Chipmakers Rip Higher, Interest Rate Impact on AI, Hut 8 CEO Exclusive Interview 7/21/26

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Hey Fidelity, what's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app?

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Start with as little as one dollar with no account fees or trade commissions on US stocks and ETFs.

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Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.

**Frank Holland** (0:47)
Zero account fees apply to retail brokerage accounts only.

**Asher Genoot** (0:49)
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**Brian Sullivan** (1:05)
Big tech soaring as the NASDAQ 100 nearly pops 2 percent. Welcome to Power Lunch everybody with Kelly. I am Brian. Stocks near session highs, doubt 400 points. Once again though, the action in the semiconductor, some big names spiking double digits as a market. Kelly looks right past Iran and oil.

**Kelly Evans** (1:23)
And speaking of big movers, we have two exclusive interviews coming up. Coinbase, one of the best stocks in the S&P 500 today. The largest US-based crypto exchange reports progress on the pathway for new legislation. CEO Brian Armstrong is here. And crypto miner turned AI data center company, Hut 8 signed a $10 billion lease, providing compute to big tech, with shares already at 400 percent in the past year. Is there more to run? We'll ask CEO Asher Genoot.

**Brian Sullivan** (1:50)
I feel like we've been doing a lot of that lately. We have these Bitcoin miners. And did you ever come up with a name for the group Kelly?

**Kelly Evans** (1:57)
AI landlords.

**Brian Sullivan** (1:58)
AI landlords. I like AI landlords. There we go. We got all that ails you, AI landlord. We've also got an action packed hour for you. We're going to get to more on oil and crypto in a few minutes. But let us start with the semiconductors and a powerful pop in many of the big name stocks. Christina Parts-Nevel is with us now. And KP, give us some of the big moves and what is behind them.

**Christina Purrty-Nevel** (2:19)
Can I say not much? Well, no. Semi's are bouncing again today. And there is no single headline driving this major move. After a roughly 20% drop in the stocks from late June, specifically June 22nd, the selling pressure just seems to be easing today. You can see it with really what is leading. The weakest, most oversold names are up the most. Sandus, Micron, Marvell, Western Digital, storage name Seagate, even Lumentum, which ran yesterday on a Barclays upgrade up over 4%.
There are, of course, individual catalysts, if you want them, to Brian's point. TSMC, Taiwan Semi, moving on an EK report that it will raise prices on both advanced and mature nodes by up to roughly 10% starting in 2027 TSMC says its pricing is strategic, not opportunistic. Nebius jumped after. NVIDIA filing showed a 9.3 passive stake. Worth being very, very careful here. This is not necessarily a new investment. Most of it is a warrant NVIDIA picked up back in March, and NVIDIA can't exercise it until September 11th. SEC rules just required it to be counted, which is why we're seeing it today, yet the shares of NVIDIA are still up. AMD, higher ahead of its advancing AI event, which starts tomorrow and Thursday. AMD's CEO keynote will be on Thursday. Jeffries and SemiAnalysis both point to Anthropic as a possible new customer announcement, so maybe buyers are getting in early. Micron caught a bid after Bank of America added it to its US number one list.
Now, the caution. After a few strong days for semiconductors against the MAG-7, it's not gossible.
TSMC, Samsung, ASML all sold off on strong results these past two weeks. Month to date, the MAG-7 is still ahead, and software is lower today after a round of Morgan Stanley downgrade. Some of this move, though, is definitely rotational, you know, from software into chips, not necessarily conviction. And for perspective on how normal this is just over the past decade, the stocks, this is the index, has had six drops of 20% or more from their 52-week highs. The S&P 500 has had roughly two.