Good Afternoon. On this date in 1962, Telstar 1 launched and beamed the first live transatlantic TV signal: a fuzzy JFK press conference, seven minutes long, from Andover, Maine to Pleumeur-Bodou, France.

Sixty-four years later, Korea's SK Hynix took a shorter trip — from Seoul to the Nasdaq trading floor — in what became the largest foreign listing in US history. The memory chips inside every AI accelerator now trade in dollars.

—Rosie, Wyatt, Evan & Conor

🔥 What’s Hot: 🔥

🥶 What’s Not: 🥶

🔢 Big number: $26.5B — what SK Hynix raised in today's Nasdaq debut, the second-biggest stock sale in history after SpaceX's spring IPO.

1. Meta's AI stack ignites the stock

The news: Meta jumped 5.95% to $669 after unveiling Muse Spark 1.1, an agentic coding model with public developer API access. Reports also pointed to first-silicon production of Meta's custom AI accelerator in September, and the company committed billions to a new 250 MW data center in Canada. Three product-and-infrastructure signals in three days — a rare cluster for a company that spent most of 2026 defending its capex.

Why it matters: Meta's been the AI spending story of the year, and the market's been asking whether all that capex would ever show up as revenue. Muse Spark 1.1 gives developers something to actually buy. Own silicon would cut Meta's Nvidia bill. And a giant new campus says management thinks the compute will get used. That's the trifecta traders chased today.

Big picture: Meta's added roughly $200 billion in market cap in three weeks of AI headlines — the market's rewarding execution, not just spending.

Source: Meta AI / MarketBeat

2. SK Hynix hits Wall Street

The news: Nvidia's biggest memory supplier priced its US debut at $149 per ADR and raised about $26.5 billion — the largest foreign IPO in Nasdaq history and the second-biggest stock sale ever, trailing only SpaceX's spring listing. Shares trade under the temporary ticker SKHYV before switching to SKHY on Monday. The book was oversubscribed roughly 7x, per underwriters, and shares opened firmly above the offer price.

Why it matters: SK Hynix owns 56–57% of the high-bandwidth memory market — the chips wrapped around every Nvidia H100 and Blackwell package. Listing in New York pulls a critical AI-supply-chain name onto US exchanges and gives American funds direct access instead of routing through Korean depositary certificates. Two leveraged SKHY ETFs are already teed up for Monday.

What's next: SKHY starts regular-way trading Monday, with 2x long (SKUU) and short (SKDD) ETFs launching alongside.

Source: Straits Times / Reuters / Yahoo Finance

3. Nvidia snaps back with its supplier

The news: Nvidia climbed 3.64% to $210 the day after slipping on chip-supply anxiety. The SK Hynix listing helped — Hynix supplies the bulk of Nvidia's HBM — and broader semis followed: AMD +1.55%, AVGO ▼0.23% (a rounding error), and the SMH semis ETF finished up 0.63%. Volume in Nvidia was the highest of the week.

Why it matters: When Hynix wins, Nvidia usually wins right alongside. The two companies are so interlocked that a well-received debut for one reads as a demand check for the other. It's also a reminder the AI trade isn't one stock — it's a supply chain, and both ends of it caught the same wave today. That story's not going away as Big Tech AI capex keeps compounding into the back half of 2026.

Bottom line: Chip stocks were the market's engine again.

Source: CNBC / FXLeaders

4. Delta lands, and sits

The news: Delta beat Q2 estimates and guided Q3 above the street, but shares still finished down 1.60% to about $87.58. Management said higher airfares should stick even as jet fuel eases, and premium cabin revenue continues to grow faster than main cabin. The rest of the group came along for the descent.

Why it matters: Delta shares came in up roughly 31% year-to-date, so a beat-and-raise wasn't going to be enough — investors wanted a blowout. It's a classic sell-the-news setup, and a decent read on how tightly wound the summer-travel trade has become. Fuel is friendly, corporate travel's back, and it's still not enough for a market that had already booked the good news. That's a sentiment tell for the rest of earnings season.

Big picture: DAL is up ~30% YTD; the "beat and raise" bar keeps climbing.

Source: MarketBeat / Yahoo Finance

5. Big banks warm up for Tuesday

The news: Every big lender closed green ahead of a busy earnings week. JPM +0.34% to $336, WFC +0.30%, BAC +0.87%, C +0.94%, GS +0.15%, MS +0.11%. Consensus expects JPMorgan to earn $5.62 on $49.5 billion in revenue when it reports Tuesday morning, with a similar beat-and-raise setup for Wells Fargo and Citi later the same session.

Why it matters: Trading and investment banking fees look strong on the back of a busy Q2 — SpaceX's IPO alone was a fee bonanza. Net interest margin guidance and consumer-credit trends will do most of the talking, though, especially with the Fed still on hold. Banks have been the sector nobody's discussing, and that's usually when they get interesting. A clean quarter here could turbocharge the leadership rotation the market's been hinting at all week.

What's next: JPM, WFC, C and BAC report at 7am ET Tuesday; Goldman and Morgan Stanley round out the group on Wednesday.

Source: IG / US News/Reuters

6. Tokyo rides the AI wave

The news: Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped ~1.77% in the morning session to 68,943, briefly climbing over 1,600 points as chip and tech names chased Wall Street's Thursday rally. Advantest and Tokyo Electron led the way; the broader Topix added around 0.9%.

Why it matters: Japan's chip-equipment names live and die with US AI demand, and today they got both a data point (SK Hynix's US debut) and a story (Meta's own silicon coming). The pop puts the Nikkei back within striking distance of its all-time high after a mostly sideways summer.

Bottom line: The AI trade is still global, and it still runs through Tokyo.

Source: Adnkronos / NDTV

7. ECB flags more hikes ahead

The news: Minutes from the ECB's June meeting, released Thursday afternoon, showed policymakers expect inflation to stay above the 2% target well into 2027 — even with nearly three more 0.25 percentage point hikes already embedded in their projections. The deposit rate sits at 2.25%, and money markets now price two additional moves over the next year.

Why it matters: Europe was supposed to be done with hikes when it stopped cutting last winter. The Iran war changed that math via energy prices, and the ECB is telling markets not to fight the tightening cycle. The euro strengthened against the dollar, and eurozone bank stocks caught a lift as investors repriced net interest income higher. It's the opposite trajectory of the Fed, which is still holding rates steady and waiting for softer data.

Big picture: Europe was supposed to be done hiking — the war rewrote the schedule.

Source: Reuters / ECB

8. Europe closes green, UK doesn't

The news: The pan-European STOXX 600 added about 0.8%, with Germany's DAX and France's CAC 40 each climbing around 0.9% as investors reassessed the Middle East picture. London's FTSE 100 lagged with a ~0.2% dip, weighed down by services PMI at 48.8 — the fifth straight month of contraction and the weakest reading since January 2023.

Why it matters: Continental Europe likes what it's seeing: a stronger US session, a settling energy backdrop, and a hawkish ECB that's actually good for bank earnings. The UK's a different story — services in contraction, wage growth cooling, and the pound easing against the dollar. Same continent, very different setups.

What's next: UK monthly GDP for May lands next Wednesday morning; a soft read would revive rate-cut talk at the Bank of England.

Source: Lloyds Bank / Mint

Q: Why was the cell phone wearing glasses?

A: It lost its contacts.

The tendency for whoever wins a competitive auction to overpay, because the top offer usually reflects the most optimistic estimate of the asset's true worth — not the average one. Common in M&A, IPO allocations, and oil-and-gas leases.

Usage: "SK Hynix pricing its ADRs at a 3% premium to Seoul's close after being oversubscribed 7x raised whispers of winner's curse, but early trading suggested the buyers had the math about right."

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