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Opendoor Technologies jumps on reported “Trump Homes” plan from developers, positive signals on mortgage loan growth

Opendoor Technologies is surging on Tuesday on a double dose of good news: a report that mortgage loan growth is soaring and a potential plan to boost US housing supply.

Speaking on CNBC, Rocket Companies CEO Varun Krishna said his firm is “on track to produce the highest mortgage loan volume and the highest gain on sale in four years.”

Separately, Bloomberg reports that US developers are pursuing a “Trump Homes” plan to build up to 1 million homes (or $250 billion in housing) in a bid to make homeownership more accessible. Shares of Lennar and Taylor Morrison, which are both said to be involved with this program, are up on this report.

The Trump Homes plan is being discussed by developers, and Bloomberg reports that “the administration is not actively considering the plan, a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.”

A more active real estate market is music to the ears of Opendoor bulls. Following its Q3 earnings report, new CEO Kaz Nejatian indicated that his plan to turn around the online real estate company involved a high-volume strategy: buying more homes faster, and quickly flipping them for a small profit. The company has significantly expanded its homebuying footprint to include the entire Lower 48 states.

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Palantir up as Wall Street gushes about Q4 report

But will retail reengage with the shares?

Alex Karp Palantir Shares Surge

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J. Edward Moreno2h

Novo expects sales will drop in 2026 amid rising competition

Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk expects annual sales to decline by up to 13% in 2026 despite signs that its new Wegovy pill, the first oral GLP-1 to come to market, is having strong early uptake.

The pharmaceutical giant gave an early look at its outlook for 2026, with complete results scheduled for Wednesday morning. The Danish drugmaker said it expects sales will fall by 5% to 13%.

How Novo Nordisk’s new Wegovy pill is transforming the weight-loss drug market

How Novo Nordisk’s new Wegovy pill is transforming the weight-loss drug market

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Rocket Companies jumps as CEO touts soaring mortgage loan volumes

The US housing market — or at the very least resale activity — is thawing after a long freeze.

Shares of Rocket Companies are soaring on Tuesday after CEO Varun Krishna told CNBC that the firm is “on track to produce the highest mortgage loan volume and the highest gain on sale in four years.” Rocket, he added, was “right there to capitalize” on the drop in mortgage rates.

Per Realtor.com, the share of US homeowners with mortgage rates above 6% now exceeds those with rates below 3%. This points to a diminished “lock-in” effect that dampened resale activity in the postpandemic economy.

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Claude Cowork’s plug-ins the newest reason for software stocks to crater

“Claude Cowork’s new plug-ins” have joined “Microsoft’s cloud business growth poised to decelerate by half a percentage point” and “the launch of Claude Cowork” as the latest reasons to send software stocks into the abyss.

Anthropic’s new tools for Cowork, a computer assistant on mental steroids, are doing outsized damage to stocks linked to the legal industry on Tuesday, but also likely weighing on the entire software complex. The iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF is down 3.4% as of 10 a.m. ET, with DocuSign, Atlassian, Salesforce, Workday, Adobe, and ServiceNow all slammed.

The chatbot maker said these plug-ins were “especially powerful for tailoring Claude to specific job functions,” and lawyers aren’t the only folks who will feel a little itchy under the collar upon seeing that.

As previously discussed, these plug-ins run the gamut in terms of applicable professional domains: in addition to legal, there’s productivity, enterprise search, sales, finance, data, marketing, customer support, product management, and biology research, as well as a meta plug-in to create and customize other plug-ins.

Anthropic’s legal plug-in for Claude Cowork prompts rush out of legal software and publishing stocks

Anthropic’s new tools for Cowork, a computer assistant on mental steroids, are doing outsized damage to stocks linked to the legal industry on Tuesday, but also likely weighing on the entire software complex. The iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF is down 3.4% as of 10 a.m. ET, with DocuSign, Atlassian, Salesforce, Workday, Adobe, and ServiceNow all slammed.

The chatbot maker said these plug-ins were “especially powerful for tailoring Claude to specific job functions,” and lawyers aren’t the only folks who will feel a little itchy under the collar upon seeing that.

As previously discussed, these plug-ins run the gamut in terms of applicable professional domains: in addition to legal, there’s productivity, enterprise search, sales, finance, data, marketing, customer support, product management, and biology research, as well as a meta plug-in to create and customize other plug-ins.

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Western Digital announces additional $4 billion in share buybacks, with management poised to unload its remaining stake in Sandisk

For Western Digital, patience is about to prove a virtue. Another 7.5 million shares of its old flash drive business — which became Wall Street’s hottest stock — will soon hit the market in a big boon for its balance sheet.

Management announced an additional $4 billion for its share buyback authorization this morning, and it’s not tough to tell why they’re feeling flush.

In the original spin-off of Sandisk on February 21, 2025, Western Digital distributed most of the shares of the flash drive business to its own shareholders, but kept just under 20% for itself, staying below that threshold for regulatory and accounting purposes.

“As you probably know, we still have 7.5 million Sandisk shares, and it’s our intention to monetize those shares before the one-year anniversary of the separation,” Chief Financial Officer Kris Sennesael said on the conference call following earnings last week. “Likely in a similar transaction that we have done before, meaning it’s a debt-for-equity swap, and so the proceeds will be used to further reduce the debt.”

That one-year anniversary is drawing near. And as if we needed another “tell” that this is imminent, JPMorgan moved Sandisk to “a not rated designation for policy reasons because of restriction” on Monday. JPMorgan was a co-lead bookrunner for the June 2025 offering that was used to culminate the first phase of this debt-for-equity swap.

WDC sold about 74% of the 28.8 million shares it retained in June of last year, generating about $880 million to retire debt in a tax-efficient manner. The company stands to be able to retire $5 billion in debt through the release of about one-third as many shares this time around!

(Would even more patience and a delay to this spin-off or the first debt-for-equity swap have been even better? Well, yes, but you can’t win ’em all.)

Sandisk has traded more than 18 million shares per day, on average, over the past month. Unless this offering provides an attractive excuse to sell (the same way President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Kevin Warsh to lead the Fed kneecapped the precious metals rally), 7.5 million shares is something that the market would easily be able to absorb at anything close to the current level of enthusiasm.

They say if you love something, set it free. If it retires $5 billion in debt for you, it was meant to be.

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