A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. Rocket Lab $RKLB won a $266M U.S. Air Force contract, extending its momentum in defense. The launches are expected to take place in Alaska and be completed by the end of 2028. The award adds to Rocket Lab’s growing streak of defense contract wins as the company continues expanding its role in national security space missions. 2. BofA is staying bullish on the memory trade, arguing that Chinese open-source AI models strengthen the long-term demand case for $MU, $SKHY, $SNDK, $STX, and $WDC. The firm reiterated its Buy rating on Micron $MU with a $1,550 price target, saying cheaper Chinese model pricing does not mean lower hardware intensity. BofA notes Kimi K3 API pricing is reportedly 5x–350x below Western models, but says that reflects business-model choices rather than the true cost of compute infrastructure. The firm also highlights that Kimi K3 needs roughly 1.4TB of HBM per serving instance, while larger AI models should require the same or even more memory as weights and active parameters grow. BofA also sees CXMT focused on commodity DRAM rather than advanced HBM, and notes Micron’s CHIPS Act restrictions may expire around December 2026, potentially opening the door for $50B–$60B in annual buybacks. 3. Moonshot AI is reportedly targeting a valuation of up to $50B in a final pre-IPO funding round after launching Kimi K3. The company is expected to close its current round at a $31.5B valuation before starting another round of fundraising talks in August, ahead of a potential Hong Kong IPO that could come as soon as this year. 4. Tesla $TSLA detailed its 2026 Summer software update, with rollout expected soon. The biggest change is deeper Grok integration, letting drivers use voice commands to place calls, control music, change climate settings, and open the glovebox. Tesla is also bringing self-driving stats into the mobile app, making them viewable and shareable, while navigation will get smarter by surfacing routine destinations and favoring routes the driver has taken before. The update also adds the ability to set a preferred arrival battery level from the app, upload custom vehicle wraps without a USB drive, and lock rear-screen controls from the front display. 5. Nvidia $NVDA says it could eventually produce up to 1,000 Vera Rubin racks per day. If reached, that scale would imply more than $630B in quarterly revenue for Nvidia and its manufacturing partners, based on estimates cited in the post. Nvidia’s hardware engineering SVP Andrew Bell said the company’s manufacturing partners should be able to make up to 1,000 racks per day once production ramps, highlighting the massive revenue potential tied to Vera Rubin if AI data center demand continues scaling. 6. Sam Altman is expected to brief the Trump administration and members of Congress next week on OpenAI’s next family of models, including their capabilities and potential impact on jobs. A new release may be getting closer, though OpenAI has not officially named the models GPT-6 or announced a launch date. 7. Jefferies came away impressed after testing Meta’s $META AI glasses, highlighting the camera quality, seamless setup, and normal-glasses form factor. The firm says Meta has a first-mover advantage as the only player currently shipping AI glasses at scale. Jefferies estimates the category could become a $14B–$18B hardware revenue opportunity within the next few years, assuming Apple Watch-like adoption at an average selling price of $400, or roughly 35M–45M units. The firm also sees upside from AI subscriptions, advertising, and commerce over time. Jefferies noted Meta AI now has around 1B monthly active users, daily glasses users are tripling YoY, and more than 7M units were sold in 2025. Jefferies says the bigger opportunity is commerce, as AI glasses could capture user intent at the point of discovery if agentic AI shifts behavior from browsing to delegation. units in 2026. 8. Supermicro $SMCI gave a major preliminary update after hours. Fiscal Q4 revenue is expected to land near the low end of its $11B–$12.5B guidance range, but the bigger surprise is gross margin, now expected at 15%–17% versus the prior 8.2%–8.4% forecast. Last quarter, SMCI was guiding gross margins around 8.4%–8.7%, and its TTM gross margin is only 8.83%, making this a dramatic improvement in just 90 days. The company also said it received more than $60B in new orders during the quarter, pushing backlog to a record high, though some orders could still be delayed or canceled. Full results are due August 11 9. Google $GOOGL is rolling out Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, and a new limited-access cybersecurity-focused model. Gemini 3.6 Flash is designed to be more efficient, using up to 17% fewer tokens while also lowering cost per token. Flash-Lite is aimed at faster, high-volume use cases where speed and scale matter most. Google is also introducing Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, a model built to find and help fix software vulnerabilities, though access will initially be restricted to governments and trusted partners. 10. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 2.3M contracts, $AAPL with 1.1M contracts, $MU with 977K contracts, $TSLA with 887K contracts, $SPCX with 752K contracts, $INTC with 656K contracts, $AMZN with 511K contracts, $NFLX with 509K contracts, $AMD with 410K contracts, and $MSFT with 387K contracts. 11. CoreWeave $CRWV says near-term profitability is being weighed down by a timing mismatch in its AI infrastructure rollout. New capacity starts depreciating roughly six weeks before contracted customer revenue begins coming in, creating pressure on reported earnings. The company is carrying about $30B of debt to fund 49 operating data centers and future deployments, with depreciation and interest equal to 81% of Q1 revenue. CEO Michael Intrator expects that drag to lessen as more installed capacity converts into revenue. CoreWeave’s financing is supported by long-term customer contracts, where clients must pay for reserved capacity whether they use it or not. 12. Short interest across U.S. equities is climbing to extreme levels. In the S&P 500, short interest has risen to roughly 3.7% of free float, near the highest level in data going back to 2010. For the Russell 3000, short interest is around 6.1%, also close to an all-time high, with both measures steadily moving higher since the start of 2025. Across all NYSE-listed stocks, short interest reached a record 9.0% of shares outstanding in late June. For context, that same metric peaked near 5.0% during the 2008 Financial Crisis and around 6.0% during the 2020 pandemic. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
