A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. Semis $SMH fell about 2.5% today as the market reacted to a mix of China supply-chain headlines and growing AI financing concerns. A Chinese state-backed firm has reportedly started mass-producing domestic DUV lithography machines, raising fears that China could become less reliant on Western suppliers like ASML and pressure future equipment demand. At the same time, Nvidia $NVDA reportedly backstopping OpenAI’s new data center buildout with $250B, along with another $5B investment into a new AI startup, is adding to concerns that parts of the AI trade are becoming too circular. China also just completed its second-largest IPO ever through a memory company, which is feeding worries that memory supply could expand just as pricing may be nearing a peak. 2. Palantir $PLTR CEO Alex Karp kicked off the company’s first Sovereignty Bootcamp, bringing together 150+ customers to discuss sovereign AI and enterprise ownership of AI-driven value. Karp said companies should not pay for AI tools only to have their business replicated by the provider, arguing that enterprises need to own what they produce. He called sovereign AI “the most important thing in AI,” framing it as the next major wave of the AI revolution. He also said: "You can’t be paying someone and then your reward is that they get to replicate your business. It’s absolutely crazy. We think there is an alternative way of doing this that actually creates more value for an enterprise." 3. Citadel Securities reportedly expects Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and the Federal Reserve to raise rates by 25 bps on Wednesday, per Bloomberg. The firm thinks markets may be underpricing a more hawkish Fed pivot and says a surprise hike would reinforce the central bank’s inflation-fighting credibility. Interest-rate swaps currently imply about a 40%chance of a move this week, with one full hike priced by September. Citadel says the recent jump in energy prices could be enough to push the Fed toward acting immediately. 4. Nvidia $NVDA announced the Open Secure AI Alliance, bringing industry leaders together to build open tools for securing software and AI agents. Jensen Huang said, “Attackers have frontier AI. Defenders need a frontier AI ecosystem.” Nvidia is arguing that open models and security tooling should be viewed as defensive infrastructure, not a liability. The company warned that broad restrictions on open frontier AI could weaken cyber defenses, increase reliance on a small group of closed providers, and concentrate too much power. Nvidia is calling for shared investment in open AI defense systems, including datasets, evaluation frameworks, attack simulators, and red-teaming tools. 5. BlackRock $BLK raised $12.5B of debt to help finance Meta’s $META nearly 1GW AI data center campus in El Paso, Texas. The 2048 notes priced at 287.5 bps over 10-year Treasuries and drew about $20B in demand, or roughly 1.6x the deal size. BlackRock-backed entities own 80% of the project, while Meta owns the remaining 20%. The financing is backed by Meta’s long-term lease commitments, allowing the data center debt to stay off Meta’s balance sheet. 6. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 4.8M contracts, $TSLA with 2.6M contracts, $AAPL with 1.8M contracts, $MU with 1.1M contracts, $INTC with 1.0M contracts, $MSFT with 700K contracts, $AMD with 654K contracts, $AMZN with 636K contracts, $SPCX with 629K contracts, and $GOOGL with 552K contracts. 7. Trump said the U.S. paused strikes on Iran to give negotiations another chance, per Axios. He warned that the U.S. could still return to “very strong military action” if talks break down, adding that diplomacy will not get much time. Discussions are reportedly centered on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and restarting broader nuclear talks, with Trump set to meet Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Tuesday. 8. Amazon $AMZN has filed with the FCC to launch 5,105 satellites by 2028 for a direct-to-device mobile network, per FT. The service would support voice, messaging, data, and emergency connectivity beyond traditional cell-tower coverage. Amazon plans to use spectrum tied to its $11.6B Globalstar deal, putting it more directly up against SpaceX’s Starlinkin satellite-enabled mobile services. 9. Foreign buying of U.S. equities has surged to a record $850B over the last 12 months, more than quadrupling since the start of 2025. That is also roughly 450% above the average since 2000. As a share of total equity market cap, foreign purchases are now around 1.3%, the highest since the post-Financial Crisis recovery in 2010 and above the 2021 meme-stock peak of roughly 1.1%. 10. AT&T $T is expanding its use of D-Wave Quantum $QBTS across network operations through a new agreement focused on complex optimization problems. In early testing, AT&T said D-Wave’s annealing quantum technology reduced one network optimization workload from roughly one hour to under 15 seconds. The initial rollout will focus on integrating D-Wave into AT&T’s agentic AI tools for outage detection, technician routing, network planning, traffic management, and response. AT&T said those tools helped reduce customer downtime by 12M hours in 2025. The company is also evaluating D-Wave’s gate-model systems for quantum security and communications, with financial terms not disclosed. 11. BofA says the selloff in European semiconductors has created a compelling entry point. The firm notes the SOX has underperformed the S&P 500 by roughly 18% from its peak, similar to past corrections like the 2015 China slowdownand the 2018 China-U.S. trade/Fed hiking cycle, but still less severe than prior downturn drawdowns near 30%. BofA argues fundamentals remain strong, with the sector trading at about a 3x discount to average 2028 consensus multiples, while semiconductor capital equipment names are trading at a 6x–7x discount. BofA also says fears of a memory pricing crash look overdone, while expecting ASM Q2 EPS to beat consensus by 11% and keeping its 2027–2028 EPS estimates for ASML 6%–7% above consensus. 12. South Korea’s KOSPI fell as much as 8% early in trading, triggering a circuit breaker, which temporarily pauses trading to slow panic selling and give the market time to reset. The move is heavily tied to memory stocks, with Samsung and SK Hynix making up roughly half the index and both acting as major memory-cycle trades. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
