Your Evening Briefing

May 18, 2026

Tech drags down stocks as semiconductors slip

Stocks declined, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 posting losses. Energy was the best-performing sector while information technology was today’s worst performer. Five of the Magnificent 7 names dropped.

In a Truth Social post, President Trump announced that “we will NOT be doing the scheduled attack of Iran tomorrow,” per the requests of three leaders in the Middle East. The statement gave stocks a bump, though they remained in the red.

Bitcoin dipped below $77,000 as ETFs saw $1 billion in weekly outflows.

Stocks that moved higher:

Dominion Energy jumped on reports that NextEra Energy is in talks to acquire the company in a deal valued at around $66 billion.
T1 Energy spiked on record call activity after Situational Awareness revealed a 3.6% stake in the company.
HIVE rocketed higher after announcing 320 MW of sovereign AI infrastructure in the Toronto area, with a 13F filing showing Situational Awareness held a 1.3% stake.
LiveRamp’s shares surged following an announcement over the weekend that French advertising company Publicis Groupe will acquire the data collaboration platform for $38.50 per share in an all-cash deal.
Macy’s ticked higher after Berkshire Hathaway took a stake in the company.

Stocks that moved lower:

Seagate Technology Holdings led memory and storage stocks lower after its CEO said it would “take too long” to build new factories and machines, dragging Sandisk, Western Digital, and Micron down with it.
Shares of Lumentum and Coherent plunged after ex-OpenAI researcher-turned-investor Leopold Aschenbrenner disclosed his Situational Awareness fund exited his holdings in those companies during the first quarter.
Regeneron sank after its Phase 3 skin cancer treatment trial failed, with results falling short of rival Merck’s Keytruda.
Li Auto sank amid a muted response to its updated L9 SUV.
UnitedHealth dipped after Berkshire Hathaway dumped its entire stake in the company.

Elon Musk once promised to take Tesla private at $420. More recently, he’s been offering xAI employees $420 to hand over their private tax returns as training data for Grok, Bloomberg reports, citing internal chats. In an effort to boost the chatbot’s tax-prep capabilities, the company asked employees — as well as friends and family — to submit completed tax returns in exchange for cash that, two months later, still hasn’t materialized.

Anthropic really doesn’t want the US to help China with AI
Anthropic made its case for freezing China out of the AI race as much as possible in a new policy paper.
Jury rules against Musk in lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman
A jury found Altman and OpenAI not liable on Monday, following a three-week trail.
EY retracts report with apparent AI hallucinations
Sherwood News had exclusively reported an AI watchdog’s findings of the hallucinations.
Elon Musk expects Tesla Robotaxis to be “widespread” in the US by the end of the year
If he’s talking about robotaxis in general, he might be right.
Swatch’s collaboration with Audemars Piguet could help bring hype back to its bottom line
The rival watchmakers have teamed up on a buzzy new collection that’s sparking a global consumer frenzy.
Meta to lay off 8,000 employees, move 7,000 to new initiatives related to AI
As part of the restructuring, the company will also be eliminating managerial roles.
Google employees are now competing with Anthropic and Meta for access to Google compute
In the AI era, even Google’s own employees are struggling to get Google computing power.
A Nepali Sherpa just broke his own Everest ascent record amid busiest year for permits ever
When it comes to the world’s tallest mountain, it’s not so lonely at the top.

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