Markets
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Hyunsoo Rim

Coinbase rises after announcing entry into prediction markets, stock trading

Coinbase was nearly 3% higher in early trading on Thursday after the crypto exchange said Wednesday it’s launching stock trading and prediction markets in the US — as the company accelerates its push to become an “everything exchange.”

Users will now be able to trade stocks and ETFs alongside their crypto portfolios at zero commission — using either US dollars or the USDC stablecoin — within their Coinbase app and account, the company said.

Prediction markets will be offered through CFTC-regulated provider Kalshi, allowing users to trade yes-or-no contracts tied to elections, sports, economic indicators, and more, with bets placed in US dollars or USDC stablecoin.

Prediction markets have surged in popularity after a federal court allowed event contracts tied to the US election to proceed last year, overcoming attempted regulatory curbs. Contracts on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have proven more accurate on certain outcomes — most notably the 2024 US presidential election — than traditional markets, though critics warn of the dangers of insider trading.

The space is heating up quickly, with crypto exchange Gemini recently securing CFTC approval, Crypto.com teaming up with Trump Media to launch markets on Truth Social, and Robinhood already offering prediction markets through Kalshi while expanding its event trading features, with 11 billion contracts traded by more than 1 million customers on the app since launching late last year.

(Disclosure: Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company. I own Robinhood stock as part of my compensation.)

Alongside the major rollouts, Coinbase also unveiled a broad slate of new products, including Coinbase Business; custom-branded stablecoins backed by flexible collaterals like USDC; an AI-powered financial adviser; and Coinbase Tokenize, an institutional platform aimed at enabling 24/7 on-chain trading of tokenized assets.

Coinbase’s shares are down about 2.5% year to date, after erasing roughly a 50% gain logged as recently as early October amid a broader sell-off across crypto markets.

Prediction markets have surged in popularity after a federal court allowed event contracts tied to the US election to proceed last year, overcoming attempted regulatory curbs. Contracts on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have proven more accurate on certain outcomes — most notably the 2024 US presidential election — than traditional markets, though critics warn of the dangers of insider trading.

The space is heating up quickly, with crypto exchange Gemini recently securing CFTC approval, Crypto.com teaming up with Trump Media to launch markets on Truth Social, and Robinhood already offering prediction markets through Kalshi while expanding its event trading features, with 11 billion contracts traded by more than 1 million customers on the app since launching late last year.

(Disclosure: Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company. I own Robinhood stock as part of my compensation.)

Alongside the major rollouts, Coinbase also unveiled a broad slate of new products, including Coinbase Business; custom-branded stablecoins backed by flexible collaterals like USDC; an AI-powered financial adviser; and Coinbase Tokenize, an institutional platform aimed at enabling 24/7 on-chain trading of tokenized assets.

Coinbase’s shares are down about 2.5% year to date, after erasing roughly a 50% gain logged as recently as early October amid a broader sell-off across crypto markets.

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Luke Kawa
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Max Knoblauch

CarMax sinks on declining used car sales as Carvana closes in

Used car retailer CarMax is down more than 5% in premarket trading on Thursday following the company’s third-quarter earnings report.

The company posted adjusted earnings per share of $0.43, beating the Wall Street consensus estimate of $0.31 per share. CarMax’s comparable-store sales came in down 9% from the same period last year and in line with its preliminary results posted in November, when it announced the sudden firing of longtime CEO Bill Nash.

CarMax sold 169,557 used vehicles to retail customers in its fiscal third quarter, an 8% drop from the same period last year. The company said it anticipates lowering margins on its used vehicles in Q4, which it expects will boost sales.

That declining used car sales figure is getting closer to rival Carvana’s, and Wall Street expects the gap to continue to shrink. In November, analysts at Wedbush Securities said they expected Carvana’s retail sales to surpass CarMax’s in Q4 of 2026 — six months earlier than initially forecast. Carvana rose 1% in premarket trading.

markets
Hyunsoo Rim

Instacart slumps on report of FTC probing its AI pricing tool

Instacart dropped more than 7% in premarket trading on Thursday following an exclusive Reuters report that the FTC has launched a probe into the grocery delivery company’s AI-driven pricing tool. News of the probe follows a study published last week finding that Instacart’s prices for identical grocery lists at the same stores varied across users, with some grocery prices differing by as much as 23% per item from one customer to the next.

Per Reuters, the FTC has sent Instacart a civil investigative demand, seeking information about Eversight, a pricing tool that Instacart acquired in 2022 for $59 million. The platform allows retailers to test different price levels and promotions across products and categories, which Instacart says could drive 1% to 3% revenue growth and an incremental margin lift of 2% to 5%, according to its website.

In response to last week’s report, Instacart said its pricing practices have been “mischaracterized,” telling TechCrunch that retailers control prices on its platform and that the tests are “completely randomized,” not dynamic or based on individual user data.

In a statement reported by Reuters, the FTC said it “has a longstanding policy of not commenting on any potential or ongoing investigations,” but added that it is “disturbed by what we have read in the press about Instacart’s alleged pricing practices.”

The probe comes as Instacart doubles down on AI to boost its profitability in the low-margin online grocery space, as growth slows and competition from Amazon intensifies.

Go Deeper: The economics of Instacart’s grocery delivery are pretty tight — AI might help, or hurt

Exclusive: FTC probes Instacart's AI pricing tool, source says; shares drop

Exclusive: FTC probes Instacart's AI pricing tool, source says; shares drop

Per Reuters, the FTC has sent Instacart a civil investigative demand, seeking information about Eversight, a pricing tool that Instacart acquired in 2022 for $59 million. The platform allows retailers to test different price levels and promotions across products and categories, which Instacart says could drive 1% to 3% revenue growth and an incremental margin lift of 2% to 5%, according to its website.

In response to last week’s report, Instacart said its pricing practices have been “mischaracterized,” telling TechCrunch that retailers control prices on its platform and that the tests are “completely randomized,” not dynamic or based on individual user data.

In a statement reported by Reuters, the FTC said it “has a longstanding policy of not commenting on any potential or ongoing investigations,” but added that it is “disturbed by what we have read in the press about Instacart’s alleged pricing practices.”

The probe comes as Instacart doubles down on AI to boost its profitability in the low-margin online grocery space, as growth slows and competition from Amazon intensifies.

Go Deeper: The economics of Instacart’s grocery delivery are pretty tight — AI might help, or hurt

markets
Luke Kawa

Micron soars after reporting huge Q1 beat, with Q2 sales guidance ahead of every Wall Street analyst’s estimates

Micron has completely erased Wednesday’s big losses, rising 9.5% in premarket trading as of 4:20 a.m. ET, after the memory chip specialist yesterday posted stellar results for its fiscal Q1 2026 and a much better outlook for the current quarter than Wall Street anticipated.

For Q1, the company reported:

  • Revenues: $13.64 billion (estimate: $12.95 billion)

  • Adjusted earnings per share: $4.78 (estimate: $3.95)

And the Street’s consensus was well ahead of even the upper ranges of the guidance provided by management for the quarter for sales of $12.5 billion (plus or minus $300 million) and $3.75 (plus or minus $0.15).

For Q2, management provided an outlook for adjusted revenues of $18.3 billion to $19.1 billion, and adjusted EPS of $8.22 to $8.62. Wall Street had penciled in revenues of $14.38 billion with adjusted EPS of $4.71.

Even the bottom end of the ranges management provided is well above the top analyst’s estimate for the quarter.

These results may help spark a revival in semi stocks, which have gotten trounced in recent sessions. Hard disk drive sellers Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital are also rising in after-hours trading, as is flash memory seller Sandisk.

Micron has been one of the worst performers in the S&P 500 since last Thursday’s record close, down double digits from then until Wednesday close as investors broadly dumped AI names. Prior to that, shares had been on fire amid a bevy of Wall Street price target hikes and surging memory chip prices as demand runs ahead of supply. The AI boom has fueled a spike of immense appetite not only for GPUs and custom chips but also memory chips as well, as data centers also need a boatload of these to store information and feed it to those processors. Micron and its major competitors, SK Hynix and Samsung, have already sold out production for their most advanced high-bandwidth memory offerings for calendar year 2026.

Micron recently announced that it would be exiting its consumer chip business to focus on serving its AI customers.

Toby Bochan
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