Nobody likes Intel, but they sure ain’t selling it

Opendoor Technologies is soaring on Thursday after executives argued that its swoon on Wednesday was an overreaction and misinterpretation by markets.

The online real estate company’s losses deepened yesterday after US President Donald Trump called on Congress to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes.

Opendoor is a home-flipper rather than a longer-term holder that buys to rent (à la Invitation Homes or American Homes 4 Rent), and if anything, has been aiming to keep homes on its balance sheet for as short a time as possible under new CEO Kaz Nejatian.

Shares were down as much as 13% on Wednesday, but bounced off those lows around 2:15 p.m. ET after Nejatian took to X to endorse the proposal, and are continuing to pare some of those losses today.

Nejatian added, “We’re not institutional investors, our job is to help people buy homes. We don’t hold the homes!”

Chairman Keith Rabois, for his part, said this policy would only have a positive impact on the company, adding that it could increase conversion.

AbbVie says it “is not in discussions” to acquire oncology biotech Revolution Medicines, bucking previous reporting by The Wall Street Journal and sending both stocks slipping in early trading.

The Journal reported Wednesday that the drugmaker was in advanced talks to acquire Revolution, a company worth about $16 billion before the story published. In a statement to several outlets, AbbVie said it is not in talks to acquire the biotech.

After Abbvie’s statement, the Journal stuck with a lead that the companies were near a deal, “granted the talks don’t hit any last-minute snags.” It also reported that “a deal hasn’t been finalized and another suitor may prevail.”

Revolution soared around 30% on Wednesday. It fell back about 7% Thursday morning.

The acquisition would’ve been the first multibillion-dollar biotech deal of the year, as M&A activity in the sector is heating up. Big Pharma faces a patent cliff in the next few years and is looking for new products to bolster its pipelines, with weight-loss medications and oncology being among the most lucrative.

It’s a new year, and retail traders have an appetite for the same main course.

“Retail investors quickly refocused their attention to their trading portfolios as the New Year began, leading to the second-highest weekly buying levels in nearly eight months and daily purchases consistently exceeding the 85th percentile [relative to its one-year average] since January 2,” JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain wrote.

While retail investors continued to buy into ETFs over individual equities overall, so far in 2026, most of traders’ single-stock money is going into names retail investors took a shining to in 2025: the AI beneficiaries.

Per Jain, Tesla, Nvidia, Amazon, Palantir Technologies, Advanced Micro Devices, and Micron are the most purchased stocks by retail so far this year. The cohort has also made some big purchases of Halliburton and Chevron after the US ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

“After earning more than $20 billion in options on our platform over the course of the year, retail investors enter January armed with capital to deploy,” added Scott Rubner, Citadel Securities’ head of equity derivatives strategy. “This demand remains a steady source of upside pressure, amplifying early-year flows and contributing to January momentum.”

Applied Digital is up 4.7% in premarket trading as of 8 a.m. ET, after the AI data center operator shared better-than-expected Q2 2026 results on Wednesday evening while saying it’s in “advanced discussions” to add a major hyperscaler client, with the potential for fresh leases to be signed early this year.

For the quarter ended November 30, 2025, Applied Digital posted revenues of $126.6 million, up 250% from the year before and some way ahead of the $84.1 million analysts had expected, per estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Profitability greatly improved too, with adjusted EBITDA of $20.2 million and adjusted net income coming in at $100,000 for the quarter.

Leasing deals with companies like CoreWeave, which has signed deals for facilities that represent approximately $11 billion in prospective (and now current) revenue, has boosted the business, with CFO Saidal Mohmand saying that the company has “one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry.”

This marked the quarter in which Applied Digital booked a $5 billion 15-year AI factory lease with a “US based investment grade hyperscaler.”

During the conference call, CEO Wes Cummins said that the company is in “advanced discussions” on three sites that represent 900 megawatts in total, with “another investment-grade hyperscaler across multiple regions.”

In a longer-term view, Applied Digital also indicated that it now expects to exceed its net operating income target of $1 billion in the next five years, per its press release:

“Applied Digital positioned itself early through strategic investments in purpose-built, next-generation data centers. Our initial hyperscaler customers are expected to expand within our existing campuses, while additional customers are anticipated across new sites. This strong demand across our campuses, together with our current expectation for additional leases leads us to expect that we will now exceed our $1 billion NOI target within the next five years.”

At the end of last year, Applied revealed plans to spin off its digital cloud computing business, combining it with EKSO to form ChronoScale Corporation, a compute platform purpose-built to support AI.

“Our view on the quarter was quite positive with the company talking up consistent strong customer demand, its execution track record so far, and near term lease possibilities alongside the longer term pipeline expansion opportunities,” wrote Needham analyst John Todaro, who has a “buy” rating and a $41 price target on the stock.