Retail sentiment on SPY and QQQ has moderated to ‘neutral’.

  • An AI-fueled rally sent the Nasdaq to a record close on Monday and AMD into the $1 trillion club. 
  • Investors now turn to the Trump-Xi summit, Iran tensions, oil prices and a busy slate of Fed speakers for more clues.
  • Alibaba unveiled a new AI accelerator that it says is its most powerful yet, putting the Chinese tech giant into the AI-chip conversation just days before the Trump-Xi meeting. 

U.S. stock futures took a breather early Tuesday after a stellar session on Wall Street saw the Nasdaq close at a record high. Semiconductors and mega-cap AI stocks led the rally, with Meta’s high-profile rollout of its Muse AI assistant and AMD breaching the $1 trillion market cap for the first time.

As of 4:00 a.m. ET, Nasdaq and S&P 500 futures were flat with a negative bias, while Dow and Russell 2000 futures were down 0.2%. 

However, on Stocktwits, retail sentiment for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), an exchange-traded fund that tracks the S&P 500 Index, and Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), which tracks the Nasdaq-100 Index, has moved to ‘neutral.’ 

Oil Is Back On The Radar 

Meanwhile, crude oil prices rose, with Brent crossing $100/barrel following U.S. sanctions targeting Iranian aviation alongside military escalations in the Middle East. 

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly said that Iranian airlines would be cut off from global fueling, landing services, and the dollar financial system starting Wednesday. Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian is also set to fly to the United Nations in New York to present Iran’s positions on “international developments.”

Big Event This Week: Trump-Xi Meet 

Investors are also closely eyeing a high-stakes meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, accompanied by top tech CEOs, to address critical trade, tariff, and AI governance frameworks ahead of the expiration of the U.S.-China trade truce. 

The Tech Radar

Meta (META): Shares rose nearly 1% in early premarket trade. Meta was Monday’s star performer after its Muse AI product climbed the U.S. app-store charts. Cathie Wood’s ARK bought about 51,000 shares of Meta yesterday, along with BEAM and IONS. 

AMD (AMD): It became the 14th U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization. The stock is among the top trending tickers on Stocktwits, with retail traders focused on renewed CPU demand.

Alibaba (BABA): Shares rose over 1% in early premarket trade after unveiling the Zhenwu V900, which the company describes as China's most powerful AI accelerator and says delivers three times the performance of its predecessor. 

Big Tech Hyperscalers (AMZN, META, GOOGL, MSFT, ORCL) remain on the retail radar. Anthropic revealed compute capacity targets scaling towards 5 GW by year-end (matching OpenAI), including a $1.2B monthly compute deal with SpaceX and up to 5 GW with Amazon. 

Trending Stocks

Tesla (TSLA): Shares are inching towards a three-week high. Nvidia (NVDA) has included Tesla energy storage in its DSX Ready AI-factory ecosystem. 

SPCX (SpaceX): Morgan Stanley has highlighted potential links between Tesla and SpaceX across robotics, energy, connectivity and AI infrastructure, saying that they are converging into one ‘physical AI’ stack.

RKLB (Rocket Lab): CEO Peter Beck pitched the proposed Iridium acquisition as a way to build a more vertically integrated space and communications company. Iridium shareholders are scheduled to vote on the deal Thursday. 

GameStop (GME): Shares rose nearly 3% in early premarket after CEO Ryan Cohen bought another 1.15 million shares for about $26.4 million, taking his direct holdings to 40.5 million shares.

Paramount Skydance (PSKY): Shares rose 2% in early premarket trade after reaching settlements with 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America, removing key legal hurdles around its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Lennar (LEN): Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a roughly $212 million purchase of Lennar shares, putting the homebuilder back on the retail radar amid an otherwise difficult housing backdrop.

Robinhood (HOOD): HOOD shares are down more than 2% in early premarket trading. Retail is tracking two catalysts: a brief app outage tied to an AWS disruption and a filing showing CEO Vlad Tenev intends to sell about $31 million of Robinhood shares. The service subsequently recovered. 

Grab (GRAB): Shares rose over 4% in early premarket trade after CEO Anthony Tan bought 10.35 million shares at $2.89 each, worth roughly $30 million, while President and COO Alexander Hungate bought another 299,571 shares. 

Novo obesity-drug peers (VKTX, GPCR and ALT): These names are catching retail attention after Novo Nordisk outlined ambitions to launch more than five "multi-blockbusters" by 2030, and signaled its search for bigger deals beyond Wegovy, putting its next-generation obesity pipeline and potential dealmaking back in focus. 

Eli Lilly (LLY): Broke ground on a $6.5 billion manufacturing plant in Houston dedicated to producing active ingredients for its oral weight-loss medication, Foundayo.

Other tickers trending on Stocktwits at the time of writing included BlackBerry (BB), On Holdings (ONON), and Novo Nordisk (NVO).

What Else To Watch Tuesday

On the economic front, investors will watch for the release of the U.S. ADP Weekly Employment Change report and remarks from several Federal Reserve officials, including New York Fed President John Williams, Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson, and Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin.

On the earnings front, watch out for AutoZone (AZO) and Thor Industries (THO) before the bell, followed by KB Home ($KBH) in after-hours trading. 

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com<