CNBC's Jim Cramer described August as a comeback month for stocks battered by powerful bearish narratives, with Moderna leading the S&P 500 after promising late-stage results for a personalized mRNA melanoma vaccine co-developed with Merck. The data revived confidence in Moderna's technology after the decline of its Covid-19 vaccine business. Enterprise software shares including Palantir, Veeva Systems, Salesforce and ServiceNow also rebounded as fears of artificial-intelligence disruption eased and a leveraged hedge fund unwound large short positions. Situational Awareness, run by Leopold Aschenbrenner, had reached $45 billion in assets, used as much as 400% leverage and lost roughly $35 billion after margin calls forced the distressed sale of holdings to Ken Griffin's Citadel. Salesforce and ServiceNow reported developments that eased concerns about software's durability in the AI era, while Gartner's results did not show the anticipated pressure from AI models. Newmont benefited from recovering gold prices, Super Micro Computer and Sandisk from AI-related memory demand, and Coinbase from a broader cryptocurrency rebound amid concerns over U.S. debt and government spending. Moderna later raised $2 billion through convertible senior notes due 2032 for its cancer-vaccine business.