Markets

Stocks hit record high as July inflation data bolsters rate cut bets

Stocks shot to fresh intraday records Tuesday after in-line July inflation data fortified bets that the Federal Reserve would deliver its first interest rate cut of 2025 next month. The S&P 500 rose 1.1%, the Nasdaq 100 climbed 1.3%, and the Russell 2000 soared 2.9%.

That marked the S&P 500’s first record close of August, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 booking a record close as well.

All 11 S&P 500 sector ETFs went positive on the day, with communication services, tech, and materials leading the way.

Gains on the day were led by chip stocks NXP and On Semiconductor, which jumped 7.2% and 6.1%, respectively. Declines were led by law enforcement equipment maker Axon Enterprise, which fell 6.1%. Elsewhere…

Meta jumped 3.1%, ending the day at $790 — its highest closing price in history. The stock has been on a tear following a series of excellent earnings reports.

Shares of On Holding leapt 8.9% after the Swiss sneaker maker reported strong Q2 sales and offered a sunny outlook as the brand gains traction in the “RTO apparel” market.

D-Wave Quantum were up 6.5% to close the day. Sherwood News spoke with its CEO, following the quantum computing company’s Q2 sales beat last week, about its potential to expand into AI model training.

e.l.f. Beauty shares rose another 4.5% after Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of the popular cosmetics brand to “overweight” and hiked its price target to $134 from $114 on Monday.

Five Below shares also bounced 4.5% after Loop Capital hiked its rating on the stock from “hold” to “buy” and lifted its price target to $165.

Tilray shares climbed 3.2%, extending a rally, as investors continue to pile into the cannabis company, fueled by a report that President Trump is considering weed reform.

Circle shares ticked up 1.3%, paring back from a 15% premarket surge after the fintech firm’s first earnings report as a public company topped revenue estimates but missed on earnings per share.

Nvidia closed largely flat despite a new report from The Information saying that China’s internet regulator has ordered local tech companies to suspend their purchases of Nvidia chips.

Spirit Airlines shares plunged 40% after the discount airliner issued a dire warning about its ability to survive as a going concern without more cash. Rival airlines including Delta, American, Southwest, and JetBlue were all up amid this news and inflation data showing a jump in ticket prices for July.

Plug Power dipped 3.4% after the hydrogen fuel cell developer reported mixed second-quarter results after the bell on Monday, but said it plans to achieve gross margin breakeven in Q4.

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announces new partnerships with Palantir, CrowdStrike

Shares of CrowdStrike jumped while Palantir pared losses after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced new partnerships with the companies at the chip designer’s GTC in Washington DC.

“AI will also supercharge cyber security challenges, the bad AIs, and so we need an incredible defender. I can’t imagine a better defender than Crowdstrike,” said Huang. “We are partnering with CrowdStrike to make cybersecurity speed of light, to create a system that has cybersecurity AI agents in the cloud but also incredibly good AI agents on prem.”

He then went on to discuss Palantir Ontology, which he called the single fastest enterprise company in the world and probably the single most important enterprise stack in the world today.

“We work with Palantir to accelerate everything Palantir does so that we can do data processing at a much much larger scale and more speed, whether it’s structured data of the past, human-recorded data, unstructured data, and process that data for our government, for national security, and for enterprises around the world, process that data at speed of light and find insight from it.”

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Nvidia jumps to high of day after CEO Jensen Huang touts more than $500 billion in flagship chip orders through 2026

Shares of Nvidia leapt to session highs after CEO Jensen Huang touted the “exceptionally” strong demand for its flagship products, noting that orders for Blackwell and early Rubin chips were above $500 billion through 2026.

That’s a lot more money in a lot less time than its Hopper GPUs generated to date.

Revenue estimates for Nvidia’s fiscal 2026 and 2027 (which loosely map to calendar years 2025 and 2026) currently sit at a combined $486 billion.

Nvidia chip orders
Source: Nvidia
Two Faces with Starry Eyes

The average American family is worth more than a million bucks

Elon Musk and I also have an average net worth of $233 billion.

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Trump Media rises on plans to make event contracts available on Truth Social in partnership with Crypto.com

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group are up after the company announced that it will be making prediction markets available on its Truth Social platform through its partnership with Crypto.com.

Users “will be able to trade prediction contracts related to major events and milestones, such as political elections, interest and inflation rate changes, commodity prices on gold and crude oil, events across all major sports leagues, and more,” per the press release. Beta testing is to begin “in the near future,” followed by a full US launch with designs on a global rollout.

Speech is free and talk is cheap — until you put your money where your mouth is. Prediction markets are a booming business, with Piper Sandler estimating that volumes at Kalshi and Polymarket are poised to be up 91% month on month in October, driven in part by interest into contracts tied to the outcomes of sporting events.

The ascension of prediction markets has been viewed as negative for the “traditional” domains for online sports betting, with the likes of DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment suffering as prediction market activity linked to sports picks up steam. Both these firms, which are looking to increase their footprints in the event contracts space, are selling off as this new entrant also threatens to eat away at market share and, more importantly, a large rival plans a reentrance, with Bloomberg reporting that Polymarket is “preparing to return to the US in the coming weeks with a focus on sports betting,” citing people familiar.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. Event contracts trading is offered by Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, a registered futures commission merchant with the CFTC.)

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Cameco soars on partnership with US government and Brookfield to deploy new nuclear reactors stateside

Shares of Cameco Corp are surging in premarket trading after the Canada-based uranium company announced that it and Brookfield Asset Management have signed a binding term sheet with the US government to build nuclear reactors in the US via their jointly owned Westinghouse Electric business.

(Brookfield and Cameco acquired 51% and 49% of Westinghouse Electric, respectively, in a 2023 deal.)

As a uranium provider to nuclear power plants, Cameco has the opportunity to benefit not just through its Westinghouse exposure, but also by having a bigger market to supply.

Shares of no-revenue nuclear company Oklo as well as Nuscale both popped on this news, but since pared gains.

The aggregate investment value of these new projects is “at least” $80 billion, per the press release. The US government will take care of arranging financing, permitting, and approvals, and Westinghouse will construct nuclear facilities which “are expected to generate reliable and secure power for the American grid, including powering significant data center and compute capacity to drive growth in artificial intelligence in the United States.”

The agreement will see the US government get a 20% share of any cash distributions tied to this project in excess of $17.5 billion. If that milestone has been hit on or prior to January 2029 and the valuation of Westinghouse is expected to be $30 billion or higher, the US government can demand an IPO of this division and the ability to accumulate a 20% stake in this entity.

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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, or Robinhood Money, LLC.