A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY.
Here's a full recap:
1. $GOOGL Alphabet is proposing an $80 billion equity capital raise to expand its AI infrastructure and compute capacity, including $30 billion in underwritten public offerings. The company also says Berkshire Hathaway agreed to invest $10 billion through a private placement at $350 a share. From Google’s press release: “AI is driving an expansionary moment for Alphabet. The company is experiencing strong demand for its AI solutions and services from enterprises and consumers, at levels that are exceeding the company’s available supply.”
2. Anthropic has confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC for a proposed IPO, giving the company the option to go public after SEC review depending on market conditions and other factors. Salesforce’s $CRM investment in Anthropic is now valued at about $5 billion, according to Bloomberg, after first investing in the AI company in 2023, with CRM shares rising 9% today.
3. AI-related companies have raised roughly $380 billion across investment-grade bonds, venture capital, and high-yield debt year-to-date, representing about 64% of all capital flows across those channels. AI-linked firms have issued around $140 billion in investment-grade bonds, accounting for 49% of total IG issuance, attracted roughly $220 billion in venture funding, making up 87% of all VC dollars, and represented 38% of high-yield corporate bond issuance at about $21 billion. In other words, nearly 9 out of every 10 venture capital dollars this year have flowed into AI-related companies.
4. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 4.8M contracts, $TSLA with 3.0M contracts, $MSFT with 1.6M contracts, $AMZN with 1.2M contracts, $META with 1.1M contracts, $AAPL with 1.0M contracts, $PLTR with 831K contracts, $MU with 810K contracts, $NOK with 791K contracts, and $ORCL with 784K contracts. Nvidia dominated the market with nearly 4.8M contracts traded, while Tesla followed with over 3.0M contracts, and Microsoft saw unusually heavy activity with more than 1.6M contracts traded.
5. Citron Research founder Andrew Left was found guilty of securities fraud by a federal jury in Los Angeles after prosecutors argued he used tweets about dozens of companies to move stock prices and generate roughly $20 million in trading profits between 2018 and 2023. Left testified in his own defense during the three-week trial, and the jury reached its verdict after two days of deliberations.
6. SpaceX $SPCX reserved 5% of its IPO shares for select employees and individuals chosen by executive officers through a directed share program, with those shares offered at the IPO price and exempt from post-IPO lock-up restrictions. Elon Musk, who controls 85.1% of SpaceX’s voting power and owns 12.3% of Class A shares, has agreed not to sell any shares for roughly one year after the IPO.
7. U.S. data center construction spending has now surpassed a $50 billion annualized rate, fueled by surging AI infrastructure demand. From March 2022 to March 2026, spending on data center construction jumped 336%, rising from roughly $11 billion to about $50 billion, while general office construction fell 34% over the same period, dropping from $65 billion to around $43 billion.
8. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman downplayed the timing of a potential IPO after reports that Anthropic confidentially filed to go public, telling CNBC that going public is simply “a financing event” and not something OpenAI is focused on timing right now. Altman said OpenAI will IPO “when it makes sense for the company,” while adding that the company is focused on building data centers on Earth for now rather than space-based compute, and remains “very confident” Stargate Michigan will generate strong returns given continued AI demand.
9. Robinhood $HOOD has officially closed its acquisition of WonderFi, marking the company’s first entry into Canada. At the same time, $HOOD just saw its largest insider buy in years, with director Meyer Malka purchasing $20 million worth of shares at roughly $80 per share.
10. Cathie Wood’s ARK funds bought $NVDA and $CBRS today while selling $AMD, adding 300,017 shares of Nvidia and 62,669 shares of CBRS, while trimming 110,207 shares of AMD.
11. Call option volume is surging, with calls now making up 70% of total options market volume, the highest level in at least four years. Since early April, that share has jumped 25 percentage points, the largest two-month increase on record, surpassing the previous brief spike of roughly 68% in late 2025 and well above the two-year average of about 55%. At the same time, the total notional value of S&P 500 call options relative to the index’s market cap has climbed to a record 4.1x, doubling over the last two months.
12. Investors now appear to view $NVDA Nvidia as being as creditworthy as the U.S. government, with Nvidia's 5-year credit default swap trading around 38 basis points, slightly below the U.S. sovereign CDS at 40 basis points. In other words, credit markets are pricing the world’s largest company as slightly less likely to default on its obligations than the U.S. federal government, helped by Nvidia’s fortress balance sheet, including roughly $8.5 billion in total debt, $10.6 billion in cash, and nearly $100 billion in free cash flow in FY2026.
WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
