A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. SanDisk $SNDK laid out its investor day targets, guiding for mid-to-high teens revenue growth, roughly 80% non-GAAP gross margins, and about 50% adjusted free cash flow margins. The company also expects to return 100% of excess cash to shareholders. SanDisk highlighted its HBF technology as a potential major efficiency unlock for AI inference, saying internal testing showed 1 HBF GPU could run the same model that required 8 HBM GPUs, implying 8x CapEx efficiency, while 4 HBF GPUs matched the token output of 8 HBM GPUs, implying 2x GPU efficiency. $SNDK was up 14%. 2. U.S. PPI came in slightly cooler on the headline number, rising 4.7% YoY versus 4.9% expected and 0.0% MoM versus 0.2% expected. Core PPI was mixed, rising 4.2% YoY versus 4.1% expected, but only 0.2% MoM versus 0.3% expected. Initial jobless claims came in at 209K versus 202K expected, while continued claims were 1.777M versus 1.794M expected. 3. Norway’s $2.3T sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, generated a record $184.3B profit in H1 2026. The fund returned 9.4% over the period, with its 72.1% equity allocation up 13.0%. In Q2 alone, the portfolio gained 11.5%, its strongest quarter since Q2 2020, led by equities returning 16.0% as AI-related names drove performance. Nvidia $NVDA remained the fund’s largest holding at the end of H1, followed by Microsoft $MSFT and Apple $AAPL. Norway’s fund now owns roughly 1.5% of all publicly listed companies globally and has become one of the world’s largest institutional investors in AI-related stocks. 4. OpenAI’s annualized revenue has reportedly topped $40B, roughly doubling its run rate from the end of 2025, according to Bloomberg. July run-rate revenue rose more than 20% MoM, driven by strength in Codex, subscriptions, and early ad sales, highlighting how quickly OpenAI’s monetization is scaling across both consumer and business lines. 5. Reddit $RDDT is set to join the S&P 500 before the open on August 18, replacing AvalonBay Communities $AVB. AvalonBay is being acquired by Equity Residential $EQR, with the combined company expected to remain in the index under the new name Vivmark Residential $VMRK. S&P Dow Jones Indices also announced that Sun Communities $SUI will join the S&P MidCap 400 before the open on August 20, replacing Webster Financial $WBS, which is being acquired by Banco Santander $SAN. 6. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 2.4M contracts, $TSLA with 2.0M contracts, $SPCX with 1.2M contracts, $MU with 1.0M contracts, $AAPL with 881K contracts, $INTC with 863K contracts, $SMCI with 843K contracts, $NFLX with 681K contracts, $PLTR with 625K contracts, and $AMZN with 600K contracts. 7. Ondas $ONDS reported Q2’26 revenue of $83.8M, beating estimates of $68M and up 67% QoQ. Adjusted gross margin came in at 50.4%, while adjusted EBITDA was -$50.6M versus -$32M expected. Backlog reached $613M, or $757M pro forma including DZYNE and Cyberhawk, with $175M of new orders in Q2 and another $105M already in Q3 to date. Ondas raised FY26 revenue guidance to $525M–$550M versus $509M expected and guided Q3 revenue to $140M–$155M. The company also pulled forward its profitability timeline, now targeting platform-level adjusted EBITDA profitability by Q4 2026 and company-wide profitability by Q4 2027. Key wins included a $52.9M lethal unmanned strike order, more than $240M of captured orders under a $982M Army IDIQ program, and NASA raising its Stratollite IDIQ ceiling from $45M to $395M. 8. Nu Holdings $NU reported Q2’26 revenue of $5.51B, beating estimates of $5.23B, up 50.3% YoY. Diluted EPS came in at $0.216 versus $0.20 expected, while net income rose 66.8% YoY to $1.06B. Gross profit increased 51.6% YoY to $2.35B, total assets grew 31.9% YoY to $82.75B, and total interest income and gains reached $4.76B, up 52.1% YoY. On the balance sheet, deposits rose 23.7% YoY to $45.33B, credit card receivables increased 42.1% YoY to $21.49B, loans to customers grew 43.8% YoY to $11.32B, and total equity reached $13.25B. 9. Elon Musk disclosed ownership of 6,418,547,515 SpaceX $SPCX shares in a new SEC filing, representing a 48.4% stake in the company. Based on the filing, Musk’s stake is valued at roughly $908.35B. 10. Nebius $NBIS is facing permitting-related delays at its Vineland data center after Hunterbrook reported a second stop-construction order at the site. The first order, issued on August 6, paused LNG tank work, while the second, issued on August 10, paused Bloom Energy $BE fuel-cell work after the city said required approvals and permits had not been secured. Nebius said on August 12 that it does not expect a material impact to the project timeline and confirmed that Vineland capacity remains included in its 2026 connected power targets. The main building structure was completed earlier this summer, engineering fit-out is underway, and fuel-cell installation is expected to move quickly once the permitting issues are resolved. 11. OpenAI is replacing chief revenue officer Denise Dresser less than a year after she joined the company. Dresser is leaving to pursue other opportunities, while Dali Rajic, president and COO of Alphabet-owned Wiz, will take over the role. The move marks another major leadership change as OpenAI scales revenue across enterprise, subscriptions, APIs, and new monetization channels. 12. Hedge funds bought $6.8B of U.S. equities last week, the largest weekly purchase in 18 years. As a share of S&P 500 market cap, it ranked as the 9th-largest weekly buy since 2008. This follows $4.8B of purchases the week before, bringing total hedge fund buying to $11.6B over the last 2 weeks, the largest two-week purchase on record. The 4-week average of hedge fund purchases has now risen to $1.8B. Meanwhile, institutional investors sold $1.1B, their second straight weekly sale, while retail investors sold $4.1B, pushing their 4-week average selling to $500M. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
