put $1 billion into Naver on July 24. Here is what each side actually committed, and what is funded versus announced.
Solar stocks fell again Friday, July 24. T1 Energy (TE) is down 58% since June 2, Enphase (ENPH) 49% and First Solar (FSLR) 36%
The Invesco Solar ETF closed 31% below its May 29 record. Enphase and SolarEdge have lost close to half their value since June 2. The July 4 construction deadline, the expired 25D homeowner credit and a pending Section 232 polysilicon ruling are the drivers.
Vietnam and China now pay the same US tariff rate. Nike (NKE) and Deckers (DECK) built years of sourcing strategy on the gap between them.
New Section 301 tariffs took effect Friday, putting Vietnam and China at the same 12.5% rate for the first time. Nike, Deckers, Columbia, Gap, Ralph Lauren and Under Armour all have heavy Vietnam manufacturing exposure.
Jensen Huang's first-ever post on X was an open-weights AI letter. Nvidia (NVDA) and Microsoft (MSFT) both signed it, along with 23 other companies.
Jensen Huang joined X in June and stayed silent for weeks. His first post was a joint industry letter on open AI models, signed by 25 companies including Microsoft. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Amazon did not sign.
Verizon (VZ) jumped 2.7% on record profit margins and a subscriber beat. A $1 billion Google deal got buried in the same call.
Verizon's Q2 2026 earnings brought record EBITDA margins, a subscriber beat and a $1 billion-plus dark fiber deal with Google buried in the same call. Shares climbed as much as 2.7% on the earnings, not the deal.
Elon Musk thanked Micron (MU) by name on Tesla's earnings call this week. That's what a real memory shortage looks like.
Musk thanked Micron on Tesla's earnings call, Intel's CEO called memory its biggest supply constraint the next day, SK Hynix's CEO sees a shortage into the next decade, and CXMT is about to IPO into all of it.
Cybersecurity keeps pulling in money. Palo Alto Networks (PANW) trades at 291 times earnings.
Cybersecurity spending looks as durable as anything in this market, and a wave of M&A backs it up: three public companies gone in a year, the biggest a $25 billion Palo Alto Networks deal for CyberArk. But Palo Alto itself trades at 291 times earnings and CrowdStrike's price-to-earnings ratio is negative. Here's the market-cap breakdown of the 21 stocks left standing, and why the category and the stocks aren't the same bet.
All seven Magnificent Seven stocks fell today. Here's where that money actually went (July 23, 2026)
All seven Magnificent Seven stocks were red by late morning Thursday, led by Tesla's 14% drop on an earnings miss and Alphabet's close-to-7% slide despite beating estimates, on another capex raise. Amazon and Meta sold off too ahead of next week's reports. The money didn't just leave, it rotated: into defense on Lockheed's earnings beat, and out of quantum, SaaS and space.
Tesla (TSLA) and Alphabet (GOOGL) are falling hard. The rest of the AI trade isn't (July 23, 2026)
Tesla and Alphabet kept falling through Thursday morning even as chipmakers, neoclouds and photonics stocks held up fine. Oil topped $100 a barrel after Trump threatened to bomb Iranian infrastructure over any new attack on shipping.
Nokia (NOK) spiked almost 9% on earnings, then reversed. AI and cloud sales doubled, but reported profit fell to a loss
Nokia's Q2 2026 net sales rose 8% and AI and cloud sales more than doubled, but reported operating profit swung to a loss and reported EPS hit exactly zero, on accelerated restructuring charges. NOK spiked as high as $11.17 in early trading before reversing back near Wednesday's close.
Alphabet (GOOGL) raised AI capex to $205 billion, its third hike this year. Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO) barely moved after hours
Alphabet raised its 2026 capex guidance to $195-205 billion during Wednesday's call, its third increase this year, and GOOGL fell as much as 5% in extended trading. But the chip and power stocks that are supposed to benefit from that spending, Nvidia, Broadcom, TSMC, Micron, Vistra and Constellation, barely moved.
Alphabet (GOOGL): cloud growth hits 82%, and its AI spending just doubled
Alphabet's Q2 2026 results answered the question this earnings week was supposed to settle. Google Cloud grew 82%, capital spending on AI infrastructure more than doubled to $44.9 billion for the quarter, and the reported 298% profit jump comes with an asterisk worth reading before you believe it.
GE Vernova (GEV) raised its cash forecast by $5 billion and fell 8% (July 22, 2026)
GE Vernova raised its 2026 revenue and free cash flow forecasts and reported an 88% jump in orders, but earnings missed and the wind unit's losses widened. The stock fell about 8%.
Super Micro's (SMCI) revenue landed at the low end of guidance. The stock is up 25% anyway (July 22, 2026)
Super Micro Computer's preliminary Q4 update showed more than $60 billion of new orders and gross margin guidance that nearly doubled, but revenue landed at the low end of its own range. The stock is up about 25% anyway.
Nasdaq-100 futures sank close to 1% Wednesday morning. Stocks clawed almost all of it back by mid-morning (July 22, 2026)
Nasdaq-100 futures fell close to 1% Wednesday morning on an Iran oil spike, new tariffs and chip-stock fear. Stocks opened lower too, but climbed steadily through the first half hour of trading and were back to nearly flat by mid-morning.
Oklo (OKLO) and X-Energy (XE) rallied Tuesday. After the bell, a Trump nuclear-for-AI report sent them higher again (July 21, 2026)
Oklo (OKLO) closed up about 6% Tuesday and X-Energy (XE) about 7%, then both extended those gains after the bell. Bloomberg reports the two nuclear reactor developers are joining Microsoft and Nvidia in a near-$200 million Trump administration effort to speed power plant construction for AI data centers.
IBM already sank 20%. This week's earnings from Alphabet, Tesla, Intel and four more decide if AI spending is real
IBM already sank 20% on a warning. Now Alphabet, Tesla, Intel and four more of our tracked stocks report earnings within 48 hours, the clearest test yet of whether AI spending is paying off.
Rocket Lab (RKLB) won a $266 million Space Force contract, the third defense headline for the stock in two weeks
Rocket Lab (RKLB) landed a $266 million Space Force contract for suborbital launches out of Kodiak, Alaska on July 21, the third defense headline for the stock in two weeks. Shares closed up 5.16% and kept climbing after hours.
Jim Cramer's tech calls are still lagging the rest of his book. Intel is 1 for 5, and IBM crashed the day after his second buy call.
Jim Cramer's tech calls are still his weak spot. Intel is 1 for 5 since June, IBM is down nearly 30% since his back-to-back buy calls, and his tech picks trail the Nasdaq-100 by more than three points a call even after Tuesday's chip bounce.