News and analysis

Chiliz (CHZ) is down 5.3% to $0.1190 this week, following a second unsuccessful attempt to surpass the resistance at $0.1250. While this might suggest weakness, the token's trend of higher lows indicates a potential nearing breakthrough. This pattern suggests that CHZ could eventually overcome the resistance in the coming weeks.

The project continues to generate positive news, which supports its price. Recently, SBI Digital Asset Holdings formed a joint venture with Chiliz, granting the project access to a large fan base in Japan. This partnership could result in a significant influx of users to the Chiliz Chain, providing further support for the token's potential upside.

It was only a matter of time when Walmart stock will reset its new historical high. It was detected on February 20 at $181.35, less than a week before a 3:1 split meaning the stock price was reduced to one-third of its previous levels. This corresponds to $60.45 in a new format. The price edged slightly higher to a $61.5 area, using a residual upside momentum after the Christmas quarter report, yet this was not a real breakthrough towards the next range. And now Walmart soared to above $64 after adding 7% to its market value in a singe day of May 16. A big step for the US largest chain of economy hypermarkets, which may also prompt more smaller steps for the whole retail segment in the near future.

A background and the major reason was that the giant company's  Q1 report demonstrated impressive sales growth, also with a good view to the rest of the year. Reaching consolidated revenue of $161.5 billion vs consensus number of $159.57 billion for the quarter, Walmart business declared a 6% YoY surplus, or 5.8% in constant currency calculations, while keeping intact its previously bullish signs on marginality, as its operating income added 9.6% to touch a $600 million landmark. The so-called adjusted operating income (after taking out all operating expenses like cost of goods sold, wages, depreciation etc) was up 13.7%. Continued increase in loyalty membership helped a lot.

Walmart is often perceived as a very big place where everyone walks around a huge trading floor, collecting goods in baskets. However, its e-Commerce segment was up 21%, supported well by store-fulfilled pickup and deliveries. Besides, its global ad business grew 24%. Inventories were unloaded by 2.7%, including a 4.2% drop in US Walmart stores. A commitment to frugality, spending less and sticking to a budget is what actually matters in the new reality after many inflation spikes over the last few years, and Walmart management skilfully uses the situation for the sake of its own and its customers at the same time.

The company emphasised a positive outlook for the current quarter which started in April, and it also updated the fiscal year of 2025 estimates to the upside. Even though specific numbers for the future periods were not detailed enough during the conference call, Walmart CEOs set a bullish tone for the stock's dynamics, after promising to strengthen AI features influence on sales (which I already described a lot in my February post) and bolstering its online sales attractiveness and infrastructure.

As it usually happens in such cases, some minor price adjustment is possible after the initial one-day spike to the new absolute record, yet even an update of previous price targets for Walmart by many investment houses to the levels above $70 looks too modest. I think, most of them would keep their Buy ratings even after this area would be touched, so that I feel more reasonable to have my personal expectations for more realistic targets (or one may call it dream targets) between $75 and $82.5 to approach the vicinity of the next two psychological barriers around $225 and $250, if we try to use the old-styled system of Walmart share price calculation (which would be actual if no split would happen).

The Graph (GRT) has surged by 11.0% to $0.3080 this week, following the U.S. inflation data release on May 15. Technically, the token was primed for a lift-off last week when it broke out upward from a triangle pattern that had been forming for several weeks, indicating a potential strong directional move. This week, prices retested the triangle's resistance and began exploring an upward trajectory towards $0.4000. They successfully surpassed the $0.3000 resistance and are now heading towards the middle of the ascending channel that has been in place since October 19, 2023. This level is unlikely to hold prices down, giving GRT an excellent chance to achieve a 30% upside move.

The fourth episode of the Dell saga. I can only speak for my own feelings, as initially I took this train in early September when Dell Technologies went through its then all-time peak at $70 per share. And now it is going to overcome $150, ha-ha. On the way to doubling the market value of Dell, I saw myself cowardly jumping outside in mid-February, when the ride just reached a $87 station and just showed misleading signs of fatigue. Yet, the correction phase was very short-lived. A bottom was formed at $80.5 soon. And it was the first day of March when Dell's Q4 earnings report made the stock soaring to nearly $130. Fortunately, I’ve calculated possible price adjustment targets to the more attractive technical area between $105 and $110. By some quirk of fate, this actually happened in mid-March to allow the crowd of desperate investors like me to buy these dips. We caught this last ride and already won above 40% of net climbing on charts, without even considering leverage factors. This is already an excellent result, against all mental challenges and other hardships of our common journey up the mountain.

What was the driver to prompt Dell Technologies rising by 11.21% in one trading session of May 15 again? The company's press release tells us that the newly developed PowerEdge family of Dell servers for cloud service providers (CSPs), and smaller businesses as well, introduced great performance upgrades. Dell PowerEdge T160 and R260 servers may double the performance at almost half the physical footprint (42% in case of T60), as a bright example, while R670 and R770 CSP Edition servers provide a new standardized server architecture "for simpler deployment and serviceability", going to be first to market with the Intel ® Xeon ® 6 Efficient core processor to provide up to 2.3x more performance per rack compared to the previous generation. The T60 based server is 23% more power efficient compared to the previous generation. Thus, Dell is successfully expanding its already top-selling portfolio. In the AI era, Dell customers will get the computing power to handle necessary and more intensive workloads "across edge, core data centers and the cloud", including high-density and scale-out cloud workloads like virtualization and data analytics, while also trying "to manage power and emissions" due to smart cooling technologies and via the use of sustainable materials like unpainted metal chassis, according to Travis Vigil, a senior vice president at Dell Technologies. Through a special early access program, more customers could evaluate new servers so that CSPs can scale production from day one of availability.

Investment house monsters immediately raised their price targets for Dell. Morgan Stanley updated its target price from $128 to $152. “Even after a >100% move in the T12M, DELL trades at just 13x our new FY26 EPS of $10.12 (18% above Street) & remains the best way to play 1) building AI server momentum, 2) inflecting storage demand, and 3) an improving PC mkt,” its analysts said in a yesterday night's note. They suppose earnings of "just over $8 per share" in the financial year of 2025 already, against the consensus of $7.55, and as much as $10.12 in the next annual period in 2026, up from their own previous $9.11 estimate, betting on "continued quarter-over-quarter AI server backlog growth". “We believe the big tier 2 CSP win referenced above could equate to a $2B order this quarter, which means AI backlog at the end of the April quarter would be just under $4B, and potentially higher taking into account smaller enterprise wins, barring any material changes in rev rec in the April quarter,” analysts note.

Well, I am not such a smart guy to check these calculations or to estimate it in a more precise way than a Morgan Stanley leading team. Yet, I have enough brain to keep holding the stock during this summer, and I hope to see higher price peaks in the nearest two or three months at least, as long as the Wall Street indexes are setting new records.