May 13th Market Overview

Happy Wednesday

The market closed at a fresh record, but you wouldn't know it looking at most portfolios. Tech carried the water while everything else basically snaked. The split feels even louder with oil sitting at $107. Days like this is why I advocate so hard for using the breadth tool I built.

Let’s dig in...

Today's Big Picture

Tech Masked A Weak Tape

The S&P printed a new record but the breadth was ugly. Two-thirds of the index closed red. Six of the Mag 7 added roughly half a trillion in market cap in one session. AI stocks are where money went to hide from the inflation prints and the oil shock.

Warsh Gets The Gavel

Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as Fed chair this afternoon, 54-45. He takes over from Powell on Friday. The thirty-year is still above 5 and Boston Fed President Susan Collins is talking openly about rate hikes. Not a soft landing setup.

Ford Becomes A Power Play

Best day since March 2020. Morgan Stanley flagged Ford Energy, the company's stationary battery storage business, as worth roughly $10 billion that nobody's pricing in. An old-line carmaker getting bid as data center infrastructure.

Market Overview

Index Performance

Stock Spotlight

Apple $AAPL ( ▲ 1.38% )  
crossed $300 for the first time ever, an all-time high going back to its 1980 IPO. Tim Cook is in Beijing with the delegation.

Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 2.29% )  
hit an intraday record. Huang's last-minute trip reads like a real signal on chip export rules.

Ford $F ( ▲ 13.18% )  
up double digits on the Morgan Stanley Ford Energy thesis. The bank expects a major commercial supply deal in the next few months.

Akamai $AKAM ( ▲ 7.74% )  
upgraded to buy at Bank of America. The pitch is the move from legacy delivery network to a real AI infrastructure platform.

Big Name Updates

Alphabet $GOOGL ( ▲ 3.94% )  
best day since April. The stock has added roughly a trillion and a half in market cap since the late March lows.

Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 2.73% )  
touched a four-month high. Musk was on the Beijing flight too.

Microsoft $MSFT ( ▼ 0.63% )  
down a fourth straight day. Only Mag 7 name in the red.

SoftBank $SFTBY ( ▲ 6.04% )  
quadrupled annual profit on OpenAI valuation gains. The stock basically trades as an OpenAI proxy now.

Other Notable Company News

Cisco $CSCO ( ▲ 2.6% )  
at all-time highs back to its 1990 IPO after beating earnings.

Alibaba $BABA ( ▲ 8.18% )  
core profit dropped hard as it spends on cloud and quick-delivery buildout.

Micron $MU ( ▲ 4.83% )  
at record highs. Memory pricing came up over 500 times on earnings calls this year, the most ever.

Johnson & Johnson $JNJ ( ▲ 2.75% ) upgraded to outperform at Leerink on new drug momentum.

GameStop $GME ( ▼ 1.3% )  
CEO Ryan Cohen says he still wants to buy eBay despite the board rejection.

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Sector Watch

Bond Market

The ten-year closed around 4.48, the highest level since last July. The thirty-year is still above 5. Both yields are up meaningfully over the past five sessions as traders reprice the hot inflation data.

The bond market and the tech tape are telling two different stories right now. One of them is wrong.

Policy Watch

Fed

Kevin Warsh is officially the next Fed chair. Powell works his final day on Friday.

• Boston Fed President Susan Collins said she could see the need for rate hikes if the energy shock sticks around. She doesn't vote this year, but her framing tells you the conversation happening inside the building.

International

Trump landed in Beijing. The actual summit with Xi starts tomorrow.

• Treasury Secretary Bessent wrapped three hours of pre-talks with Vice Premier He Lifeng in Korea.

• India more than doubled gold and silver import tariffs. Modi publicly asked citizens to stop buying gold as the country's oil bill stretches foreign reserves.

Regulatory

• Bessent met privately with state insurance commissioners last week about private credit risk in life and annuity portfolios. The holdings have ballooned, and Washington is paying attention.
  

What to Watch

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Applied Materials Earnings

Reports after the bell tomorrow. This is the cleanest read on memory and AI capex heading into year-end. With the memory crunch extending, the order book matters more than the print.

Cerebras IPO

Second AI offering of the week hits tomorrow under ticker CBRS. Fervo opened well today, so appetite for new issues is real.

Retail Sales

Tomorrow morning. The retail ETF is on pace for its worst week since October. This print tells us if the consumer is genuinely rolling over or just rotating out of cyclicals.

Thanks for reading - you are now the more informed 🙂

- John

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