• Stocks: The busiest week of the quarter began on a mixed note, as lower crude prices propped up the Dow while a selloff across tech stocks pummeled the Nasdaq, and the S&P 500 ended the day nearly flat.
• Commodities: Oil prices tumbled after the US and Iran halted fighting for a third night in a row to give negotiations a chance to play out. President Trump said there’s “a good chance” that the pause in attacks will bring a lasting peace. “If it doesn’t, we go back to doing what we were doing,” he warned.
• Crypto: Wall Street is getting worried that crypto and quantum computing are on a collision course, as quantum threatens to undercut the security of crypto algorithms.

AI

Pedro Pardo/Getty Images, Adobe Stock

China’s AI race has largely revolved around names like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent. Today, a new contender stole the spotlight.

Memory chip maker CXMT soared 466% in its Shanghai STAR Market debut after raising $8.6 billion, making it the most valuable company listed in mainland China. If you haven’t heard of CXMT before today, you’ll be hearing about it a lot more in the future: It’s now the world’s fourth-largest DRAM maker with a 7.67% market share as of last year, and it grew first-quarter revenue from less than $1 billion a year ago to $7.5 billion this year.

Memory wars

CMXT is steadily gaining ground in a memory chip race long dominated by Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix. Investors are already taking notice: Today Micron fell 2.25% and SK Hynix dropped 7.47%. It was another blow to an AI trade that’s been running out of steam, and the selloff quickly spread to other tech heavyweights like Sandisk (down 11.02% today) and Seagate (down 4.07%)

Last year, CXMT accounted for 9% of global DRAM bit shipments, and SemiAnalysis expects that number to reach 12% by 2027. Apple could provide another tailwind: The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is seeking the Trump administration’s approval to use CXMT and other Chinese memory chips in devices sold outside the US, a move that would diversify its supply chain as memory costs continue to weigh on margins. Micron, of course, has urged the administration to reject the proposal, warning that it could do to the US chip industry what Chinese competition did to American steel and manufacturing.

That said, CXMT still has ground to make up. Even after its blockbuster debut, the company’s roughly $484 billion market cap remains well below the industry’s heavyweights, with Samsung and Micron each worth around $1 trillion.

China’s IPO pipeline

CXMT may be the first of several blockbuster Chinese tech listings on the docket. NAND memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies is reportedly preparing a Shanghai IPO this year while internally targeting a roughly $148 billion valuation, according to Reuters. Then there’s DeepSeek, which has been linked to a potential IPO next year after reportedly reaching a valuation north of $50 billion.

But China’s AI ambitions go well beyond the IPO market. The country is now building its own immersion deep-ultraviolet lithography machines, a critical piece of equipment used to manufacture cutting-edge chips. The development knocked ASML, the longtime leader in the technology, down 5.8% today, while Nvidia fell 4.99%.

One thing is becoming increasingly clear: As Chinese companies quickly catch up to their US counterparts, the AI trade may never be the same.—SY

      

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Stocks

🟢 What’s up

• Forte Biosciences surged 39.65% after agreeing to a $2.2 billion cash buyout by argenx.
• Rivian Automotive gained 4.04% following a Piper Sandler upgrade on stronger delivery expectations and optimism around its upcoming R2 SUV.
• Brown-Forman climbed 5.06% after rejecting a $15 billion takeover offer from Sazerac, saying the bid undervalued the company.
• Baker Hughes rose 5.83% thanks to second-quarter earnings and revenue that topped expectations.
• Rocket Lab gained 4.74% after announcing a $266 million contract with the US Space Force.
• D-Wave Quantum rallied 20.36% on an expanded partnership with AT&T to develop quantum computing applications.
• Comcast climbed 2.27% on news of a deal with Alphabet to give Youtube Premium subscribers access to Peacock.
• Tyson Foods popped 5.67% and JBS rose 10.34% after the US moved to resume cattle imports from Mexico, easing supply shortages that have driven up livestock costs.

🔴 What’s down

• Cracker Barrel fell 2.38% after CEO Julie Masino stepped down following a three-year turnaround effort that alienated some longtime customers.
• SpaceX slipped 1.36% despite completing a successful Starship test flight.
• Legend Biotech tumbled 13.28% following the abrupt departure of its CEO.
• MapLight Therapeutics plunged 72.91% after mixed Phase 2 results for its schizophrenia treatment disappointed investors.

Call of the day

Don't get caught up in IPO mania

Morning Brew Inc.

SpaceX made its debut with a market value of nearly $1.8 trillion, making it the largest IPO in history. It was one of 48 companies that hit the market last quarter, which raised a combined $105 billion—the biggest quarter for IPO proceeds since 2021. And if you zoom out even further, the proceeds from the 72 IPOs debuting in the first half of this year hit $128 billion, or 646% higher than the first half of 2025.

No matter which way you slice it, IPOs are making a serious comeback this year—and that could be a bad thing, according to Owen Lamont, senior vice president and portfolio manager at Acadian Asset Management.

“If the recent increase in activity turns into a wave of issuance, I would view that as a symptom that the market is overvalued and in a bubble,” he said in a recent note published by Goldman Sachs. “Firms are smart—they want to sell equity when equity is overpriced. While an issuance wave is just one symptom of a bubble, not a diagnosis on its own, it is a strong one. It worked well in 2021, when a huge wave of issuance, including IPOs and SPACs, proved a great time to underweight US equities.”

But Lamont isn’t warning investors to abandon ship just yet. He pointed out that a wave of IPOs could last for years, and may not mark the end of a bubble, but the beginning. He also noted that new technology, like AI, demands new capital in order to grow, so more IPOs could be perfectly natural—though he noted that periods with lots of new IPOs coupled with big capex figures often result in disappointment for investors, like the dot-com bubble.

While only time will tell if all these new IPOs signal serious problems with today’s market, for now, Lamont’s advice is to avoid throwing your money at the next hot thing to hit markets: “IPOs are like bananas: they need to ripen before they’re ready to eat.”—MR

Investing

Morning Brew Inc.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself: Gosh, it would be great to buy enough leveraged SpaceX to give Warren Buffett a heart attack—then this is your lucky day.

CME Futures Group launched single-stock futures today, enabling investors to bet big on some of the most popular US stocks without even owning a share. And if that wasn’t enough to excite you, CME’s single-stock futures will be available to trade 23 hours a day, 5 days a week. The exchange is starting by rolling out futures contracts on just 55 stocks, including Nvidia, Micron, and Palantir, with a contract representing 100 shares of each stock. The exchange is also rolling out 22 “micro-single stock futures” which represent 10 shares of the underlying stock.

CME Group actually first tried this 24 years ago, but the idea flopped after investors didn’t show enough interest. Today, however, is a very different market.

How it works: When you hear futures, you might think of commodities trading. But futures work similarly for other assets. Essentially, single-stock futures let you speculate on a company without using options, which makes it more accessible for the average retail investor. One of the most practical uses, according to Bloomberg, is to gain exposure to a popular stock that has limited share inventory—like SpaceX’s recent IPO, for example.

ETF: Every Trade Flies

It feels like only a few short years ago that Wall Street looked at the r/WallStreetBets crowd with disdain. But over the past few years, those degenerates have become a solid customer base, and retail-friendly investing options are flooding the financial menu.

Single-stock futures aren’t the only new innovation targeting retail traders. Exchange-traded funds, the investment vehicle that popularized passive investing and brought the “set it and forget it” retirement-savings strategy to the masses, are now being wielded for some mind-boggling trading purposes. Some of the most popular options on the market include inverse and leveraged single-stock ETFs, as well as thematic funds covering booming industries, like memory chips.

Zoom out: Do most people seeking a well-rounded portfolio need leveraged exposure to single-stock futures of ETFs? No. Will there always be a market for high-risk, high-reward trading that’s more like gambling than investing? Yes. The only difference is that the market (and our economy) is catering more and more to the latter.—LB

      

News

• Nvidia and OpenAI are discussing a potential $250 billion backstop to help fund a massive datacenter expansion.
• Relatedly, investors are freaked out by Nvidia’s latest $750 billion dealmaking spree.
• One of the earliest architects of financial AI algorithms says he wouldn’t trust a chatbot to manage his money.
• Here’s how Pimco, one of the biggest critics of private credit, got in on the datacenter boom.
• Ford is giving itself a facelift, trying to become the new Nike.
• Kalshi is crashing out over a new Netflix documentary on prediction markets—take a look at the trailer here.

Calendar

Economic reports: It’s a quiet start to what will likely be one of the busiest weeks of the year, with just the advance economic indicators report, as well as the wholesale and retail inventories report.

Earnings announcements: Coca-Cola, Boeing, Visa, PayPal, UPS, Corning, Ford, Seagate, S&P Global, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Hilton Worldwide, Sherwin-Williams, Bloom Energy, Teradyne, Mondelez International, and The Cheesecake Factory keep the earnings rolling in.

recs

🔪 Meet ‘the Assassin’ of Wall Street: After being featured in two Netflix documentaries detailing her victories, a famed short seller is reinventing herself.

💳 What’s in your wallet? This guide compares and contrasts five high-end credit cards, breaking down all the perks and pitfalls for each.

🏦 There’s a cheaper way to play the AI trade: Here are the regional banks profiting from the boom just like their bigger competitors, but at a cheaper valuation.

🏆 Growth at a reasonable price is the gold standard of good investing. Here are five great stocks to buy now while the price is still right.

🏈 Sports Brew: The worldwide leader in sports is a shell of its former self. Take a look inside ESPN’s new era as the business of sports media rapidly evolves.

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