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Iran shakes stocks… Read Louis Navellier and Keith Kaplan on the memory trade… Why SpaceX’s next move doesn’t mean what you think…
It has been another violent weekend in the Middle East, with the United States and Iran exchanging a flurry of blows rather than settling into the calm that both sides had promised weeks ago.
The point of tension remains the Strait of Hormuz.
The Trump administration expected Iran to publicly declare that the waterway was open and free. Instead, Tehran did the opposite, closing the road and blaming the United States for the violence that disrupted traffic in the first place.
Iranian strikes hit US allies across the Gulf, targeting sites in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, and Oman.
On Truth Social, President Trump posted that he had reimposed the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and said the United States would effectively manage the Strait:
We are reimposing the Iranian blockade, so called because it only prevents Iranian ships or agents from entering or exiting.
The United States will, from this point forward, be known as the “Guardian of the Strait of Hormuz,” but as such, in fairness, will be reimbursed 20% on all goods shipped, for any and all costs necessary to undertake the mission of providing safety and security to this very troubled part of the world.
Crude oil prices rose on this news, with Brent and WTI rising nearly 5% as of this writing.
However, stocks are taking it in stride. Here at midday, the Dow Jones was barely down, and the S&P 500 was also down modestly. Only the Nasdaq is showing real pressure, down about 1%.
Why the muted reaction given the headlines?
Because Wall Street still believes the conflict will remain contained.
At this point, we have seen enough of these strikes followed by de-escalation operations to count on the next ceasefire. Until that assumption is broken, investors seem willing to buy into the hype.
Meanwhile, there are more reasons behind the Nasdaq’s poor performance this morning than the headlines in the Middle East
Semiconductor stocks It’s getting hit hard – again – and it’s all linked to one name: the South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix (SKHY).
It is down 6% as I write after debuting in US trading last Friday. That’s a sharp reversal from last week’s 13% rise — dragging US memory and chip makers lower.
Bloomberg Points to concerns SK Hynix will not turn a profit after investors flock to the IPO:
(Confirms decline) Investors’ growing fears that the boom has extended too far…
Traders pointed to fears of lower-than-expected profits…
Even amid recent concerns about AI’s stretched valuations and high spending levels, the deal was more than seven times oversubscribed, according to people familiar with the matter.
Now, while some on Wall Street are looking for cover today, legendary investor Louis Navellier sees this collateral damage to US chip makers as a buying opportunity.
From him Accelerating profits Flash alert this morning:
(SKHY), the large memory company that went public last week, went public on Friday and is being consolidated today. Korean stocks are pretty crazy.
So, up, down, up, down, up, down. This will make Micron Technology Company (in) Do the same thing, but Micron is a good buy on any pullback, and today would be another good example of that.
A more systematic way of dealing with “up and down” chip fluctuations.
Lewis is trading fundamentals here – buying Micron on the dip because he trusts the long-term memory story regardless of daily noise.
But our friends at TradeSmith look at the same “up, down, up, down” pattern through a completely different lens…
CEO Keith Kaplan doesn’t look at earnings, Fed policy, or the AI narrative to decide where trading goes next. He looks at the calendar.
Keith’s team built a program that scans more than 5,000 stocks across decades of price history, looking for one thing: time windows in which the stock has historically risen—or fallen—with remarkable consistency.
The bullish extensions are called “green days,” and in backtesting, the approach identified these periods with a historical accuracy rate of 83%.
Through an 18-year backtest, trading within these windows alone produced 857% of overall growth—more than double the S&P 500 over the same stretch, and the strategy still led even in 2007, the worst year in the backtest.
It’s the same logic that commodity traders used in planting and harvesting cycles, or gold merchants used in Indian and Chinese jewelry buying seasons—only applied more precisely, arrow by arrow, day after day.
By this measure, Western Digital (WDC) — one of the oldest names in computer storage, and now an important supplier to AI data centers — now sits in one of its green windows.
This green window opened on July 1st and runs until July 22nd. Over the past 15 years, the stock has risen 86.7% over that period.
Do you want to know when your stocks will have their green days?
A free trial of the TradeSmith Seasonal Tool is available so you can find out.
It’s available in the lead up to Keith’s Breakthrough 2026 The event will take place on Thursday, July 16 at 10 a.m. ET.
Here’s Keith:
You can try our software on the stocks you own with this limited-time free trial.
We’ve opened access so you can Watch the seasonal “green days” for thousands of stocks ahead of the 2026 Breakthrough event.
At this event, Keith will explain why he believes the period beginning around July 23 could represent an important shift in market leadership – the kind of shift that rewards investors who know exactly when to put in their positions, not just what to own.
I’ll note that Lewis will join him, explaining how he pairs Keith’s timing signals with his stock rating system to determine what to buy and when to buy it.
Attendees walk away with three free stock recommendations that Keith believes are positioned for what’s next — plus one he says should be avoided altogether.
To register to join them, just click here.
Another IPO story – and another prediction
SK Hynix’s volatility over the last two sessions is a reminder that a hot IPO can move a stock for reasons that have nothing to do with what’s going on at the company.
Nowhere is this more true than with the largest IPO of the year, which we’ve been tracking in recent weeks: SpaceX (Spex)
Here’s a new prediction: It goes up from here.
But here’s a twist: It won’t have much to do with SpaceX being a good investment.
Ahead of SpaceX’s historic IPO last month, we urged readers to stay away. Behind this warning was 45 years of US IPO history – compiled and analyzed by Professor Jay Ritter of the University of Florida, the world’s premier academic authority on IPOs.
In short, the average investor will not be able to buy SPCX at the IPO price. The data suggests that after the early rally (during which the average buyer will eventually enter), the stock will see a significant pullback, leaving many investors underwater.
This is exactly how it is played…
In the days following its IPO, SPCX jumped to an all-time intraday high of $225.64. But then intense selling pressure and a massive $20 billion public bond offering sent shares tumbling.
Last Wednesday, the price of SPCX fell below the opening price of $150. As I write on Monday, it is trading at just under $140 – meaning almost every buyer since the open is now underwater.
So, what happens now?
Well, it’s our strangest prediction yet…
The SPCX is likely to rise – but again, you’ll need to be careful about buying.
What’s coming and why and why smart investors will remain cautious
On July 7, SPCX joined the Nasdaq 100, forcing every fund tracking the index to buy shares. But that wave was small. SpaceX offered only about 5% of its shares in the initial public offering, despite competition in market value. Amazon (Amzn)Its index weight is about 1.3% today.
That will change…
Detentions begin to decline this summer in levels — with large tranches arriving freed during the fall. As the buoy grows, so does SpaceX’s weight index. Some analysts expect its weight to approach 4% — the top 10 spots on the Nasdaq 100 — by mid-August.
Every increase in weight forces another round of buying from funds that have no say in the matter.
Even Jeremy Grantham – who called this IPO “the craziest IPO in the history of man” – admits that the math means the price could go up “a lot” from here, valuation be damned.
What a higher stock price won’t reflect is profitable earnings
Watch for the next rally to be sold to everyday investors as proof that the market “believes” in SpaceX.
But this story is misleading. Index funds will be fulfilling a legal obligation.
Here’s what’s for you He can He thinks…
SpaceX reported a net loss of $4.3 billion in the first three months of 2026 alone, on top of an accumulated deficit — the total of current losses since the company was founded — of $41.3 billion. Meanwhile, it carries $29.1 billion in long-term debt, including a $20 billion bridge loan.
The artificial intelligence (xAI/Grok) sector lost $6.4 billion last year while burning through billions more in capital expenditures.
Now, the SpaceX bull will say: “Hey, hang on, Jeff – SPCX is a leader and a lot of profits will come in time.”
maybe. But S&P Global doesn’t expect the company to generate positive free cash flow until 2029. However, the stock, even after its decline, still trades in a range of 70 to 90 times sales.
For comparison, nvidia (NVDA) — the poster child of the whole AI boom that generates big actual profits — is trading at about 13 times sales.
Now, none of this is a reason SpaceX can’t — or won’t — go up. It just means that if it does happen, it won’t be because of fundamentals.
Bottom line: Know the difference between a stock’s high on conviction and its high on plumbing.
We’ll keep you updated on all these stories here at digest.
I wish you a good evening,
Jeff Remsburg
(Disclosure: I own MU, AMZN)
