SK Hynix Makes $26.5 Billion Nasdaq Debut, Delta Warns Airfares Aren't Coming Down

**Zaid Admani** (0:00)
Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Friday, July 10th. In today's episode, we'll break down SK Hynix's record US listing today. We'll also explain why the stable coin company Circle just got approval to be a bank, and what it means for the company. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why Netflix is thinking about launching live TV channels, and why I think it's a good idea. We got a great show for you today.
Let's go.
Stocks bounced back on Thursday with the S&P 500 up 0.8%, while the NASDAQ jumped 1.3%. It seems like after Wednesday's Iran scare, the market quickly went back to focusing on AI. Technology was the best performing sector yesterday, with chip stocks leading the rally. Oil prices also fell on Thursday after President Trump signaled that Iran may be open to ending the latest round of fighting. So it seems like every time there's one of these Iran flare ups, it could be a good dip buying opportunity because just a couple of days later, the market rips back higher. The S&P is now within 1% of a new record high, which hasn't happened since the first week of June. Now, as I record this, stocks are in the green this morning. So if we get a strong rally today, we could be sitting at record highs heading into the weekend. In the next week, earning season ramps up in a big way. Five of the six biggest banks in America all report on Tuesday. And the overall expectation from the market is high for this earning season, especially for AI companies. So the next few weeks will be very interesting. We're gonna be locked in. So if you're new here, it's a great time to get subscribed to the podcast and tune in every day to stay in the loop.
Let's run through some headlines. Starting with SK Hynix. SK Hynix is making history today by being the biggest ever US listing by a foreign company. SK Hynix is a South Korean company that makes memory chips, and they're raising $26.5 billion as part of their NASDAQ listing today, topping the record Alibaba set back in 2014 In fact, it's the second biggest US stock sale of all time, second only to SpaceX's record IPO last month. But here's the thing, SK Hynix was already a publicly traded company in South Korea. What they're doing now is creating a US listed version of their stock through something called an ADR, which stands for American Depository Receipts. The way this works is that a US bank holds the foreign company shares and then issues certificates representing those shares that Americans can then buy and sell in dollars on a US exchange. And look, the timing here for SK Hynix makes a lot of sense. The company is looking to raise all this money to build more capacity to make more memory chips. As we covered a lot on the show, the demand for memory chips has exploded because of AI. And SK Hynix is one of the three major companies in the world that makes memory, along with Samsung and Micron. In fact, SK Hynix had a 57% market share of the global HBM market by revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025 HBM is the highly profitable memory that goes in AI data centers. And all of this memory chip demand has led to a surge in SK Hynix's stock, and their market cap actually crossed a trillion dollars earlier this year. So the company is doing this listing in the US and raising money to, you know, capture that investor enthusiasm. In fact, the demand for this offering was seven times oversubscribed, so the stock is expected to have a big first day pop. And not just that, by doing this American listing, that could also further boost the company's valuation. Currently, SK Hynix trades at roughly 4.8 times forward earnings, compare that to 6.6 times for Micron. One of the reasons for that was that most American investors simply couldn't buy SK Hynix stock until now. So I'm keeping my eye on SK Hynix stock, and I wonder if Samsung will do a US listing soon too.
Let's shift gears and talk about Circle. The Stablecoin company just received approval to become a bank, sort of. Now, quick refresher on Circle. They're the company behind the Stablecoin USDC, who has had more than $73 billion in circulation. And every one of those digital dollars in circulation has to be backed by real cash and treasuries. Well, up until now, Circle had to pay third-party banks to hold all their treasuries in cash. But as of this morning, the Office of Comptroller of the Currency approves Circle to operate their own national trust bank. The bank is called Circle National Trust, and that means that Circle can custody their own reserves. Now, to be clear, this is not a full-on banking license, Circle can't take regular customer deposits or issue credit cards or make loans. So Chase and Bank of America and Wells Fargo can breathe a sigh of relief for now. But this is still a big deal for the company because it puts Circle under direct federal oversight, which might make it easier for Circle to pitch to big institutions to use their USDC stablecoin. So this is a win for Circle, and they needed it because the competition in the stablecoin space is getting intense, despite some of the hype wearing off. Two weeks ago, a consortium of more than 140 companies, including BlackRock, MasterCard, Stripe, and Visa launched a rival stablecoin called OpenUSD. Circle stock got absolutely crushed on that news. But shares are bouncing back this morning following the bank charter news. Circle stock is up around 7% this morning. If you zoom out, though, Circle stock is still down 70% plus from their post IPO peak.