HAPPY THURSDAY TO THE STREET
SK Hynix lists its ADR on Nasdaq tomorrow under the ticker SKHY. The South Korean semiconductor firm seeks about $30B in fresh capital. The broader memory sector is bracing for the verdict.
Analysts are split on whether it draws new money into chips or just reshuffles who owns the trade. Either way, the week will end on another IPO stress test.
🟩 | US stocks rose today, buoyed by chipmakers rebounding from yesterday’s sell-off.
📈 | One Notable Gainer: Micron Technology (MU) rose after pledging up to $3B to strengthen the US semiconductor supply chain.
— Brooks & Cas
MARKET SNAPSHOT
S&P 500 Heatmap. Credit: Unusual Whales
WILL THE FED HIKE AGAIN THIS YEAR?
Fed officials can't agree on where rates go next, and neither can the traders betting on it. Kalshi puts the odds of a 2026 hike at 54%, practically a coin flip, while pricing in a 62% chance the next move comes before July 2027. Sometimes a shrug is a signal all on its own.
Market Movers
ASTRAZENECA, MARA HOLDINGS, PEPSICO
📉 | AstraZeneca (AZN) tumbled after its heart disease drug Wainua failed to meet its primary goal in a late-stage trial.
📈 | Mara Holdings (MARA) jumped after agreeing to acquire more than 1,200 acres in Texas to more than double its power capacity.
📉 | PepsiCo (PEP) fell despite topping revenue estimates, as adjusted earnings missed analyst expectations.
📈 | Qiagen (QGEN) surged on reports that EQT, AllianceBernstein (AB), and KKR (KKR) are weighing a takeover bid.
📉 | Costco (COST) slid after reporting decelerating comparable sales for June.
Tomorrow's Trade Idea, Today
TOST OF THE TOWN
Stock Spotlight
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Butter Side Up
Goldman turned bullish on Toast, upgrading shares to Buy.
The firm credits the restaurant payments company's best-in-class product lineup, alongside its new AI-powered marketing push, Toast IQ Grow.
Order Still Coming
Analyst Will Nance thinks the new tool could juice average revenue per user, while giving Toast more runway to keep stealing market share in retail, international, and enterprise accounts.
Nance's case rests on demand holding up even as headlines suggest otherwise. Consumer spending stayed resilient and accelerated through the quarter, gas purchases included, a backdrop he expects to reward patient shareholders over the medium term regardless of near-term noise around hardware costs.
Extra Chair at the Table
Toast has lagged the market for six months as pricier hardware and memory squeeze margins and rivals crowd the small business payments table. Peers PayPal (PYPL) and Fiserv (FISV) have had rougher years still.
Still, 20 of 32 analysts already rate Toast a Buy or Strong Buy, and one more just pulled up an extra chair.
Do you own any shares of Toast (TOST)?
OVERHEARD ON THE STREET
🏛️ Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh named the members of his internal task forces, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and former Walmart (WMT) CEO Doug McMillon.
🏠 Existing home sales fell 2.4% in June even as the median price hit a record high of $440,600.
🤖 Meta (META) launched Muse Spark 1.1, its most aggressive coding-focused AI model yet, undercutting Anthropic and OpenAI on price.
💰 Goldman Sachs (GS) won mandates to manage $70B in retirement assets for Verizon (VZ) and Lockheed Martin (LMT).
🎙️ Privacy experts are warning corporations that AI notetakers can create unauthorized voiceprints and expose confidential meetings to legal discovery.
WEDNESDAY’S POLL RESULTS
Do you own any shares of AT&T Inc (T)?
▇▇▇▇▇▇ 🐂 Yup, I’m holding
▇▇▇▇▇▇ 🐻 Nope, not interested
▇▇▇▇▇▇ 👀 No, but I’m interested
And, in response, you said:
🐂 Yup, I’m holding — “Still a good div.”
🐻 Nope, not interested — “AT&T's long term prospects died with divestiture. Lacking Bell Labs to invent the future, the company has been floundering ever since. No dividends since 2022 and no real growth since the 2000 crash is not an indicator of a good long term investment.”
