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Claire Yubin Oh2h

QUBT drops after announcing $500 million at-the-market stock offering

Quantum Computing shares were trading 12% lower early on Monday after the company announced a $500 million at-the-market share offering, a not insignificant amount of dilution for shareholders of the $3.72 billion market cap company (as of Friday’s close).

QUBT plans to use the proceeds from the offering to "accelerate commercialization efforts, strategic acquisitions, expand sales and engineering personnel, working capital, and general corporate purposes," per the press release. The company also noted that the stock offering, which will take place on or about September 24 with institutional investors, has been arranged in an "oversubscribed" private placement.

The announcement marks the company's fifth and biggest stock offering since November 2024, which will bring the total capital raised from the period to some $900 million.

The company’s shares were up more than 20% on Friday following a wave of bullish sentiment and newsflow on the quantum sector.

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J. Edward Moreno24m

Pfizer to buy anti-obesity drug developer Metsera for up to $7.3 billion

Pfizer rose in premarket trading after it announced that it would acquire anti-obesity drug developer Metsera , which puts the pharmaceutical giant back in the weight loss medication game after its own pill didn't advance to the final stages of trials.

The transaction is a valued at $47.50 per share (roughly $4.9 billion by enterprise value), which could rise to $70 per share (or $7.3 billion) if certain clinical and regulatory milestones are met. Metsera closed at $33.32 on Friday and shot up nearly 60% in premarket trading.

Metsera is developing a weight loss shot (called MET-233i) that has shown promise but is still in early trials.

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Snap surges on positive r/wallstreetbets chatter as users hope for potential acquisition

While Snap initially took a hit on the reports that the US and China had reached the framework for an agreement to maintain TikTok’s presence in the US, that news didn’t even keep the stock down for a day.

Indeed, Snap has been on a bit of a tear lately — putting together a six-session winning streak before Friday’s swoon — in which the stock gained nearly 17%. And shares of the social media company are up again big this morning, thanks seemingly in no small part to the retail traders that populate Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets.

SNAP is the ticker with the most mentions (and the most positive mentions) on the subreddit over the last 12 hours, per data from SwaggyStocks, with many users reportedly positioned bullishly via options.

SwaggyStocks top trending on WSB — Source: SwaggyStocks (as of 6:53 a.m. ET 9/22/25)

Five-day average volumes in SNAP have surged to a record high as of Friday as some users on the subreddit speculate that the beaten-down social media company might make for an attractive acquisition target.

Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 end the week with fresh record closing highs

Another day, another record high for US stocks.

Charging Bull

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Luke Kawa9/19/25

We’re about to enter the historically worst week of the year for US stocks

The September scaries — the tendency for US stocks to perform poorly in the ninth month of the year — have seemingly been vanquished this year. So far.

However, Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets, was very early in highlighting a peculiar calendar quirk that implies some potential downside risk for next week.

Monday marks the start of the 39th trading week of the year. That’s historically been the worst week for the S&P 500, based on data going back to 1990, and the week that’s seen the highest incidence of 1% drops for the benchmark US stock index.

“Meanwhile, the week after next is the one where stocks are most likely to have a moment,” he wrote on September 11 (last Thursday). “There is something special about the week after September expiry and this has been true for basically ever. Could be a bit of the old fooled by randomness, but anyway.”

Median return of S&P 500 by week — Source: Brent Donnelly, Spectra Markets

% of time S&P 500 sees weekly drop of 1% or more — Source: Brent Donnelly, Spectra Markets

Donnelly also separately flagged, though, that seasonality has not been that useful of a trading tool this year:

“2025 has not been good for the seasonality believers. My view is that seasonality functions mostly because of asymmetry of flows and human behavior around specific times of the year and political and macro shocks are bigger than those flows. So if you have a series of randomly-timed policy shocks month after month, that will blow the flows and the behavioral seasonality out of the water. That’s my explanation for why seasonality has not worked this year. But I could be wrong.”

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Luke Kawa9/19/25

Retail traders’ favorite stocks are on a record winning streak

Relatively speculative small-cap stocks, many of which are beloved by retail traders, are basking in the glow of the renewed Federal Reserve rate cuts.

A Goldman Sachs basket of stocks widely held by the retail community is going straight up and to the right, poised for a record 10th straight day of gains. It’s up 13% over this stretch.

Fed rate cuts provide a more supportive financing environment for smaller firms, and as such, a lower risk of default.

Quantum computing companies Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum, which are both constituents in the aforementioned basket, are up big on Friday on little news. However, there is one report from Cyberscoop that the US government “is considering a broader set of actions related to quantum computing, both to improve the nation’s capacity to defend against future quantum-enabled hacks,” which may be spurring some buying activity.

On Thursday, Rigetti and IonQ announced fresh initiatives with the government.

Also enjoying big gains are classic meme stocks AMC Networks and SoundHound AI, both of which are not in Goldman’s group but also often receive a ton of retail attention.

For AMC at least, there’s a more fundamental catalyst at play: the theater chain announced that it’ll be hosting release parties for the upcoming Taylor Swift album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”

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