Markets
Luke Kawa

S&P 500 goes nowhere, lingers just short of record highs

The S&P 500 was little changed on Friday while the Nasdaq 100 posted a decent gain and the Russell 2000 retreated modestly. For the week, however, it was a strong showing, with the benchmark US stock gauge up 1.5%.

More stocks in the S&P 500 fell than rose on the day.

Healthcare was the worst-performing S&P 500 sector ETF on Friday, followed by consumer staples. Communication services and tech (home to most of the Magnificent 7) did the best.

The best stock in the S&P 500 was Airbnb, which posted robust quarterly results thanks to strong demand for international travel.

Roku was another standout gainer, up double digits after posting a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss on better-than-projected revenues.

Shares of Moderna initially plunged after the drugmaker posted a larger quarterly loss than anticipated, but rebounded with a vengeance to post a big gain.

Coinbase, on the other hand, slumped despite posting blowout fourth-quarter earnings.

GameStop spiked after the close on Thursday after a report that it was considering holding bitcoin on its balance sheet, but pared most of those gains amid elevated options activity on Friday.

Dell caught a decent bid following a report that it’s close to reaching a $5 billion deal to sell servers to xAI.

Retail favorite SoundHound AI plummeted after a filing showed that Nvidia sold its stake in the company.

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Momentum returns to optics stocks as the release valve for AI optimism

Potentially imminent end to the war? Buy optics stocks.

Maybe not? Buy optics stocks anyway.

Effectively all the juice left in the AI trade is coming from optics (and memory) stocks. And the latter group is taking a bit of a breather today while the former continues to surge.

Shares of Ciena Corp., Lumentum, and Coherent are building on recent big gains and among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500 near midday, while Applied Optoelectronics is also surging on Thursday.

These companies all provide solutions that help information move around in data centers, and thus are key beneficiaries of the aggressive capex plans of hyperscalers. Nvidia has invested $2 billion apiece in Coherent and Lumentum in deals that also include purchase commitments.

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Space stocks rip during a topsy-turvy day for the equity market

Satellite-services-from-space stocks surged Thursday after reports that Amazon is in talks to buy Globalstar, which provides voice and connectivity services from its satellite network. It also can’t hurt that the general mood around space is ebullient, following the successful launch of Artemis II on Thursday.

Planet Labs and ViaSat also soared on the news.

The gains for EchoStar — seen as a backdoor play at pre-IPO SpaceX exposure — and Rocket Lab were more muted, perhaps because a deep-pocketed competitor like Jeff Bezos getting serious about space services could complicate the plans of the two largest commercial space launch companies.

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the dominant provider of such services, and the early rumors on the company’s planned IPO — expected to be the largest ever — suggest the market is very excited about the prospects for the industry.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

The gains for EchoStar — seen as a backdoor play at pre-IPO SpaceX exposure — and Rocket Lab were more muted, perhaps because a deep-pocketed competitor like Jeff Bezos getting serious about space services could complicate the plans of the two largest commercial space launch companies.

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the dominant provider of such services, and the early rumors on the company’s planned IPO — expected to be the largest ever — suggest the market is very excited about the prospects for the industry.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

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Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles in Q1, short of expectations

Ahead of its first-quarter earnings later this month, Tesla on Thursday announced that it delivered 358,023 vehicles in the quarter.

Analysts polled by FactSet had expected 380,500 vehicle deliveries in the first quarter this year, while Tesla last month released its own company-compiled Wall Street consensus estimate — something it began doing in the fourth quarter of 2025 — of 365,645 vehicles.

The Texas-based company produced some 408,000 vehicles, meaning that it made 50,400 more vehicles than it sold during the quarter. That’s the largest gap in Tesla’s history, surpassing the previous record set in Q1 2024.

Shares extended losses in premarket trading on Thursday, falling more than 4%.

The deliveries figure is still up from the same quarter last year, when Tesla delivered fewer than 337,000 vehicles amid intensifying competition in China and flailing public perception over CEO Elon Musk’s involvement with the Trump administration.

As of 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday, event contract odds held a slightly less optimistic view than the broader analyst community, but a sunnier view than the figure Tesla put forward. 52% of traders predicted Tesla’s Q1 deliveries would come in at more than 360,000, 40% thought the figure would be higher than 370,000, and 15% estimated it would be higher than 380,000.

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

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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC. Futures and event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC.