TradingKey

As US inflation data continued to show signs of cooling, risk appetite in US equities rebounded. All three major US stock indexes advanced, with the S&P 500 hitting an all-time high. Memory chip stocks led the gains. At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.13% to 53,839.99; the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.81% to 26,803.03; and the S&P 500 Index climbed 0.65% to 7,798.99.

On August 13 Eastern Time, Intel (INTC) shares broke through the $105 mark. The catalyst for the stock price was Intel's recently announced $20 billion financing plan. UBS stated that the $20 billion financing plan announced by Intel this week has likely eliminated the long-standing uncertainties hanging over its stock price. UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri pointed out that, combined with the advance payments and financial commitments attached to several foundry agreements Intel is finalizing—with Google believed to have reached a deal on EMIB-T technology, Apple involved with M-series chips, alongside AMD, SpaceX, and other potential clients—this round of financing is sufficient to support the subsequent buildout investments for its foundry business.

Google (GOOGL) has launched Gemini 3.7 Flash, further accelerating the iteration of its low-cost agent models. As the latest release in the Flash series, Gemini 3.7 Flash focuses on coding, AI agents, and complex knowledge work scenarios, coming just three weeks after the launch of Gemini 3.6 Flash.

SanDisk (SNDK) has surpassed $1,500. The market is no longer trading just the NAND price cycle, but a longer-term thesis: As AI transitions from training to large-scale inference, can flash memory become an AI infrastructure asset that sits closer to compute and offers greater demand visibility?

On August 13, Eastern Time, risk appetite in U.S. equities rebounded. The S&P 500 Index rose 0.85% intraday to hit a record high of 7,816.7 points; the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1.04%; and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.34%. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index advanced 2.07%, serving as a major driver of the market's upward momentum. The core factor strengthening risk assets was the continuous signal of easing U.S. inflation data. Data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on the same day showed that the July Producer Price Index (PPI) was flat month-on-month, below market expectations for a modest increase, while the year-on-year gain slowed from 5.5% in June to 4.7%.

SPCX at $146.24 reclaimed $135 IPO price after 92% Q2 revenue growth. Starlink 12M subs, AI $2.56B, $14.1B contracts. Testing $154.36 breakout on bullish technicals.

Palantir crushed Q2 with 93% revenue growth, Rule of 40 at 155%. Stock pulled back to $171.10 after hitting $179.45. $166.32 support critical, $179.45 resistance next.

Market rumors suggest that AI startup Anthropic, driven by rapidly surging revenue, could see its valuation more than double from current levels to $2 trillion or even higher. If achieved, this would mean Anthropic surpassing SpaceX to record the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. However, just how likely is this scenario?

TradingKey - Data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday showed that the U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI) was flat month-on-month in July, coming in below market expectations of a 0.2% gain. Year-on-year, it rose 4.7%, marking a notable slowdown from 5.5% in June and below market forecasts of 4.9%, indicating that producer-side inflationary pressures in the U.S. are cooling.

AMAT recovered from $436 low to $548.34, testing $554.94 breakout. Q3 earnings tonight (Aug 13 AC): $9B revenue expected. Breakout could expose $582-650 on beat.

TradingKey - On Thursday, August 13 (ET), futures on the three major U.S. stock indices rose slightly in pre-market trading as markets awaited the U.S. July Producer Price Index (PPI) and initial jobless claims data. In the previous session, mild CPI figures and AI earnings reports propelled a rally in U.S. stocks, bringing the S&P 500 Index close to a record high. However, ahead of the PPI release, investors remained cautious as they evaluated the balance among inflation, interest rates, and AI valuations.

Cisco rallied to $123.88 testing $124.62 descending trendline. Q4 earnings tonight: $9B revenue expected. Stock poised for breakout toward $129.75 on AI networking demand.

IBM partners with OpenAI to expand into enterprise AI, sending its stock surging toward $240.

South Korea's sovereign wealth fund, KIC, has purchased shares of Circle for the first time, providing the company with a significant institutional endorsement.

TradingKey - Billionaire investor Bill Ackman's Pershing Square revealed in its latest disclosure that the firm initiated a new position in Netflix (NFLX) in the second quarter, while also buying Visa (V), Mastercard (MA), S&P Global (SPGI), Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), and Alcon (ALC), adding a total of six companies.

The KOSPI index has rebounded by over 30% to surpass 6,800 points, primarily driven by short covering, a recovery in Samsung and SK Hynix, and expectations of Federal Reserve rate cuts. Although it has technically re-entered a bull market, it still faces high volatility and selling pressure from trapped positions. If the index fails to hold the 5,000-point level, investors should beware of a potential bull trap.

TradingKey - On August 12 ET, Counterpoint Research released its Q2 2026 memory market report. YMTC climbed to third place globally for the first time with a 14% NAND shipment share, trailing only Samsung (25%) and SK Hynix (SKHY) (22%), and slightly surpassing Kioxia; Micron (MU) ranked fifth with 13%.

TradingKey - On August 12, SanDisk (SNDK) and Japan's Kioxia jointly announced their ninth-generation high-performance 2Tb QLC 3D NAND flash memory technology, targeting AI infrastructure, cloud computing, and other data-intensive applications. The launch of the new product has once again focused market attention on a sector being redefined by AI: beyond GPUs and HBM, as AI model training, inference, and data processing scale up, the market's positive feedback on next-generation flash technology stems both from product performance itself and from investor expectations of AI-driven growth in NAND demand. Over the past year, SanDisk has become one of the strongest-performing memory stocks in the U.S. market. However, its share price suffered a sharp pullback after reaching an all-time high of $2,335 in June and remains subject to severe volatility recently. SanDisk's stock price dropped 13.3% in a single day following its early-August earnings announcement, despite the company...

TradingKey - As of the Asian session on August 13, gold prices (XAUUSD) pulled back intraday after yesterday's CPI pushed them up near $4,450, with the latest price trading around $4,380. This indicates that the market remains cautious ahead of the PPI data release, as profit-taking by some investors has driven the pullback in gold prices.

TradingKey - On August 13, Japanese and South Korean stock markets extended their previous upward momentum at the close, with SK Hynix rising nearly 6%, Samsung Electronics gaining nearly 5%, and Kioxia climbing nearly 4%.