Today’s Market Recap：U.S. Treasury Steps In to Stabilize Markets,Stocks Rally, Bitcoin Breaks $70,000, Moderna Surges 180%

Tracking the Market Trend

TradingKey - The U.S. Treasury Department announced market intervention measures, and the three major U.S. stock indices reversed their three-day losing streak to close higher across the board.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.22% to 53,463.05; the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.16% to 26,331.09; and the S&P 500 increased 0.21% to 7,707.98.

A major breakthrough in Moderna’s (MRNA) cancer vaccine sent its stock soaring 180%, while Merck (MRK) followed suit with a gain of nearly 13%, leading the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Most tech stocks rebounded, with Tesla (TSLA) rising more than 4%, while Nvidia (NVDA) bucked the trend, falling about 1%. The chip sector came under pressure overall, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) dropping more than 2%.

In the bond market, the yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury note briefly plunged 10 basis points following intervention by the Treasury Department. The U.S. Dollar Index fell to its lowest level since late May, while the offshore yuan rose above 6.73 to hit a new high in more than three years. Bitcoin (BTC) briefly surpassed $70,000 during the session, and Ethereum (ETH) rose as much as 10%.

In the commodities market, as tensions between the U.S. and Iran continued to escalate, WTI crude oil rose for the fourth consecutive day, hitting a new high in over three weeks. Gold (XAUUSD) rebounded sharply, breaking above $4,500 for the first time in more than two months.

Market Headline

The U.S. Treasury Department announced an expansion of the repurchase limit for long-term bonds, causing the yield on 30-year U.S. Treasuries to plummet. The U.S. Treasury doubled the liquidity repurchase limit for 10- to 30-year Treasury bonds to at least $4 billion per transaction, intervening as the yield on 30-year U.S. Treasuries hit its highest level since 2007. This move signaled policy intervention and reignited market discussions about a Treasury-led version of “yield curve control” (YCC).

Moderna’s Phase 3 trial for its melanoma mRNA vaccine was successful, and its stock closed up nearly 180%. Moderna and Merck announced on Wednesday that their jointly developed personalized mRNA cancer vaccine had achieved positive results in a large-scale Phase 3 clinical trial, marking the first successful Phase 3 trial of mRNA technology in cancer treatment and a major breakthrough in personalized immunotherapy in the history of cancer treatment. Boosted by this news, Merck’s stock closed up nearly 13%, leading the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

OpenAI’s revenue growth slowed to 18% in the second quarter, allowing Anthropic to overtake it. According to recent reports, OpenAI’s second-quarter revenue totaled just $6.7 billion, an 18% increase from the previous quarter, while its operating loss widened. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s second-quarter revenue reached $11.5 billion, surging 140% quarter-over-quarter, surpassing OpenAI in quarterly revenue for the first time and posting a small profit. This divergence in performance between the two AI giants not only reshapes the industry’s competitive landscape but also adds new uncertainty to the IPOs both companies are simultaneously preparing for.

NVIDIA plans to invest in AI data annotation company Mercor, with the funding round potentially valuing the company at $20 billion. According to The Information, NVIDIA has begun discussions with data annotation service provider Mercor regarding an investment, which would be part of a funding round valuing Mercor at $20 billion. In the past, most of Mercor’s revenue came from closed-source AI model developers such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, but as NVIDIA prioritizes the development of its open-source Nemotron model, revenue from NVIDIA is on the rise. According to people familiar with the matter, NVIDIA paid Mercor tens of millions of dollars last quarter. In addition to Mercor, NVIDIA also uses data from other providers such as Turing and Scale, while maintaining its own in-house data team.

Marvell (MRVL) has entered into a custom chip partnership with Google(GOOGL) and received warrants from Google. Mawell Technologies and Google announced today that they have entered into a custom chip partnership, with Mawell issuing warrants to Google that allow for the purchase of up to 58.97 million shares of stock at an exercise price of $206.58 per share, corresponding to a value of approximately $12.18 billion. The two parties signed a commercial agreement on July 29, under which Marvell will provide Google with custom chip products; the subsequent vesting of the warrants will be tied to revenue from the collaborative products.

Samsung reportedly raised prices for foundry orders, with increases of up to 15% for advanced processes. According to media reports, Samsung Electronics has raised prices for new orders of certain advanced-process foundry services by up to 15%. Sources familiar with the matter revealed that in July, Samsung raised prices for chips manufactured using its 4-nanometer process (SF4) by 10% to 15% compared to the previous month. Samsung is unable to fulfill all orders, partly because it needs to allocate capacity to U.S. customers while also reserving capacity for its own chip production.

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