Today’s Market Recap:SanDisk Surges Over 13% to Lead Storage Sector, S&P 500 Hits Record High

Inflation cooled more than expected, with the July PPI falling to 4.7% year-over-year, but the divergence between the CPI and PPI widened. In the U.S., the July PPI remained flat month-over-month and fell to 4.7% year-over-year, while the core PPI dropped to 4.2% year-over-year, driven primarily by falling energy prices, with service price growth also slowing. The divergence between the CPI and PPI trends intensified, putting pressure on corporate profit margins.

Internal divisions within the Federal Reserve have intensified, and uncertainty surrounding the September interest rate path has increased. Richmond Fed President Barkin supports keeping interest rates unchanged, arguing that inflation stems primarily from temporary shocks, but warns that AI investment and supply chain issues could lead to persistent price pressures; Cleveland Fed President Hamack, however, maintains a hawkish stance on rate hikes and cautions against financial stability risks such as U.S. Treasury leverage and an AI bubble. With the unemployment rate remaining low amid mixed economic data, the outlook for the Fed’s September policy meeting remains unclear.

Anthropic plans to go public at a $2 trillion valuation, which could make it the largest IPO in history. According to media reports, six shareholders revealed that Anthropic’s rapidly growing revenue will support more than doubling its valuation in its fall IPO. Annualized revenue is projected to reach $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of 2026, and investors are betting on the company’s valuation doubling.

On the eve of its IPO, Anthropic is making another major move, planning a $6 billion acquisition of chip optimization firm Decart AI. The parent company of Claude intends to spend $6 billion to acquire “world model” startup Decart, setting a new record for its largest merger and acquisition. Faced with heavy pressure from computing costs ahead of the IPO, it remains to be seen whether this strategic gamble—targeting core cost-reduction technologies—will help the company break through in the AI arms race.

SanDisk has set “ultra-high” long-term targets, with a gross margin of up to 80% projected for FY2028–30, sending its stock price up more than 13%. SanDisk expects a non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 80%, an operating margin of about 75%, and an adjusted free cash flow margin of roughly 50% for fiscal years 2028 through 2030, and has committed to returning 100% of remaining cash to shareholders after completing business investments. The company’s long-term target for input bit volume growth is in the mid-to-high double digits, but the volume of bits available for sale will be adjusted flexibly; it has signed long-term agreements with eight major customers, covering approximately two-thirds of its bit shipments for fiscal year 2028; the total addressable market (TAM) for enterprise-grade flash memory is projected to reach 1.2 ZB by 2030.

Workday surged as much as 30% at one point, driving software stocks higher, following reports that Silver Lake is considering an acquisition of Workday. According to media reports, private equity giant Silver Lake is in negotiations to acquire Workday. The news drove Workday’s stock price up as much as 30% during intraday trading and spurred a collective rally in AI software stocks such as Cloudflare, Palantir, and Salesforce. Workday had previously been a prime example of the “AI disrupting software” narrative but had fallen 18% year-to-date as of Wednesday’s close.

Google has launched Gemini 3.7 Flash to accelerate the iteration of low-cost agent models. As the latest version in the Flash series, Gemini 3.7 Flash focuses on programming, agent systems, and complex knowledge-based work scenarios. Google states that its performance in software engineering, web development, and knowledge-intensive tasks has significantly improved compared to 3.6 Flash. In terms of coding capabilities, the new model can better handle debugging, bug fixing, and production-level code generation tasks.

The table below lists the ten most actively traded stocks in the market recently. Backed by massive trading volumes and excellent liquidity, these assets have become key benchmarks for tracking global market dynamics.