A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY.
Here's a full recap:
1. U.S. Central Command forces have begun launching powerful strikes against Iranian targets in response to Iran’s attacks on three commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM said the strikes are meant to impose heavy costs for targeting commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway, calling Iran’s aggression unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire. WTI Crude was up 5% today as the S&P fell 0.5%. $SMH, the semiconductor index, was down 4%.
2. Palantir $PLTR expanded its partnership with GNP Seguros, the largest insurance company in Mexico. GNP will use Palantir to detect claims fraud, improve underwriting precision, process claims more effectively, and expand access to high-quality insurance coverage across Mexico. Another sign Palantir’s international expansion continues.
3. The U.S. is revoking a general license that authorized the sale of Iranian oil, according to a U.S. official. The move comes after attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, with the official calling Iran’s actions in the strategic waterway “wholly unacceptable” and warning they will be met with consequences.
4. DeepSeek has reportedly increased hiring of chip-design engineers in recent months as it works on a new chip designed for inference. This adds to a growing trend that keeps pressuring the Nvidia $NVDA narrative: Google $GOOGL and Amazon $AMZN are building major internal chip businesses, Cerebras and Broadcom $AVGO are partnering with OpenAI on chips, Anthropic is reportedly looking to secure custom silicon supply, and now DeepSeek may be moving in the same direction.
5. Netflix $NFLX signed video licensing deals with PMX, BuzzFeed Studios, Condé Nast, Hearst, People Inc., and Tastemade, per Variety. Starting Aug. 3, Netflix will carry publisher videos ranging from 2 minutes to 20+ minutes across the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.
6. Penguin Solutions $PENG beat Q3 FY26 expectations with revenue of $478.7M vs. $421.4M estimated and adjusted EPS of $0.84 vs. $0.56 estimated. Net sales hit a quarterly record, up 48% YoY, driven by Integrated Memory revenue more than doubling to $275.1M. The company also raised FY26 guidance, now seeing non-GAAP EPS of $2.60 ± $0.05 vs. $2.28 estimated and net sales growth of 22% ± 2%, up from prior guidance of 12% ± 5%. AI infrastructure momentum also continued, with 4 new customer logos, NVIDIA AI Factory Specialized Partner status, and an expanded ClusterWareAI platform.
7. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 2.3M contracts, $TSLA with 1.9M contracts, $AAPL with 875K contracts, $MU with 698K contracts, $INTC with 643K contracts, $SPCX with 588K contracts, $AMZN with 569K contracts, $META with 565K contracts, $PLTR with 515K contracts, and $MSFT with 508K contracts.
8. Amazon $AMZN launched an eight-part U.S. investment-grade bond sale expected to price today, per Bloomberg. The deal is reportedly around $25B and spans maturities from 2029 to 2066, with expected ratings of A1 from Moody’s, AA from S&P, and AA- from Fitch.
9. Meta $META is rolling out its first proprietary AI image-generation model, Muse Image, inside the Meta AI chatbot. The model will also be embedded across Meta’s apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, allowing users to generate images from text prompts or edit existing pictures. Advertisers will soon get access as well, giving Meta its own image-creation technology instead of relying on third-party models.
10. Raymond James initiated coverage of SpaceX $SPCX with a Strong Buy rating and an $800 price target, implying a roughly $10.5T market cap. Analyst Brian Gesuale called SpaceX “one of the defining industrial infrastructure companies of the 21st century,” arguing that industrialized access to orbit and AI are creating the biggest infrastructure convergence since the Internet. Raymond James projects SpaceX can grow from $38.5B in revenue and $17.7B in EBITDA today to more than $837B in revenue and $696B in EBITDA by 2031.
11. Microsoft $MSFT is starting to use its own MAI models inside certain Excel and Outlook features, replacing OpenAI and Anthropic for some tasks, per Bloomberg. Tens of thousands of AI prompts in those apps are now reportedly being handled each week by Microsoft’s internal models, signaling the company is increasingly shifting parts of its AI stack in-house.
12. Morgan Stanley says the memory trade $MU $SNDK $WDC $STX may be hitting a peak rate of change, but not the end of the cycle. The firm says memory remains cyclical, with pricing, inventory, and earnings revision momentum potentially nearing a point where the market starts to move sideways or correct. Still, MS views any pullback as happening inside a broader structural bull market for AI capex. Near term, the key focus is earnings and hyperscaler commentary, especially around whether AI spend, token monetization, open-source competition, and “chipflation” impact guidance and margins. Morgan Stanley remains bullish longer term, citing 35%–40% earnings growth in 2027 and the ramp of agentic AI, but prefers areas where the money is actually being spent, favoring DRAM and legacy memory over NAND, while staying least positive on memory module makers.
WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
