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Editorial Advisory Board

  • Professor Andrea M. Armani, University of Southern California
  • Ruti Ben-Shlomi, Ph.D., LightSolver
  • James Butler, Ph.D., Hamamatsu
  • Natalie Fardian-Melamed, Ph.D., Columbia University
  • Justin Sigley, Ph.D., AmeriCOM
  • Professor Birgit Stiller, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, and Leibniz University of Hannover
  • Professor Stephen Sweeney, University of Glasgow
  • Mohan Wang, Ph.D., University of Oxford
  • Professor Xuchen Wang, Harbin Engineering University
  • Professor Stefan Witte, Delft University of Technology

Chegg, Victoria's Secret, Blink Charging, Applied Digital, and Peloton Stocks Trade Down, What You Need To Know

CHGG Cover Image

What Happened?

A number of stocks fell in the afternoon session after the major indices pulled back (Nasdaq -1.3%, S&P 500 -1.1%) as Israel carried out significant strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites, dramatically escalating fears of a broader conflict in the Middle East. This development has sent crude oil prices surging, as investors fear potential disruptions to global oil supply and a wider regional conflict. 

The conflict intensified market anxiety, compounding existing volatility, especially in risk assets like stocks, and prompting a pronounced shift toward safe-haven assets.

The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.

Among others, the following stocks were impacted:

Zooming In On Applied Digital (APLD)

Applied Digital’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 115 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.

The previous big move we wrote about was 11 days ago when the stock gained 51% on the news that it signed two long-term lease agreements for artificial intelligence data centers with Nvidia-backed AI hyperscaler CoreWeave. 

APLD is expected to deliver 250 megawatts (MW) of power for CoreWeave's AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure at its North Dakota data center campus. 

The bigger takeaway is financial: across the 15-year term, these contracts are expected to generate about $7 billion in revenue, providing significant long-term financial visibility for Applied Digital. 

The stock's reaction suggested investors viewed the deals as both a reliable new stream of recurring income and a clear signal that Applied Digital is well positioned in the rapidly expanding AI-data-center space.

Applied Digital is up 43.3% since the beginning of the year, but at $11.18 per share, it is still trading 19.4% below its 52-week high of $13.86 from June 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Applied Digital’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $124,196.

Here at StockStory, we certainly understand the potential of thematic investing. Diverse winners from Microsoft (MSFT) to Alphabet (GOOG), Coca-Cola (KO) to Monster Beverage (MNST) could all have been identified as promising growth stories with a megatrend driving the growth. So, in that spirit, we’ve identified a relatively under-the-radar profitable growth stock benefiting from the rise of AI, available to you FREE via this link.

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