Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls hangs on the rim (Jeff Haynes/Getty Images)

S&P 500 climbs to new all-time high ahead of Big Tech earnings

Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla will report after the bell tomorrow.

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all gained ahead of tomorrow’s earnings from Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla and Apple’s earnings on Thursday. Investors were unfazed by the lowest consumer confidence reading since 2014. The Federal Reserve began its two-day policy meeting, where it is expected to keep interest rates steady. (Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

While tech was the best-performing sector, healthcare was the worst, as the Trump administration proposed flat rates for Medicare insurers, sending UnitedHealth, Molina Healthcare, Centene, CVS Health, Elevance Health, and Humana lower.

Stocks that moved higher:

Corning (yes, the 175-year-old company that used to make your grandmother’s casserole dishes) soared after announcing a $6 billion deal with Meta. Amphenol, Coherent, and Lumentum rose in tandem as the deal reignited the optical connections trade.
Richtech Robotics spiked after announcing a partnership with Microsoft to use AI to improve its robots.
Cloudflare surged as social media buzz around the viral AI agent Clawdbot drew investor attention to Cloudflare’s role in the infrastructure behind emerging AI tools.
Micron gained after breaking ground on a new facility in a decade-long, $24 billion investment plan.
CoreWeave jumped after a Deutsche Bank analyst upgraded the stock to “buy” and bumped its price target to $140, following Nvidia’s latest investment.
Satellite stocks AST SpaceMobile, Rocket Lab, and Planet Labs surged on “sovereign space” plans.
Shares of General Motors rose after reporting a Q4 earnings beat, providing higher-than-expected guidance, and announcing a $6 billion stock buyback. The automaker is also reportedly in talks with bankrupt parts supplier First Brands on rescue financing, along with Ford, whose stock also rose.
RTX rose after beating its Q4 adjusted earnings per share by 6%.
D-Wave Quantum got a bump after announcing a trifecta of good news: a $20 million system sale, a collaboration with Davidson Technologies and Anduril Industries for US air and missile defense, and a $10 million service deal with an unnamed Fortune 100 company.
UPS rose amid news that it will slash 30,000 jobs as the company winds down its partnership with Amazon.
Baidu ticked higher after merging two app businesses into a new AI unit.

Stocks that moved lower:

UnitedHealth was particularly hit hard among the slumping healthcare stocks, as its 2026 guidance underwhelmed investors after it reported Q4 earnings this morning.
Pinterest sank after the company announced it was cutting nearly 15% of its workforce to redirect resources to AI.
Commvault tumbled after the infrastructure software company trimmed its full-year annualized recurring revenue guidance.
American Airlines dropped despite its upbeat full-year guidance.
JetBlue sank on a deeper-than-expected loss. The airline also forecast higher costs in 2026.
Despite topping revenue estimates and posting its second straight quarter of positive free cash flow, shares of Boeing dipped.

Seagate beats expectations on sales and EPS

The guidance was strong, too.

Matt Phillips2h

Matt Phillips4h

Satellite stocks surge on “sovereign space” plans

Planet Labs is on pace to notch its second 10% gain of the month early Tuesday afternoon, adding to its astronomical run of more than 500% over the last 12 months.

Wedbush Securities tech analyst Dan Ives hiked his price target for the stock to $30 from $28 after hosting a series of meetings with the company and investors in California. Ives wrote:

“[Planet Labs] is seeing massive success through its improved GTM selling motion as the company is providing mission-critical use cases for a wide array of government applications with defense & intelligence, with more international agencies seeing the value in PL’s satellite fleet for situational and maritime domain awareness in real-time as the company is benefitting from increasing defense budgets and the urgent need for international countries to reduce its reliance on the US.”

That commentary is consistent with recent news reports that the German military is planning to build what the Financial Times calls the “the equivalent of Elon Musk’s internet service for the German armed forces.”

A separate report in The Wall Street Journal on Monday said, “Spending on space-related projects is expected to rise in many countries, giving companies new opportunities to sell their wares and services.”

Behind this push, in part, is the fact that the roughly 80-year-old NATO alliance is is under unprecedented strain due to, among other things, US President Donald Trump’s fixation on somehow acquiring the Danish territory of Greenland.

Other space plays seem to be benefiting from similar dynamics, with Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile both up solidly on the day.

Governments’ New Must-Have: Their Own Satellites

“[Planet Labs] is seeing massive success through its improved GTM selling motion as the company is providing mission-critical use cases for a wide array of government applications with defense & intelligence, with more international agencies seeing the value in PL’s satellite fleet for situational and maritime domain awareness in real-time as the company is benefitting from increasing defense budgets and the urgent need for international countries to reduce its reliance on the US.”

Other space plays seem to be benefiting from similar dynamics, with Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile both up solidly on the day.

Matt Phillips7h

Corning-Meta deal reignites optical connections trade

Corning’s $6 billion deal with Meta to provide fiber-optic cable connections for its AI data centers is reigniting an AI-related trade that’s been stalled out over the last month.

Fellow opto-electrical makers of plugs, cables, and various doodads needed to connect data center servers — such as Amphenol, Coherent, and Lumentum — are also soaring Tuesday.

Such stocks ripped in the second half of 2025 before the rally sputtered out in the first half of December. But the amount of money Meta plans to shower on Corning has clearly cheered up competitors — and investors — in the space today.

Corning soars after striking deal to sell up to $6 billion in optical infrastructure to Meta

Luke Kawa10h

Richtech Robotics soars after announcing partnership with Microsoft to use AI to improve its robots

Shares Richtech Robotics are surging in premarket trading after the company announced “a hands-on collaboration with Microsoft through the Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Labs to jointly develop and deploy agentic artificial intelligence capabilities in real-world robotic systems.”

Per the press release, the two companies worked together to imbue Richtech’s flagship ADAM robot with “additional layers of context awareness” to “support smoother workflows and more responsive customer interactions in retail environments.”

Apropos of nothing, here’s an ADAM robot serving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang a margarita:

Richtech was one of many robotics and vaguely robotics companies that caught a massive bid in early December after Politico reported that the Commerce Department was poised to go “all in” to support the industry. To date, there's been no evidence of such a plan, but that hasn’t stopped robotics stocks from having a phenomenal start to 2026. The Themes Humanoid Robotics ETF, which counts Richtech as one of its members, gained nearly 50% year-to-date through Thursday’s close, though it has since come off the boil.

Max Knoblauch10h

Boeing posts its second straight quarter of positive free cash flow, revenue beats estimates

Boeing reported its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings before the market opened on Tuesday.

Boeing posted adjusted earnings of $9.92 per share, compared to the $0.44 loss per share expected by Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet. Those earnings, however, aren’t comparable to estimates because they reflect a massive gain from the close of Boeing’s sale of its digital aviation assets, which the company said boosted overall earnings by $11.83 per share.

The plane maker generated $375 million in free cash flow, its second straight quarter of positive FCF following six consecutive quarters of negative results. Wall Street expected $207 million.

Boeing last year saw significant recovery from its bleak 2024, improving its commercial deliveries by 72%. The company logged nearly 1,200 plane orders in 2025, outselling European rival Airbus for the first time since 2018. Boeing’s revenue climbed 57% in the fourth quarter to $23.95 billion, beating estimates of $22.6 billion. Its total backlog grew to $682 billion.

In October, US regulators approved an increase to the monthly cap on 737 production from 38 to 42 planes.