Stocks climbed Monday as Nvidia hit a record and helped carry the Nasdaq to a fresh high. It is still the doldrums between earnings seasons, and save for the FOMC minutes dropping Wednesday and Delta's earnings Thursday, there is not much to look forward to but yields and oil war.

Unless you count STOCKTOBERFEST, starting tonight in NYC, where some of the top trading minds will meet with Stocktwits community members at our annual conference to take on how to invest in this crazy year of our lord, 2026. 🍻

I’ll be reporting live (as soon as I comb my hair and head over to the welcome party, newletter comes first). See you there!

Anyway, the S&P 500 gained 0.7%, the Nasdaq rose 1.0%, the Dow added 0.2%, and the Russell 2000 bounced 0.6%. Ten of 11 sectors finished green. Materials led at +1.4%, while Real Estate lagged at -0.4%. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.31%, but crude eased 2.1% to roughly $89 as investors extended Friday’s rally on reduced Fed rate-hike expectations.

On Stocktwits, $NVAX surged on outbreak speculation, while $CAPR’s selloff met extremely bullish sentiment and extremely high message volume. Tuesday brings trade data and earnings from Constellation Brands and Penguin Solutions.

Today's Briefing:

Novavax, the maker of a protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, surged Monday as traders circulated claims of a Russian plague outbreak. A lab leak in Siberia sent one technician to the hospital last week, where she died from undetermined pneumonia.

The small company stock jumped like it made bacterial plague vaccines. It does not. Reports from Russian media found a broken vial of plague bacteria at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute caused a 28-year-old researcher to fall ill, and the inpatient health facility where the researcher died was quarantined. Still, it's not clear if there is a genuine outbreak in Russia.

The RIP: $NVAX ( ▲ 20.08% ) climbed +25.8% to $13.15, trading 21.3M shares, 5.6 times its recent pace. Shares touched a fresh 52-week high of $13.33 and brought their year-to-date gain to +95.8%. Reportedly, there was no evidence of bacteria in the patients lungs. Plague is treatable with antibiotics if administered within 24 hours, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

There is actual company news in the background. Mabion’s Sept. 14 announcement of expanded work with Novavax covers analytical services for early-stage pipeline projects. It’s three week old news, so the front page headlines of plague scares helped push trading along. Vaccine stocks catching bids on outbreak headlines is one of the market's oldest reflexes. Many pharma stocks were lower Monday, save for Moderna, climbing on Nasdaq 100 reinclusion.

Reported short interest stood at 30.24% of the float as of Sept. 15, giving traders plenty of squeeze material. $NVAX ticker talk splits over outbreak speculation and any direct business benefit. Sentiment was 69% bullish, with message volume still normal.

Cerebras makes the world's largest computer chips, wafer-sized processors built to run AI models faster than Nvidia's GPUs. Monday the stock bounced 9% off last week's post-IPO low. The reason is two sentences Sam Altman posted on X Friday.

The RIP: $CBRS closed up 9.2% at $181.69 on 14.0M shares, about 1.4 times its recent pace, after touching $185.26. That's still -41.6% year to date, 138 points behind the chip index, with a $43B market cap against $95B at the May debut. The stock added 3% after hours Friday and ripped again Monday.

Last week was brutal. A SemiAnalysis report said OpenAI would power the "Ultrafast" mode of GPT-6.1 Sol with Nvidia GPUs instead of Cerebras chips. The stock fell 20% to its lowest level since the May IPO. The same week, 19.4 million insider shares, 8% of the company, came unlocked.

Then Altman posted Friday: "There is some speculation about our partnership with Cerebras. Cerebras is a close partner, and we have a deep engagement pushing on the frontiers of speed."

The last deal we know of is a $10 billion agreement in January: 750 megawatts of compute through 2028. Citi says its 2026-2028 revenue outlook is unchanged, but the stock needs evidence that gross margins are stabilizing. Any further delay in the margin trough would weigh on sentiment.

Schneider Electric agreed Monday to buy PTC, the Boston software company behind design, engineering, and product-lifecycle tools used by manufacturers. The companies signed an all-cash deal worth $22.6 billion.

The RIP: $PTC surged 33.5% to $192.26, its biggest daily jump on record. It was the leading S&P 500 climber Monday. Schneider offered $205 per share, a 42.3% premium to Friday’s close. Volume hit 28.2 million shares, more than 23 times its recent pace.

Schneider already owns industrial software company AVEVA and has a pending deal for AI data specialist Cognite. PTC fills the design side of that stack, adding the software manufacturers use before products and factories reach the operating floor.

The combined software business would serve more than 50,000 customers and generate an estimated 24% of Schneider’s revenue. Management projected €250 million in cost savings by year three and roughly €800 million in revenue synergies.

PTC still closed 6.6% below the cash offer, leaving investors to price the time and regulatory risk between Monday’s pop and $205.

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33.5K WATCHERS · EXTREMELY BULLISH · EXTREMELY HIGH ACTIVITY

Capricor fell after 24-month HOPE-3 extension data showed deramiocel slowed upper-limb decline by 76%, but the FDA’s earlier effectiveness concerns still hung over its November decision.

1K WATCHERS · NEUTRAL · HIGH ACTIVITY

C.H. Robinson fell after agreeing to acquire freight-broker rival RXO for $5.8 billion, its largest deal yet and an expansion of its truck-brokerage and last-mile network.

116.4K WATCHERS · BEARISH · HIGH ACTIVITY

Moderna climbed ahead of its Oct. 9 return to the Nasdaq-100, which should bring index-fund buying after the stock’s fivefold 2026 run.

46.8K WATCHERS · EXTREMELY BULLISH · HIGH ACTIVITY

Applied Digital completed another 75 MW at Polaris Forge 1, lifting live capacity to 250 MW, but shares slipped before Wednesday’s fiscal first-quarter report.

Bearish 🐻 | Bullish 🐮 | It’s Complicated 😵‍💫

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🪙 Your daily crypto email, data-driven and short enough to finish

Macro: Trade balance (8:30 AM ET), GDPNow (9:00 AM ET), Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan speaks (6:00 PM ET). 📊
Pre-Market Earnings: $VCIG VCI Global Ltd. ☀️
After-Market Earnings: $STZ Constellation Brands Inc - Ordinary Shares - Class A, $PENG Penguin Solutions Inc.. 🌙

P.S. You can listen to all of these earnings calls on Stocktwits.

Want to see some change? Respond to this email and reach me, Kevin Travers, with feedback. Follow me on Stocktwits. Send me charts and ideas! Refer a friend for this quarter’s edition of The RIP Forecast 😎

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