Micron Rallies as AI Tailwinds Drive a Street-High Price Target

00:00 Scarlet Fu

We’re about two minutes away from the end of the trading day on this Wednesday. Scarlet Fu and Jess Menton here with you and also here with us to take you through the closing bell is a global simulcast. We’re joined now by Carol Masser and Lisa Matteo.

00:14 Scarlet Fu

and in doing so we bring together our Bloomberg Television, radio and YouTube audiences worldwide.

00:18 Speaker A

Go women!

00:19 Scarlet Fu

That’s right, to parse through the most crucial moments of the trading day. Carol, I don’t think the release of the Fed minutes was all that crucial. No no surprise there. Um but the 10-year auction was a pleasant surprise.

00:32 Carol Masser

Yeah, interesting, right? Um and especially since some of the auctions have not been going so well with some concerns. Um but you’re right, the Fed minutes, it was really fascinating to see basically no market reaction.

00:48 Carol Masser

The one thing Mike McKee said who was down there at the Fed, um said that what we did see in terms of an outlook got a little bit of information that another rate increase is um expected by the end of the year. So most participants in the Fed uh believe that. So get ready guys, probably not probably not October but maybe later this year.

01:05 Lisa Mateo

Yeah, we’re also keeping an eye on geopolitics. I mean we’ve been hearing about uh strikes being stepped up. So we look at oil, we go right to oil right now. Brent crude at $100 a barrel right now. WTI crude at $88 a barrel.

01:19 Jess Menton

And you know what guys, I know I’ve been talking about this lack of a 1% down day streak in the S&P 500, but going to bring it up again because through today’s close, it’s 49 consecutive sessions uh at 4:00 p.m. uh Eastern here and that would change the size and scope, so longest streak in a little over two years now, guys.

01:36 Scarlet Fu

And of course, earnings season is upon us soon. I mean in less than a week, we’ve got four big banks reporting and we know that after they report, they also tend to sell a lot of debt um with borrowing costs so high, you wonder if they’re going to sell more debt than they actually need to kind of take advantage of the fact that or because of worried that rates might climb even more. I mean, it’s just the spillover from that is everywhere.

02:00 Scarlet Fu

All right, you’ve got the closing bells here and it is indeed a down day and we are looking at the end of a four-day winning streak for the S&P 500, a retreat from record highs for the S&P and the Nasdaq. You can see the S&P down a fifth of 1%, the Dow losing two-thirds of 1% and the Nasdaq also down a fifth of 1%, Carol.

02:22 Carol Masser

All right, back to the big caps we go. S&P 500. Yes, the index is down and Jess, we’ve got most names in the S&P actually lower today. 361 names losing ground on this Wednesday. You’ve got 139 gaining and about 400 changed.

02:40 Jess Menton

Well, Carol, looking underneath the hood for the S&P 500 with the I map function, Healthcare, best performing sector up more than 1% today, uh followed by consumer discretionary and staples, but they’re just marginally higher, but on the other end of that, industrials down more than 2%, materials down 1 and a half percent, Carol.

03:01 Carol Masser

All right guys, let’s go to some of the individual gainers if I may and let’s go to Micron. This was a top name in the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 stock gaining uh 4% in today’s session that happening after DA Davidson raised its price target on the memory chip maker to a street high of $3,000. Quite a ways to go considering the stock closed at 1,088. Am I seeing that right? Yep, 1088. So, yeah, uh basically seeing long-term tailwinds related to AI. The firm previously had a price target of about $2,100, so upping it by uh just shy of $1,000. The new target implying about 187% increase from Micron’s last close. That was as of yesterday.

03:51 Carol Masser

Um the analyst met with Micron’s management team, concluded that investors are early in their journey of understanding Micron’s value and believe that journey will lead them to assigning a far higher multiple. And they talked about AI models generating better results with more memory, run faster with more memory, a lot there. This stock is up almost 300% year to date. So quite a run.

04:19 Carol Masser

Um let’s go to something that isn’t necessarily a household name ticker M uh excuse me, BKH. We’re talking about Black Hills Corporation. This one soaring. It was up uh about um 10% at its high intraday. So that was up the most in about six and a half years finishing the day with a gain of about 7.2%. It’s a $5.8 billion market cap utility company based in South Dakota. It signed an agreement with Google prompting Freedom Capital markets to upgrade the stock to buy from hold. They say the contract changes Black Hills growth profile rather than simply adding a project. So again that um price target up to 78 from 69. So that’s stock closing at uh just under $76 a share.

05:12 Carol Masser

And I just want to mention Moderna, uh this name top in the S&P 500. Morgan Stanley raising the firm’s price target to 95 from 89, keeping an equal weight rating on the shares, adjusting its models for its biopharma coverage ahead of uh Q3 earnings. So this one, I keep forgetting. It’s up a lot, Lisa. It’s up about 563% year to date. So we’ve seen quite a run. Again, almost a 5% gain in today’s session.

05:46 Lisa Mateo

All right, let’s get to the downside. We’ll start with SpaceX, ticker SPCX. Um their shares fell down more than 2 and a half%. Uh sources are saying the company in talks with banks, investors to raise 40 billion to buy those chips from Nvidia. How it breaks down, it’s 10 billion in bank loans, 30 billion investment grade debt to fund that chip order. Financing effort reportedly led by Apollo Global Management. Nothing has been confirmed. Um Apollo would kind of lead that deal to help sell the debt to a broad base of investors. Um Pimco also among a small group of lenders um in talks to fund the deal. Um the transaction though expected to close in 2027. Also since we mentioned, I also want to take a look at Nvidia shares. They’re down uh they closed down seven tenths of a percent. Same for Tesla too, also putting in Tesla out there.

06:33 Lisa Mateo

Um online brokerage firm Weble, that’s ticker B U L L. their shares, they fell as much as 24%, uh to close down about 19%. Uh and right now the problem, this isn’t over a national security cert concern with US finance. Um CNBC reporting the US House select Committee on China said to release this report that Weble is tied structurally to China’s government. So what are we talking about? Okay, we’re talking about the company’s ownership architecture, uh technical workforce, technology, infrastructure as well, uh cross-border data reporting, all of that. Um they found this kind of big gap between Weble’s public marketing as an American company and then the actual control of of the firm as well. Um Weble, so the company is based in St. Petersburg. Um they have not commented. They have about 28 billion global users on top of that. And in the filing, the panel says that national security concerns around that company have escalated since about October 2025. Um I want to end off with industrial stocks because those are underperforming. Um this is um as inflation, you know, increases, oil prices on the rise. I want to get to Mcore, EME down as much as uh 6 and a half percent. Caterpillar also uh lower down about more than 5%.

08:08 Scarlet Fu

All right. Uh we have some breaking news from uh the Wall Street Journal saying that Lululemon’s new CEO Heidi O’Neal, who over who of course came over from Nike is shaking up management. Uh she has ousted two executives, also creating two new positions. She’s hired former Nike and Walmart executives to fill these positions with the goal of getting various departments to work together collaboratively. We know that the company is um having a tough time getting its Mojo back and you can see the stock uh moving somewhat in the after hours trading, uh down about 1/3 of 1%. Uh O’Neal definitely working on a turnaround story here at Lululemon.

08:52 Scarlet Fu

All right, let’s move on to uh bond the bond market and yields. Uh kind of all over the place. So in the end, uh we had a mixed day for the bond market after a strong auction of 10-year notes, $39 billion dollars of 10-year notes awarded at 5.3%. That was below the 5.39%, 36% that we got earlier today. Um so yeah, it’s been a kind of wacky day in the bond market, but I feel like we could say that for any day over the past couple weeks.

09:27 Carol Masser

We could, we could.

09:28 Scarlet Fu

It’s um been wacky for a while now.

09:31 Carol Masser

Which is why maybe you want to go to Costco and buy some wine. I’m just going to put that out there. There’s a great story. Um apparently, some vintners in California are offloading their surplus wine, making premium wines more affordable for consumers at retailers like Costco. Lisa knows a lot about Costco, Kroger and Aldi. A bottle that can command $150 as a winery brand may be sold for less than 30 bucks under a private or exclusive label with the quality of these wines increasing exponentially. My family who goes to Costco, love the wines and they’re always like, you should go 20 bucks, 30 bucks, they say they’re great. Lisa, you go to Costco.

10:14 Lisa Mateo

I go to Costco all the time, but I’m more of the vodka. We go for the vodka. I did not see that coming. Didn’t see that one coming. Uh but it’s curious to see because they have so much left over that that’s what they’re doing. They’re going to these private labels to do it. I mean, you go to think Aldi was what like another one that was listed in there. So it’s it’s you can get a pretty good deal if you know where to go.

10:41 Scarlet Fu

But can you get some good deals in you know, the East Coast? Because I’m sure, you know, if you’re closer to um Napa and Sonoma, you’re probably getting better wine there, right? I mean, they they would do it locally.

10:55 Carol Masser

It’s because all you youngins Jessica are are not drinking and so they’ve got to offload it to Cost

11:03 Jess Menton

But but word on the street is you and I, there’s supposed to be a wine segment when I’m back with you on Friday.

11:07 Carol Masser

Oh, yeah, I’m drinking. I I do my wine. I’ll be there.

11:10 Scarlet Fu

Well, you know, you might need some wine for the story, um the next story that we’re going to tell you about.

11:14 Carol Masser

I definitely need wine for this next story.

11:15 Scarlet Fu

Yes, because it turns out that New York City families who flee to the suburbs, you know, because the cost of living in the city is so high. They go to places like New Jersey, home of Carol Basser. Um they’re seeing that Jersey discount disappear because the budget now required to sustain a dual income family of four in New Jersey rose by almost $41,000 over the last five years. That is an annual increase of 6.7% according to the Living Wage Institute. And Carol, um that’s definitely not the kind of wage increases people are seeing on average.

11:51 Carol Masser

I can’t even tell you about my property taxes and some of it has to do with education and apparently if their budget they miss it, they can just tack it on to your tax bill. And so it’s pretty amazing. I believe in education, but I also live in a place where most kids, uh most families send their kids to private schools because the public education isn’t great. And that breaks my heart having grown up in public education and um really good. So New Jersey, um we’ve had a hard time getting this together.

12:28 Lisa Mateo

It has. I know I’m a Jersey girl too. and you’re right. You know, paying the property taxes and then sending your kids to the private school.

12:38 Carol Masser

Is that why you don’t live in Jersey?

12:40 Jess Menton

It’s tough.

12:41 Scarlet Fu

Jess or Scarlett?

12:42 Carol Masser

What?

12:42 Jess Menton

I did once. I don’t want to pay the toll.