Your Daily Dose of Market & Career Clarity

📬 Delivered to 150,000+ ambitious readers

Silver banana goes to…

Get a Top Job Offer, Guaranteed (or tuition is free) | Apply Here

Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

• The Dow closes above 53,000 for the first time as chip stocks rebound.

• Trump marks the first White House opening bell as the Treasury launches funding for new Trump Accounts.

• U.S. job growth misses expectations, adding just 57,000 jobs in June.

• OPEC+ agrees to increase oil production again, keeping crude prices in check.

• Michael Burry issues a fresh warning about the outlook for AI stocks.

Market News

Revenge of the Semis

Just two weeks ago, investors were questioning whether the AI rally had run its course. Chip stocks had fallen sharply, with companies like Micron and AMD under heavy pressure, leading many to wonder if the sector's momentum was fading.

On Monday, however, the market pushed back against those concerns as AI stocks staged a strong rebound.

• The Nasdaq jumped 1.1%.

• The S&P added 0.7%.

• The Dow gained 0.3%, finishing above 53,000 for the first time after posting its strongest quarterly gain since 2020.

Semis did the heavy lifting:

• The VanEck Semiconductor ETF was up 2.4% before the opening bell even rang.

• Broadcom ripped nearly 4%.

• Micron, now a near four-digit stock at $985, because apparently that’s normal, added 0.7%.

It wasn’t just chips either:

• ASML gained 3% after Bernstein hiked its target 30% to $2,623.

• IBM rose 3.5% on a Bank of America bump.

The spark came from Taiwan. Nvidia supplier Foxconn posted a stronger-than-expected jump in quarterly sales on Sunday, which traders read as hard evidence that AI server demand is still alive and well.

That hands the mic to Samsung, which will report preliminary Q2 earnings tonight with the Street expecting a profit number roughly 18x higher than a year ago. If the world’s biggest memory maker delivers? The late-June chip correction will be rebranded as just consolidation if it doesn’t, well, delete this paragraph.

Macro did its part, too. In the market’s favorite dysfunctional way, bad news was good news. June payrolls grew just 57K, a miss big enough that traders slashed the odds of the Fed’s threatened rate hike, sending the 10-year down to 4.47%.

All eyes now turn to Wednesday, when minutes from Kevin Warsh’s first meeting in the big chair drop. Warsh spent years warning about easy money; traders want to know if the guy who wrote the hawkish op-eds is the guy running the meeting.

Meanwhile, the reopened Strait of Hormuz and OPEC+’s fifth consecutive output hike kept crude pinned near $68, easing the inflation nightmares that haunted June. The only party not invited: cr*pto. B*tcoin loitered around $63K, down nearly half from a year ago, with the cr*pto Fear & Greed index at 29, while gold sits at $4,163 and silver cleared $62.

Peel Take: Markets continue to respond more to interest rate expectations than to economic fundamentals. Weaker jobs data has increased hopes for lower rates, helping push stocks to new highs. But with key events like Samsung's results and the Fed minutes still ahead, volatility could return quickly. The rally may continue, but investors should stay disciplined and avoid taking unnecessary risks.

What's Ripe

AXT Inc (AXTI) 12.2%

• The indium phosphide wafer maker, the stuff optical interconnects in AI datacenters are literally built on, led CNBC's midday movers after its Tongmei unit inked a $25.4mm 2027 supply deal with an 80% take-or-pay commitment.

• Northland Capital reiterated its Outperform rating and raised its price target to $125, calling the recent pullback overdone.

• Peel Take: AXT is benefiting from strong demand across the AI supply chain, and its long-term customer agreements provide greater revenue visibility than many companies in the sector. However, after a nearly 270% gain this year, the stock remains highly volatile. The long-term opportunity may be attractive, but investors should be mindful that large price swings are likely to continue.

Dell Technologies Inc (DELL) 4.4%

• Trump told Americans to “go out and buy a Dell computer” while ringing that first-ever White House opening bell, and the stock sprinted from Thursday's $394.32 close to as high as $428, his second endorsement-fueled DELL pop this year.

• The shoutout came as a thank-you: Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6bn+ to the newly launched Trump Accounts program, which Treasury just seeded with $1.4bn of taxpayer money.

• Peel Take: The most powerful sell-side analyst in America doesn't work at Goldman; he works at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, initiated coverage with a megaphone, and, per his own disclosures, owns at least $1mm of the stock he's pumping. Ethics officials call that a conflict of interest; the tape calls it alpha.

What's Rotten

Alarum Technologies (ALAR) 51.5%

• The Israeli web data firm was cut in half after the FBI seized domains belonging to its NetNut subsidiary on July 2 and then kept seizing more of them over the weekend, which is not the kind of recurring activity investors like.

• Management responded by voluntarily pausing traffic across the affected residential proxy network "for several days" to investigate potential misuse of its infrastructure.

• Peel Take: NetNut's business is renting access to millions of residential IP addresses, which is perfectly legal until someone uses them for something that isn't. When your product's main selling point is "looks like regular people's internet traffic," the FBI showing up isn't a black swan; it's a known unknown you were being paid to underwrite.

O'Reilly Automotive (ORLY) 6.7%

• Bloomberg reported O'Reilly is pursuing a $10bn all-cash bid for Genuine Parts' auto-parts business (yes, NAPA), its biggest swing since the CSK Auto deal in 2008, and shareholders reacted like they'd found a check-engine light.

• The Street is split: D.A. Davidson calls the deal accretive with a $114 target, while Barclays waves the antitrust flag over heavy store-footprint overlap.

• Peel Take: O'Reilly has built a strong track record through steady execution and consistent share buybacks. Its proposed acquisition of Genuine Parts would be a major strategic shift and the largest deal in the company's history. While the combination could strengthen its position in the auto parts market, investors are likely to wait for more clarity on execution, integration, and regulatory approval before becoming more optimistic.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from Lazard

👉 Want 1-on-1 recruiting help from Lazard bankers & 2,000+ top mentors? Apply to WSO Academy

📚 Lesson from the Library

🎥 Excel Modeling: Build Models That Actually Work

Build fast, clean, and professional financial models using Excel like a pro.

🎓 Check out the Excel Modeling Course

🌟 WSO Academy Q2 Update

🚀 Platform Improvements

We've also rolled out several updates behind the scenes to make mentor matching faster, more personalized, and give you more control over your Academy experience.

👥 Smarter Mentor Matching

We've improved how mentor matching works by taking mentor status into account (e.g., current analyst, associate, VP, etc.). When a student submits a mentor request, our system will now prioritize mentors whose background best aligns with what they're looking for.

🔄 More Control Over Your Mentor Requests

Students now have two new options when submitting mentor requests:

• Only match with mentors you haven't worked with before – Perfect if you'd like to get fresh perspectives from different professionals.

• Allow matching with top-rated mentors outside your target region – If you're open to expanding beyond your preferred geography, this option gives our system access to a larger pool of highly rated mentors.

🌎 Language Matching (Coming Soon)

We're adding language preferences to mentor profiles so students can request sessions in languages other than English. As more mentors update their profiles, we'll enable language matching in the mentor request form to prioritize mentors who speak your preferred language.

⭐ More Feedback, Better Matches

Your feedback continues to improve the Academy. After mentor sessions, students will now have the option to indicate if they'd prefer not to be matched with a particular mentor again. This helps us make future matches even stronger while ensuring you continue working with mentors who best fit your goals and learning style.

Learn about WSO Academy

🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

• Sky agrees to acquire ITV’s media and entertainment business in a multibillion-dollar deal.

• O’Reilly Automotive makes a $10 billion bid for Genuine Parts’ auto-parts division.

• TeraWulf signs a long-term data center lease with Anthropic.

• Solstice agrees to acquire Element Solutions to expand its exposure to AI infrastructure.

• Castlelake’s takeover bid for easyJet moves forward after gaining board support.

📊The Daily Poll

Previous Poll:

Trump is calling for lighter AI regulation. What do you think is the right approach?

More regulation: 53.9% // Less regulation: 7.7% // A balanced approach: 33.3% // Not sure: 5.1%

Student Success Corner

👉 Are you next? Find out with WSO Academy

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

A pharmaceutical company received $3 million in royalties on the first $20 million in sales of the generic equivalent of one of its products and then $9 million in royalties on the next $108 million in sales. By approximately what percent did the ratio of royalties to sales decrease from the first $20 million in sales to the next $108 million in sales?

Answer: 45%

Today

At a certain fruit stand, the price of each apple is 40 cents, and the price of each orange is 60 cents. Mary selects a total of 10 apples and oranges from the fruit stand, and the average (arithmetic mean) price of the 10 pieces of fruit is 56 cents. How many oranges must Mary put back so that the average price of the pieces of fruit that she keeps is 52 cents?

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?

Happy Investing,
Chris, Ankit, Mitchell, Fernanda, Nick, & Patrick

ADVERTISE // WSO ALPHA // ACADEMY // COURSES // LEGAL