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Luke Kawa

Plug Power falls after posting mixed second-quarter results

Plug Power is trading lower in the after-hours session after reporting second-quarter results that were a mixed bag.

  • Revenue: $174 million (estimated $157.9 million, guidance for $140 million to $180 million).

  • Net earnings per share: -$0.20 (estimated -$0.16).

Management failed to provide much in the way of guidance for the current quarter, but aims to “achieve gross margin break-even on a run-rate basis in Q4 2025.” In the current quarter, the hydrogen fuel cell company’s gross margin was -31%, a sharp improvement from -92% during the same period last year thanks to progress in its “Project Quantum Leap” plan to reduce costs.

Plug Power was whipsawed during the second quarter amid evolving legislation related to its hydrogen business. One draft of the Senate’s tax bill would have ended the green hydrogen production credit at the end of this year. The OBBBA as passed kept these credits in place through the end of 2027, proving Plug Power CEO Andy Marsh’s prediction mostly right.

“We don’t expect that Congress — and Congress, remember, is who decides this — is going to make any changes to the 45V,” he told Sherwood News in late February.

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Chip stocks post record outperformance of software companies in never-before-seen divergence

One session in 2026 brings one thing we’ve never seen before in markets: a massive divergence between the two big parts of the technology sector.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF absolutely trounced the iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF today, with the former gaining 3.7% leaving while the latter dropped 2.9%.

The 6.6-percentage point gap is the biggest outperformance for SMH versus IGV on record, going back to December 2011.

Since these two are both parts of a broader technology whole, it’s rare to have one up a ton while the other gets shellacked. The rolling one-year correlation of daily returns for these two ETFs was about 0.8 heading into today.

There have been only three sessions (including today) where the chip stock ETF was up at least 1.5% while the software ETF was down 1.5% or more. We’ve never seen SMH gain 2% while IGV fell 2% before Friday’s session. And there’s been only one session where the reverse happened (November 11, 2024).

The opening trading day of 2026 was phenomenal for the AI picks and shovels trade, while very poor for their more downstream peers.

How and why did this happen? Who knows really, but this looks like the kind of thing where a couple major funds decide to keep their total AI exposure stable but lean into a hardware-over-software tilt when adjusting their positioning at the start of the year, which kicks off intraday momentum that forces everyone else along for the ride.

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AI downstream stocks tumble even as their picks and shovels peers soar

While the AI picks and shovels stocks are enjoying a strong start to 2026, the same can’t be said for the companies more downstream in this theme — even most of the hyperscalers.

The S&P 500’s biggest losers today include:

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Why the 1929 stock market crash still matters, almost a century later

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book, “1929,” follows the foremost financiers of the era through the market’s darkest days and the aftermath that created Wall Street as we know it.

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