Daily Market Notes

Bitcoin jumped nearly 8% on Aug. 19 toward $69,500 and forced a record ~$2.7 billion of crypto short liquidations, including more than $1 billion of Bitcoin shorts in about an hour. Two-day short wipeouts through Aug. 20 ran past $3.1 billion as price reports pushed toward $72,000. Read →

Moderna and Merck’s Phase 3 INTerpath-001 melanoma trial met RFS and DMFS on Aug. 19. Barron’s put Wednesday’s gain at 177%. Thursday the stock reversed hard — more than 9% in pre-market per Schwab, with session reports of a much larger fade — as the tape digested a historic one-day spike, not a new trial miss. Read →

Brent settled $91.62 and WTI $85.83 on Aug. 19, the highest in nearly four weeks, as Strait of Hormuz traffic stayed slow and the UAE suspended economic transactions with Iran. Thursday the climb extended, with Brent reported toward the low $90s as U.S. SPR commentary added a second supply scare. Read →

Walmart’s U.S. comparable sales rose 2.6% in Q2, short of Street estimates around 3.7–3.8% and the slowest pace since 2020. Shares fell about 9% even after a revenue/EPS beat and a raised full-year outlook. Management flagged more than $2 billion of incremental fuel-cost headwinds this year. Read →

July FOMC minutes are due Aug. 19 at 2 p.m. ET. The committee held 3.50–3.75% on a 9–3 vote. Hammack, Kashkari, and Logan wanted +25 bp. The minutes show how far that hawkish lean went. Read →

Moderna and Merck’s personalized melanoma vaccine cut recurrence or death 49% versus Keytruda alone at five years in Phase 2b KEYNOTE-942. Phase 3 INTerpath-001 is fully enrolled. There is no new Aug. 19 trial print. Read →

SK Hynix will buy back and cancel 40 trillion won (~$29 billion) of treasury shares, as many as 24 million, from Aug. 20 to Nov. 19, after the stock fell more than 50% in two months. Read →

Trump paused 50% tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian imports for three days after a last-minute deal, hours before a 12:01 a.m. Wednesday deadline. Documents still have to close. Read →

Hangzhou’s Unitree Robotics, ticker 688836, listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market on Aug. 19. Shares ran from a ¥150.80 IPO price to as high as ¥1,100, then eased toward ¥900 — still about a 500% first-day gain. Read →

Five vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday and none on Sunday, against 31 the weekend before. Traffic is down about 90% since the war began, and the 60-day US-Iran arrangement expired Monday. Read →

At a Garden City rally Trump told drivers a tiny bit more for gasoline is worth stopping a nuclear Iran, then said he would soon declare the Strait of Hormuz US territory. Iran called it fanciful delusions. Read →

Michael Burry added to a short position in Nebius at $247, calling it what the top of a boom looks like. The case rests on server depreciation schedules and what customers pay for short-term compute. Read →

Lip-Bu Tan bought 105,263 Intel shares at $95.00 on August 11. The Form 4 shows the shares landed in a family trust, an indirect holding, and he bought after the stock had already run. Read →

Retail sales fell 0.6% in July against a Reuters consensus of +0.1%, the sharpest drop since May 2025. The S&P 500 eased 0.2% from its record to 7,786.76. Read →

A BofA estimate that Broadcom's AI financing platform could carry $370 billion in senior debt by 2029 sent shares down 5%. Broadcom does not owe that figure directly. Read →

S&P Dow Jones Indices confirmed Reddit enters the S&P 500 before the open on August 18, replacing AvalonBay Communities. Shares closed up 12.63% at $178.09. Read →

Spot gold traded a $4,310.73 to $4,389.37 range and fell below $4,350 in the U.S. session on profit-taking and a softer dollar, with September rate-cut odds the dominant driver. Read →

Shares surged roughly 17-18% on reports of Silver Lake interest, briefly halted for volatility. The reported deal values the company near $43 billion. Read →

July producer prices came in unchanged month over month against a +0.2% consensus. The S&P 500 closed at 7,798.99, up 0.65%, its 27th record close of 2026. Read →

The commission canceled its scheduled August 14 meeting on Chair Paul Atkins' Reg Crypto proposal and delayed a tokenization exemption tied to Section 10505 of the CLARITY Act. Read →

Guidance for mid-to-high-teens annual revenue growth from fiscal 2028 through 2030, with roughly 80% gross margins and 75% operating margins, sent shares up about 14%. Read →

Micron rose 6%, SK Hynix ADRs 8%, Western Digital 8% and SanDisk about 14% on the same investor-day catalyst. A correlated move is a read on pricing, not on companies. Read →

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Navy can maintain a blockade indefinitely by rotating ships, a day after Iran asserted control of the strait. Read →

Record Q4 revenue near $17.3B, up 18%, EPS of $1.22, and $4 billion in hyperscaler AI orders in the quarter alone. The stock dropped about 9% on margin compression. Read →