Chips rallied hard against a falling US market Monday: SanDisk, Western Digital, and Micron all jumped after Elon Musk called memory the binding constraint on AI, even as the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow all fell on escalating US-Iran tensions. In an ironic twist, Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office had just exited Micron entirely, days before the rally. Singapore's STI reversed a weak open to close higher, while Hong Kong's own chip rally sent its market up. Let's dig in 👇

💬 Druckenmiller dumped Micron days before it ripped: bad timing, or an overdone rally?

📊 Quick Recap — What Moved & Why

🇺🇸 US — Chips Rally as Iran Fears Rattle Wall Street

🔑 Key Event: Memory and optical-chip names rallied hard even as the broader market fell: $Sandisk(SNDK.US) jumped about 8-10% to a fresh high, $Western Digital(WDC.US) rose 6%, and $Micron Tech(MU.US) gained 5% to reclaim $1,000, after Elon Musk flagged memory as AI's binding constraint and Commerce Secretary Lutnick opposed Apple sourcing memory from China. $S&P 500(.SPX.US) fell 0.52% to 7,745.06, $NASDAQ Composite Index(.IXIC.US) lost 0.32% to 26,644.91, and $Dow Jones Industrial Average(.DJI.US) dropped 0.51% to 53,459.78, as a US-Iran shipping deal expired and oil topped $90.

@Heroic Lifesaver : Both SanDisk and Micron look headed for new highs. Memory demand is outstripping supply, and I'd rather be on the right side of that than fight the tape.

👀 Other to Watch

• Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office → fully exited Broadcom, Intel, and Micron just days before Monday's memory-sector surge, per a Friday 13F filing, loading up instead on Amazon, AMD, and a new Alphabet stake.
• $Coherent Corp.(COHR.US) & $AXT(AXTI.US) → also rode the memory/optical theme, up 10.4% and 14% respectively, the latter on a blowout earnings beat.
• Airlines → fell hard on the oil spike ($American Airlines(AAL.US) down over 4%, $Delta Air Lines(DAL.US) and $United Airlines(UAL.US) both down more than 2%), while energy producers rallied as a mirror trade, with $ExxonMobil(XOM.US) up about 3%.
• $Snap(SNAP.US) → fell about 8-12% premarket after a court ruling revived thousands of social-media-addiction lawsuits and its CTO sold roughly $21.5M of stock.
• Anthropic → said its annualized revenue run rate topped $65B in July, up from just $9B a year ago. Investors reportedly expect an October IPO near a $2 trillion valuation, which would make it the largest IPO ever, topping SpaceX's $1.77T listing.

🇸🇬 Singapore — STI Reverses a Weak Open to Close Higher

🔑 Key Event: $FTSE Straits Times Index(STI.SG) opened down about 0.9% at 5,679, carrying over Friday's Iran-driven jitters, before reversing to close up 0.4% at 5,768.46 as Singapore's July trade surplus held firm at S$12.6B, reassuring investors even as global oil risk lingered.

@只想暴富 : UOB's Q2 profit rose 10% on record wealth-management fee income, but I'd watch whether that can keep offsetting the margin pressure from lower rates, since trading income already fell 8%.

👀 Other to Watch

• $OCBC Bank(O39.SG) & $UOB(U11.SG) → both traded ex-dividend Monday, paying S$0.47 and S$0.88 per share respectively; $DBS(D05.SG) had already gone ex-dividend Friday.
• $MediLifestyle(Z4D.SG) → surged 44% on a deal to acquire 60% of EM2AI for S$6.76M.
• $Ever Glory(ZKX.SG) → filed for a proposed dual-primary listing on the Hong Kong exchange.

🇭🇰 HK/China — Chip Rally Lifts Hong Kong Even as Wall Street Falls

🔑 Key Event: Hong Kong moved the opposite way from Wall Street: $Hang Seng Index(00HSI.HK) rose 1.34% to 25,453.23 and $Hang Seng TECH Index(STECH.HK) gained 1.58% to 4,782.03, led by $SENSETIME-W(00020.HK), up 8.9%, and a continued rally in chipmakers $SMIC(00981.HK) and $HUA HONG GRACE(01347.HK) on the same AI-chip enthusiasm lifting US memory names.

👀 Other to Watch

• $Moutai(600519.SH) → H1 profit fell 1.95% year-on-year to RMB44.5B, its first half-year decline since listing, as China's "national team" funds exited its top-10 shareholder list.
• China's July industrial output rose 4.5% year-on-year, though property investment fell 19.2% and retail sales grew just 0.6%, a soft print keeping the case for more stimulus alive.

🌍 Other

• 🇺🇸 Meta faces opening statements Tuesday in a landmark Oakland trial, with state attorneys general seeking $1.4 trillion in damages over claims it engineered addictive features for kids.
• 🌍 Oil topped $90 a barrel (Brent) after a US-Iran shipping memorandum expired with no successor deal; Citi turned bullish on silver, targeting $75-90/oz.

📅 Key Events Tonight / This Week

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🚫 No duplicates · ⏰ Deadline: Aug 18, 2026, 11:59 PM SGT

Not investment advice, just market talk 🙏