If recent history is any guide, Walmart’s Q4 earnings release Thursday before the bell will be appointment viewing.

This time last year, it wasn’t the DeepSeek freak-out or tariff chatter that caused the S&P 500 to definitively begin its downturn from all-time highs. It was Walmart’s underwhelming full-year guidance that catalyzed a momentum stock meltdown.

Since then, the retail behemoth has become a more important — and richly valued — part of the S&P 500, joining the trillion-dollar market cap club in the process. Investors have clamored for safety within the US stock market in 2026, and that’s meant bidding up the income streams associated with moving loads of volume at everyday low prices.

Jeff Jacobson, head of derivatives strategy at 22V Research, offers some perspective on just how well things have been going for the Bentonville-based giant:

• Walmart versus the SPDR S&P 500 ETF is at its highest level since the aftermath of the global financial crisis;

• The implied volatility of calls that offer exposure to additional upside in Walmart is very elevated relative to history (that is, they’re expensive);

• This is the only time in the past five years where Walmart has traded above Wall Street’s 12-month price target.

That makes the bar to clear, regardless of how the actual numbers and guidance end up, fairly high.

In Jacobson’s view, it would be prudent for Walmart holders to try to take advantage of this elevated implied volatility by selling upside, or attempting to lock in gains after this hot run.

His recommendations:

• Covered calls: sell April $145 calls at $3 or better.

• Collar the position: sell WMT May $155 calls, buy May $125 put, sell May $110 put.

On Sunday, Logan Paul sold his Pikachu Illustrator “Pokémon” card for a record $16.5 million to AJ Scaramucci, son of former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci. 

The sale price is more than triple what Paul paid to acquire the card five years ago, nearly $5.3 million, a world record at the time. Since then, many of the trading cards have skyrocketed in value, outpacing baseball cards and even Meta.

The sale has drawn controversy in the crypto industry, as Paul had announced in 2022 that the card would be tokenized and listed on his digital collectibles platform, Liquid Marketplace. Since then, the platform has since been accused of “multi-layered fraud in the crypto asset sector,” according to a 2024 filing from Canada’s Ontario Securities Commission. 

“I had originally offered to sell up to 51% of the Illustrator on Liquid Marketplace but ultimately only 5.4% of the card was sold for about $270k in the Summer of 2022 to fractional owners,” Paul wrote on social media. 

“In May 2024, I bought the card back for the same price it was sold for per the terms of LM and made funds available for users to withdraw. I was told that those funds were available to be withdrawn for approximately a year after being deposited in LM users’ accounts,” Paul added.

Gemini Space Station, the crypto firm the Winklevoss brothers founded, announced it will be parting ways with three executives, COO Marshall Beard, CFO Dan Chen, and CLO Tyler Meade, effective today, according to a February 17 form 8-K filing. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart deemed the announcement “a big shakeup.” 

In addition, Beard resigned from his role as a member of the company’s board of directors.

Shares were down over 13% following the news and are down 35% year to date.

The announcement comes on the heels of the firm’s September IPO and amid an overall downturn in crypto, which is taking a toll on several firms.

Gemini said it does not intend to appoint a successor COO at this time. Kate Freedman will become interim general counsel.

“Many of the duties previously performed by Mr. Beard, including revenue-generating responsibilities, will be assumed by Cameron Winklevoss in addition to his existing responsibilities,” the filing reports.

Meanwhile, Danijela Stojanovic, the firm’s chief accounting officer, will be interim CFO.

Earlier this month, the company slashed 25% of its workforce and shuttered operations in the United Kingdom, European Union, and Australia, per Bloomberg.

The company also pre-announced its 2025 earnings results, expecting net revenue to be between $165 million and $175 million as compared to $141 million for the year ended December 31, 2024. It expects an adjusted loss before tax of between $257 million and $267 million.

AMC is enjoying a solid start to the week as management looks to make progress on managing its onerous (and expensive) debt load.

Bloomberg reports that the theater chain is marketing a $750 million term loan and seeking $1.73 billion in secured debt, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.

The obligations that the chain is reportedly looking to refinance are its $2 billion term loan due in 2029 (priced at one-month SOFR plus 700 basis points) and $400 million in senior notes due next year that carry a coupon of 12.75%.

Florida-based construction company JFB Construction Holdings climbed 14% in premarket trading on Tuesday following an announcement that it will merge with Israeli drone maker Xtend in a $1.5 billion deal.

The shares were halted for news pending Tuesday morning, per a Bloomberg trading notice, before resuming trading.

JFB said the deal is backed by investments from Eric Trump. Unusual Machines, a drone tech company linked to Donald Trump Jr., is also listed as a strategic investor.

Xtend has marketed some of its drone products as “low cost‑per‑kill” and in November announced it won a multimillion-dollar Pentagon contract.

ServiceNow’s executives have banded together to try to restore confidence in the struggling software company’s stock.

A filing released this morning showed CEO Bill McDermott entered into an agreement to purchase $3 million in company stock on February 27.

In addition, the CEO, CFO Gina Mastantuono, and three other executives ended their 10b5-1 trading plans (in which company stock is typically divested by an insider’s broker according to a preset schedule).

Shares were up about 3% in early trading before paring much of those gains.

ServiceNow was one of many software stocks to struggle this earnings season despite reporting better-than-expected results and rosy near-term guidance, as investors worry about the potential for industry-wide disruption by AI tools.

McDermott had attributed the slide in the stock to acquisitions announced in December. During the conference call following the company’s Q1 earnings report in late January, he told investors, “The worry is gone, you can give us back the market cap.”

Norwegian Cruise Line rose as much as ~12% in premarket trading on Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that Elliott Investment Management has built a more than 10% stake in the company and plans to push for a turnaround at the cruise operator.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal detailed that the activist hedge fund aims to engage with the company to “try to help fix its underperformance” and “make changes to catch up to its rivals.” Per the report, Elliott also privately approached Adam Goldstein, the former president and COO of competitor Royal Caribbean — a company that Elliott sees as having been successfully improving its financial performance and guest experience — as a potential board member nominee for the company.

Indeed, NCLH has seen its stock drop more than 20% in the past year, lagging behind rivals like Royal Caribbean, which is projecting strong demand for the full year driven by affluent customer demand.

Last Thursday, Norwegian appointed former Subway CEO John Chidsey as its new chief executive. Shares fell more than 7% on Friday after the late evening news.