Markets
Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

S&P 500 dips as Fed Chair warns on inflation risks

The S&P 500 fell into the red and never made it back to positive territory after Fed Chair Jay Powell warned of more tariff-induced pressure on inflation to come, causing traders to price in lower odds of interest rate cuts. The benchmark US stock index fell 0.1%, the Nasdaq 100 gained 0.2%, and the Russell 2000 slumped 0.5%.

Materials, energy, and real estate were the worst-performing S&P 500 sector ETFs, while utilities, communications services, and tech were the lone sectors to gain on the day.

Humana rose more than 12% after the health insurance company topped Q2 estimates and raised its full-year outlook. Big decliners included mining giant Freeport-McMoran, which tumbled after the Trump administration announced tariffs on imports of processed copper products, but excluded ore and cathodes.

Elsewhere…

Wingstop shares soared 26% after the chicken chain posted better-than-expected Q2 sales and profit — and opened a record 129 net new stores last quarter.

Peloton shares climbed 18% after UBS slapped a “buy” rating on the stock, citing recent subscription price hikes and early signs that user declines may be leveling off.

Marvell Technology rose 7% after Morgan Stanley raised its price target to $80 from $73 while keeping its “equal weight” rating.

Electronic Arts shares jumped 5.7% after Wedbush Securities said in a note that the Madden NFL parent company was set to outpace the rest of the video game market through its fiscal year 2027.

Shares of Nvidia and Broadcom rose 2% and 1.7%, respectively, after a Morgan Stanley analyst raised his price targets on the chipmakers to $200 from $170 for Nvidia and to $338 from $270 for Broadcom.

VF shares rallied 2.7% after the parent of Vans, Timberland, and The North Face reported a smaller-than-expected Q1 loss and showed early signs of a potential turnaround.

Avis shares tanked 15% following a disappointing second-quarter earnings report. (Fun fact: renting a car costs about 40% more than it did a decade ago).

Adidas shares sank 11% after the shoemaker posted lower-than-expected sales in the second quarter and warned of the impacts of US tariffs for the second half of the year.

Mondelez fell 6.6% after the Oreo parent beat Q2 expectations but stuck with a muted full-year outlook, as it faces historically high cocoa prices and slow demand in North America.

SoFi Technologies dropped 2.3% after it announced plans to sell $1.5 billion of stock, giving up gains after the company topped Q2 earnings expectations and hiked its full-year revenue guidance on Tuesday.

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markets
Matt Phillips

Intel soars amid retail engagement, analyst chatter

Intel ripped toward a new 52-week high Wednesday, amid a flurry of activity in the options market and a couple of positive analyst assessments ahead of its earnings report due tomorrow.

Shortly after 11 a.m. ET, call options activity was roughly equivalent to the full-day average over the past 10 sessions. Bets on stock swings using call options have become a highly popular retail trade, suggesting that retail investors are getting interested in the shares ahead of the report from the partially nationalized American chip icon.

(That interpretation is buttressed by what we’re seeing on social sentiment-monitoring sites like SwaggyStocks, which at about 11:30 a.m. listed Intel as the fifth-most-mentioned stock on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum over the past 24 hours.)

Wall Street analysts are also chattering about the stock, with RBC and Bernstein Research both writing about it in the last 24 hours.

RBC — which has a “sector perform” (or neutral) rating on Intel — said it expects a “slight beat and largely inline outlook” when the company reports after the close Thursday.

Bernstein’s Intel watchers — who have a “market perform” (also neutral) rating on the stock — seemed a bit more cautious, writing, “Overall numbers going forward still looking high to us. Fundamentals and valuation keep us sidelined.”

“If there is no memory, there’s no AI.”

FLASH FORWARD

ByMattPhillips

WedJan 212026

markets
Matt Phillips

BNP upgrades Seagate on more durable cycle

Seagate Technology Holdings was up in early trading after analysts at BNP Paribas upgraded the shares to “outperform” from “neutral” and lifted their price target to $380 a share, implying a gain of almost 15% from where the stock is currently trading.

The maker of the somewhat stodgy technology known as hard disk drives — or HDDs in tech lingo — was one of the top stocks in the S&P 500 for much of last year as it was swept up in the AI data center trade.

Data centers need tons of storage capacity, and demand from hyperscalers has driven up prices and created shortages for disk drives, an industry that is dominated by a duopoly of Seagate and Western Digital. (BNP also maintained its “outperform” rating on WDC in a note Wednesday.)

The analysts at BNP say they pushed by the buy button on the stock after becoming more convinced that the upswing in sales was durable, writing:

“We have witnessed a structural shift happening in HDD industry, toward 1) an effective duopoly, 2) higher mix toward data centers, and 3) disciplined capex investments. These have supported our expectations of long-term, through-cycle profitability for the HDD industry. We are now upgrading Seagate from Neutral to Outperform as we are gaining greater conviction that robust data center storage demand could drive an upcycle longer than we initially expected. We think a secular re-rating of Seagate (as well as Western Digital) to over 20x is justified.”

“We have witnessed a structural shift happening in HDD industry, toward 1) an effective duopoly, 2) higher mix toward data centers, and 3) disciplined capex investments. These have supported our expectations of long-term, through-cycle profitability for the HDD industry. We are now upgrading Seagate from Neutral to Outperform as we are gaining greater conviction that robust data center storage demand could drive an upcycle longer than we initially expected. We think a secular re-rating of Seagate (as well as Western Digital) to over 20x is justified.”

markets
Nate Becker

Stocks jump as Trump says “I won’t use force” to acquire Greenland

In a speech in Davos, Switzerland, US President Donald Trump said he won’t use force to acquire Greenland, sending stocks higher at the open. 

“We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be frankly unstoppable, but I won’t do that,” Trump told the crowd, referring to his pursuit of Greenland, which has roiled markets recently. “People thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.” 

He seemed to indicate that Denmark, which owns Greenland, could rebuff the US’s overtures to acquire the country without military retaliation.

“They have a choice. You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember,” he said. Throughout his speech, Trump constantly reiterated his desire for the US to own Greenland.

Stocks rose at the open, with the S&P 500 rising 0.3%. S&P 500 futures, which had been down Wednesday morning, jumped after his comments.

markets
J. Edward Moreno

J&J slips despite cheery 2026 guidance

Johnson & Johnson reported fourth-quarter sales that beat expectations and gave rosy guidance for 2026.

The company said it expects to bring in between $100 billion and $101 billion in revenue this year, compared to the $98.9 billion analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The drugmaker also expects to report between $11.43 and $11.63 in annual adjusted earnings per share, compared to the $11.48 that Wall Street was expecting.

Despite beating expectations, J&J, the first major drugmaker to report earnings results this year, fell by more than 2% in premarket trading.

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