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Matt Phillips

The average S&P 500 stock is now down since the election

That escalated quickly.

The hawkish body language from the Federal Reserve — despite delivering a rate cut — hammered the markets Wednesday.

The S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 had their second-worst days of the year, while the small-cap Russell 2000 suffered its largest decline of 2024.

The force of the sell-off was such that now some key market gauges are actually underwater since November 5. Of course, that’s when President-elect Donald J. Trump’s election win generated a strong stock-market reaction from investors excited by the prospect of both tax cuts and regulatory relaxation, which might provide a bit more pep for the domestic economy.

Today, the Trump bump is looking more like a hump verging on a potential slump as the US central bank grows more worried about inflation, though of course he isn’t even in office yet.

Of note: the equal-weighted edition of the S&P 500 is now down since Election Day. That is, the average member of the benchmark US stock index is worth less than it was on November 5.

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Palantir tumbles after delivering spectacular results

Palantir’s exceptional earnings receive ugly reaction

The valuation agita hitting high-flying stocks overshadowed the AI and intelligence software company’s blowout quarterly update.

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Luke Kawa

Fermi secures preliminary approval for a low-emissions natural gas plant to meet AI power demands

Power provider Fermi said it has received preliminary approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for the planned 6 gigawatts of natural gas generation that’s part of its “Project Matador” to meet the ever-growing power demands of the AI boom.

“At Fermi, our private grid model ensures that the growing demand for AI is met privately,” Fermi America CEO and cofounder Toby Neugebauer said.

Final approval is still subject to a formal meeting and public comment.

The initial gas generators are already en route to the campus, with plans to have these installed and online in 2026, Fermi said.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently remarked that “the ability to get the builds done fast enough close to power” is the biggest constraint he faces, just ahead of an announced deal with IREN to purchase power-secured cloud computing capacity.

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Luke Kawa

The negative reaction after Palantir’s earnings is spreading to other volatile retail favorites

Palantir is the poster child for a richly valued, retail darling, megacap momentum stock. It’s going down on largely good news, and that’s cascading to hit smaller, volatile segments of the market also beloved by the retail community.

Goldman Sachs baskets that track retail favorites and nonprofitable tech stocks are down more than 2% and 3% as of 9:43 a.m. ET, respectively, while the Invesco S&P 500 High Beta ETF is also off more than 2%.

Long Island highway patrol officer using radar to check speed

Stocks are getting speed checked

A retail favorite failing to build momentum even when it “deserves” to, the most important part of the stock market being told it’s overheating, and the heads of banks warning of a broader pullback.

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Tom Jones

Spotify notches another quarter of strong active user growth and improved profitability

Spotify shares are up 3.25% as of 6:45 a.m. ET as investors digest the streaming giant’s Q3 earnings, in which the company reported that it added more than 70 million monthly active users, posted revenues that were up 7% from last year, and improved profitability.

Total revenues climbed to €4.27 billion, or around $4.91 billion, for the quarter, while net income came in at €899 million ($1.03 billion), which translated into adjusted earnings per share of €3.28 — ahead of the ~€1.96 that analysts had expected, per FactSet figures cited by The Wall Street Journal. Spotify now counts a whopping 713 million monthly active users, including 281 million premium subscribers, compared to 640 million and 252 million, respectively, on the same quarter last year.

The boosted figures come on the back of a host of new features that the streaming platform’s introduced, such as “lossless listening,” playlist mixing controls, and direct messages. The company is now forecasting that its total monthly active users will climb to 745 million by the end of the fourth quarter.

With the latest gains today, Spotify is now up ~48% year to date, even as cofounder Daniel Ek announced in September that he’d be stepping down as CEO at the end of the year, almost 20 years on from the company’s inception.

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