Stock Market Update
August 20, 2025
UPGRADES
U.S. President Donald Trump has been on a multimillion-dollar bond-buying spree since taking office in January, investing in debt issued by local authorities, gas districts and major American corporations.
Across 33 pages of filings to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE), dated Aug. 12, the president outlined 690 transactions that have taken place since he took office. The documents were made public on Tuesday.
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According to CNBC calculations, the purchases had a total value of at least $100 million, assuming the lower value end listed for each disclosed transaction.
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By law, the U.S. president, vice president and other select officials must periodically declare “reportable transactions” to the OGE. The precise value of these dealings does not have to be reported.
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The extensive lists filed earlier this month show that, over the course of this year, Trump has bought bonds sold by various entities, including local U.S. governments, as well as gas districts, water supply districts, hospital authorities and school boards.
DOWNGRADES
Palantir shares sank into bear market territory Wednesday after six-straight days of heavy selling.
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The slide marks the longest such streak for the artificial intelligence software company since April 2024, and brings shares down 20% from the recent record. Shares closed in correction territory on Tuesday after accumulating a 15% loss from the highs.
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Palantir’s slide followed a broader market selloff and came on the heels of a short-seller report from Andrew Left’s Citron Research.
He called the company “detached from fundamentals and analysis” and said shares should be priced at $40 if compared to the same price-to-revenue multiple in OpenAI’s recent $500 billion valuation.
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“Karp and his team should be proud. But for investors, that’s where discipline kicks in,” Left wrote. “Comparison is the enemy of happiness, and when measured against true AI leaders,
Palantir’s price already reflects success beyond its fundamentals.”
NEWS
1. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were under pressure Wednesday during Day 2 of a nasty market rotation out of some of this year’s top gainers and into value-based stocks and laggards. “What I’ll say about these rotations is that they happen from time to time.
They are healthy corrections. I know they feel awful to go through,” said Jeff Marks, director of portfolio analysis for the Club, noting they tend to last about three days. That’s why it’s “too early to do things even though we have cash,” Jeff added.
Including Wednesday’s market action, the S&P 500 was on a four-session losing streak, and the Nasdaq was down four out of the past five sessions. Both of them logged record-high closes last week.
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2. Many of the portfolio’s Big Tech winners were lower in Wednesday’s market rotation, including Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Broadcom, Nvidia, and CrowdStrike.
But it was not all bad news. DuPont was up. “It is very cheap versus peers. We expect that the spin-off of the electronics business Nov. 1 will unlock that value,” Jeff said. struggled this year, were also higher.