Memory chip manufacturer Micron (NASDAQ: MU) threw investors for a loop on Thursday with a quarterly report that featured an outlook that wasn't even in the ballpark of Wall Street's expectations. In the first quarter of its fiscal 2025, Micron's performance was solid, buoyed by soaring demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is critical for AI accelerators. Micron is pitching itself as an AI play.
In 2022 and 2023, rising interest rates drove up the yields of low-risk fixed income investments like Treasury bills, bonds, and CDs, which made them more appealing than dividend stocks. One of those stocks is Agree Realty (NYSE: ADC), which has gained about 14% during the past 12 months but still pays an attractive forward yield of 4.3%. Let's see if it's the right time to buy, sell, or hold this real estate investment trust (REIT).
The S&P 500 is on track to deliver back-to-back years of more than 20% gains, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index has nearly doubled since the start of 2023. Investors could just buy exchange-traded funds (ETFs) focused on the S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100 in hopes of a continued rally. A potentially big one is falling interest rates, as the Federal Reserve continues to lower the benchmark federal funds rate (even if the pace is slower than expected).
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