The Quarter Closes Strong, AeroVironment Soars, and Circle Slides on Stablecoin Threat

The Nasdaq is closing out its best quarter since the second quarter of 2020, and Tuesday’s session had no shortage of reasons why: drone maker AeroVironment doubled its revenue and crushed estimates, while Circle got a reminder that BlackRock and Google just don’t see USDC as untouchable.

Fuel cell stocks kept their parabolic June run going, too. Today’s edition has every name that mattered before markets shut the books on Q2.

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You’re watching two healthcare charts that already look expensive from the outside. One just hit a fresh high with analysts raising targets, while the other is sitting near its 52-week high after a huge biotech run. But Elite Trade Club Insider readers are seeing the part most investors miss: one major holder is cashing out hard, while one director is buying nearly $25 million near the highs.

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Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is making investors nervous in a different way than usual: he’s talking less. At his first meeting as chairman, Warsh shortened the policy statement and skipped a rate forecast, and some investors say the added silence could mean a choppier market ahead.

Strategy gave back most of Monday’s 13% jump after abandoning its “never sell bitcoin” stance, falling another 8% as the company shifts toward buybacks and bitcoin sales.

Air Products jumped 8% after writing off $2.9 billion to kill a Louisiana hydrogen plant that ran into cost overruns and environmental objections, with investors applauding the death of a project nobody wanted anymore.

The yen touched a 40-year low against the dollar, putting Japanese authorities on intervention watch for as soon as Friday. Trump confirmed the US will meet Iran in Qatar Tuesday, though Tehran hasn’t committed to a timeline.

Tuesday is the last day of Q2, and the scoreboard is hard to argue with. The Nasdaq is up 20% for the quarter. The S&P 500 added 14%. The Dow gained 13%. All three are posting their best three-month stretch since the second quarter of 2020, when markets were bouncing off a pandemic floor.

What is interesting is how uneven the gains were under the hood. This was not a rising tide. It was a very specific tide, and it had a very specific name.

Chips Won the Quarter. Everything Else Competed for Second Place.

The PHLX Semiconductor Index climbed 81% in Q2 alone, putting it on pace for the best quarter in its history. Micron surged 240%. Marvell is up 213% for the year. Astera Labs more than quadrupled this quarter after joining the Nasdaq-100 last week.

Meanwhile, Microsoft fell 18% in June alone, its worst month since the dot-com bust. Meta ended the quarter in the red. The Magnificent Seven ETF gained roughly 10% for Q2. Good by normal standards. Embarrassing next to the chip rack.

What the Next Quarter Has to Answer

Rate futures are now pricing three Fed hikes this year. Gold is on track for its worst quarter in 13 years. The AI trade is still running, but it is getting more selective about who it takes with it.

The broad rally is real. The question is whether it stays broad or snaps back to the handful of names that have been doing most of the work all along.

In 2021, Air Products unveiled a plan to build a low-carbon hydrogen plant in Louisiana. It was going to extract hydrogen from natural gas, capture the carbon dioxide, and sequester it under a lake. It was exactly the kind of project that sounded visionary in a boardroom and difficult everywhere else.

Five years, one CEO change, and $2.9 billion in writedowns later, the project is dead. Investors celebrated by sending the stock up 10%.

Why the Market Cheered a Multi-Billion Dollar Loss

There is a version of this story where a company writes off $2.9 billion, and the stock collapses. That is not what happened here, and the reason is instructive.

Air Products had been carrying this project like dead weight for years. Environmental objections piled up. Costs kept climbing. Buyers for the hydrogen never materialized. Hydrogen remains too expensive to compete without subsidies, and the subsidy environment has shifted. The market had already priced in the project's failure. What it had not priced in was management finally admitting it.

The Lesson Hiding in the Writedown

Canceling a bad project is not the same as failing. Sometimes it is the most credible thing a management team can do, and investors know the difference.

Air Products still has an active low-carbon venture at Neom in Saudi Arabia. That project involves supplying ammonia to fertilizer maker Yara International and remains on track. The Louisiana albatross is gone. What is left is a more focused company with a cleaner balance sheet and a stock that just proved the market was waiting for exactly this move.

Silver demand is surging across industries that power the modern economy—EVs, solar, electronics, and defense.

At the same time, supply is falling short, creating what experts call a structural shortage.

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With prices already climbing in 2025, many believe the next leg higher could still be ahead.

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The stablecoin space has a new entrant, and it did not arrive quietly. A consortium backed by BlackRock, Google, Coinbase, Visa, Stripe, and Mastercard announced the launch of Open USD, a new dollar-backed stablecoin set to go live later this year on the Coinbase-affiliated Base blockchain, as well as Solana and other networks. Around 140 companies have already signed up to use it.

This is not a crypto startup making noise. This is the backbone of traditional finance, deciding that stablecoins are infrastructure.

What Changed to Make This Happen

The Genius Act, signed into law last year, established a regulatory framework for dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies. That one piece of legislation did more to legitimize the stablecoin market than five years of industry lobbying.

When BlackRock and Visa can point to a federal framework and say this is now a regulated asset class, the internal approval process at large institutions gets a lot shorter. The 140 companies lined up to use Open USD before it even launched is a direct result of that clarity.

Where This Fits in the Bigger Picture

The two largest stablecoins, Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, together hold around $260 billion in market cap. Open USD is entering a market that already exists and already has volume. The question is not whether institutions want exposure to dollar-pegged digital payments. They clearly do.

The question is whether a consortium of this size and credibility can take a meaningful share from incumbents who have years of liquidity and trust built up already. The names behind this one suggest they intend to find out.

Cuprina Holdings [CUPR] $6.59 (+47.76%)

Cuprina is still riding the aftershock of its FDA 510(k) clearance for Medifly Maggots, a maggot debridement wound-care therapy that sent the stock up triple digits two weeks ago.

The move has been a rollercoaster since, swinging between the low $4s and mid-$7s as early buyers lock in gains and new traders chase. The clearance is real. The price discovery is still happening.

Ambarella [AMBA] $85.80 (+28.04%)

Ambarella management is spending two days meeting institutional investors in Boston and Baltimore in a KeyBanc-hosted, non-deal roadshow, and the stock ripped from the low $60s to near $80 as funds rediscovered the name.

No capital raise attached, just face time with big money to pitch the edge AI growth story, fresh off record automotive revenue and an $800 million long-term Hanwha deal.

ProMIS Neurosciences [PMN] $13.16 (+22.42%)

An analyst reiterated a Buy rating and an $18 price target on ProMIS this morning, citing the differentiated profile of its Alzheimer’s candidate PMN310, which targets toxic amyloid-beta oligomers while avoiding plaque binding.

The fully enrolled PRECISE-AD trial has blinded interim data due in early Q3. Strong Buy consensus and a fresh vote of confidence right as the readout window opens.

Universe Pharmaceuticals [UPC] $6.10 (-49.92%)

Universe Pharmaceuticals surged 311% on Monday after announcing it would acquire Best Praise International for $10.75 million, and today is the inevitable cooldown after a move that big.

Just gravity catching up to a name that more than quadrupled in a single session on an acquisition most investors hadn’t fully digested yet.

Nuvectis Pharma [NVCT] $10.14 (-35.54%)

Nuvectis priced a $100 million public stock offering, a meaningful dilution event for a clinical-stage biotech with $25 million in cash heading into the quarter.

The company simultaneously cut its at-the-market sales agreement capacity to $5 million and suspended that program, which only underscores how much the new offering reshuffles the share count. The NXP900 pipeline is unchanged. The math behind every existing share just isn’t.

Circle Internet Group [CRCL] $62.63 (-17.55%)

BlackRock, Google, and Coinbase unveiled a new dollar-backed stablecoin called Open USD on Tuesday, with 140 companies including Visa, Stripe, and Mastercard already signed up to use it.

That is about as direct a competitive threat to Circle's USDC as the stablecoin market has produced. Mizuho had already cut its price target to $85 from $135 before this news broke. The moat just got a lot more crowded.

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That's it for today! Please, write us back, and let us know what you think of the Closing Bell Roundup. We're always eager to hear feedback!

Thanks for reading. I'll see you at the next open! 

Best Regards,
— Adam G.
Elite Trade Club

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