The S&P 500 finishes flat but tech weighs down the Nasdaq 100

A rare double upgrade from JPMorgan has Southwest Airlines taking off on Friday morning, with shares up 4% shortly after the market opened.

The firm upgraded Southwest from “underweight” to “overweight” and hiked its price target from $36 to $60. According to analyst Jamie Baker, the potential for earnings-per-share guidance of $5 is “attractively probable” in 2026 — a figure that would “handily dwarf” the Wall Street consensus.

“Southwest possesses the industry’s deepest track record of profitability, an investment grade balance sheet, and a loyal customer base,” Baker wrote, adding that recent hiccups and slow adaptation is stabilizing, and revenue-driving initiatives like bag fees are “progressing as planned.”

Bag fees helped drive the airline to record third-quarter revenue in October. Later this month, the carrier will roll out assigned seating, which will open up new seating tier categories (and more premium ticket options).

The jobless rate dipped down to 4.4% in December, even as employment grew by just 50,000. Economists anticipated 70,000 jobs would be added, with the unemployment rate edging down to 4.5%.

Ahead of this release, prediction markets implied that job growth for December would be a little north of 80,000.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

In the wake of this report, traders in prediction markets calcified bets that the Fed would do nothing at its January meeting, with probabilities rising to 97% from 93%, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF added to its premarket gains.

Revisions to previous reports were negative, with payrolls for the two last readings being lowered by 76,000, cumulatively.

In the previous report, a joint release of October and November nonfarm payrolls, the unemployment rate had jumped by more than expected to 4.6%. That marked the first time the US unemployment rate increased for four consecutive readings since June 2009.

Housing-related stocks rose in after-hours trading yesterday, and remained in the green early on Friday, after President Trump said he would direct a large-scale purchase of mortgage bonds in a bid to lower borrowing costs.

In a Truth Social post yesterday, Trump said he is instructing his “Representatives” to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds, arguing the move will “drive Mortgage Rates DOWN, monthly payments DOWN, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable.” The purchase will be executed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, per an X post by Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the two firms.

Shares of mortgage lenders surged early Friday, with Rocket Cos and UWM Holdings both up around 6% as of 7 a.m. ET and LoanDepot rising as much as 16.8%. Online real estate platform Opendoor Technologies jumped 8.4%, while home builders like Lennar saw more modest gains.

AI utility darling Vistra and zero-revenues nuclear company Oklo are flying higher on Friday after both companies announced deals with Meta.

Shares of both companies are up double digits as of 7:30 a.m. ET.

The social media giant signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Vistra, which will see it buy the output of three nuclear plants “to support Meta’s operations in the region.” Per the press release, more than 15% of the contracted capacity from this deal will constitute a new addition to the PJM region, home to the nation’s largest power grid and ground zero for rising electricity costs. The pact is reminiscent of Meta’s deal with Constellation Energy in June, another 20-year PPA of what’s generated from a nuclear plant in Illinois.

Meta’s agreement with Oklo “provides a mechanism for Meta to prepay for power and provide funding to advance project certainty for Oklo’s Aurora powerhouse development,” with the nuke company aiming for the first phase to be active as soon as 2030, also “to support Meta’s data centers in the region.”

The Mark Zuckerberg-led firm also struck a deal with privately held firm TerraPower to develop up to eight reactors and storage system plants in the US, the first of which is hoped to be delivered as soon as 2032.

“We believe this news is incrementally positive for the entire nuclear energy industry, including OKLO, as it reaffirms the commitment from hyperscalers to start leveraging new energy sources to fuel the AI Revolution with power being the biggest headwind to the industry,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote.

The Trump administration has touted nuclear energy as a way to solve its competing priorities in the development of artificial intelligence. George Pollack, senior US policy analyst at Signum Global, has argued that US leadership can realize only two of these three objectives: preside over an AI boom, boost fossil fuel production at the expense of renewables, and avoid household angst over high energy prices. However, the long lead times involved with developing and deploying nuclear power, as two of agreements show, are seemingly incompatible with short-term fixes. On the other hand, the ambitious, multiyear data center build-out plans envisaged by hyperscalers help explain why they’re willing to wait and plan ahead to lock down energy supply.