00:06 Speaker A
It’s time now for today’s trending tickers. And we start with chips. So much for an AI bubble. Some companies are still experiencing an absolute boom.
00:18 Speaker A
Look at this, SK Hynix, the main supplier of high bandwidth memory to Nvidia, is soaring in Soul in Korea up more than 7% today.
00:27 Speaker A
It isn’t necessarily linked to President Trump touting stronger trade relations with South Korea. Rather, this comes after the AI memory maker posted strong results amid surging demand for AI chips.
00:38 Speaker A
A couple of key numbers. Operating profit surged 62%. And the company has already sold out its planned supply for all of 2026.
00:49 Speaker A
And Nvidia is still at the heart of the action today, even if limited supply from SK Hynix and others may limit its speed. Nvidia is rising again to new records in pre-market.
00:59 Speaker A
The latest catalyst after some major announcements yesterday, Nvidia is now getting a boost from the optimism around Trump’s trade talks with Xi Jinping and Nvidia’s prospects in China.
01:07 Speaker A
One bit of potentially bad news for whoever’s invested in Nvidia’s partnerships announced yesterday. Nokia, the Finnish cloud provider that rose more than 22% in New York yesterday, is now giving up a chunk of those gains, down sharply in Helsinki and down around 3 and a half% in new pre-market in New York.
01:25 Speaker A
Two other chip stocks to watch, Intel and AMD, which are continuing to rise in the pre-market.
01:32 Speaker A
And finally, one outlier, the Dutch leader in chipmaking machines, ASM International, which dropped on the news it had missed forecasts due to challenges in China. Now it’s down over 2.4%.
01:43 Speaker A
The second batch of stocks to watch, car makers. Mercedes-Benz shot up more than 5.3% in Germany after it confirmed its annual outlook and announced a 2 billion euro share buyback.
01:53 Speaker A
It’s actually a mixed picture with profits slumping on weak China sales and tariffs. But analysts at JP Morgan called it a very strong quarter in the current context.
02:04 Speaker A
Things look very different at Toyota, which is going against the grain at a time where most car makers are pivoting back to hybrid and combustion engines.
02:11 Speaker A
At the Tokyo Motor Show, Toyota announced a more electrified fleet including an electric Corolla concept car. Even though Toyota just announced record sales growth of 4.7% for the quarter despite tariffs, the stock is deep in the red today.
02:25 Speaker A
And finally, let’s check the magnificent 7 club members reporting today and tomorrow. Let’s have a quick look through them. Yes, Microsoft, Microsoft, Alphabet, which is the parent of Google, Amazon, and Meta, um, uh and Microsoft there as well.
02:43 Speaker A
Only one in the red, Amazon, down just slightly off its uh just down off the flat line there as you can see.
02:50 Speaker A
But the others all in the green. Tech stocks, well, they’ve been rallying this week on sustained AI demand and US-China trade hopes. There’s been a slew of news around Microsoft and Open AI and there’s a lot of anticipation as to what will happen once the latest earnings reports come out.
03:03 Speaker A
And another reoccurring headline this week has been layoffs. Now, Amazon, Target, and UPS have announced big cuts. In the case of UPS, the news that it would axe 48,000 jobs sparked a stock surge. It went up 8% yesterday.