Benny, the mascot for the Chicago Bulls, performs during a break between the Bulls and the New Orleans Pelicans at the United Center on January 14, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois.

(Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Stocks jump as Trump walks back European tariff threats

All sector ETFs traded higher in the broad-based rally.

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 jumped after US President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t slap tariffs on several European countries after reaching what he called “the framework of a future deal” on Greenland with NATO’s secretary general. Small-caps completely recovered from yesterday’s losses, while the Russell 2000 beat the S&P 500 for the 13th consecutive session. The rally was broad-based, with all sector ETFs trading higher, led by energy.

Stocks that moved higher:

Lucid surged as the EV maker extended its deal with Rockwell Automation.
Intel ripped amid a flurry of activity in the options market and a couple of positive analyst assessments ahead of its earnings report due tomorrow.
Seagate Technology Holdings rose as analysts at BNP Paribas upgraded the shares to “outperform” from “neutral” and lifted their price target to $380 a share.
Shares of United Airlines rose following the release of the carrier’s fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report after the bell yesterday.
GameStop jumped as CEO Ryan Cohen purchased $10.6 million in company stock.

Stocks that moved lower:

Netflix fell after a lower-than-expected earnings forecast.
Kraft Heinz dropped as Warren Buffett’s successor appears to be considering selling off Berkshire Hathaway’s stake.

Luke Kawa1h

GameStop jumps in after-hours trading after CEO Ryan Cohen purchases another 500,000 shares

Ryan Cohen is putting his money where his mouth is.

The GameStop CEO bought another 500,000 shares of company stock for $10.8 million on Wednesday, per a filing.

The stock was trading higher on Wednesday thanks to Cohen’s purchase of 500,000 shares for roughly $10.6 million on Tuesday, and extended these gains in the after-hours session on this news.

“The Reporting Person believes that it is essential for the Chief Executive Officer of any public company to purchase shares of such company in the open market with his or her own personal funds in order to further strengthen alignment with stockholders,” per the filing. “The Reporting Person believes that any Chief Executive Officer who fails to do so should be fired.”

Cohen is poised to become even more financially enmeshed with GameStop’s stock and operating performance should shareholders approve a package that would tie his pay completely to ambitious targets for the company’s earnings and market cap.

The CEO now owns about 8.56% of shares outstanding.

Luke Kawa2h

AppLovin tumbles; company dismisses negative report as “false, misleading, and nonsensical”

AppLovin managed to finish Tuesday well off its lows after initially getting clobbered in the wake of an incendiary report published by CapitalWatch.

Nonetheless, shares are getting torched on Wednesday, ending down nearly 6%. An AppLovin spokesperson forcefully denied the allegations made by CapitalWatch, which included calling the ad tech firm “the ultimate monument to 21st-century new-type transnational financial crime.”

Per an emailed statement:

“We categorically reject the claims made in this report, which is rife with false, misleading, and nonsensical allegations. AppLovin’s public filings transparently disclose our material investments, global operations, and information regarding significant shareholders.”

“Claims that AppLovin facilitated money laundering or its products are used for unauthorized downloads are patently false. AppLovin functions within a broader ecosystem that includes major app stores, operating systems, and payment providers, and the apps monetized through our platform must be publicly available on the major app stores and subject to their independent review and enforcement. Economically, the money laundering theory is implausible: publishers receive only a portion of advertiser spend, meaning any attempt to ‘launder’ funds would require forfeiting a substantial share while creating a highly visible, auditable transaction trail across multiple independent companies. Accepting the report’s premise would therefore imply a systemic failure across the broader mobile advertising and app-store ecosystem, for which the report provides no evidence.”

AppLovin craters after report from CapitalWatch alleges it’s a money-laundering operation for “transnational criminal kingpins”

Per an emailed statement:

“We categorically reject the claims made in this report, which is rife with false, misleading, and nonsensical allegations. AppLovin’s public filings transparently disclose our material investments, global operations, and information regarding significant shareholders.”

“Claims that AppLovin facilitated money laundering or its products are used for unauthorized downloads are patently false. AppLovin functions within a broader ecosystem that includes major app stores, operating systems, and payment providers, and the apps monetized through our platform must be publicly available on the major app stores and subject to their independent review and enforcement. Economically, the money laundering theory is implausible: publishers receive only a portion of advertiser spend, meaning any attempt to ‘launder’ funds would require forfeiting a substantial share while creating a highly visible, auditable transaction trail across multiple independent companies. Accepting the report’s premise would therefore imply a systemic failure across the broader mobile advertising and app-store ecosystem, for which the report provides no evidence.”

Matt Phillips6h

Intel soars amid retail engagement, analyst chatter

Intel ripped toward a new 52-week high Wednesday, amid a flurry of activity in the options market and a couple of positive analyst assessments ahead of its earnings report due tomorrow.

Shortly after 11 a.m. ET, call options activity was roughly equivalent to the full-day average over the past 10 sessions. Bets on stock swings using call options have become a highly popular retail trade, suggesting that retail investors are getting interested in the shares ahead of the report from the partially nationalized American chip icon.

(That interpretation is buttressed by what we’re seeing on social sentiment-monitoring sites like SwaggyStocks, which at about 11:30 a.m. listed Intel as the fifth-most-mentioned stock on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum over the past 24 hours.)

Wall Street analysts are also chattering about the stock, with RBC and Bernstein Research both writing about it in the last 24 hours.

RBC — which has a “sector perform” (or neutral) rating on Intel — said it expects a “slight beat and largely inline outlook” when the company reports after the close Thursday.

Bernstein’s Intel watchers — who have a “market perform” (also neutral) rating on the stock — seemed a bit more cautious, writing, “Overall numbers going forward still looking high to us. Fundamentals and valuation keep us sidelined.”

“If there is no memory, there’s no AI.”

FLASH FORWARD

ByMattPhillips

WedJan 212026

Matt Phillips8h

BNP upgrades Seagate on more durable cycle

Seagate Technology Holdings was up in early trading after analysts at BNP Paribas upgraded the shares to “outperform” from “neutral” and lifted their price target to $380 a share, implying a gain of almost 15% from where the stock is currently trading.

The maker of the somewhat stodgy technology known as hard disk drives — or HDDs in tech lingo — was one of the top stocks in the S&P 500 for much of last year as it was swept up in the AI data center trade.

Data centers need tons of storage capacity, and demand from hyperscalers has driven up prices and created shortages for disk drives, an industry that is dominated by a duopoly of Seagate and Western Digital. (BNP also maintained its “outperform” rating on WDC in a note Wednesday.)

The analysts at BNP say they pushed by the buy button on the stock after becoming more convinced that the upswing in sales was durable, writing:

“We have witnessed a structural shift happening in HDD industry, toward 1) an effective duopoly, 2) higher mix toward data centers, and 3) disciplined capex investments. These have supported our expectations of long-term, through-cycle profitability for the HDD industry. We are now upgrading Seagate from Neutral to Outperform as we are gaining greater conviction that robust data center storage demand could drive an upcycle longer than we initially expected. We think a secular re-rating of Seagate (as well as Western Digital) to over 20x is justified.”