Hey there weekday warriors,
Today we’re getting into the only thing that really matters… GameStonk is back. Enjoy the next 4 minutes and 25 seconds of blue-chip news and commentary.
Keep on snapping necks and cashing checks,
+ US stocks “finished mixed Monday as investors took a breather after three weekly gains and ahead of key inflation readings later this week.” (Yahoo! Finance)
+ The 10-year Treasury yield “moved lower as of Monday morning, with traders looking ahead to Wednesday's CPI inflation report." (MarketWatch)
+ Oil “settled higher Monday, as signs of an improving economy in China boosted demand hopes at time when wildfires in China threaten supplies. ” (Reuters)
+ Bitcoin “rebounded on Monday, as investors anticipated upcoming United States inflation data for April, which could play a crucial role in influencing the Federal Reserve's decision on whether and when to reduce borrowing costs in 2024.” (Investing.com)
+ The three most talked about stocks on WallStreetBets in the past 24 hours were: 1) GameStop +74.4% 2) AMC +78.3% 3) BlackBerry +6.9% (… and what year is it?)
The market moves you need to know about…
+ Shares of vaccine maker Novavax gapped up 47.6% in early trading on Monday. On Friday shares nearly doubled. Investors are bullish on Novavax’s comeback story (clearly). NVAX had issued a “going concern” warning early last year. But it got a little help from Sanofi last week. The massive vaccine maker agreed to inject cash into Novavax’s veins… in return for access to its rona boi jab and the tech behind it.
+ Walgreens Boots Alliance soared 5.4% after news dropped that Walgreens is contacting potential buyers for the Boots UK drugstore chain.
+ HubSpot jumped in early trading yesterday after reports that Google has made a pretty compelling offer to buy the CRM maker. But HUBS gave most of the gains back and ended the day just 0.02% higher.
Roaring back
(Source: Giphy)
“Roaring Kitty? *takes drag of cigarette* I haven’t heard that name in years…”
This is not a drill. After a nearly 3-year hiatus, Keith Gill aka Roaring Kitty aka Deep F*cking Value has returned to the internet.
In case you were living under a rock in 2021, he’s the Wall Street Bets user credited with ushering in the epic GameStop (+74.4% // +21.1% after hours) short squeeze that brought massive hedge funds to their knees and made Vlad Tenev an enemy of the people.
His first post back?
For those of you who don’t speak fluent internet, the image above is a meme that implies sh*t is about to get real.
He proceeded to Tweet a bunch of other memes and GIFs that hinted something big was coming.
That “something big” probably has to do with GameStop. Shares of GME have risen about 70% from mid-April to last Friday.
To be clear, the stock was mooning on absolutely no news. And the company is arguably in much worse shape than in 2021 during GameStonk Mania 1.0. FFS, we haven’t even gotten a recent Tweet from CEO (and mystical internet figure in his own right) Ryan Cohen.
No one man should have all that power…
Roaring Kitty’s tweet sent shares of GameStop up 74% on the day.
GME wasn’t alone. It felt like January 2021 yesterday. Shares of AMC, which also got the memestonk treatment 3 years ago, went parabolic, climbing 78% on the day.
+ No wonder Sam Altman tempered expectations about OpenAI’s event yesterday…
We didn’t get a search engine to compete with Google or ChatGPT 5. Instead, we got GPT-4o (read: GPT-4 “omni”). Feels like an update that could have been an email…
So what was the “magic” Sam was hyping in his announcement? The newest version will better integrate OpenAI’s voice and video functionality. It just took Siri out back and finished her off once and for all. There’s a new voice assistant in town…
Oh, and OpenAI said the new model will be twice as fast… and half the cost.
Clearly, Sam’s play here is to bring ChatGPT to the masses. And it’s 100%, unequivocally, totally a coincidence that OpenAI held its event a day before Google’s I/O conference…
+ Annnd it’s gone…
Squarespace (+13.2%) is throwing in the towel. After 3 years of being a sad excuse of a publicly traded company, the website builder is going private as part of a $6.9B (nice) deal with Permira.
Permira will pay $44 per share. Friendly reminder: SQSP opened at $48 when it IPOed in May 2021.
+ There was only one thing that made less sense than GameStop’s spike today…
Shares of Xponential Fitness (+11.3%) ended the day up more than 11%. This seems strange considering the company behind Pure Barre suspended its CEO and announced an investigation by the US Attorney’s Office. That’s in addition to the ongoing SEC inquiry.
But, hey, at least it reiterated its full-year guidance during its earnings call.
The SEC and a shareholder lawsuit claim that the company lied about unit volume metrics and franchise closures.
+ Anglo-American (-2.4%) is playing hard to get. The miner rejected BHP’s (UNCH) much-improved second offer of $43B. BHP’s first proposal was ~$39B.
+ Drop the "Melinda." Just "Bill". It's cleaner. Melinda French Gates (Bill’s ex) is resigning as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But she isn’t walking away empty-handed. She’ll have “an additional $12.5 billion to commit to my work on behalf of women and families.” That was negotiated as part of the couple’s divorce.
+ ‘Wealth can be pretty isolating’: Problems that rich people face, according to therapists (Read) Poor rich people.
+ Chicken Wings Are the New Inflation Hedge (Read)
Yesterday, we were keeping an eye on OpenAI’s launch event.
+ Check out all the details on OpenAI’s event above.
Here's what we’re keeping an eye on today...
+ Home Depot, Alibaba, Sony, Sea Limited, and On report before the bell
+ Rumble earnings drop after the close
+ Producer Price Index data drops at 8:30 AM EST
+ J-Poww speaks at an ECB event… because apparently, he doesn’t have enough on his plate here at home
+ Google's I/O Developer Conference gets underway. Expect AI to be mentioned no less than 37,000 times.
Yesterday, I asked, “Do you feel better or worse about the economy than you did in April?”
52.6% (eerily similar to yesterday’s #) of you feel worse. Less than 8% of you feel better.
Here’s today’s question…
Oh, and…
What did you think about today's newsletter?
Does this look like the face of a guy you should take financial advice from?
No, it’s the face of an individual who is financially irresponsible/dumb enough to be talked into spending money on a family photo shoot that he could have just done with his iPhone. So, act accordingly...
This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter is an investment recommendation. All content is created for entertainment, educational, or informational purposes only. Do your own research, or do yourself a favor and hire a professional