Stocks End Sharply Lower for 3rd Straight Day as Risk-Off Sentiment Grips Markets; Dow Sheds 600 Points, Bitcoin Plunges

Amazon Stock Sinks on Earnings Miss, Big Spending Plans

FROM 2 hr 56 min ago

Amazon has big AI spending plans. That isn’t helping its stock.

Shares of the e-commerce and cloud giant tumbled about 10% in extended trading Thursday after the company missed quarterly earnings estimates and took Wall Street by surprise with a massive spending forecast that landed as investors are increasingly looking for evidence that big AI spending is paying off—and some of its big tech counterparts say they plan to keep shelling out.

Amazon (AMZN) said its capital expenditures could reach $200 billion this year as it invests heavily in AI and robotics. That was well above the roughly $160 billion analysts expected.

CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement that the company expects a “strong long-term return” on its investments. He pointed to signals of strong demand at Amazon’s cloud segment, which recorded its fastest growth in 13 quarters and which Jassy said on Thursdays’ conference call would be the main recipient of the company’s spending.

Amazon Web Services revenue grew 24% year-over-year to $35.6 billion in the fourth quarter, above analysts’ estimates. That helped propel Amazon’s total revenue for the quarter to a record $213.4 billion. Earnings per share, however, came in just short of the analyst consensus at $1.95.

Amazon said it expects first-quarter revenue of $173.5 billion and $178.5 billion. Analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha were expecting $175.38 billion.

The company’s report followed another from Google parent Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), which yesterday said it too planned to continue plowing money into AI technology.

–Kara Greenberg

Estée Lauder Stock Plunged After Strong Earnings

FROM 3 hr 17 min ago

Estée Lauder’s latest forecast wasn’t a winning look.

The cosmetics company reported second-quarter results Thursday that sent investors running—and the stock to its lowest close since December—despite results that beat expectations and an improved outlook for the year. The company’s reiteration of a $100 million expected second-half tariff hit to profits, along with the stock’s steady climb off April lows that may have led to high expectations, likely weighed on the shares.

Estée Lauder Cos. (EL), parent company of Bobbi Brown and Clinique, hoped to cast its results as long-awaited progress. Sales picked up in Europe, China and other Asian markets. And after 10 years of losing market share, Estée Lauder is gaining ground in the Americas by expanding beyond department stores and selling via Amazon (AMZN), Tik Tok and Sephora, CEO Stéphane de la Faverie said on a conference call Thursday.

“One of the main challenges that we see is: the enacted tariffs are starting to hurt consumer confidence in Latin America,” de la Faverie said, according to a transcript provided by Alpha Sense. “But overall, I want to say, I feel very strong.”

The company reported $4.2 trillion in sales for the quarter ended Dec. 31—a 6% increase from last year, and slightly above the consensus analyst estimate from Visible Alpha. That translated to about $0.89 in adjusted earnings per share, compared to the $0.82 analysts anticipated, per Visible Alpha.

Estée Lauder also raised its earnings outlook for the full fiscal year. The company expects to end 2026 with an adjusted operating profit margin of 9.8% to 10.2%, despite a dip in the third quarter due to tariffs and other headwinds. That’s up from the 9.4% to 9.9% margin given in prior guidance.

Today’s investor reaction, however, was deeply negative, with the shares finishing 19% lower even after a bounce from intraday lows. The stock finished Wednesday’s session above Wall Street’s consensus price target, per Visible Alpha Data; it’s now some 15% below it.

–Sarina Trangle

Pizza Hut Is Shutting 250 Restaurants. Here’s Why

FROM 5 hr 9 min ago

Yum! is tearing off a slice of its pizza portfolio.

The fast-food giant will close 250 of 20,000 domestic Pizza Hut locations in the first half of the year, Yum! Brands (YUM) said on a conference call Wednesday. The restaurateur’s other brands, including Taco Bell and KFC, are performing well, but Yum! floated the idea of selling Pizza Hut while announcing a strategic review of the brand in November.

On the call, executives declined to share details about Pizza Hut’s future, citing the review. But the company estimated Pizza Hut’s core operating profit will fall 15% in the first quarter as the company invests in new marketing and other attempts to lift sales.

“We have aligned stakeholders on a targeted program in the US, Hut Forward, that represents a bridge to a longer-term acceleration of the brand,” said Yum! Brands CFO Ranjith Roy, according to a transcript made available by AlphaSense. “This program includes alignment on a vibrant marketing program, modernization of certain technology and franchise agreements, and Yum! providing a onetime contribution to marketing support, along with the approval of some targeted closures of underperforming units.”

Yum! didn’t respond to questions about which locations will close and how they were selected in time for publication.

Read the full article here.

–Sarina Trangle

Silver Price Chaos Is Forcing the World’s Largest Jeweler to Shift Strategy

FROM 6 hr 21 min ago

Not all that glitters is gold, they say. Soon, even less of it will be silver. 

Jewelry maker Pandora on Wednesday announced it’s introducing platinum-plated jewelry this year to diversify its precious metals exposure and reduce its reliance on silver, the price of which has soared over the past year. 

“With this innovation, we can navigate the new realities of raw material costs while offering consumers precious metal jewelery that is exceptionally well-suited for everyday wear,” said CEO Berta de Pablos-Barbier in a press release.

Precious metals prices rose throughout last year as tariff and geopolitical uncertainty, as well as a weaker U.S. dollar, boosted demand for safe haven assets like gold. But prices skyrocketed in the final months of the year when tech stocks wobbled and investors, hungry for gains, chased momentum in metals markets. 

The run-up turned into a full-blown meltdown on Monday when gold and silver suffered their worst sell-off in decades. After a few days of relative calm, volatility flared up again on Thursday. Spot silver prices were down about 13% at $77.50 an ounce in recent trading, while gold slid 2% to trade around $4,880 an ounce.

Even with this week’s rout, precious metals are far more expensive now than they were last year. The price of silver is up about 140% in the past 12 months, while gold has risen 70%.

Read the full article here.

–Colin Laidley

Americans Under 35 Are Finally Buying Homes Again, But Many Are Still Locked Out

FROM 8 hr 3 min ago

Homeownership among Americans under 35 just hit its highest point in two years, a rebound after months of grim headlines about young buyers being priced out of the market.

New data from the Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancy Survey, released Tuesday, shows that 37.9% of households headed by someone under 35 owned their home in the fourth quarter of 2025. That’s up 1.6 percentage points from a year earlier, when the rate had sunk to 36.3%—the lowest level in five years. 2025’s number was a surprise to analysts who expected homeownership rates to continue dropping.

They point to easing mortgage rates and a slight softening in home prices as helping younger buyers get off the sidelines. But almost two-thirds of young households still don’t own a home, and the rate remains far below the 43.6% peak reached during the mid-2000s housing bubble.

Read the full article here.

–Peter Gratton

The Job Market Froze Over This Winter

FROM 8 hr 36 min ago

Layoff announcements were up and job openings down this winter as the job market’s hiring freeze deepened, according to two barometers of the job market Thursday.

The number of job openings fell to 6.5 million in December from 6.9 million in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Thursday. That was the fewest since 2020. Another red flag popped up in consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas’s layoff report for January, which showed companies announced 108,000 job cuts, the most for any January since 2009, and the fewest hires for that month since the firm began tracking hires that year.

The indicators were unmistakable signs that the job market is being dragged down by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the immigration crackdown, and to a lesser extent, the rise of AI software.

“The labor market spent much of 2025 bending, but not breaking—and ended the year perilously close to a definitive breaking point,” Cory Stahle, senior economist at job site Indeed, wrote in a commentary.

The layoff rate remained low, suggesting that employers have not turned to large-scale cuts yet, but the risks of that are growing, several economists said.

Read the full article here.

–Diccon Hyatt

Google Says Spending Could Double This Year Amid Its AI Push. Investors Don’t Seem Excited

FROM 9 hr 56 min ago

Alphabet (GOOGL) shares slumped Thursday after the Google and YouTube parent laid out massive spending plans to support its AI ambitions.

The shares were down over 5% in recent trading, after the company forecast $175 billion to $185 billion in capital expenditures this year as it builds out its AI infrastructure, roughly double the $91.45 billion Alphabet spent in 2025.

With Thursday’s move, Alphabet shed some $170 billion of its market value, pulling its market capitalization back below $4 trillion.

Some Wall Street analysts said they’ve only become more bullish about the stock after the company’s latest results, however. Analysts from JPMorgan, Citi, and Wedbush lifted their price targets following Wednesday’s earnings report, given what they viewed as strong signals of AI demand.

“We acknowledge the concern around investments,” Citi analysts wrote. “But given clear AI demand signals, we believe Google should be investing in product and in alleviating capacity challenges.”

Read the full article here.

–Aaron McDade

Consumer Staples Is Only S&P 500 Sector in Green Today

FROM 10 hr 18 min ago

On a brutal day for the S&P 500, shares of consumer staples are a positive outlier.

The S&P 500 Consumer Staples Sector was the only one of the 11 industries tracked by the benchmark index to trade in the green Thursday morning, rising some 0.7%.

Four declined by more than 2%, with the Consumer Discretionary Sector down nearly 3%.

Hershey (HSY) advanced 8% to pace consumer staples after the chocolate giant reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results and issued a rosy 2026 outlook. Costco Wholesale (COST) and Coca-Cola (KO) also were among the top gainers in the sector, up nearly 2% and 1.5%, respectively.

The Great Inflation of 2021 Is Still Haunting the Fed

FROM 10 hr 36 min ago

The surge of inflation that took hold after the pandemic is still hurting household budgets and still very much on the minds of officials at the Federal Reserve.

In recent public speeches, Fed officials talked about the long shadow of the burst of price increases in 2021 and 2022, and how that high inflation is still lingering in a diminished form. The Consumer Price Index rose 2.7% over the year in December—far lower than the four-decade high of 9% in 2022, but remaining above the elusive 2% goal for nearly five years.

Fed officials held the central bank’s key interest rate steady at their most recent meeting last month, after cutting it by a quarter-point at the previous three meetings to boost the job market. Concerns about inflation kept them from cutting the rate again, several Fed members said this week.

The fed funds rate influences borrowing costs on all kinds of loans. The Federal Open Market Committee typically lowers it to encourage spending and boost the job market, and raises it to do the opposite and push down inflation.

This week, Fed officials continued to mull whether inflation or the threat of joblessness posed the biggest risk to the central bank’s dual mandate to keep prices stable and employment high, and how much they should cut interest rates in the months ahead, if at all.

“While we’ve made a lot of progress on inflation, it still remains above our target,” Thomas Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said in a speech in South Carolina on Tuesday, according to prepared remarks. “That’s been the case since 2021.”

Read the full article here.

–Diccon Hyatt

Qualcomm’s Disappointing Outlook Stokes Worries About a Global Memory Shortage. The Stock Is Tumbling

FROM 11 hr 31 min ago

Qualcomm’s stock is getting hammered amid worries about a worsening memory shortage.

Shares of Qualcomm (QCOM) plunged over 9% in recent trading after the chipmaker gave a disappointing outlook for the current quarter, and pointed to a tightening supply of memory components that’s impacting the smartphone market.

Qualcomm, which makes processors that are used in smartphones, laptops, and cars, said it expects a weaker smartphone market in the short term as companies navigate a global memory shortage that’s expected to drive phone and laptop prices higher.

Read the full article here.

–Aaron McDade

Bitcoin’s Price Fell Below $70,000. That Means Extra Attention on Strategy’s Earnings

FROM 11 hr 57 min ago

Bitcoin has slipped below another five-digit milestone.

The leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization—at about $1.39 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap—recently changed hands at prices not seen since late 2024, dropping below $70,000 apiece. The price hasn’t been cut in half since its record highs of around $125,000, recorded last fall, but the retreat is nevertheless severe.

The latest round of defections from bitcoin has come as investors have lately moved away from risk assets and, in some cases, shifted portfolio allocations toward more defensive plays. 

Ask a market maven what’s next and you’re likely to get a range of answers. Bulls still talk about bitcoin’s long-term potential—not just to recover, but to post the kind of parabolic returns it long saw. Bears see substantial further losses ahead. In the meantime, the trading action is hitting not only crypto assets itself but related stocks.

One of those may fuel one or both of those narratives later today: Big bitcoin buyer Strategy (MSTR), previously known as MicroStrategy, is set to report quarterly results after today’s close. The company earlier this week reported its latest purchase, which brought the adverage prices it’s paid for the bitcoin it owns to around $76,000.

Read the full story here.

–David Marino-Nachison

Ciena to Replace Dayforce in S&P 500

FROM 13 hr 7 min ago

Ciena (CIEN) has been tapped to move up to the S&P 500.

After markets closed yesterday, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that the networking systems company will join the benchmark index from the S&P MidCap 400, effective before the opening bell next Monday, Feb. 9.

Ciena will be replacing Dayforce after it was acquired and taken private by Thoma Bravo in a deal that closed Wednesday.

In addition, S&P SmallCap 600 component Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (ARWR) on Monday will replace Ciena in the S&P MidCap 400, while ADT (ADT) will replace Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals in the S&P SmallCap 600.

Ciena shares slipped 1% before the bell Thursday, while ADT and Arrowhead were up about 3% and 1%, respectively.

Don’t Like Trump’s Economy? Maybe You Will Next Year

FROM 13 hr 24 min ago

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent came to Congress Wednesday with a message to critics who say his administration’s tariffs are not delivering on promises to re-industrialize the country: give it some time.

Bessent answered questions from the House Financial Services Committee in a hearing Wednesday, addressing tariffs, the president’s attacks on the Federal Reserve, and other economic matters.

Bessent faced a mixture of supportive and critical questions from lawmakers during his testimony.

Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York, pointed out that the economy has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs every month since Trump imposed sweeping import taxes on most U.S. trading partners last year.

Bessent said a slew of factories have broken ground in response to the tariffs, which are intended to tip the scales in favor of domestic manufacturing over imports. Those factories will take some time to get up and running, he said.

Read the full article here.

–Diccon Hyatt

Peloton Stock Tanks on Weak Results, Outlook

FROM 13 hr 38 min ago

Peloton Interactive (PTON) reported weaker-than-estimated results for its holiday quarter. Its current-quarter and full-year projections aren’t so hot, either.

Peloton shares sank 9% in premarket trading Thursday after the connected fitness company posted less revenue and a wider loss than analysts were expecting.

The New York-based firm reported a fiscal 2026 second-quarter loss of 9 cents per shares on revenue that slipped 3% year-over-year to $656.5 million. Analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha had expected a loss of 6 cents per share on revenue of $677.2 million.

For the current quarter and full year, Peloton sees revenue of $624 million and a range of $2.40 billion to $2.44 billion, respectively. Visible Alpha consensus is for $637 million and $2.48 billion, respectively.

In October, Peloton announced a relaunched product line and higher subscription and hardware prices.

“The new Cross Training Series is resonating in the marketplace, our subscription base is highly committed, our integrated Commercial Business Unit is growing and well-positioned to continue doing so, and Member engagement with Peloton IQ is encouraging,” CEO Peter Stern said. “Looking ahead, our focus remains on executing our strategy to increase our share of the growing global wellness economy while continuing to enhance our magic formula of premium hardware, intuitive software, and unmatched human coaching.”

Peloton shares entered the day down 22% over the past year.

Amazon, UPS and Other Major Companies Are Making Big Job Cuts. Is AI To Blame?

FROM 14 hr 25 min ago

The labor market limped into 2026, and big layoff announcements in recent weeks have added fresh anxiety to the fragile jobs picture.

Amazon.com (AMZN) said it plans to eliminate about 16,000 corporate roles, while United Parcel Service (UPS) announced 30,000 new job cuts, following an even larger reduction last year. Chemical manufacturing company Dow (DOW) slashed 4,500 jobs, or roughly 12% of its workforce, while Home Depot (HD) and Nike (NKE) each cut hundreds more.

For many workers, the fear isn’t just about layoffs—it’s about why they’re happening. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 71% of Americans worry artificial intelligence could permanently replace their job.

With AI frequently cited in corporate earnings calls and layoff announcements, it’s easy to connect the dots. But when economists and labor researchers dig into the data, a more complicated—and far less AI-driven picture—emerges.

Read the full article here.

–Peter Gratton

Stock Futures Little Changed as Investors Assess Tech Earnings

FROM 14 hr 45 min ago

Futures contracts connected to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.1%.

S&P 500 futures pointed 0.1% higher.

Nasdaq 100 futures were up 0.2%.