On June 25, Apple raised prices on 14 products in a single day.
MacBooks, iPads, the Apple TV, HomePod, Vision Pro.

The base MacBook Pro went from $1,699 to $1,999.
The stock fell more than 6%, its worst day since April 2025.

The reason Apple gave wasn't tariffs. It was memory.

"We've never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly."

The company said, pointing at AI data centers consuming every memory and storage chip on the planet.

Apple isn't eating these costs. Neither is Microsoft, which hiked Xbox prices the same day. The buyer is.

But the company collecting the check sits one layer up the supply chain.

Micron posted its fifth consecutive record quarter on June 24: $41.46 billion in revenue, up from $9.30 billion a year ago. Revenue more than quadrupled.

Data center memory sales went from $1.53 billion to $11.5 billion. Gross margin (the share of revenue left after production costs) jumped from 39% to 84.9%. The stock popped 14.6% after hours.

Apple raised prices because Micron could.
Same chip shortage, opposite ends of the trade.

Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, and Valve have all raised prices or cut memory configurations this year. Demand from AI data centers has outstripped the global supply of RAM (the chip that feeds data to a processor) and NAND (the chip that stores it).

Memory makers are prioritizing AI companies over consumer electronics, and the hyperscalers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta) are spending roughly $700 billion on AI buildout this year.

Consumer gadgets just happen to use the same chips.

iPhones held steady, for now. Analysts at Counterpoint Research expect the iPhone 18 to climb $150 to $200 this fall.

When a $3 trillion company can't absorb its own input costs, that's the supplier layer flexing pricing power it hasn't had in decades.

Micron guided next quarter to $50 billion.

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The Dow just cut a company that's been there since 2004. Its been replaced by another huge company. Can you guess which one?

Something remarkable happened to Bitcoin on Sunday. How much got liquidated in a single day is the part worth clicking.

What changed on gold and silver? Remember their January records? Things are a bit different.

SpaceX just spent $60 billion on WHAT? The deal came with a $10 billion breakup clause if it fell through.

On June 29, Rocket Lab said it's buying Iridium Communications for roughly $8 billion in cash and stock, valuing each Iridium share at about $54.

Rocket Lab stock jumped nearly 17%.

It took on a $3.6 billion bridge loan to fund the cash piece.

What it buys: Iridium's 66-satellite low-orbit constellation, its licensed L-band spectrum (a slice of radio frequency used for satellite communications), and 2.5 million existing subscribers across government, defense, aviation, and maritime.

Overnight, Rocket Lab goes from launching other people's satellites to owning a network.

SpaceX won the satellite internet market by owning the whole stack. It launches Starlink satellites on its own rockets at internal cost, so it grows the network at a pace nobody paying market launch prices can match.

Rocket Lab is copying that playbook: own the rockets, the manufacturing, the spectrum, and now the customers.

This is the second satellite megadeal in ten weeks, after Amazon paid $11.6 billion for Globalstar.

Not everyone buys the Starlink-killer framing.

Some analysts say this is more about vertical integration and grabbing scarce spectrum than going head-to-head with Starlink's consumer broadband.

Make of that what you will.

Satellite communications is consolidating fast.

The market is rewarding anyone who can put launch, hardware, and spectrum under one roof, and the independent operators are becoming acquisition targets.

Iridium got bought. Globalstar got bought.

The list keeps getting shorter.

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WTI crude (the U.S. oil price benchmark) is sitting around $70 a barrel. On the quarter, it's down roughly 30%, the steepest quarterly drop since 2020.

The trigger: on June 18, the U.S. and Iran signed a framework to end the war, and the Strait of Hormuz started reopening.

Oil that had been trapped inside the Persian Gulf is finally moving again.

Japan's Nikkei and South Korea's KOSPI both hit all-time highs on the news.

The conflict shut down around 20% of global oil supply routes for four months.

Production from Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE dropped by an estimated 10 million barrels per day at the worst point.

Oil surged past $117 a barrel during the crisis.

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was drawn down heavily.

It's at its lowest level since 1983, down 18% since the war began.

Cheaper crude doesn't mean cheaper gas tomorrow.

Tanker traffic through Hormuz has recovered to about 75% of pre-war levels, but the IEA (International Energy Agency) says it'll take until early fall to physically reship enough oil to restore pre-war supply.

Mine clearance is ongoing.

Saudi Arabia only just started sending ships back to its key Ras Tanura terminal for the first time since March.

And the SPR is nearly scraped clean, so there's no cushion for the next disruption. Analysts think drivers won't see pre-war pump prices until 2027.

Falling crude is taking pressure off an inflation number that's still running hot, but the relief is slower than the headlines suggest.

The producers who spent the war quarter pricing in $100 crude are now staring at $70.

The lesson, as always, is in the timing.

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(by feargreedmeter)

Source: Stock Analysis