Michael Jordan #23 dribbles towards the net circa the 1990's during a game.

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Stocks close near record highs as strong manufacturing data boosts economic outlook

Due to the partial government shutdown, this week’s expected jobs data will be delayed.

Stocks climbed as the January ISM manufacturing index blew past analysts’ expectations, indicating manufacturing growth. All major US indexes rose, while gold and silver resumed their sell-off after Friday’s meltdown. Bitcoin recovered a bit after this past weekend’s bloodbath, where the price dipped below $75,000. Due to the partial government shutdown, tomorrow’s expected jobs openings data for December and Friday’s expected January jobs report will be delayed.

Stocks that moved higher:

Gaming stock Roblox rebounded from Friday’s sell-off as analysts said that investors’ fears about the impact of Google’s Project Genie on the broader gaming market may have been an overreaction.
Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, JetBlue, United Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Delta Air Lines took off as oil prices retreated and US-Iran tensions eased.
Critical minerals stocks NioCorp and United States Antimony Corp. surged on a report that President Trump will launch a $12 billion critical minerals stockpile.
GameStop rallied after CEO Ryan Cohen said the retailer is aiming to acquire a company bigger than itself.

Stocks that moved lower:

Tesla stock fell as a new Chinese safety rule effectively bans the car door handles for which Tesla is famous. Lucid and Rivian, which also adopted the flush door handles, fell as well.
Disney dropped despite posting better-than-expected Q1 sales and earnings.
Strategy tumbled as the value of its bitcoin was briefly less than its cost basis.
BitMine Immersion Technologies also fell as the company acquired more ethereum despite being underwater amid the token’s price decline.

Luke Kawa1h

OpenAI reportedly seeking alternatives to Nvidia chips, unhappy with inference performance

Reuters reports that OpenAI is “unsatisfied” with Nvidia’s latest AI chips and has been seeking alternatives since last year, citing a whopping eight sources familiar with the matter.

This news comes on the heels of a recent report from The Wall Street Journal that Nvidia’s plan to invest $100 billion in OpenAI had stalled.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang seemingly confirmed the WSJ reporting in comments to the press over the weekend, but still struck a positive public tone on OpenAI, indicating that the chip designer would be participating in its upcoming funding round.

Sources inside OpenAI appear to be choosing a more combative response.

Per Reuters, the specific shortcoming OpenAI sees in Nvidia’s offering involves inference, or the “thinking” being done by AI models.

Now, the idea that OpenAI is seeking alternatives to Nvidia, or at least additional sources, is well known: the ChatGPT maker struck highly publicized deals in October with Advanced Micro Devices that the chip designer said would “deliver tens of billions of dollars in revenue” as well as custom chip specialist Broadcom to develop and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators.

So this really has the feel of, “I dumped her, she didn’t dump me!”

Palantir beats Q4 earnings and sales expectations, stock surges

The numbers are in.

Matt Phillips2h

Luke Kawa2h

Microsoft is the biggest drag on the US stock market since Gemini 3’s launch

Microsoft is the publicly traded company that, due to its partnership with OpenAI, had a place of pride at the epicenter of the AI boom.

It doesn’t have that much to show for it.

Thanks to last week’s plunge following the release of its earnings, the tech behemoth is now trailing the SPDR S&P 500 ETF for the first time since November 30, 2022 — the day ChatGPT was released. It’s the only member of the so-called Magnificent 7 to trail the fund that tracks the benchmark US stock index over this stretch.

The OpenAI relationship has been more of a burden than a boon for the company as of late, as the ChatGPT maker’s cash burn and competitive pressures have cast a pall over its partners.

Per data from Bloomberg, Microsoft has been the biggest drag on SPY since the release of Gemini 3, shaving off 80 basis points. Alphabet, on the other hand, has been the largest driver of the ETF’s advance over this period.

Max Knoblauch6h

Airline stocks climb as oil prices retreat on easing US-Iran tensions

West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell more than 5% on Monday, following President Trump’s comments over the weekend that Iran was “seriously talking” with the US — a sign that tensions between the countries could be easing.

That drop-off boosted major US airlines, which stand to benefit from lower fuel costs. Shares of carriers including Frontier, United Airlines, JetBlue, and Delta Air Lines were all up in the mid- to high single digits.

Max Knoblauch6h

Gaming stocks rebound from sell-off as analysts dismiss Google’s new AI project as merely “a one-minute-long walking simulator generator”

Investor fears about the impact of Google’s Project Genie on the broader gaming market may have been an overreaction, analysts at mBank said in a note on Monday.

According to analyst Piotr Poniatowski, Friday’s sell-off was “unjustified.”

Unity Software shed 24%, Roblox lost 13%, and Take-Two closed down 8% heading into the weekend. All three are up at least 3% on Monday.

Project Genie, Google’s new generative-AI prototype, can create interactive worlds from a text or image prompt, and users are already testing its ability to recreate copyrighted worlds. But, as Poniatowski noted, interactivity within those generated worlds is very limited:

“Control is limited to movement and jumping. Users cannot perform complicated actions such as crouching, climbing, dodging, evading, shooting, etc. It is simply moving and jumping around the generated world. There are no NPCs, no interactions and no depth. As of writing, Project Genie is essentially just a one-minute-long walking simulator generator.”

The note mirrors a post on X by Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg on Friday, in which the exec said models like Google’s are “unsuitable on their own for games that require consistent, repeatable player experiences.”

Gaming stocks plunge following release of Google’s AI tool that can create playable, copyrighted worlds