Tech tumble drags down stocks

The underperformance of bitcoin versus gold and other speculative assets last year was a head-scratcher.

However, bitcoin’s strong start to 2026 leaves it well positioned for a potential catch-up trade with soaring precious metals, according to Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets — so long as the crypto asset is able to break through near-term resistance levels that loom.

The shaded area in the below chart shows “an important series of supports that I had focused on back in the summer of 2025 and again in November 2025. The level broke somewhat cleanly and we have not been back above since,” he wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday. “Broken megasupports like that tend to become important resistance on the way back up so bears can get busy as we near the 98400/99400 zone, or bulls can add on a break of 100k. I would think a move through 100,000 would trigger a strong psychological response from the market given the laggy nature of bitcoin vs. gold, silver, and stocks.”

“In a world where there is a shortage of good places to park your money if you’re worried about counterparty risk, it makes sense that gold and silver would be rallying,” he concluded. “Then again, it would have made sense that bitcoin would be rallying too, and it went straight down for the second half of 2025.”

Satellite services stocks Rocket Lab, Planet Labs, and EchoStar all notched closing records as geopolitical instability continues to push them higher.

Planet Labs President and CFO Ashley Johnson presented at the Needham Growth Conference today, talking up her company’s recent deal with the Swedish Air Force. She called the deal “a signal of the urgency that you’re hearing from nations around the world for the need to have their own intelligence capabilities, their own eyes in the sky to understand what’s going on, to make sure that they have the proper preparedness.”

Satellite stocks have been surging in the face of an uptick in global instability and White House actions and saber-rattling aimed at Venezuela, Iran, and remarkably Denmark, over President Trump’s fixation on annexing Greenland.

Since the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve, their gains have been eye-watering: Rocket Lab is up nearly 30%, Planet Labs is up 34%, and EchoStar has risen 21%.

After all, the low-Earth orbit industry began as a way to easily establish redundancies for communications, intelligence, and missile defense capabilities. Military and government contracting remain important cornerstones of the business.

Shares of EV maker Rivian fell 3% in premarket trading on Wednesday, as the company received a downgrade to “sell” from “neutral” by UBS.

Analyst Joseph Spak said he believes most of Rivian’s AI news has been released and that market expectations for the automaker’s forthcoming R2 may be too high. Still, UBS raised its Rivian price target from $13 to $15.

Earlier this week, analysts at Wolfe Research also downgraded Rivian to “sell” from “hold,” writing that the company wouldn’t benefit from its self-driving updates until late this year.

As of Tuesday’s close, Rivian shares are up 14.7% since its AI day on December 11.