Friday's Final Takeaways: A Market Split Between AI Doubts and Crypto Euphoria

Marley Kayden (0:02)

Welcome back to Market On Close. I'm Marley Kayden here in our Chicago headquarters. We will close up this week with some final thoughts on the session and the week overall. We saw chip and memory names moving higher today with the SMH notching its fourth winning day following the tech sell-off we saw after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an open letter calling for a slowdown in AI development. Names like Applied Materials, Lam Research moved higher today on the session along with memory names like Sandisk and Seagate. Cyber stocks gave back some of their gains today, but they still closed up nearly 8% on the week. We also saw a big move in crypto tide companies today after Bitcoin topped $80,000.

Coinbase was one of the top performers on the session moving 12% higher while Strategy posted a gain of 16%.

Bitcoin jumped 5% on the week despite seeing setbacks for the crypto industry as the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate and the Fed issued a rate hike. Even though we are still more than 35% off of October highs, JP Morgan's internal model is estimating Bitcoin's value at $266,000.

Yes, you heard me correctly. That model compares Bitcoin with gold on a volatility-adjusted basis. But as we all know, Bitcoin is inherently more volatile than gold. This valuation doesn't offer a timeline either. Other firms are looking at Bitcoin moving higher over the next 12 months, not to that degree. Citi has a target of $82,000, which is just above where we are right now, while Bernstein expects almost double that at $150,000. Standard Charter has a $100,000 target by the end of the year. Now, as we head into next week, we do have some earnings to look out for. We've got AutoZone, KB Home, Cracker Barrel, General Mills, Darden Restaurants and Costco all reporting. On the data front, we'll get PMI on Wednesday. We'll have jobless claims and new home sales on Thursday and consumer sentiment on Friday. We also have some Fed speak throughout the week and of course, the UN General Assembly starts on Tuesday and we also have the US China Summit with Trump and Xi meeting, which everyone will be waiting for to hear any announcements from that discussion. But that is going to do it for us this week on Market on Close. I'm Marley Kayden. You can download our Schwab Network app available in the Apple App Store for free and you can tune in 24-7 on schwabnetwork.com. I hope you have a great weekend.