Markets
Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

S&P 500 inches up, Nasdaq 100 gains to book record closing highs

The S&P 500 traded in positive territory all day and managed to eke out another record close, though the advance was nothing to write home about. The Nasdaq 100 gained 0.3% to close at a record along with the benchmark US stock index, while the Russell 2000 sank 1.4%.

Consumer discretionary was the worst-performing S&P 500 sector ETF, weighed down by Tesla, which fell 8% after CEO Elon Musk pondered the company’s challenges on its Q2 earnings call (including developing full self-driving software as well as tariff and supply chain headwinds). In fact, energy, tech, and communications services were the only sector ETFs with a positive showing on the session.

Gains were led by West Pharmaceutical, with shares up about 23% in its best day ever after the company, which makes tiny rubber components used for GLP-1 pens, crushed Wall Street estimates thanks to soaring weight-loss drug demand. LKQ Corp. led declines, falling nearly 18% after the automotive scrapyard owner reported Q2 profits that fell short of Wall Street expectations and revised its full-year profit guidance lower. Elsewhere...

T-Mobile shares jumped about 6% as Wall Street digested the wireless giant’s better-than-expected Q2 earnings results after the bell Wednesday, along with a fresh upgrade to its full-year forecast.

ServiceNow shares rose 4% after the cloud software company posted strong Q2 results and its CEO said the company would slow hiring for its “soul-crushing” roles.

Chipotle shares tumbled 13% after the burrito biggie posted its second straight quarter of same-store sales declines, also missing the Street’s estimates.

American Airlines’ tumble neared double digits after the company slashed its full-year earnings outlook, projecting an up to $0.20 loss for the year — worse than the Street’s expectations and American’s previous outlook.

Southwest plunged 11% after posting disappointing Q2 results Wednesday and despite the airline’s projections of earning over $350 million in bag fee revenue for the full year.

IBM shares dropped nearly 8% after the company reported Q2 earnings that beat on the top and bottom lines, but posted weaker-than-expected growth in its important software division.

Mattel shares sank over 16% after the toy maker posted mixed second-quarter results, as demand picked up overseas but wasn’t enough to completely offset declines in North America. 

Outside of earnings...

American Eagle shares rose 4%, finishing way off its premarket highs after a new campaign starring actress Sydney Sweeney sparked fresh retail buzz, landing the stock on r/WallStreetBets’ trending list.

UnitedHealth shares dipped almost 5% after the insurance giant said it was responding to requests from the Department of Justice regarding its Medicare Advantage business practices.

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern were down 4.5% and less than 1%, respectively, as the two rail giants confirmed that they have, in fact, been involved in talks about combining their companies.

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Tasha Matsumoto
22h
Tech drags down stocks; gold and silver plummet

Gold and silver sank amid Trump’s plans to nominate reputed inflation hawk Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair.

Public sculptures along the Clear Creek Trail in downtown Golden, Colorado.
Ben Walsh, Luke Kawa

Gold and silver plunge, suffering their worst losses since the 1980s

Gold and silver suffered their worst losses in decades on Friday, with the iShares Silver Trust falling more than 30% at one point during afternoon trading before recovering slightly.

After recently crossing $5,000 per ounce for the first time, gold’s dip was relatively muted compared to silver’s rout, but nevertheless eye-watering for a traditional safe haven asset. At one point, gold’s intraday dip exceeded 10%, its worst intraday drop since the 1980s and surpassing its declines seen during the 2008 financial crisis, per Bloomberg.

Silver’s drop was its worst in percentage terms since 1980.

Gold, and particularly silver, have been pushed higher recently by a storm of retail trader enthusiasm for the metals, as well as more traditional drivers of precious metals such as geopolitical risks and concerns over a fall in the dollar’s value due to trade wars and possibly waning central bank independence.

Leveraged ETFs that hold gold and silver futures have become increasingly popular trading vehicles amid the parabolic moves in precious metals prices, and likely contributed to the magnitude of the unwind today.

Case in point: look at silver futures for delivery in March. That’s the dominant contract held by the ProShares Ultra Silver ETF, which offers exposure to 2x the daily move in the shiny metal. Volumes exploded (and the contract rebounded modestly) right around 1:25 p.m. ET, which is when silver futures settled and around the time the ETF performed its daily rebalancing (which in this case, involved massive selling).

Max Knoblauch

Gaming stocks plunge following release of Google’s AI tool that can create playable, copyrighted worlds

Shares of major gaming companies are plunging on Friday as investors get a deeper look at the capabilities of Google’s new generative-AI prototype, Project Genie.

The tool allows users to “create and explore infinitely diverse worlds” with a text or image prompt. Users have already exposed its ability to realistically recreate knockoffs of copyrighted games from Nintendo and other gaming companies.

As users experiment with recreations of game worlds like Take-Two’s “Grand Theft Auto 6,” shares of major gaming companies are sinking. Unity Software, the maker of the popular Unity game engine, is down over 25%, while gaming platform Roblox is down about 9%.

Collision 2019 - Day One

D-Wave Quantum CEO on what’s next after the most eventful month in the company’s history

“If 2025 was the international year of quantum, 2026 is the international year of D-Wave Quantum,” said CEO Dr. Alan Baratz.

Luke Kawa1/30/26
markets
Matt Phillips

SoFi bests Wall Street’s Q4 expectations, shares rise

SoFi Technologies reported better-than-expected Q4 sales and earnings-per-share numbers Friday before market open, sending the shares higher in the premarket. 

The online lender reported: 

  • Adjusted Q4 earnings per share of $0.13 vs. the $0.12 consensus estimate collected by FactSet.

  • Adjusted revenue of $1.01 billion in Q4 vs. the Wall Street forecast for $977.4 million.

  • Q1 2026 adjusted net revenue guidance of approximately $1.04 billion vs. the $1.04 billion consensus expectation, according to FactSet.

SoFi shares rallied roughly 70% last year, as the company’s growing menu of financial products — including trading, wealth management, mortgages, credit cards, and cryptocurrency trading — showed signs of gaining traction beyond its traditional base of student borrowers. But the stock has stumbled in early 2026, falling nearly 7% in January through Thursday’s close, though most of that slump seems to have been reversed this morning.

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