Markets
Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa
8/5/25

Disappointing US economic data weighs on stocks

Bad economic news was bad news for stocks, which slumped to their lows of the day after the ISM Services Index came in at 50.1 in July, while economists had been looking for a reading of 51.5.

Major indexes clawed back some of their losses but still ended mostly in the red, with the S&P 500 off 0.5% and the Nasdaq 100 down 0.7%, while the Russell 2000 bucked the trend with a 0.6% advance.

Most S&P sector ETFs fell on the day, with utilities leading the way down.

Axon shares jumped 16%, leading S&P 500 gains, after the law enforcement equipment maker reported much better-than-expected Q2 earnings and sales after the close Monday. Leading decliners was Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which sank 20% despite posting a second-quarter earnings beat after the company said it would stop development of one of its next-generation pain medicines.

Elsewhere...

Pfizer jumped 5% after the drugmaker reported earnings results that beat Wall Street’s Q2 expectations and raised its full-year outlook.

Shares of Core Scientific were up 3% after a report from the Financial Times saying some of the company’s “top shareholders” are crying foul over the terms of its all-stock takeover by CoreWeave and are planning to vote against the deal. CoreWeave shares were up 5.5%.

Navitas Semiconductor, the tiny chipmaker that went parabolic in late May after earning a spot in Nvidia’s supply chain, tumbled 16% after reporting Q2 results.

Shares of CRISPR Therapeutics slid 6.7% after the Swiss biotech missed Wall Street’s Q2 expectations, despite growing excitement around its flagship gene-editing therapy.

Coinbase shares fell 6.3% after the largest US crypto exchange suffered an outage on Base, its ethereum layer 2 network, and halted operations for 29 minutes due to an “unsafe head delay.”

Yum! Brands shares fell 5% after the KFC and Taco Bell parent reported lower-than-expected Q2 results amid a slowdown in consumer spending at its key US franchises.

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markets
Matt Phillips
13m

Planet Labs slips after big post-earnings gain

Smallish midcap satellite imagery and data company Planet Labs is giving back a chunk of the nearly 50% gain it racked up after posting earnings early Monday.

No tears, though: the shares, which seem to have a fairly robust retail following, are still up roughly 340% over the past 12 months.

Retail darling Planet Labs soars on earnings pop for second straight quarter

Retail darling Planet Labs soars on earnings pop for second straight quarter
markets
Luke Kawa
1h

CoreWeave soars as Microsoft’s deal with Nebius shows unrelenting demand for AI compute

CoreWeave is soaring as Microsoft’s $17.4 billion deal with Nebius shows the immense value and continued demand for all parts of the AI data center ecosystem.

One additional reason for CoreWeave’s jump may be that its pending acquisition of AI data center infrastructure company Core Scientific looks like a great deal compared to Microsoft’s renting of (more broad and advanced) AI data center capacity from Nebius.

CoreWeave’s all-stock deal to buy Core Scientific was initially valued at ~$9 billion, but with the subsequent decline in its shares, it’s worth about 40% less. And in purchasing Core Scientific, CoreWeave is saving $10 billion in what it would have paid the company to lease data center infrastructure over the next 12 years.

As it stands, Microsoft is getting about 300 megawatts in data center power capacity from Nebius, while Core Scientific boasts that its footprint is in excess of 1,300 megawatts. So, on the surface, it looks like an absolute steal for CoreWeave.

But again, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison; not all access to AI computing infrastructure is created equal.

There are differences in the type of AI infrastructure provided by the two: Nebius owns GPUs, while Core Scientific doesn’t, and what it provides in the software layer isn’t offered by Core Scientific as a stand-alone entity. This is the difference between the “full stack” approach (Nebius) and a “colocation” approach (Core Scientific).

That being said, CoreWeave’s acquisition of Core Scientific, once completed, will make the combined entity’s business model look more like Nebius’ model, which, as Microsoft just told us, is something that top hyperscalers are willing to pay a pretty penny for.

markets
J. Edward Moreno
2h

UNH rises after preliminary data shows most Medicare Advantage enrollees will be on more lucrative, top-rated plans

UnitedHealth rose more than 4% in premarket trading on Tuesday after the company disclosed that it expects the majority of its Medicare Advantage enrollees will be on plans rated four stars or higher in 2026.

Though the data is only preliminary, about 78% of UNH’s Medicare Advantage members are in plans rated four stars or higher, the company said in a regulatory filing Tuesday morning. On Monday, the company said it plans to reiterate its full-year guidance when it meets with investors this week.

Insurance companies that provide government-sponsored plans, like Medicare Advantage, have struggled this year amid unexpected rising costs. Plans that are rated four stars or higher earn bonus payments and are typically more lucrative for healthcare insurance providers.

Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa
17h
US stocks grind higher as volatility dissipates

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% in what was is fourth-smallest intraday range of 2025, as did the Russell 2000, while the Nasdaq 100 gained 0.5%.

Germany, Bull running on field
markets
Matt Phillips
17h

Retail darling Planet Labs soars on earnings pop for second straight quarter

Planet Labs, which operates a network of satellites that record data, images, and information about the Earth, surged more than 40% after reporting better-than-expected quarterly numbers before the open of trading Monday.

It was the second straight quarter when the money-losing company’s quarterly update generated a massive market reaction. The stock jumped nearly 50% after numbers came out in June.

The company, which went public via SPAC in 2021, raised its full-year revenue guidance and notched its second straight quarter of positive free cash flow. Analysts and investors watch free cash flow closely as it can signal when a company’s business is starting to become more durable.

While the company is small — roughly $2.5 billion in market cap — it has posted pretty serious gains, rising almost 300% the past 12 months. Planet Labs also appears to have a fairly large retail shareholder base.

Just 57% of its float is in the the hands of institutional investors, according to FactSet data. That’s roughly the same as other retail favorites such as Palantir, though Planet Labs is no where near as highly valued as the defense data and AI software company led by CEO Alex Karp.

Planet Labs Boosts View as Deals Close Quicker on Higher Demand

Planet Labs Boosts View as Deals Close Quicker on Higher Demand

The company, which went public via SPAC in 2021, raised its full-year revenue guidance and notched its second straight quarter of positive free cash flow. Analysts and investors watch free cash flow closely as it can signal when a company’s business is starting to become more durable.

While the company is small — roughly $2.5 billion in market cap — it has posted pretty serious gains, rising almost 300% the past 12 months. Planet Labs also appears to have a fairly large retail shareholder base.

Just 57% of its float is in the the hands of institutional investors, according to FactSet data. That’s roughly the same as other retail favorites such as Palantir, though Planet Labs is no where near as highly valued as the defense data and AI software company led by CEO Alex Karp.

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