February 06, 2026 04:21 PM EST
The Once-Hot AI Trade Hit a Snag. Some Experts Call That a ‘Fantastic’ Sign
FROM 15 hr 29 min ago
AI was the rising tide lifting all boats. These days, it’s sinking as many as it’s lifting.
Investor anxiety is building in tandem with Big Tech’s AI spending, creating an environment in which the slightest whiff of uncertainty can wreak havoc on stocks. The four hyperscalers that reported earnings in the past two weeks—Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN)—all laid out plans to continue aggressively investing in AI infrastructure.
Tech stocks sold off this week amid worries about excess AI spending and disruption of the software industry.
Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Alphabet and Meta say this year’s infrastructure spending will be about double last year’s. Amazon on Thursday forecast 2026 capital expenditures of $200 billion, a 50% year-over-year increase and about $50 billion more than Wall Street expected. Microsoft didn’t provide a dollar estimate, but its capital spending the rest of the year is expected to be consistent with last quarter, when it rose by more than 60%.
Read the full story here.
February 06, 2026 04:18 PM EST
Is The Economy’s Balance ‘Precarious’ or ‘Stabilizing?’ Fed Officials Differ
FROM 15 hr 32 min ago
Federal Reserve officials gave contrasting assessments of the economic outlook Friday, with one having “cautious optimism” and the other noting that to workers, the situation seems “precarious.”
In separate statements, Fed Governor Philip Jefferson and Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly discussed how the job market has been slower than usual in recent months, although employers have avoided mass layoffs so far. Jefferson, speaking at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, noted the unemployment rate, at 4.4% in December, has “changed little” in recent months, suggesting that the job market is stabilizing after a slowdown.
Job seekers may be feeling a bit skeptical about the future of the economy.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Daly, in a blog post, highlighted that working households don’t feel optimistic these days, cautiously or otherwise. Recent surveys of consumer sentiment show that people expect unemployment to rise and jobs to become more scarce over the next six months. And open positions are already pretty hard to come by, having fallen to their lowest since the pandemic in December.
Read the full story here.
February 06, 2026 04:12 PM EST
Chip Stocks Soar as Nvidia CEO Huang Says Demand Is ‘Through the Roof’
FROM 15 hr 38 min ago
America’s biggest cloud giants are doubling down on their investments in AI hardware. That hasn’t helped their shares lately—but chipmakers are getting a lift as their orders keep rolling in.
Shares of AI chip leader Nvidia (NVDA) closed up nearly 8% Friday helping send the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 50,000 points for the first time, while Amazon (AMZN) shares slumped a day after the cloud provider followed other major Nvidia clients with a massive AI spending forecast.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC the AI industry could be reaching an “inflection point” as the technology becomes more widely adopted.
Bridget Bennett / Bloomberg / Getty Images
Other semiconductors stocks including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Broadcom (AVGO) and Marvell Technology (MRVL) also surged, sending the PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index (SOX) up nearly 6%.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC in a televised interview Friday that demand has been “going through the roof” as cloud heavyweights lead what he believes could become the “largest infrastructure buildout in human history.”
Read the full article here.
February 06, 2026 04:07 PM EST
S&P 500, Nasdaq End Week Lower Despite Friday Rally
FROM 15 hr 44 min ago
The S&P 500 entered Friday down more than 2% for the week following a three-day selloff. It very nearly ended the week in the green.
The benchmark index surged 2% today but closed lower for the third time in four weeks. The Nasdaq ended 1.8% lower over the five sessions for its fourth straight weekly decline.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped a three-week skid, ending 2.5% higher for the week following its 1,200-point rally Friday in which it crossed the 50000 threshold for the first time.
For the year, the Dow and S&P 500 are up about 4% and 1%, respectively, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 2%.
February 06, 2026 03:13 PM EST
Communications, Consumer Discretionary Sectors Underperform Friday
FROM 16 hr 37 min ago
Communications and consumer discretionary shares didn’t get the memo Friday.
On a day when the S&P 500 surged 1.8% with less than an hour to go in the trading day, the benchmark index’s Communication Services and Consumer Discretionary Sectors declined 1.8% and 1.4%, respectively.
The other nine S&P 500 sectors were in the green, led by a 4% advance by Information Technology shares.
News Corp (NWSA) was the worst-performing stock in the Communications Services Sector with a 6% decline, while Amazon (AMZN) led Consumer Discretionary decliners with a 7% pullback.
News Corp shares sank 6% Friday.
Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images
February 06, 2026 01:20 PM EST
Crypto’s Rough Week Has Dragged on Bitcoin, Altcoins, DATs and Stocks. What’s Next?
FROM 18 hr 30 min ago
This week’s crypto bloodbath hasn’t just worried bitcoin owners. It’s also sparked fresh anxieties about the future of digital assets.
The price of bitcoin plunged yesterday to near $60,000, marking one of its worst single-day declines in the past decade. Though the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value has been recouping some lost ground so far Friday—it was recently trading around $71,000—the week’s losses are still tracking in the double-digits. Other crypto assets have also seen pronounced declines.
Bitcoin has been pulled lower this week. That’s weighed on a range of other assets.
Nikolas Kokovlis / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Altcoins including ether and solana have seen losses of around 25%; Hyperliquid’s native token, up about 11%, was a lonely bright spot. Digital asset treasury companies took a beating: Strategy (MSTR), Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) and Twenty One Capital (XXI) have all seen double-digit pullbacks over the past five trading days.
Read the full article here.
February 06, 2026 12:44 PM EST
Jennifer Garner’s Baby Food Company—Once Upon a Farm—Is Set for an IPO Today
FROM 19 hr 6 min ago
A children’s food company co-founded by actress Jennifer Garner is slated to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange today.
The business, Once Upon a Farm, said late yesterday that its initial public offering raised nearly $200 million. The company, set to trade on the New York Stock Exchange using the symbol “OFRM,” sold nearly 11 million shares at $18 apiece, in the middle of the $17 to $19 range they were marketed in.
Garner rang the NYSE’s opening bell ahead of the shares’ debut. The IPO price implies Once Upon a Farm—known for food pouches that keep product safe via cold pressure, rather than heat or pasteurization—has a market capitalization of about $724 million.
Once Upon a Farm, co-founded by actress Jennifer Garner, goes public today.
Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Read the full article here.
February 06, 2026 12:22 PM EST
Amazon Is the Dow’s Weakest Performer Friday as Stock Sinks 8%. Here’s Why
FROM 19 hr 28 min ago
Amazon said it plans to invest heavily in its AI buildout this year, and investors aren’t pleased.
Shares of the world’s largest cloud provider were down about 8% in recent trading, making Amazon the worst-performing stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Friday, at a time when broader markets rose.
Amazon shares are down about 12% since the start of the year.
David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / Getty Images
The tech giant said yesterday it could spend up to $200 billion this year on capital expenditures, far more than many Wall Street analysts anticipated. Executives said most of that spending is set to go toward the company’s cloud business, as it invests in data centers and equipment to expand its AI capacity.
Read the full article here.
February 06, 2026 11:02 AM EST
Almost Entire Dow Jones Industrial Average Higher Friday
FROM 20 hr 49 min ago
On a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 750 points, it should come as no surprise that 90% of its components were in the green.
Friday morning saw 27 of the 30 Dow components in the green, and one of the other three, Salesforce (CRM) was barely in the red, down just 0.2%.
Amazon (AMZN) shares declined 8% and Verizon Communications (VZ) was 1.5% lower in recent trading, but all the other stocks in the blue-chip index were higher.
Nvidia (NVDA) led Dow gainers with a 6% advance, followed by Caterpillar (CAT) and 3M (MMM), up about 5% and 4%, respectively.
February 06, 2026 10:14 AM EST
Stellantis Shares Are Tumbling to Their Lowest Point in Over 5 Years. Here’s Why
FROM 21 hr 36 min ago
Another big automaker is making major changes to its electric vehicle strategy. Investors aren’t cheering the move.
Shares of Stellantis (STLA) plunged 25% Friday morning to their lowest point since April 2020, after the automaker announced several changes as part of a “reset” of its business to better meet consumer demand.
The maker of Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, and other car brands said it expects to take a charge of about 22 billion euros ($26 billion) for the second half of 2025, largely due to an overhaul of its electric vehicle strategy. Ford (F) and General Motors (GM) each made similar announcements in recent months, with plans to take on big charges as they pivot to focus less on all electric vehicles and more on hybrids and traditional internal combustion engine cars.
Stellantis makes over a dozen car brands, including well-known American brands such as Jeep, Dodge, and Chrysler.
Jim West / UCG / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
“The charges announced today largely reflect the cost of over-estimating the pace of the energy transition that distanced us from many car buyers’ real-world needs, means and desires,” Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa said, adding that the charges also “reflect the impact of previous poor operational execution,” which he said the company is fixing since he took over in mid-2025.
Read the full article here.
February 06, 2026 09:35 AM EST
What If a Housing Shortage Isn’t the Reason Homes Are So Expensive?
FROM 22 hr 15 min ago
A new analysis from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco challenges the common assumption that homes have gotten more expensive because too few have been built.
The analysis published this week, showed that cities across the country have built housing faster than their populations have grown and that home prices tend to rise alongside income. Indeed, the housing supply grew faster than the population even in expensive markets like San Francisco. In other words, rising incomes, not a shortage of housing, could be fueling the soaring cost of houses.
Experts have assumed homes have gotten more expensive because too few have been built. But what if that isn’t the case?.
David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The research by a team led by Schulyer Louie, a doctoral student at the University of California Irvine, sheds new light on the causes of the housing affordability crisis and has implications for how policymakers should address it. With rent and home-ownership costs soaring relative to typical incomes, politicians from both major parties are looking for ways to bring those costs down. But the problem may have less to do with too few homes being built and more to do with high-income earners bidding prices out of reach of everyone else.
Read the full article here.
February 06, 2026 09:02 AM EST
Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly Shares Rebound as FDA Commissioner Says Agency Will Take Action Against ‘Illegal Copycat Drugs’
FROM 22 hr 48 min ago
Yesterday, shares of Eli Lilly (LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NVO) sank about 8% apiece after Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) said it would begin selling a lower-priced, compounded weight-loss pill. A social media post by the head of the Food and Drug Administration has sent them surging a day later.
U.S.-listed shares of Danish firm Novo Nordisk jumped 7.5% and Eli Lilly stock advanced 3.5% before the bell after FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary wrote on X that the agency “will take swift action against companies mass-marketing illegal copycat drugs, claiming they are similar to FDA-approved products.”
Hims & Hers stock, which initially surged close to 14% yesterday before reversing course to finish nearly 4% lower, dropped a further 7% early Friday.
Hims & Hers said its new pill starts at $49 per month for five months, and comes with the same active ingredient as Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, which received FDA approval in December and costs $149 for self-pay patients, according to the company’s website.
“The FDA cannot verify the quality, safety, or effectiveness of non-approved drugs,” Dr. Makary added.
Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk’s U.S.-listed shares sank 8% yesterday on news Hims & Hers Health was introducing a lower-priced, compounded weight-loss pill.
Michael Siluk / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
February 06, 2026 07:59 AM EST
Rubbermaid Parent Newell Brands Stock Sinks on Soft Q1 Forecasts
FROM 23 hr 52 min ago
Newell Brands (NWL) posted solid fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter results. Its current-quarter forecasts left investors underwhelmed.
The Rubbermaid and Sharpie parent’s stock sank 12% before the bell Friday after the company issued soft fiscal 2026 first-quarter guidance.
The Atlanta-based firm reported Q4 normalized, or adjusted, earnings per share of $0.18 on revenue that declined nearly 3% year-over-year to $1.90 billion. Analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha had expected $0.18 and $1.88 billion, respectively.
However, Newell Brands projected a current-quarter normalized loss per share of $0.08 to $0.12, wider than analysts’ expected loss per share of $0.03. It also sees a 3% to 5% Q1 sales drop, bigger than the consensus 1.6% decline.
Shares of Newell Brands, which said current-quarter sales are “expected to be negatively impacted by shipment timing dynamics rather than underlying consumer demand,” entered Friday having lost more than half their value over the last year.
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Is Now the Time to Load Up on Bonds? Vanguard Thinks So
February 06, 2026 07:19 AM EST
The 60/40 portfolio is back. Or is it the 40/60 portfolio?
“It might be time to skew your portfolio more to the bond side versus U.S. equities,” said Gregory Davis, President and chief investment officer at Vanguard, in an appearance on CNBC Thursday.
“You have a 10-year [yield] that’s at 4.2%. You’re picking up a nice premium relative to where inflation is today,” said Davis. “It’s the first time in almost a decade where you’re actually earning a real yield when it comes to investing in bonds.”
Treasury yields languished at historic lows following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and fell even further when the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates in response to Covid-19. Soaring inflation in 2022 forced the Federal Reserve to aggressively hike rates, driving bond yields higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note topped 4% for the first time since 2008 in September 2022, and has stayed above that threshold for most of the past three years.
Bonds are offering attractive yields for the first time in over a decade, said Vanguard’s CIO on Thursday.
Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images
In that time, the stock market has been on a tear. The S&P 500 is up about 90% since the current bull market began in October 2022. Booming investment in artificial intelligence has fueled three consecutive years of double-digit returns for the benchmark index.
But the market’s exceptional performance in recent years could be a double-edged sword. U.S. stocks “have been overvalued for some time,” said Davis on Wednesday. That’s one of the reasons he expects the return on stocks and bonds to be “pretty comparable” over the next decade. Vanguard predicted mid-single-digit stock returns over the next decade in its 2026 market preview. Goldman Sachs analysts issued a similar forecast a year earlier.
Read the full article here.
Stock Futures Point Higher After Sell-Off
February 06, 2026 06:42 AM EST
Futures contracts connected to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.4%.
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S&P 500 futures rose 0.6%.
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Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 0.7%.
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