AI trade gets its momentum back

Nintendo’s popular bundle that packaged the Switch 2 with “Mario Kart World” is seemingly going out of production, per a post on X from GameStop.

Shares of the console maker fell more than 3% after markets opened on Monday, implying some worry from investors that consumers may not be so willing to pay the game’s elevated $80 price tag (it’s valued at $50 in the bundle). About 9.6 million copies of the game have sold since the Switch 2 released in June, a figure that includes the bundled version.

The Switch 2 itself is still looking solid, sales-wise. It was pacing 68% ahead of the original Switch in October, though November saw a sharp market-wide spending drop-off on consoles according to data from Circana. Sony’s PS5 outsold the Switch 2 in both units and dollars last month.

Quantum computing stocks D-Wave Quantum, IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and Quantum Computing are surging on Monday morning thanks to one-way traffic in the options market.

Put/call ratios for all of these companies are well below their 20-day averages about 20 minutes into the session:

D-Wave, which is leading the rally, did have some news to speak of: an announcement that Murray Thom, vice president of quantum technology evangelism, would be presenting at CES on January 7. That press release, published at 7 a.m. ET, didn’t really move the needle much for the shares, with the company and its peers only taking off once the regular trading day began and with it, the options frenzy.

While the good times may be back for these stocks, there’s still a long ways to go to repair the damage suffered since October, when a broad group of speculative stocks peaked.

Paramount’s $30 per share offer for Warner Bros. Discovery now includes a $40.4 billion personal guarantee from Larry Ellison, the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, according to a fresh filing on Monday.

“Larry Ellison has agreed to provide an irrevocable personal guarantee of $40.4 billion of the equity financing for the offer and any damages claims against Paramount,” said Paramount in a news release following the filing.

Ellison’s backing directly addresses a concern that the Warner Bros. board cited when encouraging its shareholders to turn down Paramount’s offer — that the offer was backed by a revocable trust. According to the board, that meant Paramount could back out of the contract if it so chose.

Netflix also got more of its ducks in a row for its WBD offer on Monday, refinancing part of its $59 billion bridge loan with longer-term and lower-cost debt.

Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery are climbing in premarket trading, and event contracts showed increased optimism in Paramount’s likelihood to end up buying WBD (50% as of 8:43 a.m. ET, up from 27% as of 8:00 a.m. ET).

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. Event contracts trading is offered by Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, a registered futures commission merchant with the CFTC.)

Chinese buyers can get their hands on the best chips from Nvidia’s Hopper generation before the new year — their Lunar New Year, that is, which starts on February 17.

Reuters reports that the chip designer has told customers in the world’s second-largest economy that it plans to ship about 40,000 to 80,000 H200 chips to China by mid-February, citing a trio of people familiar with the matter. Shares of Nvidia extended gains to be up nearly 2% in premarket trading on Monday, as of 8 a.m. ET.

Earlier this month, President Trump said that Nvidia could begin to sell these processors to China, with 25% of the proceeds going to the US government. H200s are the top offering from Nvidia’s Hopper generation, which preceded its current Blackwell flagship products. Providing China with this high-powered US AI technology has been critiqued by both sides of the aisle in Congress.

The report also notes that Chinese authorities have yet to approve these purchases, and previous reporting from the FT suggests potential buyers would need to show what the Nvidia chips can do that domestic chips can’t. Based on what experts say about the performance gap between H200s and the top Chinese processors, that might not be too difficult a hurdle to clear.

Reuters had previously indicated that Nvidia had told Chinese buyers that it was considering boosting H200 production in light of firm demand. Monday’s report cites a source that says orders for this fresh capacity should open in Q2.

Analysts never gave Nvidia much credit for a potential recovery in H20 sales after the Trump administration lifted curbs on sending those chips to China (and wouldn’t you know it, they were right!). Given the technology gap between those nerfed Hopper (H20) chips and these top-of-the-line ones (H200), however, this looks to be a different story.