Stocks rally as traders lock in bets on lower rates

November’s reading of the consumer-price index matched Wall Street’s expectations, helping spark a stock-market rally.

The SPDR S&P 500 Trust and Invesco QQQ Trust are on the rise in the premarket, with the iShares Russell 2000 ETF outperforming and gaining almost 1% following this release.

The lack of any upside surprise in inflation was enough to fortify bets that the Federal Reserve will deliver another rate cut at next Wednesday’s meeting. The implied odds of a 25-basis point reduction in its policy rate rose from 86% to over 99% after the data on Tuesday.

Small caps tend to have more floating-rate debt than their larger peers, and so benefit disproportionately from rate cuts.

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Luke Kawa3h

Infleqtion targets revenue growth of 23% in 2026, up from 12% in 2025

Quantum computing firm Infleqtion said it’s aiming to book $40 million in sales this year as it released its 2025 results after the close on Wednesday.

That would be an increase of roughly 23% compared to the $32.5 million in revenues the company generated in 2025, and would mark an acceleration from growth of 12% last year.

The seller of quantum sensors and computers went public via a SPAC in February after carrying a pre-money valuation of $1.8 billion (well below other pure-play peers like Rigetti Computing, IonQ, and D-Wave Quantum).

“We did $29 million in revenue in 2024, and then we announced that we did $50 million of booked and awarded business in 2025. I think that sets a good foundation for significant revenue growth going forward,” CEO Matthew Kinsella told us in February. “I’ve always deeply believed that we need to develop that muscle of commercialization.”

Luke Kawa

Applied Digital Q3 results crush estimates

The AI data center operator just released its fiscal Q3 results.

INDONESIA-TECHNOLOGY-BUSINESS-ENVIRONMENT-AI

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks climb and oil plunges on US-Iran ceasefire

Stocks continued their six-day winning streak, their longest of 2026, as investors returned to risk.

Cowboy Riding a Bull - stock illustration

Luke Kawa5h

Retail traders are selling everything but the Magnificent 7, per JPMorgan

JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain with the skinny on retail trading activity through 11:30 a.m. ET today:

“Retail investors are selling into today’s strength in both ETFs and Single Stocks. In ETFs, they are trimming their broad-based exposure — a major departure from their typical pattern.”

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF and ProShares UltraPro QQQ suffered particularly large outflows, per Jain.

The exceptions to the selling pressure are the Magnificent 7 stocks, he wrote, with Nvidia, Tesla, Meta, and Microsoft enjoying “small net purchases,” while Micron, TSMC, Exxon, and Chevron were the most dumped names.

Last week, Jain noted that retail traders had been “skipping the dips, selling into rallies, and positioning more defensively” with markets jittery amid the ongoing Mideast war.

Luke Kawa8h

Avis shorts facing $1.1 billion in losses as car rental company racks up 155% gains in its recent rally

Whatever traders are doing with Avis — buying, or just renting — it’s causing short sellers an immense amount of pain.

Shares of the car rental company have traded violently on Wednesday, from up nearly 7% at their highs to down almost 4% at their lows, after a face-ripping rally of 155% over the previous 11 sessions.

Per exchange data, roughly half the shares were sold short as of mid-March. S3 Partners, which tracks higher-frequency measures, said that short interest as a share of float had recently been trimmed to about 43%, down from as high as 53% at the start of the year.

Per Matthew Unterman, managing director at S3, Avis shorts are down $1.1 billion on paper over the past 30 days.

This isn’t Avis’ first rodeo: shares went parabolic in Q4 2021 as part of a meme stock moment in which it briefly became the most valuable company in the Russell 2000 small-cap index.

In any event, cheers to u/Bright_Leopard_4326, who admonished other members of the r/ShortSqueeze subreddit for not paying enough attention to the potential for a boom in the stock 10 days ago, when shares were trading below $150.

AVIS short squeeze — Source: r/ShortSqueeze

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