SpaceX Falls 13.6% on AI Spending as Dow Hits New Record — 2026.8.5 US Stock Daily
The Dow closed at 54,349.12, up 0.49%, its fifth straight gain and another record close. The S&P 500 closed at 7,723.55, down 0.17%; the Nasdaq closed at 26,363.44, down 0.83%. The three indexes split into two directions. The VIX also fell 4.18% to 15.81 — index divergence and falling volatility moving together look more like sector rotation than a broad shift in sentiment.
SpaceX closed down 13.6%, wiping out $225 billion in market value in a single day, according to a Wall Street Insight (华尔街见闻) flash. The Wall Street Journal put the reason right in its subhead: the rocket company’s massive AI spending is unsettling investors. The same day’s flash showed Nvidia up 3.7% — the company spending on compute got cut, the company selling compute got bought. If this pricing pattern continues, the pressure will fall first on companies that don’t sell chips themselves but are telling a story built on self-funded compute infrastructure.
Storage sent a more direct signal. According to a Wall Street Insight flash, SanDisk’s fourth-quarter adjusted EPS came in at $39.25, beating the analyst estimate of $34.37, with revenue of $8.97 billion, up 51%, and the board approved a $14 billion buyback. Despite that scorecard, shares fell 8% after hours — nothing wrong with the results themselves; the only thing to quibble with was guidance: first-quarter revenue guidance of $10.3-10.8 billion came in below the analyst estimate of $11.16 billion. The same flash also showed Western Digital opening down at least 5%, with the semiconductor ETF down 1.04%. Putting the two together, my read is: hitting the numbers no longer earns automatic credit — money is watching guidance.
Energy was the weakest sector, with the energy ETF down 2.07% and WTI crude down 0.90% to $75.09. The backdrop is the Strait of Hormuz: Iraq’s oil ministry confirmed a tanker carrying Iraqi crude successfully passed through the strait, Oman and Iran reached an agreement on separate transit lanes for passage, and Reuters’ reporting also partly attributed the US stock market’s new highs to expectations of the strait reopening. But Polymarket’s pricing is far more cautious: “transit volume returns to normal by August 31” sits at only 14%, “returns to normal by August 15” at only 2%, while “US announces end of blockade on Iran by August 7” is priced at 41%. An announcement is close to a coin flip; actual normalized transit is close to impossible. If stocks and oil prices are running ahead of an announcement, that gap will later have to be closed either by rising probability of actual transit or by oil prices giving back gains.
Fed Governor Cook said inflationary pressure from tariffs, oil, and AI may have already eased, but will remain above 2% over the long run. The 10-year Treasury yield sits at 4.62%. On Polymarket, the contract for “a 25bp rate hike after the September meeting” is priced at 44%. According to a Wall Street Insight flash, gold ETFs rose more than 4.1%, while the dollar index barely moved, down just 0.17% to close at 99.72. With the dollar nearly flat, the VIX falling, and stock indexes at highs, gold’s outsized single-day move looks more like money hedging against rate uncertainty.
At the sector level, healthcare ETFs rose 1.27%, materials rose 1.23%, and financials rose 0.21%; technology fell 0.53%, communications fell 1.04%, and utilities fell 1.02%. According to flashes, the New York Times closed down 13%, its biggest single-day drop since October 2012, and Etsy announced layoffs of 12%. According to Reuters reporting, total US stock market capitalization has topped $70 trillion — at that scale, days where the S&P falls just 0.17% while a single stock loses 13% in one day are likely to become more common.
Three things to watch next: whether upcoming storage and hardware earnings repeat the pattern of “beats expectations, gets punished for guidance falling short of the most optimistic numbers”; which direction Polymarket’s August 31 transit-normalization probability moves; and whether today’s divergence turns out to be just a rotation if the September rate-hike contract pulls back from 44% while gold simultaneously stalls.