To The Moon

Hello. Nvidia does not report until after tonight's US close. Not one of Tuesday's five biggest gainers rose because of it.

$NVIDIA(NVDA)$ itself closed up 2.19 per cent at US$213.05, snapping a seven-session losing streak, and added 0.29 per cent after hours. The indices rose with it: $S&P 500(.SPX)$ up 0.32 per cent and $Invesco QQQ(QQQ)$ 0.62 per cent, with coverage noting $Dow Jones(.DJI)$ had posted a third straight triple-digit gain.

On the results themselves, the options market is pricing a swing of about US$280 billion in market value, with another report putting the move at about 6 per cent. That sounds large, but it is the smallest reaction the market has expected from Nvidia in years. One report put it in a single line: a beat is a fail, and a blowout is the base case.

Even the coverage of Nvidia itself has moved off that number. The Wall Street Journal says it has become a banker to the AI boom, and that this is dangerous ground; Reuters framed the test as the new Rubin chip making its debut just as the money Nvidia puts into AI projects comes under scrutiny; Morgan Stanley warns that this kind of lending carries credit risk. The same day, Nvidia said it would pay US$6 billion for a licence to Poolside's model software.

It sells the chips, funds the people buying the chips, and buys software from others. The money goes round the loop and comes b ack as its revenue. What matters tonight is not whether revenue beats, but where the money it has lent out sits in its own accounts.

The biggest gainer was $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$, up 4.91 per cent at US$479.18. The reason was specific: Raymond James raised it from Outperform to Strong Buy and lifted its target from US$565 to US$641. But the argument in the note was not Nvidia — it was the US$201 billion server CPU market Raymond James expects by 2030, which is a play for Intel's share. The popular reading is that Nvidia's price increases have lifted the value of a second supplier; that is not the argument this note makes.

The other side deserves stating: the consensus target is already US$625.35, so US$641 sits barely above it. This upgrade does not lift the ceiling so much as nudge the most optimistic end of the range higher — and a market that only arrives in 2030 has to be bought at today's price.

$Bloom Energy Corp(BE)$ closed up 6.58 per cent at US$217.45, the noisiest name of the day. Its reason for rising had nothing to do with energy or with AI: a disclosure showed Nancy Pelosi had bought it, reported at about US$3 million, in the same batch as Intel. That is not a fundamental, but the effect on sentiment was real, and the stock was rising pre-market.

Two law firms also issued investor notices about it the same day. A famous buyer on one side, firms looking for plaintiffs on the other.

The other name in that batch is worth a look: $Intel(INTC)$ rose just 0.25 per cent on Tuesday to US$87.48, still about 8 per cent below its US$95 placement price — of the four companies that went to the market for money last week, the first one to get it has not finished paying for it.

$NEBIUS(NBIS)$ closed up 5.24 per cent at US$221.97, and the real reason is that its debt sold well: the convertible note ended up at about US$5.75 billion, above the size first planned — US$5 billion is no longer the right figure. Its revenue for a whole year is only about US$1.4 billion. So what rose was not the compute it has rented out but the appetite for its paper. The interest and the dilution start now; the rental income has to wait.

$Moderna, Inc.(MRNA)$ closed up 14.36 per cent at US$158.83 on 49.22 million shares, 3.7 times its normal volume. For the first time what moved it was not data but a price: Wolfe Research put peak sales for the personalised cancer vaccine intismeran at about US$9.2 billion.

Read the rating carefully, though — it only went from Underperform to Peer Perform, not even to Buy. A rating that moved no further than neutral drove a 14 per cent gain, which tells you what is being bought here is an estimate, not an order book.

Five sessions together make the picture whole: 176.97 per cent on the day the phase 3 data landed, most of it a squeeze; down 23.55 per cent the next day as profits were taken; up 8.86 per cent the day after; down 4.30 per cent on Monday; and Tuesday's 14.36 per cent is new buying. The question has changed — from whether the drug works to how much this platform can sell in a year.

The bear case has not gone away: the full data set has not been published and peak sales are an estimate; revenue over the past 12 months was US$2.23 billion, down 27.6 per cent year on year; and the stock slipped 0.71 per cent after hours.

Memory rebounded across the board on Tuesday: $Micron Technology(MU)$ up 2.48 per cent at US$932.97, $SK hynix(SKHY)$ 2.68 per cent, $Direxion Daily Semiconductors Bull 3x Shares(SOXL)$ 4.06 per cent and $Marvell Technology(MRVL)$ 4.84 per cent. The only one to close lower was $SanDisk Corp.(SNDK)$, down 0.83 per cent at US$1,480.77 — on 18 August BofA called Nvidia the under-owned name and SanDisk the crowded one. On the way down, the heaviest holdings get cut first; on the way up, the most crowded one does not come back with the rest. Monday and Tuesday showed one half each.

Two headlines from the same outlet, side by side: on Monday, Wall Street is pulling out of this year's biggest winners; on Tuesday, inflation worries ease and money moves back into tech. One day apart, opposite directions. A story about positioning can flip in a day. A story about a business cannot.

Hong Kong healthcare is doing the same thing today. $CANSINOBIO(06185)$ is up 16.60 per cent intraday and $INNOVENT BIO(01801)$ 9.09 per cent, with an intraday high of HK$112.70 that is a 52-week high — a 52-week high, not an all-time one.

What lifted Innovent is the interim report published on 25 August, with revenue over the past 12 months up 37.5 per cent; firmer still are the deals already signed: a collaboration with Pfizer on 12 ADC candidates worth up to US$10.5 billion, the China commercialisation rights to Lilly's Verzenios, and SP001 licensed out beyond Greater China for up to about US$1.1 billion.

In the same session, WuXi AppTec is down 2.40 per cent intraday and Hengrui up just 1.20 per cent. The picks-and-shovels names did not follow — the money coming in is picking the ones with data, orders and an interim report, rather than sweeping the whole sector.

Innovent's own side needs saying too: a price-earnings ratio of 125, a forward multiple of 56.6, a Strong Buy from 29 analysts — and an average target of HK$120.16, only about 10 per cent above the current price.

The reason oil fell is the opposite of the story doing the rounds. WTI is at US$80.26 today against a previous close of US$82.36, a third consecutive day lower.

The loudest story is a ceasefire: sources say the United States and Iran have agreed terms including free navigation through Hormuz, to be announced within days. That has one source and no official confirmation, so I am not treating it as fact.

There are several sourced explanations, and they are far more mundane. First, the US measures on Iran landed lighter than traders expected — no secondary sanctions on Iran's trading partners, with Bessent saying those partners would get time to wind down first. Reports also say Iran and Oman are discussing a temporary joint shipping corridor through Hormuz, with technical talks to follow; and Pakistan's army chief visited Tehran, reportedly carrying a proposal tied to sanctions relief. A separate report says the US Navy has cleared mines from the strait.

So what pressed oil down was not the rumour of de-escalation but the fact that the pressure, when it came, was lighter than feared. On a screen those two look the same. In logic they are not.

With oil easing, risk appetite came back. Bitcoin briefly cleared US$80,000 on Tuesday and is back at about US$78,810 today, down 0.20 per cent, with coverage noting it has made back three months of losses in a week. $Strategy(MSTR)$ rose 3.42 per cent, $Coinbase Global, Inc.(COIN)$ 4.28 per cent, and the stablecoin issuer $Circle Internet Corp.(CRCL)$ 4.90 per cent to US$92.02.

Circle's targets are worth setting out, because they were all set this month: Morgan Stanley at US$38 on 3 August; Wolfe on 25 August raising its target from US$50 to US$65 while keeping an Underperform; TD Cowen at US$82 on 3 August; and Bernstein at US$140 on 24 August. Lowest to highest is a factor of 3.7, against a price of US$92.02 and a street average of US$102.04.

The disagreement comes down to how $Circle Internet Corp.(CRCL)$ earns its money: a stablecoin issuer earns mainly interest on its reserves. Rising volumes help it; falling rates thin that income out — which makes tonight's inflation print matter more to Circle than to bitcoin. The stock is down 33 per cent over the past year, and Coinbase's tokenised stocks are already live on Base while the SEC's rules are not.

One line on the conference needs to be precise: Warsh and Bessent meeting head-on is the market's framing, not an agenda either of them has set out. What coverage is actually asking is narrower — whether Warsh will talk down the hawks. Bloomberg put it more bluntly: this week Nvidia will move markets more than Warsh. He speaks at 22:00 Beijing time on 28 August.

The order matters too: July PCE comes first, at 20:30 Beijing time; Nvidia reports after tonight's US close; and Marvell follows after Thursday's close — one headline simply said to forget Nvidia, because Marvell's results matter more to the AI trade, and Marvell itself rose 4.84 per cent on Tuesday.

Money waiting on a set of results does not simply sit still. It went and bought somebody else's rating, somebody else's debt, somebody else's estimate, and a disclosure filing — what those reasons have in common is that none of them has to wait for that report. Once it lands, they will have to queue up again.

The above is personal analysis, not investment advice.

💬 【Talking Point】

$NVIDIA(NVDA)$ does not report until after tonight's US close, yet on Tuesday $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ rose 4.91 per cent on a server-CPU upgrade, $Bloom Energy Corp(BE)$ 6.58 per cent on a disclosure filing, and $NEBIUS(NBIS)$ 5.24 per cent because its convertible sold above the size first planned. Do you read that as money having routed around the results, or as a queue that has to re-form the moment they land?

💰 【Bounty】

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