SpaceX’s planned $1.5 trillion IPO is on track to be gargantuan enough

Palantir Technologies, the richly-valued AI darling, hasn’t been immune from the persistent waves of selling that have drowned software stocks.

Last week, the stock broke below its 200-day moving average for the first time since August 5, 2024, and ended January with its lowest close since July. Needless to say, the defense data and AI software company has rarely traded worse heading into an earnings report, with its Q4 results due out after the close on Monday.

“It appears that expectations coming into this earnings print are lower than they have been in the last year or so,” Dean Curnutt, CEO of Macro Risk Advisors, wrote. “And this potentially sets the shares up for post-earnings volatility and directional follow-through to the upside.”

His recommendation:

• Buy call options with a strike price of $162.50 that expire on Friday

• Sell the same amount of calls with a strike price of $182.50 that expire on Friday

As of the time of recommendation, the potential payout on this trade was roughly 10.5 to 1.

Curnutt noted that when Palantir has been this beaten-down ahead of earnings, shares have usually performed very well thereafter.

“As of right now, PLTR T-3 move is -11%,” he concluded. “If you look at the last 8 quarters in the attached table, the only 2 times where the T-3 was negative (8/6/24 and 11/5/24), the T+5 moves were +22% and +45% respectively.”

Rare earth and critical minerals stocks are soaring as Bloomberg reports that President Donald Trump will soon launch a $12 billion initiative to stockpile critical minerals.

Think the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but for the likes of gallium, cobalt, and lanthanum.

MP Materials, USA Rare Earth, Critical Metals, NioCorp, and United States Antimony Corp. are all soaring in premarket trading on this report.

The purpose of this project, reportedly dubbed “Project Vault,” is to secure a sufficient domestic supply of these strategically important materials for the private sector. Three commodities trading houses and more than a dozen companies (including Google, General Motors, and GE Vernova) are said to be participating in this venture.

Here’s how the mechanics would reportedly work:

“Under the arrangement, companies that make an initial commitment to purchase materials at a specified inventory price later — and pay some up-front fees — will be able to present Project Vault with a shopping list of preferred materials they need.

The project, in turn, will seek to procure and store the materials, with the manufacturers charged a carrying cost for the expenses associated with interest on the loan and holding the elements.

Manufacturers will be allowed to draw down their material stash as long as the firms replenish them. In the case of a major supply disruption, they will be able to access all of it, the officials said.”

The Trump administration has invested in many critical minerals stocks, most recently USA Rare Earth, in a bid to bolster North American output. China currently dominates the production and processing of many strategically important minerals, which are used in everything from fluorescent lights and EV batteries to semiconductors. Access to rare earths was a particularly contentious issue as the US and China ironed out a trade agreement late last year.

Disney, the Stitch merch company that also operates a streaming service and several global theme parks, reported its fiscal first-quarter earnings on Monday. Its shares initially climbed in premarket trading before turning negative.

The company reported adjusted earnings of $1.63 per share in its first quarter, down 7% from last year but above Wall Street’s estimate of $1.57 per share. Its total revenue of $25.98 billion was ahead of the $25.7 billion consensus estimate, driven by a 7% rise in overall entertainment segment revenue.

Management reaffirmed its full-year guidance for double-digit adjusted EPS growth, and said the company is on track for its $7 billion stock buyback. Disney warned of “international visitation headwinds” at its US theme parks for the current quarter.

Disney posted an 11% hike in streaming revenue, while operating income for the division surged 72% from last year to $450 million, ahead of Wall Street estimates. The entertainment juggernaut forecast $500 million in Q2 streaming profit. The ad-free tier price hike on Disney+ last year was its fourth in four years.

Disney’s board is reportedly closing in on promoting the head of its theme park division, Josh D’Amaro, to CEO — with a vote coming this week. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that current CEO Bob Iger had told associates he will step down before the end of 2026.

In December, Disney became the first major content licensing partner with OpenAI, granting more than 200 of its licensed characters to the tech giant’s generative-AI tools. Last month, the company said it would introduce TikTok-esque vertical video to Disney+ this year — a move seen across the streaming industry as competition for attention grows beyond traditional content forms.

GameStop is trading higher again on Monday, up 2% in the premarket, as CEO Ryan Cohen continues his media blitz to tease potential M&A.

Late Friday afternoon, CNBC reported that Cohen wants GameStop to buy a company much bigger than itself, and that if his play works, it has the “potential to make [GameStop] worth several hundreds of billions of dollars.”

That came on the heels of Cohen telling The Wall Street Journal that he was on the hunt for a “big” acquisition that would either “be genius or totally, totally foolish.” Shares rose nearly 5% on Friday.

The CEO was slated to appear on Fox Business for a TV interview at 2 p.m. ET on Monday. Michael Burry — of “The Big Short” fame, who recently revealed that he’s long GameStop — said he’d be publishing a list of suggested targets that the company could potentially acquire ahead of this appearance. However, per Fox Business anchor Charles Payne, the appearance has been canceled because “Ryan is working on something moneumental, and he would not be able to say much.”

This press push marks a big shift for the executive, whose media appearances have been scarce during his time running the retailer. But Cohen needs both GameStop’s market value and EBITDA to rise significantly if he’s going to make any money from running the company. He recently agreed to a package that would tie his pay completely to those metrics and only see him start to receive stock options in the event that GameStop’s market capitalization exceeds $20 billion while also booking $2 billion in cumulative EBITDA from Q1 2026 onward.

On a closing basis, GameStop has exceeded this $20 billion threshold only during its 2021 meme stock mania. And, due to heavy losses from 2019 through early 2022, it’s taken GameStop a full decade to generate its latest $2 billion in cumulative EBITDA.