You know what they say—when in a corporate drought, recruit a popular celebrity to do the leg work for you.

That playbook seems to have worked for American Eagle, which saw its shares surge nearly 18% in premarket trading after unveiling a new campaign with actress Sydney Sweeney, known for her role in drama series Euphoria and romcom Anyone But You. Shares ended the day up 4.25%.

The denim ad, entitled “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” comes at a tough time for the mall staple. Shares of American Eagle have sunk 32.27% in 2025, thanks to a broader consumer slowdown and fears that tariffs will hurt sales. Back in May, the company pulled its full-year guidance.

But today’s ad campaign triggered a different kind of revival for the company: a wave of retail trader attention. Like many meme favorites, AEO has steep short bets against it, which tends to drive interest from retail traders. Roughly 13% of available American Eagle shares are sold short, according to CNBC.

Meme-ing all the way to the top

American Eagle is just the latest nostalgic name to be elevated to meme status by a group of r/WallStreetBets loyalists, who started posting about AEO last night.

Other companies swept up in the latest meme stock craze this week include GoPro, Krispy Kreme, Opendoor, and Kohl’s. To outsiders, the names may seem totally random, but retail traders tend to go for household names with high short interest, buying shares en masse in order to to “squeeze” short sellers, who are forced to buy more shares to cover their bets, thereby pushing the stock even higher.

The recent meme stock madness has sparked a search for the next stock preparing to pop. Other highly shorted names include Hims & Hers, Wayfair, Etsy, and Rivian, according to Barron’s, while CNBC highlighted stocks like Beyond Meat and 1-800-Flowers.

Retail rewind: Retail traders became a force to be reckoned with during the pandemic years, beginning with the notorious GameStop short squeeze of January 2021. But since then, these average Joes have built increasing sway in the financial system.

With the Nasdaq and S&P 500 hitting fresh all-time highs this week, the meme traders are back and more confident than ever. These days, regulators and brokerages alike are making it easier to feed the meme frenzy in the hopes of keeping the rally going and raking in retail cash—which means we may get to see what kind of damage meme stock traders can cause when the leash really comes off.—LB

🟢 What’s up

• Las Vegas Sands added 4.31% after crushing analyst estimates last quarter.
• Deutsche Bank rose 7.83% to a decade high after shareholders applauded the financial firm’s turnaround efforts.
• T-Mobile US gained 5.8% thanks to a better-than-expected quarter for the telecom giant.
• Bloom Energy popped 22.95% on the news that it made a deal with Oracle to provide the tech company’s AI data centers with power.
• Enterprise software maker ServiceNow jumped 4.16% on management’s promise of more AI growth ahead.
• West Pharmaceutical Services soared 22.78% on the news that demand for GLP-1 products remains strong.

What’s down

• IBM dropped 7.62% despite beating analysts expectations on the top and bottom lines last quarter. Shareholders didn’t like to hear management warn of slowing software sales.
• UnitedHealth Group fell 4.76% on reports that the health insurer is cooperating with the DOJ’s investigation into its Medicare billing practices.
• Tough day for airlines: American Airlines sank 9.62% after lowering its forward guidance, and Southwest Airlines lost 11.16% after missing analyst earnings estimates.
• Luxury goods maker LVMH sank 3.66% after sales fell 4% last quarter as the high-fashion industry gets hit with tariff turmoil.
• Union Pacific fell 4.43% after it confirmed it’s in talks to acquire smaller rival Norfolk Southern, which also lost 0.81%.
• Honeywell International beat-and-raised earnings last quarter, but the stock still stumbled 6.18% lower.

July 4th has come and gone, which means that retailers are already preparing for Halloween. But one company’s scary-bad earnings really put the “boo” in boo-rito.

Chipotle tumbled 13.34% after the fast casual behemoth reported its second straight quarter of slowing sales, and Q2 same-store sales dropped 4%—below Wall Street expectations of a 2.9% decrease, and a steep decline from the 0.4% drop it reported in the first quarter.

Management did its best to shrug off the blame, noting that consumer concerns about tariffs caused customers to close their wallets, and promising that sales will recover. But, although you can spin the story however you want on an earnings call, you can’t lie to the SEC: Chipotle now expects same-store sales to remain “flat” through the rest of the fiscal year, the second straight quarter the company has cut forecasts.

One tough quarter is an anomaly, but two is a pattern. If Chipotle wants to boost foot traffic, it’ll need to make this year’s Boorito event one to remember.

Just like Klaus carried The Vampire Diaries, the Mag 7 is essentially carrying the whole S&P 500 on its back right now—which makes its Q2 earning announcements higher stakes than ever.

Alphabet and Tesla kicked things off late yesterday, reporting right after the bell. As predicted, all roads lead back to two key, tricky themes: politics and AI.

Driving downhill

Tesla had a tough quarter, and not just because the cloud of Elon Musk’s political fallout with President Trump is still hanging over the company.

Shares sank 8.2% today after the EV company reported that auto sales fell 16%, the second straight quarter the metric has declined and Tesla's worst quarterly sales drop in over a decade. The company pointed to headwinds like cutthroat competition from China, but promised a cheaper car was on its way later this year to eventually boost sales.

Perhaps even more concerning to investors was Musk’s warning that Tesla’s losing streak could continue for “a few rough quarters” due to the expiration of federal EV credits in the big, beautiful bill that was just passed by Congress.

Tesla, which is the worst performing member of the Magnificent Seven, has declined 24.4% year to date.

Analysts and investors have been begging Musk to get back to his desk and abandon his political aspirations for months. “If Musk continues to lead and remain in the driver’s seat at this pace, we believe Tesla is on a path to an accelerated growth path over the coming years with deliveries expected to ramp in the back-half of 2025 following the Model Y refresh cycle,” wrote Tesla bull Dan Ives yesterday.

Alphabet spells “AI”

Shares of Google parent company Alphabet rose 1.02% after beating top and bottom line expectations. The search giant also upped its capital expenditures forecast by $10 billion, and now plans to shell out $85 billion this year—not too shabby.

Investors have closely scrutinized big tech’s capex spending, which largely goes toward building and powering cost-intensive data centers. Companies like Alphabet are banking on surging demand for AI to justify the huge sums, and there's no sign of a slowdown: Management said on the earnings call it will likely increase its capex spending in 2026.

Another surprising bright spot was the company’s search business revenue, which rose 12% year over year, despite a surge of AI-driven chatbots that have fiercely competed with Google. Its “AI overview” product now has two billion monthly users, a sharp increase from the 1.5 billion last quarter, management noted.—LB

• The NFL is reportedly in negotiations with Disney to acquire a 10% stake in ESPN.
• $1 billion worth of Nvidia chips were smuggled from the US into China in the weeks following President Trump’s heightened export controls.
• The key to trade deal negotiations with China may just be TikTok.
• US business growth hit a 2025 high last month thanks to strong service industry activity, even as manufacturing slowed.
• Walmart is rolling out “super agents,” AI bots designed to boost the retailer’s e-commerce business.
• The US will once again allow Chevron to pump oil in Venezuela.
• New home sales in June came in lower than expected, pushing inventory higher.

The earning and economic calendars both shift into lower gear tomorrow as Wall Street scoots out of the office early for a summer Friday.

The only report worth watching is durable goods orders, while on the earnings side of the equation we'll hear from HCA Holdings, Charter Communications, Philips 66, Centene, Booz Allen Hamilton, and AutoNation.