Your Daily Scope and News of What Matters
SpaceX stock fell about 4–5% on Aug. 20 as 319 million more insider shares became eligible to trade — the second major post-IPO lockup release. Shares slipped back under the $135 IPO price.
Samsung stock jumped after the board approved a record 90–110 trillion won 2026 shareholder return — about five times the 2020 high. Roughly 30T won in Q3 dividends and 15T won buyback for employee pay are lined up.
Walmart stock tumbled about 9% on Aug. 20 after U.S. comparable sales grew just 2.6% — slowest since 2020 — even as revenue and EPS beat. Fuel costs, pharmacy pricing, and soft Q3 EPS guidance drove the selloff.
Palantir stock drew fresh attention Aug. 19 after a second Sovereignty Bootcamp drew nearly 200 organizations and CEO Alex Karp said high-margin growth can run 18 more months. PLTR near $175; median Wall Street target $205.
Merck stock rose about 13% on Aug. 19 after intismeran autogene plus Keytruda met Phase 3 melanoma endpoints with Moderna. MRK closed near $152, above stale analyst targets. Keytruda was half of Q2 revenue.
Unitree Robotics closed up 460% on its Aug. 19 Shanghai STAR Market debut — from a 150.80 yuan IPO to 845 yuan. Market cap near 342 billion yuan. Record 9.78 million subscription accounts; lottery win rate 0.018%.
Aug. 19: Moderna and Merck said intismeran autogene plus Keytruda met Phase 3 melanoma endpoints. MRNA ripped on the headline; MRK rose too. Hazard ratios not disclosed — full data at a medical meeting.
NVIDIA reports Q2 FY27 on Aug. 26 at 5 p.m. ET. Company guide is $91 billion ±2% with zero China data-center compute in the model. Q1 was $81.6 billion. The print is one number. Guidance and China are the others.
SNDK is Sandisk, the NAND company Western Digital listed in February 2025. Fiscal Q4 revenue was $8.97 billion. Two-thirds of the sequential lift was price. The next-quarter guide was not enough for a stock that had already priced a supercycle.
NVIDIA reports Aug. 26. The tape this week already split optical names. Read the stack: foundry and CoWoS, custom ASICs, 1.6T optics. One ticker is not the AI trade.