Moderna led the S&P 500 in August after reporting promising results from a late-stage trial of a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine it co-developed with Merck, according to CNBC. The data challenged years of skepticism about whether the company's mRNA technology could produce another major breakthrough following the decline of its Covid-19 vaccine business. "This is miraculous, so it got a miraculous welcome," CNBC's Jim Cramer said Monday.
Enterprise software stocks accounted for many of the index's other top performers. Palantir, Veeva Systems, Salesforce, and ServiceNow had each come under sustained selling pressure as investors grew skeptical that traditional software models could remain competitive against the backdrop of accelerating AI development, according to the outlet. Those declines were compounded by large short positions held by Situational Awareness, a leveraged hedge fund that had bet against software companies based on that thesis. When the fund was forced to unwind its trades in late July, those shorts became a tailwind for the stocks it had targeted. "As August comes to a grinding end, it's hard to believe that the reverberations of a hedge fund implosion could color so much of the month's action," Cramer said.
Situational Awareness, which was run by Leopold Aschenbrenner and peaked at $45 billion in **** ets at the start of July, lost roughly $35 billion after margin calls from prime brokers Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase forced a distressed sale of its publicly traded holdings to Ken Griffin's Citadel. The fund had used as much as 400% leverage and held large short positions in software names including Adobe alongside bullish bets on AI infrastructure stocks.
Among individual software stocks, Salesforce bounced back after better-than-expected quarterly results quieted fears of what Cramer called a "SaaSpocalypse," while ServiceNow gained ground after showing investors that AI could be folded into its platform without disrupting existing operations. Veeva Systems climbed in tandem with the wider software sector after the anticipated AI threat to its life sciences niche failed to materialize in any meaningful way. Gartner also joined the recovery, as worries that large AI models would erode the market for its research and advisory services turned out not to be borne out by the company's actual results.
Outside software, Newmont benefited from a recovery in gold prices, while Coinbase climbed as cryptocurrencies rebounded amid concerns about U.S. debt and government spending. Super Micro Computer and Sandisk also surged on strong demand for memory used in AI data centers.
#cramer
Enterprise software stocks accounted for many of the index's other top performers. Palantir, Veeva Systems, Salesforce, and ServiceNow had each come under sustained selling pressure as investors grew skeptical that traditional software models could remain competitive against the backdrop of accelerating AI development, according to the outlet. Those declines were compounded by large short positions held by Situational Awareness, a leveraged hedge fund that had bet against software companies based on that thesis. When the fund was forced to unwind its trades in late July, those shorts became a tailwind for the stocks it had targeted. "As August comes to a grinding end, it's hard to believe that the reverberations of a hedge fund implosion could color so much of the month's action," Cramer said.
Situational Awareness, which was run by Leopold Aschenbrenner and peaked at $45 billion in **** ets at the start of July, lost roughly $35 billion after margin calls from prime brokers Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase forced a distressed sale of its publicly traded holdings to Ken Griffin's Citadel. The fund had used as much as 400% leverage and held large short positions in software names including Adobe alongside bullish bets on AI infrastructure stocks.
Among individual software stocks, Salesforce bounced back after better-than-expected quarterly results quieted fears of what Cramer called a "SaaSpocalypse," while ServiceNow gained ground after showing investors that AI could be folded into its platform without disrupting existing operations. Veeva Systems climbed in tandem with the wider software sector after the anticipated AI threat to its life sciences niche failed to materialize in any meaningful way. Gartner also joined the recovery, as worries that large AI models would erode the market for its research and advisory services turned out not to be borne out by the company's actual results.
Outside software, Newmont benefited from a recovery in gold prices, while Coinbase climbed as cryptocurrencies rebounded amid concerns about U.S. debt and government spending. Super Micro Computer and Sandisk also surged on strong demand for memory used in AI data centers.
#cramer
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