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Luke Kawa

Flurry of positive announcements make ImmunityBio the next short squeeze target for retail traders

Heavily shorted ImmnuityBio is continuing its stellar run, up big in premarket trading after management delivered its fourth and fifth doses of positive news for the week.

In a pair of press releases, the biotech company said that:

  • A trial aiming to advance the utilization of its bladder cancer drug (ANKTIVA) is over 85% complete, with interim analysis having been positive.

  • A study of one of its treatments delivered in concert with another drug helped patients stay clear of Waldenstrom Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma for up to 15 months.

At their premarket peak on Friday, shares had more than doubled on the week.

The stock jumped 30% on Thursday after management said that ANKTIVA volume sales rose 750% in 2025. That came on the heels of a 7% rise on Wednesday after Saudi Arabia approved this drug as part of a treatment for bladder cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. And that followed a release from the company on Tuesday about how ANKTIVA “demonstrated statistically significant immune restoration across two clinical trials in 151 patients with non-small cell lung cancer,” driving shares up nearly 9%.

About 36.5% of the company’s shares were sold short as of the start of this year, and retail traders are clearly of the view that those betting against the company will be forced to capitulate amid this litany of positive releases. As of 7:30 a.m. ET, two of the top three posts on the r/ShortSqueeze subreddit center on the biotech firm, with one of these a cross-post from r/WallStreetBets of a more than $90,000 position initiated after the close on Thursday.

This may be another instance in which the term “short squeeze” looks like a bit of a misnomer: as of year-end 2025, about 120.6 million shares of IBRX were sold short, per exchange data. Cumulative volumes over the past three full sessions have been above 150 million. So going forward, if there are shorts left to be squeezed, it’s because this three-day spike (going on four days!) had much more to do with a buyer’s binge thanks to this string of encouraging news.

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Matt Phillips

GitLab shares dive as death-of-human-coding theme strengthens

Shares of software development service GitLab tumbled Wednesday after lackluster guidance undermined an otherwise solid set of Q4 results.

The hard numbers, however, may be less important for the shares than the hardening narrative entombing the company, whose stock price is down roughly 60% over the last year, at last glance.

In short, the problem is that GitLab sells coding and software development services long used by human coders and software developers. And investors think rapid advances in AI coding, through programs like Claude Code, mean there will be far fewer flesh-and-blood programmers to use GitLab in the future.

To wit, this report from The Information notes that OpenAI is developing an alternative to Microsoft’s GitHub — not to be confused with GitLab, an independent company, though both offer similar services such as code repositories and collaborative software development tools.

For sure, it’s not clear that human coders are destined for the dustbin of history. But it does seem fairly obvious that far fewer will be needed.

As I’ve written recently, that makes the AI boom somewhat distinct from other recent tech frenzies, in which programmers were typically insulated from the job losses their work often unleashes.

GitLab Stock Tumbles Again. Why the Software Pain Isn’t Over.

Monster robot attacks

In short, the problem is that GitLab sells coding and software development services long used by human coders and software developers. And investors think rapid advances in AI coding, through programs like Claude Code, mean there will be far fewer flesh-and-blood programmers to use GitLab in the future.

To wit, this report from The Information notes that OpenAI is developing an alternative to Microsoft’s GitHub — not to be confused with GitLab, an independent company, though both offer similar services such as code repositories and collaborative software development tools.

For sure, it’s not clear that human coders are destined for the dustbin of history. But it does seem fairly obvious that far fewer will be needed.

As I’ve written recently, that makes the AI boom somewhat distinct from other recent tech frenzies, in which programmers were typically insulated from the job losses their work often unleashes.

markets
Max Knoblauch

Ross Stores climbs after posting stronger-than-expected Q4 sales

Shares of off-price retailer Ross are up more than 6% on Wednesday morning, following the release of the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report after-hours on Tuesday.

Ross posted adjusted earnings of $2 per share in its Q4, ended January 31, beating Wall Street’s expectations of $1.90 per share. Total sales climbed 12% year over year to $6.6 billion, ahead of the $6.4 billion consensus.

CEO Jim Conroy credited some of the company’s success on growth in 18- to 34-year-old customers.

Looking ahead to the current quarter, Ross expects earnings of between $1.60 and $1.67 per share. Analysts polled by FactSet expect $1.68.

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Matt Phillips

Palantir’s ties to Anthropic reportedly under strain amid Pentagon spat

Palantir Technologies may have to cut ties with AI lab Anthropic after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared his department would restrict military contractors from using Anthropic’s technology, according to a story by The Information published Tuesday afternoon. Anthropic’s models are deeply embedded in the Palantir software packages the US government uses to analyze classified data.

Information reporters Aaron Holmes, Sri Muppidi, Rocket Drew, and Julia Hornstein wrote:

“Palantir CEO Alex Karp appeared to criticize Anthropic on Tuesday without directly naming it. Speaking at a defense tech summit hosted by Andreessen Horowitz in Washington, Karp upbraided Silicon Valley for going against the U.S. military, and warned that AI companies risked angering both liberals and conservatives.

‘If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take everyone’s white-collar jobs… and you’re going to screw the military, if you don’t think that’s going to lead to the nationalization of our technology, you’re retarded,’ Karp said. ‘That’s where this path is going.’”

Anthropic-Palantir Partnership at Risk After Pentagon Decision

Information reporters Aaron Holmes, Sri Muppidi, Rocket Drew, and Julia Hornstein wrote:

“Palantir CEO Alex Karp appeared to criticize Anthropic on Tuesday without directly naming it. Speaking at a defense tech summit hosted by Andreessen Horowitz in Washington, Karp upbraided Silicon Valley for going against the U.S. military, and warned that AI companies risked angering both liberals and conservatives.

‘If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take everyone’s white-collar jobs… and you’re going to screw the military, if you don’t think that’s going to lead to the nationalization of our technology, you’re retarded,’ Karp said. ‘That’s where this path is going.’”

markets
Luke Kawa

Crypto-adjacent stocks rebound as return of geopolitical risk prompts reversals in 2026 market trends

Crypto-adjacent stocks are ripping on Wednesday morning as bitcoin soared above $70,000, exceeding a key resistance area flagged by multiple analysts in recent weeks.

Big gainers include:

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

Bitcoin has performed terribly in 2026, and is down nearly 50% from its peak in October.

And it’s not the only beaten-down pocket of the market to have its fortunes change as geopolitical risk flares up.

Shortly before the US strikes against Iran, Renaissance Macro Head of Technical Research Jeff deGraaf flagged that the gap between winners and losers within the tech sector had reached levels not seen since the dot-com bubble; the nascent reversal in hardware versus software since tensions in the Middle East have ratcheted higher also seems to be manifesting as a rebound in crypto, as well.

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