Fire Horse
Figma and Anthropic get dealmaking, Meta and Nvidia sign a bigger one and Tepper moves in on Micron. Bold moves shook up the status quo on Wall Street.
Lunar New Year and a U.S. holiday means another trading week of thinner liquidity is in play.
Chinese equity markets will remain closed for eight days until 24 February to bring in the Year of The Fire Horse. It's a once-in-60-year occurrence that symbolises bold action, impulsive energy and breakthroughs. That mix of chaos and opportunity feels particularly fitting for Wall Street right now.
Talk of a ‘SaaSpocalypse’ and ‘RAMageddon’ continued this week as the market punished software, while hitting pause on rewarding memory chip makers.
Some of the worst hit SaaS firms are Atlassian ($TEAM), trading below its 200-day moving average after losing 43% last month, and Monday.com ($MNDY), hovering at the lower end of its 52-week range after multiple analysts cut price targets.
Only Figma ($FIG) bucked the trend, rising 2.5% with a breakthrough of its own addressing AI disruption concerns. The companies launched ‘Claude Code to Figma’ – an integration aimed at embedding AI more directly into design workflows.
Meanwhile, memory firms Micron ($MU) and Sandisk ($SNDK) saw re-ratings to the upside, but struggled to extend gains as investors took profits in early Tuesday trading. Still, $MU bulls might take solace in a 13F filing from billionaire fund manager David Tepper, who made his own bold bet in Q4: Tepper’s fund Appaloosa added a million $MU shares.
It's a reinforcement of the memory ‘supercycle’ narrative as the RAM shortage persists. AI is hungry for memory: Nvidia’s ($NVDA) latest Vera Rubin GPUs will use nine-times as much memory as a high-end PC. And this week, Meta ($META) and Nvidia expanded their partnership, with Meta striking a massive chip deal for Nvidia’s GPUs and new standalone CPUs.
But perhaps the most chaotic corner of Wall Street is still M&A. The takeover saga for Warner Bros. Discovery ($WBD) between Netflix ($NFLX) and Paramount Skydance’s ($PSKY) served another twist: Netflix granted WBD a seven-day waiver so that it can engage with Paramount and discuss deficiencies in its offer. It's a sign that Paramount is still in the game, and $PSKY rallied 5% on the news.
When liquidity thins, narratives get louder. Regardless of the Chinese zodiac, fortune favours the bold.
This is not financial advice nor a recommendation to invest in the securities listed. The information presented is intended to be of a factual nature only. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. The author of this article and other employees of Stakeshop Pty Ltd may hold positions or have financial interests in the company (or companies) discussed above. As always, do your own research and consider seeking financial, legal and taxation advice before investing.
Samy is a markets analyst at Stake, with seven years of experience in the world of investing, working across roles in private banking, venture capital and financial media. She has a Master’s degree in Finance and Data Analytics from The University of Sydney Business School.
