TMTB EOD Wrap: A Day of Activation (ARM AMD and Intel)

Good afternoon. QQQs +66bps as Oil fell 2% although was well off its intra day lows. War news mixed: Iran has signed privately they are open to talks and VP Vance might travel to Pakistan as soon as this weekend for negotiations. WSJ said tha two senior Iranian officials won’t be assassinated for at least next 4-5 days as communciatoins continue. We know Trump likes to get deals done, but we also know Iran is a very tough negotiator and things be easy to come to a consensus. So still plenty of questions in the air, and Brent is still $100+.

Let's move onto Tech, where the only killings we care about are SaaSassinations.

Today was all about activation. The CPU theme has been kindling into a fire for the past several months as Agentic AI has taken off and datapoints of a tight CPU market have added up, including very bullish commentary from mgmt teams over the past couple of months. The OpenClaw basket names - NET, FSLY, AKAM, etc. - all took off but ARM, AMD, INTC remained in the dog house, with most investors saying all 3 had too much hair. Where there is so much kindle, it doesn’t take much to light the flame.

A few items today were the catalyst for activation. First, the most obvious was ARM’s CEO putting out a $25B / $9 EPS target out there and saying agentic AI is driving 4x more CPU capacity in DCs per GW vs previously. Second, Nikkei was out saying INTC and AMD were raising prices. Third, turbulence in the memory trade this (MU/SNDK -4%) had investors looking for different places to shift $ into. Couple all those with a juicy r/r for both INTC (under $45) and AMD (near $200) and charts that had just crossed above short-term moving averages, and the setting was ripe for the moves we saw today: ARM +16%; AMD +7%; INTC +7%. We had held in there on our LT AMD position, but we were waiting for the right activation to initiate a MT position, along with INTC. We’ll leave ARM to the more daring. We think the theme has legs, assuming the market holds up, which is a big if. As always, we’ll keep an open mind and adjust accordingly.

Another name that recently activated: HPE.