(Zhang Xiaotian/Getty Images)

Stocks go nowhere on laziest trading day since July 4 holiday

If you skipped this one, you weren’t alone.

8/18/25 3:42PM

The start of the week was a relative snoozer, with the amount of money changing hands across US exchanges the lowest since the holiday-shortened session on July 3.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 each closed less than 0.1% away from where they ended last week, while the Russell 2000 rose 0.3%.

Consumer discretionary posted the largest advance among S&P 500 sector ETFs with a 0.4% gain, while real estate was at the bottom of the leaderboard with a 0.9% drop.

Gains on the day were led by Dayforce, which soared almost 26% after Bloomberg reported that private equity giant Thoma Bravo is in advanced talks to acquire the HR software provider. Declines were led by EQT Corp. and Intel, which fell 4.4% and 3.7%, respectively.

Elsewhere...

Meta shares fell 2.3% after the social media behemoth cut the starting price of its upcoming smart glasses with a display to about $800, down from a price of over $1,000. The company is also facing two government probes over its AI chatbots.

Shares of Duolingo jumped nearly 13% after the company’s CEO defended its use of AI amid customer backlash. KeyBanc analysts also upgraded the stock to “overweight.”

First Solar shares jumped 9.7% after UBS named the solar panel maker a top pick, pointing to fresh IRS guidance that largely preserved 2030 tax credits for the industry.

Novo Nordisk rose 2.6% after the pharma giant cut prices for its weight-loss shots, Ozempic and Wegovy, while the latter was also approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat a liver condition.

TeraWulf jumped 4.6% after the bitcoin mining company said AI cloud platform Fluidstack exercised its option to expand at the company’s Lake Mariner, New York, data center campus.

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J. Edward Moreno2h

Luke Kawa4h

POET Technologies nears multiyear high on strong call demand after flagship product wins award

POET Technologies is surging on heavy volumes and high call demand after announcing that it won a Product Innovation Award at China’s Infostone awards.

The honor went to the optical communications company’s flagship product, the Teralight, which uses light to move data between chips.

“Unveiled less than a year ago at the 2025 OFC Conference, POET Teralight has driven commercial interest in the Company because of its highly integrated design and complete optical system-on-chip architecture that simplifies module development,” per the press release.

This award may be the latest excuse to buy the stock, which is up over 40% year to date.

Call activity is elevated, with nearly 37,000 having changed hands as of 10:55 a.m. ET, well above the 20-day average of 28,030 for a full session. Shares are approaching their multi-year high of $9.41.

Matt Phillips4h

Intel bucks market slump after Wall Street upgrades

While the market slid early Tuesday, Intel soared as the American chipmaker received a pair of upgrades:

HSBC analysts lifted their rating on the stock to “hold” — essentially “neutral” — from “reduce,” Wall Street-speak for “sell.” The analysts nearly doubled their price target for the shares to $50 from $26. (That’s essentially where the stock is currently trading.)
Seaport Global also boosted its rating to “buy” from “neutral,” with a $65 price target.

Improving demand for CPUs — Intel’s bread-and-butter processors — is behind HSBC’s newfound enthusiasm for the shares. Analysts at the bank wrote:

“We had been cautious on Intel mainly given overall uncertainty on customer pipeline and execution headwinds in their foundry business while the core business was also lacking visibility on growth drivers. However, we now turn more positive as we expect the traditional servers (DCAI) to get back on a growth trajectory. We expect there is an overwhelmingly increasing demand for server CPUs driven by rising agentic AI... While the stock has moved up 19% YTD (vs S&P 500 up 1%), we believe there is further [data center and AI group] upside still not fully priced in. Hence, we upgrade Intel from Reduce to Hold.”

HSBC seems to be slightly understating the extent of the gains for the stock so far in 2026, as its share price has risen nearly 30% since the end of last year. But the gains are even more impressive if you date them to the partial nationalization of the ailing American chip giant, which was announced on August 22. Almost a month later, Nvidia announced a strategic partnership with the company, giving it a massive shot in the arm. Since then the stock is up more than 90%.

Luke Kawa4h

ImmunityBio surge continues on sign its drug may be approved to treat a broader range of bladder cancers

Once you start squeezing, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Shares of ImmnuityBio are flying higher once again, up more than 30% in early trading Tuesday after having been down as much as 10% in the premarket. A little more than half an hour into the regular trading day, more than 46 million shares have changed hands, more than 3x the 20-day average for this point in the session.

Last week, we discussed how a number of positive press releases from the company touting the progress of its treatments helped send shares skyward, making the heavily shorted company a hot topic of discussion on the r/ShortSqueeze subreddit.

The positive press parade continues this morning, with ImmunityBio announcing that the FDA asked for more information about the ability of its ANKTIVA drug to treat a certain type of bladder cancer, though it doesn’t need to do any new clinical trials. Management said they would provide this information within 30 days.

Share are up nearly 200% over the past six sessions.

On Monday, the company published a podcast appearance by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder, executive chairman, and global chief medical and technology officer, on “The Sean Spicer Show,” which was provocatively titled, “Is the FDA BLOCKING Life Saving Cancer Treatments?”

Luke Kawa6h

AppLovin craters after report from CapitalWatch alleges it’s a money-laundering operation for “transnational criminal kingpins”

AppLovin is tumbling in premarket trading on Tuesday after financial research agency CapitalWatch published a report on Monday calling the company “the ultimate monument to 21st-century new-type transnational financial crime.”

“AppLovin serves as the ultimate exit for asset laundering/diversion by transnational criminal kingpins,” the authors wrote, alleging that the growth of its advertising business comes in part from illicit cryptocurrency funds routed through its platform.

AppLovin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Sherwood News.

This is far from the first report to question AppLovin’s business practices.

Fuzzy Panda Research and Culper Research announced short positions in the ad tech firm last February in research reports alleging that AppLovin’s operating performance was a function of “systematic exploitation of app permissions” as well as taking data and gaming the ad platforms of other tech giants, particularly Meta. In October, reports surfaced that the SEC was investigating AppLovin’s data collection practices, as were a number of state regulators.

The allegations raised by CapitalWatch are a whole different kettle of illegal fish.

Anything is possible. But if I were hypothetically trying to launder a bunch of money, I likely would not try to do so through a publicly traded entity domiciled in the United States that’s subject to much more regulatory oversight and scrutiny than the average global firm.