OP Wire 5/21 (OP – Lite)

By Steve

U.S. Futures Tread Water

U.S. stock futures remained flat on Tuesday as investors awaited Nvidia’s quarterly earnings and insights from Federal Reserve officials on interest rates. The Nasdaq Composite stood out in the prior session, closing at an all-time high due to enthusiasm over Nvidia’s upcoming results. Meanwhile, several Fed officials indicated a need for more evidence of cooling inflation before considering rate cuts, maintaining skepticism among traders about a September cut.

Palo Alto Networks’ Disappointing Forecast

Shares of Palo Alto Networks fell in extended trading after its fourth-quarter billings forecast underwhelmed analysts. The cybersecurity firm is facing spending slowdowns and increased competition as clients diversify their security vendors. CEO Nikesh Arora noted initial traction in consolidating users on a centralized platform but acknowledged that this has led to increased bookings with deferred payments, impacting billings.

More Fed Speak Ahead

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller is set to speak about the U.S. economic outlook, following cautious remarks from his colleagues on Monday about the need for more evidence of sustained inflation cooldown. The Fed’s next policy meeting is scheduled for June 11-12, with traders widely betting on no rate changes.

Samsung Electronics Appoints New Chip Unit Head

Samsung Electronics has appointed Young Hyun Jun as the new head of its semiconductor division, replacing Kyehyun Kyung. The move aims to enhance the division’s competitiveness amid a push to develop AI-optimized chips. Samsung is targeting a tripling of its high bandwidth memory (HBM) supply this year and has begun mass production of HBM3E chips.

Oil Prices Dip

Crude prices fell on Tuesday, extending losses from the previous session, amid concerns that high U.S. interest rates will curb economic activity. Both benchmarks dropped less than 1% on Monday following comments from Fed officials about awaiting more signs of slowing inflation before considering rate cuts. Political uncertainties in Iran and Saudi Arabia have also added risk to the crude markets.

$JPM- UBS analyst Erika Najarian raised the firm’s price target on JPMorgan to $224 from $219 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. JPMorgan’s willingness to deploy excess capital may have disappointed, but its balance sheet strength and strong ROTCE power remain, the analyst tells investors in a research note.

$QCOM- Benchmark analyst Cody Acree raised the firm’s price target on Qualcomm (QCOM) to $240 from $200 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares after Microsoft (MSFT) launched its new family of Copilot+ PCs, with all systems initially powered exclusively by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Series of processors. The firm believes this Window’s and joint OEM launch featuring Qualcomm’s processors is “a water-shed event for the company as it places Qualcomm as a direct competitor for the first time in the mainstream laptop market,” the analyst tells investors. The firm believes Qualcomm’s potential share gains in the AI PC market are one of the company’s key investment drivers, the analyst added.

$DELL- Dell Technologies (DELL) expands the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA (NVDA) to include new server, edge, workstation, solutions and services advancements that speed AI adoption and innovation.”Organizations are moving quickly to capture the AI opportunity, which is why our collaboration with NVIDIA is so important,” said Michael Dell, founder and CEO, Dell Technologies. “Our expansion of the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA continues our joint mission – we’re making it easy for organizations to implement AI so they can move boldly into this next technological revolution.” “Generative AI requires a new type of computing infrastructure – an AI factory that produces intelligence,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA. “Together, NVIDIA and Dell are providing the world’s industries with a full-stack offering – including computing, networking and software – that drives the copilots, coding assistants, virtual customer service agents and industrial digital twins of the digital enterprise.”

$DIS- Redburn Atlantic upgraded Disney to Neutral from Sell with a $100 price target.

$MSFT- Microsoft (MSFT) announced two new Copilot+ PCs: Surface Laptop, 7th Edition and Surface Pro, 11th Edition, the latest additions to our portfolio of devices available to our business customers. Built with the new Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors from Qualcomm (QCOM) and Windows 11 Pro, these devices deliver the performance your teams need, are faster and have more AI acceleration than MacBook Air (AAPL), Microsoft said. These new Copilot+ PCs with integrated NPU bring new AI experiences such as Recall, Live Captions with Translations and new Windows Studio Effects help streamline everyday tasks, save valuable time and make it even easier to collaborate. The all-new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro are available to business customers in September, with pricing starting at $1,099.

Hey OP…. More volatility today with high IV that will decrease later in the week so be careful on swing trades…. I’ll be scalping puts today while I wait for the next alert play set up. See you all in chat

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