Silver's rise, Reddit's AI ad tools, Regencell Bioscience surges
Here are some of the stories Wall Street is watching on June 17.
Stocks (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) are trading lower on ongoing nervousness about the conflict between Israel and Iran.
Silver (SI=F) is hitting levels not seen since February 2012.
Reddit (RDDT) is continuing to see its stock rise after adding new AI ad tools.
Regencell Bioscience (RGC)s shares are exploding higher after a 38-for-1 stock split.
Stay up to date on the latest market action, minute-by-minute, with Yahoo Finance's Market Minute.
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Bloomberg
8 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Dollar Falls as Risk of Dovish Fed Offsets Boost From Oil Prices
The prospect of a dovish Federal Reserve meeting is competing with higher oil prices to push and pull dollar traders in diverging directions. That's leading the spot and options market to take opposing views on the greenback, a notable development after the currency's worst start to a year on record.
Forbes
32 minutes ago
- Forbes
Crypto Goes Corporate As A New Wave Of Public Companies Buy Bitcoin
So called crypto treasury companies, public firms that focus on acquiring digital assets like bitcoin, have become one of the most talked-about trends of 2025, and for good reason. These firms are raising money, merging with public shells and buying up tokens at breakneck speed turning themselves into vehicles for institutional and retail investors to gain exposure to digital assets without the hassle of operating in the murky netherworld of hackable crypto exchanges and digital wallets. The bitcoin treasury strategy pioneered by billionaire Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy, which now calls itself Strategy, remains dominant: more than 70 public companies around the world currently hold over $67 billion worth of the asset. But the sheer velocity of capital deployment for crypto treasuries at large is jaw-dropping. Since April, more than 30 public companies have announced plans to adopt similar strategies, targeting about $19 billion in capital raises, according to Elliot Chun of Architect Partners, a Palo Alto-based financial advisory firm. Just last week, the president's Trump Media and Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social social-media platform, announced it had secured $2.3 billion through a sale of its equity and convertible notes, marking one of the largest bitcoin treasury deals to date. And on Monday, billionaire Justin Sun, a major backer of the Trump family's crypto ventures, revealed that his digital asset platform, Tron, will go public in the U.S. via a reverse merger with Nasdaq-listed SRM Entertainment. As part of the deal, Tron will inject up to $210 million worth of its namesake token into the new company. The stocks of many of these unproven companies are soaring. Janover, a commercial property financing platform, has surged more than 5,300% since April, when it adopted a solana-focused strategy and rebranded as DeFi Development Corporation. Japan's hotel chain-turned-hodler MetaPlanet is up 472% year-to-date. Strategy, Michael Saylor's bitcoin-brimming firm, whose stock has gained 30% year-to-date, has soared 3,000% over the past five years. Most of these crypto Johnny-come-latelies are simply capitalizing on the investor hype and enthusiasm around crypto, now that the U.S. government appears to be in full embrace of the industry. Leverage is another driver of these stocks. Nearly all of these firms are adding crypto to their balance sheets after issuing convertible debt or equity similarly to the funding employed by Strategy. Leverage amplifies returns, so when bitcoin and other crypto prices are rising these stocks can produce bigger gains. Another factor is volatility, which hedge funds and options traders crave. These publicly-traded entities, stuffed with leveraged crypto, tend to gyrate wildly with the underlying asset and thus have high implied volatility. They are a speculative trader's dream. 'There are now a variety of investors that want to access [crypto] risk in a regulated fashion that fits within their investment mandate, and what these treasury companies are permitting is essentially creating lots of different vehicles to do that,' says Jeff Park, head of alpha strategies at crypto asset manager Bitwise. But it's not just leverage and volatility that set these companies apart. Operating in public markets, rather than the murky world of crypto trading, has allowed them to scale rapidly. By listing on major exchanges, they gain access to deep institutional capital markets, allowing them to raise billions almost overnight and place outsized bets that private firms simply can't match. The ability to borrow cheaply and easily is a big part of the new wave of crypto treasury firms' allure, notes Park. Since traditional IPOs are costly, often require teams of lawyers and can take years, these Strategy-wannabes are instead tapping Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, known as SPACs, or finding existing public shells—micro-cap companies ripe for what is known as a reverse-merger. Take Twenty One Capital, backed by Tether and SoftBank, which is merging with the blank check affiliate of the Lutnick family's Cantor Fitzgerald at a $3.6 billion enterprise value. Less than two months ago the SPAC, Cantor Equity Partners, traded for $10.80. Today it trades at $35 despite the fact that the merger has not yet been completed. Or consider former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's Strive Asset Management, which in May announced a reverse merger with Asset Entities, an $86 million provider of content delivery solutions that had otherwise been languishing, to buy bitcoin. Since the announcement, Asset Entities' stock went from around $0.60 to as high as $13, and now trades for $5.42. "The price action that is currently being seen is before these transactions have been consummated, and that is a little bit unnerving,' adds Park who believes the good times will continue for these corporate early adopters. 'If you believe there's a wall of money coming to buy bitcoin and everyone's waiting on the sidelines to get their deals approved, well you better hope that you can do it first,' he says. Park believes that much of the excitement around these new corporate crypto treasuries stems from anticipated returns: 'What we haven't seen yet is an aggressive exploration of the left side of the balance sheet, which is actually generating worthwhile yield and return through the bitcoin that is being held in these operating companies.' Additionally, the crypto these companies are buying is effectively being taken off the market. This creates scarcity, which can magnify price swings and accelerate tokens' rise, potentially making these treasury strategies even more impactful from a return standpoint. Architect Partners' Chun is wary of the rapid balance sheet build up among the new digital asset buyers. 'This is financial engineering at its best,' he warns. 'Straight equity, PIPEs, convertible notes, ATMs—it's an MBA course on its own in every different structure for public equity one can think of.' Video game retailer GameStop is using more than $3 billion in convertible debt to finance its new bitcoin buying strategy. How will Game Stop, which has already spent $500 million on bitcoin, generate a return on its new treasury asset? No details are available yet, but as long as its stock gets carried higher with the prices of crypto, it may not matter to management of the one-time meme stock favorite. 'You have a whole lot of hype. You have a lot of people who aren't crypto-native, who are new to this and don't understand the intricacies of operating with this asset class,' says Chun. 'Being in crypto this long, you're always looking for the next thing that will take us down to our next winter. This definitely has the makings of something like that.'
Associated Press
43 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Vanderbilt ready to keep investing in football after historic season and House settlement
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Vanderbilt has plenty of options for divvying up revenue sharing under the House settlement with a two-time national baseball champ and both men's and women's basketball coming off NCAA Tournament berths. Combined with a record of more losing seasons than bowl berths seemingly would make for an easy decision to invest anywhere but football. Not the Commodores. 'This is the SEC,' Vanderbilt athletic director Candice Storey Lee said Tuesday. 'You have to invest and invest at a high level.' The decision is tougher with the SEC's lone private university coming off one of its best all-around athletic seasons in years. Lee wouldn't specify if Vanderbilt will follow the 75-15-5-5 formula that has emerged as a popular revenue-sharing plan with the House settlement that would send 75% of revenue-share money to football, followed by men's basketball, then women's basketball. Investing more in football isn't just the cost of doing business in the Southeastern Conference. Lee and Chancellor Daniel Diermeier lured Clark Lea away from Notre Dame because they wanted to turn Vanderbilt into a consistent winner, which the Commodores haven't been in decades. In 2021, Vanderbilt announced its biggest football stadium renovation in 40 years with a complete redesign and rebuild of each end zone. The south end zone will be ready for the season opener Aug. 30. All the spending is easier to justify after 2024. With quarterback Diego Pavia, the Commodores went 7-5 and won their first bowl since 2013. The season's highlight was the program's first win over an AP No. 1-ranked team with the Commodores never trailing against Alabama last October. Lea said last season's success is starting to break through the 'cynicism' around Vanderbilt football. 'We all see the opportunity that we have right now,' Lea said. 'And I think for those of us that have been in this really ... certainly for me this being year five, I'm so excited to feel like I have something at stake, to feel like chips are on the table.' Football wasn't the only beneficiary of that initial $300 million investment. The north end zone now features the Huber Center, which opened last fall giving men's basketball and women's basketball each a floor complete with separate practice courts, locker rooms, film rooms and hangout areas for players. The timing was perfect on a campus where women's soccer reached its first Sweet 16 and women's tennis hosted an NCAA regional: — Vanderbilt men's basketball went 20-13 in coach Mark Byington's debut season earning the Commodores' first NCAA Tournament berth since 2017. — The women beat in-state rival Tennessee twice in a season for the first time, went 22-11 and earned a second straight NCAA Tournament berth. With Mikayla Blakes setting records as a freshman and Khamil Pierre back, coach Shea Ralph is targeting titles and the program's first Final Four since 1993. Ralph said she's glad to be working at Vanderbilt for an athletic director who played women's basketball at the school. Lee graduated in 2000 after four seasons playing for coach Jim Foster. Ralph's concern now is how female athletes' fair-market value is assessed. 'Are we being compared to other women? Which is going to set us back,' Ralph said. The practice court once shared now will be used by volleyball, Vanderbilt's 17th sport debuting this fall. The south end zone will have a space that can be used by coach Tim Corbin and his baseball program, which just earned the No. 1 national seed for the NCAA Tournament after winning the SEC Tournament. A training table in that end zone also will be open to all athletes. 'It's clear that we're trying to, yes, invest where you get the largest return on investment, but also invest where all of our student athletes can be positively impacted,' Lee said. ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here. AP college football: and
