Markets
Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

S&P 500 dips as traders ditch high-flying stocks and go bargain hunting

The start of the third quarter was marked by a vibe shift: an intense rotation from the market’s winners into value stocks. Alas, since value stocks often get that title from underperformance, making them smaller members of a benchmark, this shift in allocations saw the S&P 500 end 0.1% lower despite advancers outnumbering decliners by 255. Until today, the S&P 500 hadn’t declined during a session in which this many of its constituents rose in all of 2025.

The Nasdaq 100 fell 0.9% while the Russell 2000 rose 0.9%.

Top performers in the S&P 500 included casino stocks Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts, and MGM, which were all up over 7% on the back of strong June Macao gaming numbers. On the flip side, GE Vernova and Axon Enterprise fell 4.3% and 6.3%, respectively, leading the day’s declines.

Target shares rose 5% as bullish call option activity surged, part of the broader factor rotation where traders are pivoting from high-flyers to beaten-down names.

Ford and GM jumped 4.7% and 5.7%, respectively, after both posted solid Q2 vehicle sales. Ford’s sales rose over 14%, while GM’s climbed more than 7%.

Tesla slipped 5% after President Trump threatened to have “DOGE take a good, hard look” at EV-friendly government subsidies — a critical part of Elon Musk’s business.

AI trade names like Meta, Palantir, and Cloudflare, along with chipmakers Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom, all declined in this factor rotation, also weighed down by Senate Republicans scrapping a bill provision that would have banned state-level AI regulation.

AMC sank 9% after the movie theater chain and meme stock favorite struck a debt-for-equity swap and settled litigation with creditors.

Rivian shares dipped 1.9% while Lucid’s fell 3.7% as the Senate worked to advance a version of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which would slash a number of EV benefits and charger network budgets.

Warner Bros. Discovery dropped over 4% after the Newhouse family — longtime media moguls and Condé Nast owners — sold $1.1 billion worth of shares.

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markets
Luke Kawa

GameStop jumps in after-hours trading after CEO Ryan Cohen purchases another 500,000 shares

Ryan Cohen is putting his money where his mouth is.

The GameStop CEO bought another 500,000 shares of company stock for $10.8 million on Wednesday, per a filing.

The stock was trading higher on Wednesday thanks to Cohen’s purchase of 500,000 shares for roughly $10.6 million on Tuesday, and extended these gains in the after-hours session on this news.

“The Reporting Person believes that it is essential for the Chief Executive Officer of any public company to purchase shares of such company in the open market with his or her own personal funds in order to further strengthen alignment with stockholders,” per the filing. “The Reporting Person believes that any Chief Executive Officer who fails to do so should be fired.”

Cohen is poised to become even more financially enmeshed with GameStop’s stock and operating performance should shareholders approve a package that would tie his pay completely to ambitious targets for the company’s earnings and market cap.

The CEO now owns about 8.56% of shares outstanding.

markets
Luke Kawa

AppLovin tumbles; company dismisses negative report as “false, misleading, and nonsensical”

AppLovin managed to finish Tuesday well off its lows after initially getting clobbered in the wake of an incendiary report published by CapitalWatch.

Nonetheless, shares are getting torched on Wednesday, ending down nearly 6%. An AppLovin spokesperson forcefully denied the allegations made by CapitalWatch, which included calling the ad tech firm “the ultimate monument to 21st-century new-type transnational financial crime.”

Per an emailed statement:

“We categorically reject the claims made in this report, which is rife with false, misleading, and nonsensical allegations. AppLovin’s public filings transparently disclose our material investments, global operations, and information regarding significant shareholders.”

“Claims that AppLovin facilitated money laundering or its products are used for unauthorized downloads are patently false. AppLovin functions within a broader ecosystem that includes major app stores, operating systems, and payment providers, and the apps monetized through our platform must be publicly available on the major app stores and subject to their independent review and enforcement. Economically, the money laundering theory is implausible: publishers receive only a portion of advertiser spend, meaning any attempt to ‘launder’ funds would require forfeiting a substantial share while creating a highly visible, auditable transaction trail across multiple independent companies. Accepting the report’s premise would therefore imply a systemic failure across the broader mobile advertising and app-store ecosystem, for which the report provides no evidence.”

AppLovin craters after report from CapitalWatch alleges it’s a money-laundering operation for “transnational criminal kingpins”

Nonetheless, shares are getting torched on Wednesday, ending down nearly 6%. An AppLovin spokesperson forcefully denied the allegations made by CapitalWatch, which included calling the ad tech firm “the ultimate monument to 21st-century new-type transnational financial crime.”

Per an emailed statement:

“We categorically reject the claims made in this report, which is rife with false, misleading, and nonsensical allegations. AppLovin’s public filings transparently disclose our material investments, global operations, and information regarding significant shareholders.”

“Claims that AppLovin facilitated money laundering or its products are used for unauthorized downloads are patently false. AppLovin functions within a broader ecosystem that includes major app stores, operating systems, and payment providers, and the apps monetized through our platform must be publicly available on the major app stores and subject to their independent review and enforcement. Economically, the money laundering theory is implausible: publishers receive only a portion of advertiser spend, meaning any attempt to ‘launder’ funds would require forfeiting a substantial share while creating a highly visible, auditable transaction trail across multiple independent companies. Accepting the report’s premise would therefore imply a systemic failure across the broader mobile advertising and app-store ecosystem, for which the report provides no evidence.”

Tasha Matsumoto, Nate Becker
2h
Stocks jump as Trump walks back European tariff threats

All sector ETFs traded higher in the broad-based rally.

Benny, the mascot for the Chicago Bulls, performs during a break between the Bulls and the New Orleans Pelicans at the United Center on January 14, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois.
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

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