Western Alliance Bank signage (Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images)

FREAKY FRIDAYS

Markets trim losses, shaking off regional banking jitters and bubble fears

Stock futures: sinking. Bitcoin: bashed. Gold: soaring. VIX: spiking. Even the AI trade is hurting in the premarket.

10/17/25 5:10AM

After months of serene sailing, stocks are finding it easier to slip into reverse gear in October. Exactly one week since the market fell 2.7% — the S&P 500’s worst day since April — stocks and risk assets were once again tumbling in premarket trading on Friday, with high-flying momentum and AI stocks bearing the worst of the punishment.

The sell-off this morning was a more serious continuation of yesterday’s price action, when the S&P 500 Index turned a green day into a mildly red one, slumping in the afternoon to close down 0.4%. S&P 500 futures then dipped a further ~1.2% this morning, dragged lower by some of the biggest names in the AI trade, with Nvidia, Tesla, AMD, and Palantir among the most heavily traded names as of 7:45 a.m. ET.

However, markets have since regained much of the lost ground, seemingly due, at least in part, to comments from President Trump that appear to have assuaged investors about the risks of a trade war with China.

Quantum names like Rigetti Computing and IonQ were notable outliers in terms of premarket volumes. That follows on from yesterday when speculative pockets of the market, including quantum stocks, were clobbered.

The risk-off mood, which spread to European and Asian markets overnight, appears to have been brought on by concerns in the banking sector. Yesterday, two regional US banks, Zions Bancorp and Western Alliance Bank, disclosed loan fraud losses. Though relatively trivial sums in the grand scheme of things — Zions disclosed a $50 million charge-off for a loan — the news struck a nerve with investors, given the recent collapses of First Brands and Tricolor Holdings.

In the age of AI, with hyperscalers signing deals for tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, $50 million of misplaced capital is hardly a big deal. But such is the nature of markets: if AI bubble fears were the dry tinder and geopolitical and trade tensions were the gas-soaked rag, then the tiny spark to start the sell-off was a couple of bad loans in America’s regional banks.

Some of those worries about US financials are subsiding this morning after regional banks Truist, Regions, and Fifth Third all reported better-than-expected quarterly adjusted earnings per share along with lower-than-anticipated provisions for credit losses.

Outside of equities, the price action has been similarly safety-seeking. Gold was trading north of $4,350, up a whopping 18% in the last month, bitcoin was back toward $105,000, and ethereum was just north of $3,700. The VIX was also elevated, trading at its highest level since April.

Still, it’s worth gaining some perspective. At current prices, the S&P 500 is back to where it was last week, and where it was toward the end of September.

Matt Phillips2h

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 Phillips4h

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.”

Nate Becker4h

Stocks jump as Trump says “I won’t use force” to acquire Greenland

In a speech in Davos, Switzerland, US President Donald Trump said he won’t use force to acquire Greenland, sending stocks higher at the open.

“We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be frankly unstoppable, but I won’t do that,” Trump told the crowd, referring to his pursuit of Greenland, which has roiled markets recently. “People thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

He seemed to indicate that Denmark, which owns Greenland, could rebuff the US’s overtures to acquire the country without military retaliation.

“They have a choice. You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember,” he said. Throughout his speech, Trump constantly reiterated his desire for the US to own Greenland.

Stocks rose at the open, with the S&P 500 rising 0.3%. S&P 500 futures, which had been down Wednesday morning, jumped after his comments.

J. Edward Moreno5h

J&J slips despite cheery 2026 guidance

Johnson & Johnson reported fourth-quarter sales that beat expectations and gave rosy guidance for 2026.

The company said it expects to bring in between $100 billion and $101 billion in revenue this year, compared to the $98.9 billion analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The drugmaker also expects to report between $11.43 and $11.63 in annual adjusted earnings per share, compared to the $11.48 that Wall Street was expecting.

Despite beating expectations, J&J, the first major drugmaker to report earnings results this year, fell by more than 2% in premarket trading.