The Midday Tape
Chips are ripping, jobless claims came in soft, and the Nasdaq is up 400 points into midday, but the tape is really a story of two markets: semis and megacap AI melting up while rate-sensitive real estate gets taken to the woodshed one price target at a time.
Rates and macro set the backdrop.
Weekly jobless claims fell, giving the bid to risk assets and pushing the Nasdaq up roughly 400 points on the session. Bonds are behaving strangely: Treasuries (TLT) are higher even as the headline framing notes Fed hikes are "supposed to hurt bonds," a signal the market is more focused on growth data than hawkish rate rhetoric right now. Gold (GLD) is up 2.3% on the day, working as a hedge even with risk assets rallying, an odd-couple pairing that says positioning, not conviction, is driving flows into the afternoon.
Chips are the story of the day.
Intel (INTC) is up nearly 10% after CEO comments that memory prices have surged more than 500%, and that call is dragging Micron (MU) up alongside it, with Micron cited up 5% intraday. Nvidia (NVDA) is up over 2% after CEO pushback on "AI doom" chatter, echoed by Steve Eisman calling Terminator fears "garbage." Not everyone is convinced: Aswath Damodaran says Nvidia is priced as the "greatest company ever" even if the business itself is merely "awesome," a valuation warning worth flagging against the rally. Broadcom (AVGO), Alphabet (GOOGL) and Meta (META) are also in play on a report that Meta's custom AI chips could save it $8.5 billion, reinforcing the in-house silicon theme spreading across hyperscalers.
Real estate and rate-sensitive names are the laggards.
Scotiabank took the hatchet to price targets across a long list of REITs this morning, sector perform ratings maintained but targets cut on W.P. Carey (WPC), Vornado (VNO), UDR (UDR), Simon Property (SPG), SL Green (SLG), Regency Centers (REG), Mid-America Apartment (MAA), Kilroy Realty (KRC), Invitation Homes (INVH), BXP (BXP), Douglas Emmett (DEI), Camden Property (CPT), American Homes 4 Rent (AMH), Essex Property (ESS) and Federal Realty (FRT). That is a sector-wide markdown, not stock-specific noise, and it is weighing on rate-sensitive real estate even as broader risk appetite improves elsewhere.
Single-stock movers:
Generac (GNRC) is up nearly 20% on the session, one of the day's biggest percentage gainers. Lockheed Martin (LMT) is down over 2% after CFO commentary flagging supply chain as the biggest risk to production scaling and warning of possible margin "lumpiness" into the guide. J.B. Hunt (JBHT) is modestly higher despite a wave of price target cuts from UBS and Raymond James, offset by a fresh bullish upgrade call. Lennar (LEN) missed Q3 EPS and flagged pricing pressure despite pulling back on incentives, a read-through for homebuilder sentiment. SpaceX (SPCX) continues to extend its rally, up over 2%, amid reports it is discussing buying AI training data from failed startups.
Still ahead this afternoon:
watch whether the memory-price story keeps legs under semis into the close, whether the REIT target-cut wave stabilizes or spreads into broader financials, and any follow-through commentary from the Lockheed and GE Aerospace conference remarks on supply chains and fleet plans.
Bottom line: this is a bifurcated tape, AI and chips carrying the indexes higher while rate-sensitive real estate and select industrials absorb the pain, and the afternoon hinges on whether chip momentum can keep offsetting the REIT bleed.