Samsung's $58 Billion Problem 📉

Welcome back to the Day Trading newsletter 📈

It's been a rough 48 hours: Samsung's record profit somehow set off a global chip rout Tuesday, and on Wednesday President Trump declared the Iran ceasefire "over,” sending oil toward $80 and the Dow down nearly 600 points.

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

💣️ President Trump declared the ceasefire with Iran "over" Wednesday, threatening new strikes and sending the Dow down 576.76 points, or 1.09%, to 52,348.39. The S&P 500 slipped 0.28% while the Nasdaq eked out a 0.2% gain. Airlines and cruise lines (big fuel burners) took the worst of it, with American Airlines down nearly 4% and Carnival off 3.5%.

🛢️ Oil surged on the ceasefire collapse, with Brent crude briefly topping $80 a barrel intraday before settling up 5.2% at $78.02. WTI, the U.S. benchmark, jumped 4.4% to $73.52. Iran again threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint for roughly a fifth of the world's oil. Energy stocks like Chevron and Exxon rallied.

📊 The Fed's June meeting minutes confirmed what Chair Kevin Warsh called a "family fight" over rates, even though the vote to hold at 3.5%–3.75% was unanimous. A handful of officials wanted a hike immediately, and the rest split on where rates should sit by December. Many said at or slightly below current levels, many others said higher. Warsh notably declined to submit his own rate projection.

🔼 Nvidia rose 3.65% Wednesday (its third straight gain) after reports that Beijing will allow Alibaba, ByteDance, and DeepSeek to buy limited quantities of its H200 chips. The stock is still down 16% from its May 14 high, a slide that erased roughly $1 trillion in market value and left it trading below the S&P 500's forward multiple.

📈 Alibaba jumped 11% to $108.98 (its biggest one-day gain since May) after UBS and Citi raised their cloud growth forecasts to roughly 45%, up from 38% in the March quarter. The upgrades landed the same day as reports Beijing will let the company buy Nvidia H200s — a double dose of good news for China's AI buildout.

💰️ Broadcom climbed 4.83% to $388.69 after Apple said it would expand spending with the chipmaker in a multiyear deal expected to top $30 billion. The agreement calls for more than 15 billion U.S.-made chips and is the largest commitment yet under Apple's American Manufacturing Program, with Broadcom investing $1.5 billion to expand its Fort Collins, Colorado plant. 

👖 Levi Strauss beat on the top and bottom lines (adjusted EPS of $0.28 vs. $0.24 expected on $1.56 billion in revenue, up 8%) and raised its full-year guidance. The stock still fell more than 5% after hours as traders zeroed in on a soft third-quarter outlook calling for growth to slow to 4%–5%. CEO Michelle Gass said two-thirds of sales growth came from unit volume, not price hikes. 

🔻 Bitcoin slipped to around $62,000 Wednesday morning, down more than $1,100 in 24 hours, even as Middle East tensions flared. The world's largest crypto failed to catch a safe-haven bid alongside oil's surge, and remains roughly $47,000 below where it traded a year ago.

Samsung's preliminary second-quarter numbers were, on paper, spectacular:

Roughly $58 billion in operating profit, up 19-fold from a year ago and ahead of analyst estimates, powered by the AI memory boom.

The market's response? Samsung shares fell as much as 10% intraday in Seoul before closing down about 7%. The selling went global.

In the U.S., Intel dropped more than 9%, Applied Materials fell as much as 10% intraday, Marvell and Lam Research slid more than 6%, AMD lost about 6%, and Micron fell nearly 5%.

Deutsche Bank noted the results were "only" 6% ahead of estimates (not enough for a stock that had already run 150% this year).

Reports that China's DeepSeek is developing its own AI chip added fuel to the fire.

This is what "priced for perfection" looks like. 

When a 19-fold profit jump triggers a selloff, the market is telling you expectations (not earnings) are the problem.

The AI trade has been wobbling for weeks: Nvidia has shed roughly $1 trillion in market value since mid-May and now trades around 18 times forward earnings, cheaper than the S&P 500.

Tuesday showed that nervousness now extends to the memory makers, which had been 2026's hottest trade.

What to watch: 

• SK Hynix's Nasdaq debut Friday (a $28 billion share sale, the largest-ever U.S. listing by a foreign company) is about to become the cleanest real-time test of investor appetite for AI.

• Watch Beijing: reports Wednesday that China will let Alibaba, ByteDance, and DeepSeek buy Nvidia's H200 chips helped the sector bounce.

• Samsung's full results land later this month.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your research before making any trades.