Markets
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Luke Kawa

Elon Musk lost $33.9 billion in one day. Here’s what he could have bought instead of tweeting into self-immolation.

The world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, lost $33.9 billion (per Bloomberg) amid a full-blown public tantrum toward US President Donald Trump on Thursday that started with a disagreement over US debt and legislative priorities before escalating into not-thinly-veiled accusations of pedophilia.

Roughly $20 billion of Musk’s disappearing wealth comes from the cratering of shares of Tesla, which had its 11th-worst day on record yesterday.

$33.9 billion is a big number. If you can easily put it in perspective, congratulations; please invite me on one of your mega yachts. But for the rest of us...

  • That’s roughly as much as the Dallas Cowboys, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Rams, and New York Yankees franchises are worth combined, per Forbes’ 2024 annual list.

  • If, instead of tweeting, Musk just decided to send someone random all the money he’d end up losing on Thursday, that person would be the 55th-richest person in the world, per Bloomberg’s RICH <GO> list.

  • You could buy nearly 500,000 Cybertrucks. It’s unclear when you’d be able to take delivery, but that would definitely help Tesla’s forward earnings estimates inflect higher.

  • Musk has shown an interest in mixed martial arts. He’d probably have more flexibility to schedule a scrap with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg (and line up a ref and some judges willing to score the bout favorably) if he bought TKO, the UFC owner with a market cap of about $33.4 billion.

  • $33.9 billion is nearly enough to account for all the cumulative net income that Tesla has generated over its history as a publicly traded company ($35 billion).

Musk-Trump isn’t the most costly divorce we’ve seen, though. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos settled with Mackenzie Scott for about $38 billion.

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Tasha Matsumoto
2h
Stocks rise for the fourth-consecutive session as tech rally leads gains

While tech was the best-performing sector ETF, the rally was broad-based, with all sector ETFs rising higher except for health care.

This picture shows a turkey standing next to cows in a field in Douville-en-Auge, northwestern France, on December 29, 2018.
markets
Luke Kawa

Beyond Meat jumps amid spike in call activity

Shares of Beyond Meat are soaring on Wednesday amid heavy call activity and little news.

Over 200,000 call options have changed hands as of 11 a.m. ET, already above the 20-day average of 194,098 for a full session. Its put/call ratio of close to 0.1 is the lowest in months.

The three most traded options contracts are calls that expire this Friday with strike prices of $1 and $1.50, as well as calls that expire next Friday with a strike price of $1.

Those remain out-of-the-money call options: after its meme moment drove shares to $7.69 on October 22, the stock has given all that back and then some as the air came out of many speculative pockets of the market.

Because of how much call demand spiked during the boom times, today’s pickup registers as more of a blip on the chart:

Beyond Meat’s recent refinancing efforts, which were cited as a supposed fundamental catalyst for the explosion of retail interest, started when the stock was trading at $2.85.

Based on today’s activity, the dust hasn’t fully settled on this story, but so far: management has eliminated about $800 million in debt and all it got in exchange so far is a near 70% decline in its stock price and a longer runway to make processed peas into faux meat.

markets
Luke Kawa

AI stocks linked to OpenAI are rallying in a reversal of recent trends

The AI pendulum appears to be swinging back in the other direction, at least for one day.

The TL;DR trade within AI has recently been “long Google and its supply chain partners, short anything closely affiliated with OpenAI.”

As we discussed yesterday, the Google ecosystem has been booming, while key OpenAI suppliers and investors have been languishing.

Today, we’re seeing a bit of a reversal in that seeming pair trade — and, in what’s very positive for markets on the whole, this is being driven by the outperformance of the OpenAI-linked cohort rather than intense pain for the Google group.

Nvidia, CoreWeave, Oracle, and Advanced Micro Devices are all trading well to the upside in early trading. Meanwhile, Google is modestly lower, and Broadcom and Lumentum are in the green, though not by as much as most of the OpenAI-linked suite of stocks.

“With the trillions set to be spent over the coming years many Big Tech players will benefit besides Nvidia on the chip front... that should not be mistaken for Nvidia being the indisputable Rocky Balboa champion of the AI Revolution and that is not changing any time soon on the chip front,” wrote Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives.

markets
Max Knoblauch

Deere drops as tariffs and a weak profit forecast weigh down a Q4 sales beat

A sales and profit beat weren’t enough to stem Deere investors’ tariff unease on Wednesday, when the company dropped its fourth-quarter earnings report. Deere shares slipped about 4% in premarket trading.

Deere posted adjusted earnings of $3.93 per share, beating the $3.84 estimate from Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet. The company also said it expects full-year 2026 profit to land between $4 billion and $4.75 billion. Wall Street expected more than $5 billion.

According to CEO John May, “ongoing margin pressures from tariffs and persistent challenges in the large ag sector remain” and 2026 will “mark the bottom of the large ag cycle.” May said he believes the company’s cost-control efforts will allow it to seize opportunities as the market recovers.

In its fourth quarter, Deere also:

  • Booked $12.4 billion in total revenue, beating expectations by more than 5%.

  • Logged a 27% net sales jump in its construction and forestry division. However, the company said tariffs were a headwind for the division's operating profits.

markets
Luke Kawa

Robinhood jumps after forming joint venture to enhance its prediction markets business

Shares of Robinhood Markets are on the rise in premarket trading after the brokerage announced after the close on Tuesday a joint venture with Susquehanna to enhance its prediction market business.

The pair is launching an independent futures and derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, with Robinhood as the controlling partner and Susquehanna serving as the liquidity provider, and is expected to begin operations next year. In a related move, the joint venture is acquiring 90% of MIAXdx, a derivatives exchange that was once a part of FTX.

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

Currently, Robinhood offers access to contracts with probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC. The joint venture would have the tools needed to operate an event contracts business independently and the potential to gain a bigger share of the revenues associated with this fast-growing product line thanks to the brokerage’s ample distribution network.

Per the press release:

“Prediction Markets have quickly become Robinhood’s fastest-growing product line by revenue. Just one year since launch, 9 billion contracts have been traded by more than 1 million Robinhood customers. By introducing a robust, institutional-grade exchange to the market, we’ll add more choices for consumers. We’ll also gain the flexibility to build faster and deliver more contracts and services to traders.”

Bank of America analysts recently warned that the boom in prediction markets and online gambling was creating “emerging credit risks” for some lenders.

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