The small polar bear lady Antonia eats an ice cake with fruit and vegetable filling at the zoo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, 20 December 2017.

(Antonia Hofmann/Getty Images)

Stocks waver ahead of tomorrow’s interest rate decision

The S&P 500 struggled for direction, but small-caps were trading near all-time highs.

12/9/25 4:03PM

The S&P 500 ended Tuesday’s session slightly lower, while the Nasdaq 100 posted a modest gain. The Russell 2000 notched a new intraday all-time high, as small-caps are poised to benefit from tomorrow’s anticipated rate cut. Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s commentary will offer crucial insight into the central bank’s approach to easing in 2026.

Traders also digested delayed JOLTS data from September and October, which showed higher-than-expected job openings in October.

Stocks that moved higher:

CoreWeave traded higher after the neocloud company said this morning that its $2 billion convertible note offering announced on Monday has been upsized to $2.25 billion.
CVS Health rose after posting a cheery 2026 earnings forecast.
Ares Management soared on yesterday’s news of its S&P 500 inclusion.
Accenture gained after announcing partnership with Anthropic, adding to its recent series of AI collaborations.

Stocks that moved lower:

JPMorgan Chase fell as its retail banking head, Marianne Lake, remarked during the Goldman Sachs financial services conference that the consumer environment is a “bit more fragile.” Wells Fargo dipped as well.
Nvidia shed gains after the Financial Times reported that China may limit its access to H200 chips despite President Trump’s announcement yesterday.

Seagate beats expectations on sales and EPS

The guidance was strong too.

Matt Phillips57m

Tasha Matsumoto

S&P 500 climbs to new all-time high ahead of Big Tech earnings

Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla will report after the bell tomorrow.

Matt Phillips3h

Satellite stocks surge on “sovereign space” plans

Planet Labs is on pace to notch its second 10% gain of the month early Tuesday afternoon, adding to its astronomical run of more than 500% over the last 12 months.

Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives hiked his price target for the stock to $30 from $28 after hosting a series of meetings with the company and investors in California. Ives writes:

[Planet Labs] is seeing massive success through its improved GTM selling motion as the company is providing mission-critical use cases for a wide array of government applications with defense & intelligence, with more international agencies seeing the value in PL’s satellite fleet for situational and maritime domain awareness in real-time as the company is benefitting from increasing defense budgets and the urgent need for international countries to reduce its reliance on the US.

That commentary is consistent with recent news reports that the German military is planning to build what the Financial Times calls the “the equivalent of Elon Musk’s internet service for the German armed forces.”

A separate report in the Wall Street Journal Monday said “spending on space-related projects is expected to rise in many countries, giving companies new opportunities to sell their wares and services.”

Behind this push, in part, is the fact that the roughly 80-year-old NATO alliance is is under unprecedented strain due to, among other things, President Trump’s fixation on somehow acquiring the Danish territory of Greenland.

Other space plays seem to be benefiting from similar dynamics, with Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile both up solidly on the day.

Governments’ New Must-Have: Their Own Satellites

[Planet Labs] is seeing massive success through its improved GTM selling motion as the company is providing mission-critical use cases for a wide array of government applications with defense & intelligence, with more international agencies seeing the value in PL’s satellite fleet for situational and maritime domain awareness in real-time as the company is benefitting from increasing defense budgets and the urgent need for international countries to reduce its reliance on the US.

Other space plays seem to be benefiting from similar dynamics, with Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile both up solidly on the day.

Matt Phillips5h

Corning-Meta deal reignites optical connections trade

Corning’s $6 billion deal with Meta to provide fiber-optic cable connections for its AI data centers is reigniting an AI-related trade that’s been stalled out over the last month.

Fellow opto-electrical makers of plugs, cables, and various doodads needed to connect data center servers — such as Amphenol, Coherent , and Lumentum — are also soaring Tuesday.

Such stocks ripped in the second half of 2025 before the rally sputtered out in the first half of December. But the amount of money Meta plans to shower on Corning has clearly cheered up competitors — and investors — in the space today.

Corning soars after striking deal to sell up to $6 billion in optical infrastructure to Meta

Luke Kawa8h

Richtech Robotics soars after announcing partnership with Microsoft to use AI to improve its robots

Shares Richtech Robotics are surging in premarket trading after the company announced “a hands-on collaboration with Microsoft through the Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Labs to jointly develop and deploy agentic artificial intelligence capabilities in real-world robotic systems.”

Per the press release, the two companies worked together to imbue Richtech’s flagship ADAM robot with “additional layers of context awareness” to “support smoother workflows and more responsive customer interactions in retail environments.”

Apropos of nothing, here’s an ADAM robot serving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang a margarita:

Richtech was one of many robotics and vaguely robotics companies that caught a massive bid in early December after Politico reported that the Commerce Department was poised to go “all in” to support the industry. To date, there's been no evidence of such a plan, but that hasn’t stopped robotics stocks from having a phenomenal start to 2026. The Themes Humanoid Robotics ETF, which counts Richtech as one of its members, gained nearly 50% year-to-date through Thursday’s close, though it has since come off the boil.