As previously reported, RBC Capital analyst Mitch Steves upgraded Applied Materials (AMAT) to Outperform from Sector Perform and raised his price target to $45 from $38. The analyst notes that the current consensus already reflects his expectations of a down 2019, with expectations having been reset by Apple's (AAPL) negative pre-announcement, but believes that the company could begin a "soft and slow recovery" in Q3. Beyond the near term pressure, the analyst contends that a "memory supply/demand constraint could occur in 2020, OLED demand could ramp up as early as Q4 on smartphone & TV rebound, Data Center reinvestment could occur in the back half" of 2019 after a digestion phase in the first half.

Welcome to "Fly Insider," The Fly's weekly recap of notable insider stock transactionsNOTABLE INSIDER PURCHASES: Significant insider purchases reported in the prior week from April 15 through April 19 include:Chairman of Ashford (AINC) Montgomery Bennett purchased 200,000 shares of company stock at $4. 91 per share... To see the rest of the story go to thefly.com. See Story Here

Apple quietly acquired Paris-based AI startup Datakalab on December 17, Challenges' David Pargamin reports. The terms of the transaction could not be learned, but European Commission has been notified of the deal, the author notes. Reference Link

Friday's total option volume of 56.7 million contracts resulted in net open interest growth of 6.01 million calls and 5.28 million puts. NVIDIA (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), Apple (AAPL) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) saw the greatest growth. Top five new positions opened include 50k Lyft (LYFT) May-24 20 calls, 44k Energy Transfer (ET) 4/26 weekly 16.5 calls, 43k Las Vegas Sands (LVS) Sep-24 41 calls, 23k Tesla (TSLA) 4/26 weekly 162.5 calls and 21k Papa John's (PZZA) Jun-24 57.5 puts.