Markets
Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

S&P 500 goes nowhere with earnings season set to pick up steam

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 ended fractionally lower while the Russell 2000 fell 0.6% in a ho-hum end to the week.

Volatility seems to have gone on vacation for the summer. The S&P 500 has traded in a weekly range of less than 2% in each of the past three weeks, the first time it’s done that this year.

Utilities was the only S&P 500 sector ETF to end with a gain of more than 1%; energy, healthcare, and communications services were the biggest decliners.

Gains were led by Invesco, which jumped 15% after the investment management firm told the SEC that it’s seeking permission from owners of its Invesco QQQ Trust to change the fund structure. Elevance Health was among the decliners, falling 8% after disappointing Q2 results and signaling uncertainty around the future of ACA enrollment. Centene and Molina Healthcare also dropped 4% and 10%, respectively.

Charles Schwab shares rose about 3%, hitting a record high, after relentless retail trading activity throughout the tariff-infused volatile second quarter helped drive better-than-expected results.

Both Coinbase and Robinhood reached record highs after the House passed two critical crypto legislative bills focused on stablecoins and market structure oversight.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

Shares of online real estate company Opendoor were up 36%, continuing its rally after call volumes set a new daily record for the fourth straight session, nearly eclipsing 1 million.

Tiny AI company Blaize jumped more than 50% after announcing a $120 million deal to deploy its platform in Asia “for smart city applications.”

Netflix shares fell 5% a day after reporting a Q2 beat and receiving a wave of analyst price target hikes, as investors reacted to the company’s warning that second-half margins would be lower than the first half.

Sarepta shares sank 36% after reports that the FDA plans to halt all shipments of the company’s top-selling drug following a second patient death link to its experimental gene therapy. 

Exxon shares fell 3.5% after rival Chevron won a ruling that gives the company access to one of the world’s fastest-growing offshore oil regions, allowing Chevron to close its $53 billion acquisition of Hess. Chevron shares dipped down less than 1%.

Talen Energy, a power provider for hire with a focus on selling juice to the booming AI data center industry, jumped nearly 25% after announcing the purchase of two gas-fired power plants.

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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 well off the lows on Tuesday after initially getting clobbered in the wake of an incendiary report on the adtech firm 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 it “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 it “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
1h
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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