Worst Quarter Since 2022? Why Staying In the Market May Matter More Than Timing The first quarter of 2026 is in the books — and it wasn't pretty. The $S&P 500(.SPX)$ fell roughly 5.3%, the $NASDAQ(.IXIC)$ dropped 7.8%, and the $DJIA(.DJI)$ shed 4.2%, marking the worst opening quarter for U.S. equities since 2022. The U.S.-Iran conflict rattled global energy markets, Brent crude surged past $119 at one point, and inflation fears resurfaced just as the labor market showed signs of cooling. But on the final trading day of March and in
The Architect of AI: How NVIDIA is Buying Up the Infrastructure of Tomorrow $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ 's recent $2 billion equity injection into $Marvell Technology(MRVL)$ is far more than a routine strategic partnership—it is a glaring declaration of intent. This move serves as the capstone of a stealth campaign Jensen Huang has been executing across the broader AI economy. NVIDIA has tipped its hand: the company is no longer content simply selling the silicon fueling the gold rush; it is systematically buying leverage at every layer of the critical infrastructure required to sustain it. While most investors still largely price NVIDIA a
From Memory to CPUs: Intel's Fab 34 Buyback Supercharges the Shortage and Pricing Trade Key Takeaways – Intel and AMD both beat the tape, but Intel's move was the standout, with the stock up about 8.8% versus roughly 3.3% for AMD. – The immediate catalyst was Intel's agreement to buy back Apollo's 49% stake in the Fab 34 Ireland JV for $14.2 billion, regaining full economics of a fab that produces Intel 4 and Intel 3 chips including Core Ultra and Xeon 6. – The financial logic is straightforward: Intel says the deal will be EPS accretive in 2027 and beyond, and Intel's 2025 filing shows income attributable to the Ireland SCIP was already meaningful and expected to rise as Fab 34 ramps further. – The deeper read is that the market is still treating this as part of a bigger
Historically, U.S. Oil Stocks Still Managed to Hit New Highs Even When Oil Prices Are Falling. Why? A counterintuitive situation is that in the years following the 2022 oil price surge in the U.S., oil prices have been generally falling from 2023 to 2025, yet $Exxon Mobil(XOM)$ 's stock price has been hitting new highs year after year. This suggests that factors other than oil price fluctuations must play a significant role in the crude oil market. These factors can be summarized as: 1. Increasing concentration of global oil supply. Due to geopolitical factors, Russia and Iran, two major oil-producing countries, have been excluded from the mainstream oil trading system, gradually constraining their oil pro
Stocks Are Falling, But AI Compute Demand Still Looks Red Hot The market is selling first and asking questions later Recent geopolitical tension has pushed U.S. stocks sharply lower, and the damage has been broad. In this kind of environment, investors usually cut risk first and sort out the fundamentals later. That is why the recent decline has felt almost indiscriminate. For long-term investors, that distinction matters. A falling stock does not always mean the business is weakening. Sometimes it simply means the market is in full defense mode. The AI demand signal still looks very strong Under the surface, one of the most important signals is still pointing in the opposite direction. Bloomberg's GPU rental indexes show that AI compute demand remains extremely tight. The key point is not
Not Just Oil in Short Supply Amid Middle East Tensions! Which Semiconductor Material Companies Have a Chokehold on Global Tech? Advanced materials are the foundation and physical limit of all high-end technologies. For example, the more advanced the semiconductor process, the higher the requirements for material purity, electrical conductivity/resistivity, and yield. Due to the accumulation of know-how in cutting-edge materials, patent barriers, and lengthy customer certification cycles, companies with first-mover advantages and core product categories are more likely to become evergreen stocks. Moreover, recent geopolitical disruptions have made supply chain security issues increasingly severe, making these companies more valuable for their scarcity. Moomoo Insights has compiled nea
Meta Tumbles 8%, $1B Options Bet on Limited Rebound $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ shares plunged more than 8% on Thursday, falling back to around $545. The immediate trigger was a landmark jury verdict in the U.S., which found that Meta and $Alphabet(GOOG)$ $Alphabet(GOOGL)$ YouTube's product designs contributed to user addiction. The significance of the ruling lies not in the several million dollars in damages, but in its potential legal spillover—shifting the regulatory framework from“platform immunity”toward“product liability.”Agains
Netflix Raises Prices. Streaming Is Going to Keep Getting More Expensive. Netflix stock rose Thursday following news that the company once again raised prices for its multiple subscription tiers, another sign for consumers that streaming will continue to get more expensive from here. $Netflix(NFLX)$ updated its plans page on Thursday. The standard subscription tier with ads will now cost users $8.99 a month, $1 more than before. Standard ad-free and premium subscriptions each went up by $2 and cost $19.99 and $26.99 a month, respectively. "We continue offering a range of prices and plans to meet a variety of needs, and as we deliver more value to our members we are updating our prices to enable us to rein
Nike Just Hit an 8-1/2-Year Low. Here's What Its Chart Says Heading Into Earnings Nike plans to report earnings next week at a time when the shoe-and-apparel giant's stock is trading at about an 8-1/2-year low, having fallen some 70% since its November 2021 all-time high. Let's see what its chart and fundamentals can tell us. Nike's Fundamental Analysis $Nike(NKE)$ is set to release fiscal Q3 results after the closing bell next Tuesday, with the Street looking for $0.29 in GAAP earnings per share on $11.22 billion of revenue. That would represent a 46.2% drop from the $0.54 in GAAP EPS that Nike reported for the same quarter last year, as well as a 0.4% sales contraction from the year-ago period's $11.27 b