What Happened?
A number of stocks jumped in the afternoon session after President Trump canceled planned military strikes on Iran and signaled a peace deal could be signed over the weekend.
Intel contributed an additional tailwind after Bank of America double-upgraded the stock from underperform to buy. War-driven inflation had lifted Treasury yields, compressing the valuations on capital-intensive chip stocks. Separately, the Strait of Hormuz closure disrupted the chemical and specialty-gas supply chains that semiconductor fabrication depends on. Oil falling back toward $87 a barrel and the 10-year yield dropping would ease the knock on effects from both.
The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.
Among others, the following stocks were impacted:
- Semiconductor Manufacturing company Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX) jumped 2.5%. Is now the time to buy Lam Research? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
- Semiconductor Manufacturing company Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) jumped 2.8%. Is now the time to buy Applied Materials? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
Zooming In On Applied Materials (AMAT)
Applied Materials’s shares are very volatile and have had 27 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 4 days ago when the stock gained 9.1% on the news that the broader semiconductor sector recovered from a sharp selloff during the previous trading session.
The decisive tone-setter was Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who described the previous week's selloff as a chance to "buy at a discount," adding that the AI revolution is still "at the beginning." That framing, was enough to stabilize sentiment in a sector that had erased $1 trillion in market cap in a single session.
Applied Materials is up 111% since the beginning of the year, and at $566.24 per share, it has set a new 52-week high. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Applied Materials’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $4,073.
ONE MORE THING: 3 Hidden Platforms Growing 3X Faster than Amazon, Google, and PayPal. Amazon, Google, and Meta all followed the same playbook: Dominate an ignored market. Build an unbeatable moat. Scale until you’re unstoppable.
These three platforms are running that exact playbook right now. The early investors in Amazon made fortunes. The early investors in these could do the same. Get All 3 Stocks Here for FREE.
