All eyes on Nvidia today. The world's most valuable company reports fiscal Q1 after the bell, with Wall Street expecting EPS of ~$1.78 on revenue of ~$79.2 billion — up 120% and 80% year-over-year, respectively. Data center revenue alone is projected at $72.85 billion. Nvidia has delivered 13 consecutive quarterly beats, and options are pricing in a roughly 6.5% post-earnings move, equivalent to ~$355 billion in market cap. Shares rose 1.6% in premarket to $224.11. Bank of America recently raised its price target to $320.
Bank of America's May Global Fund Manager Survey found a record 73% of professional investors now call "long global semiconductors" the most crowded trade on the planet — up from just 24% in April, the steepest one-month jump in survey history. Cash levels dropped to 3.9%, triggering BofA's contrarian sell signal. The Bull & Bear Indicator sits at 7.8, just below the 8.0 threshold that historically marks reliable pullback warnings. Strategist Michael Hartnett warned bull capitulation is "almost complete" and early June is "ripe for profit-taking."
Nearly 45,000 of Samsung's unionized workers plan an 18-day walkout beginning May 21 — potentially the largest work stoppage in semiconductor industry history, hitting the single most critical chokepoint for HBM and DRAM supply. JPMorgan estimates the strike could impact Samsung's operating profit by $14 billion to $21 billion. Chip stocks sold off on the news, with AMD, ARM, and the SOXX index all under pressure.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was a late addition to President Trump's China delegation after Trump personally called to invite him. Huang flew to Alaska to board Air Force One — only he and Elon Musk got seats on the plane among 17 CEOs. The trip puts AI chip export restrictions front and center, with Huang lobbying both Washington and Beijing for nearly a year to ease curbs on Nvidia's most advanced chips.
Monday's session saw the Nasdaq drop 0.84% to 25,870 and the S&P 500 fall 0.67% as rising Treasury yields hammered chip stocks for a third consecutive session. The 30-year yield briefly topped 5.19% — its highest level in nearly 19 years — while the 10-year climbed to 4.687%. Analysts framed it as a collision between a credible AI demand thesis and a bond market raising the discount rate on future earnings.
Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness fund — now managing ~$13.7 billion, up from $5.5 billion at year-end — disclosed roughly $8.46 billion in put options targeting AI chip stocks. The 13F showed $1.56 billion in Nvidia puts, $2 billion+ in bearish SMH positions, and large puts against AVGO, ORCL, AMD, TSM, ASML, and INTC. Counterintuitively, the fund is going long Bitcoin miners and AI energy infrastructure, reflecting Aschenbrenner's thesis that electricity — not chips — will be the bottleneck in the second half of the AI race.
Micron Technology closed Monday at $681.54, down 5.95%, caught in a triple headwind: the looming Samsung strike threatening HBM/DRAM supply chains, rising Treasury yields pressuring high-multiple tech names, and lingering concerns about China exposure. Near-term sentiment remains fragile ahead of Samsung's May 21 walkout.
Evercore ISI analyst Mark Lipacis boosted Broadcom's price target to $582 from $490, maintaining an Outperform rating — now the highest target on the Street. The thesis: AI workloads are transitioning from training to inference by late 2026, pushing cloud providers toward lower-cost, higher-efficiency custom silicon — Broadcom's sweet spot.
Citi analyst Atif Malik — ranked #3 among 12,000+ analysts with an 80% success rate — raised Intel's price target to $130 from $95, keeping a Buy rating. The thesis centers on agentic AI workloads growing 185% annually and pushing the overall CPU market to $132 billion by 2030. Intel shares rose 2.5% premarket to $123.72, also buoyed by the Huang-Trump China trip.
Cisco posted record revenue of $15.8 billion (up 12% YoY) and raised its AI orders guidance to $9 billion from $5 billion, while lifting its FY26 AI revenue target to $4 billion from $3 billion. CEO Chuck Robbins declared a "networking supercycle." Shares surged over 15% to an intraday record of $119.36 — their best single-day performance since 2011. Also announced ~4,000 job cuts to reallocate resources toward AI.
