☕️ [Task Coins Giveaway] Daily Market Talk — Walmart Crashes 9% as Moderna's Rally Unravels

Two of the week's biggest stories unwound Thursday: Walmart crashed 9% as US sales growth hit its slowest pace since 2020, and Moderna gave back almost all of Wednesday's record surge, its worst day ever. Treasury yields fully erased the relief from the Treasury's own buyback announcement just a day earlier. Let's dig in 👇

💬 Walmart beat and raised guidance, yet crashed 9%: what does that say about the US consumer?

📊 Quick Recap — What Moved & Why

🇺🇸 US — Walmart Crashes 9% as Moderna's Rally Unravels

🔑 Key Event: $Walmart(WMT.US) fell 9.15% even after beating on earnings and raising full-year guidance, as US comparable sales grew just 2.6% (vs. 3.7% expected), the slowest pace since 2020; the profit beat was partly inflated by a one-time $2.9B tariff refund. $Moderna(MRNA.US) fell 23.5%, its worst day ever, giving back much of Wednesday's record 177% surge as profit-taking set in. $S&P 500(.SPX.US) fell 0.87% to 7,641.16, $NASDAQ Composite Index(.IXIC.US) lost 1% to 26,067.17, and $Dow Jones Industrial Average(.DJI.US) dropped 1.32% to 52,759.21, as Treasury yields fully erased Wednesday's buyback-driven relief.

👀 Other to Watch

• $Costco Wholesale(COST.US), $Home Depot(HD.US) & $Amazon(AMZN.US) → fell 2.45%, 2.85%, and 2.15% respectively in sympathy with Walmart's consumer-spending warning.
• Bitcoin → topped $71,500 after Trump said the US is "considering" accumulating more of it; $Strategy(MSTR.US) rose 7.8% and $Coinbase(COIN.US) 7.6% on the crypto-beta trade.
• 30-year & 10-year Treasury yields → rose back to 5.251% and 4.704%, erasing almost all of Wednesday's Treasury-buyback relief; Jefferies called the buyback "at best a circuit breaker" against a $32T market.

@Tiffany lover : Is the surge in long-end Treasury yields about bond investors selling off, pessimism on the economic outlook, or just money chasing quick gains in chip stocks?

• $Alibaba(BABA.US) → revenue beat (+9%) but net income fell 75% on surging AI capex; Cloud+AI revenue rose 45%.
• Memory & optical names defied the selloff again → $SK Hynix(SKHY.US) rose 4.4% (also striking a tentative labor deal: 6.3% wage hike, up to 60% of bonuses in stock) and $Micron Tech(MU.US) 4%, while $Lumentum(LITE.US) jumped 6.2% and Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) 5.7%.

@koolgal : Alibaba's cloud/AI growth is real, but the AI capex is squeezing near-term profit, so this quarter should show whether cloud monetisation can finally expand margins.

🇸🇬 Singapore — STI Lags a Regional Bounce

🔑 Key Event: $FTSE Straits Times Index(STI.SG) fell 0.4% to 5,671.91 Thursday even as regional markets like Hong Kong bounced, before edging up slightly to about 5,680 Friday morning. $DBS(D05.SG), $OCBC Bank(O39.SG), and $UOB(U11.SG) had no fresh news of their own Thursday, drifting on routine moves within their post-earnings ranges.

👀 Other to Watch

• $ULTRAGREEN AI USD(ULG.SG) → fell 35% after saying there was no material change to its business, following a rival's US FDA approval for a competing imaging-agent product.

🇭🇰 HK/China — Gold Miners & Biotech Lift HK to a 4th Straight Gain

🔑 Key Event: Hong Kong diverged from Wall Street again: $Hang Seng Index(00HSI.HK) rose 0.80% to 25,698.49 and $Hang Seng China Enterprises Index(HSCEI.HK) gained 0.90% to 8,547.84, a 4th straight up day, led by gold miners (Zijin Gold International up over 11% on record profit) and biotech names rallying on the same cancer-therapy optimism hitting Moderna earlier in the week.

👀 Other to Watch

• The Hang Seng Indexes Company's quarterly review results are due after today's HK close, with constituent changes effective 7 and 14 September.
• $ZIJIN MINING(02899.HK) → guided to H1 profit of about RMB39.1B, up 68% year-on-year on higher gold and copper prices; formal results still pending.
• $YOFC(06869.HK) → guided to H1 profit of RMB2.4-3.0B, up as much as 914% year-on-year on booming optical-fiber demand; formal results still pending.

🌍 Other

• 🇺🇸 Meta has quietly become one of Microsoft's largest AI customers, reportedly spending hundreds of millions a year on Azure even as it builds its own AI infrastructure.
• 🌍 Oil held near multi-week highs (WTI ~$86, Brent ~$93) on persistent Strait of Hormuz tensions, with no resolution to the US-Iran standoff in sight.

📅 Key Events Tonight / Next Week

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🚫 No duplicates · ⏰ Deadline: Aug 21, 2026, 11:59 PM SGT

Not investment advice, just market talk 🙏