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Buzzsaw for wooden workboat building in Cambridge, MD
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The buzziest stocks are running into the buzzsaw as stock-market angst festers

Speculative stocks are fully succumbing to the selling afflicting their larger peers.

Luke Kawa

The stock market has gone through three phases since the US election.

The first, from November 5 through December 6, saw stocks surge on widespread enthusiasm about the purportedly pro-business, pro-market stances the incoming Trump administration would adopt. Even then, there was more than a whiff of speculative fervor in the air: the best-performing US equity factors during this period were trading activity and volatility, or stocks that move a lot with lots of turnover.

Some companies that fall into one (or both) buckets include Palantir Technologies, Tesla, AppLovin, Rocket Lab, Trump Media & Technology Group, Riot Platforms, Rivian, Palo Alto Networks, Reddit, GameStop, MARA Holdings, and Coinbase.


Then, after December 6, the S&P 500 struggled, failing to make an all-time high, but many thematically interesting, tech-oriented segments of the market still roared.

Smaller AI upstarts like SoundHound AI and Cerence jumped more than 130% and 240%, respectively, over the next month. Four quantum-computing stocks — D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, IonQ, and Quantum Computing — saw their combined market caps rise by more than 80% during this stretch. The cherry on top of the speculative sundae saw SEALSQ, a Swiss company that’s been touting its quantum-resistant tech, spike 1,840% in a turbocharged parallel boom with quantum stocks.

Meanwhile, the benchmark US stock index gave back about 2%.

Now, even the buzziest names are running into the buzzsaw. Blame a combination of high long-term bond yields and some recalibration of very rose-colored expectations for the incoming Trump admin as the inauguration draws closer, along with some idiosyncratic catalysts — like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang throwing cold water on quantum computing — for the air coming out of these balloons.

On January 7, stocks that did well during December started to get slammed, followed by a day of reckoning as the drawdowns accelerated.

This continued leg downward on Monday, with huge drops in once-upon-a-time meme stocks like Plug Power as well as the quantum-computing cohort, hints at the possibility of capitulation by retail investors. Last week, JPMorgan equity and quantitative strategists flagged that retail investors had been continuing to plow cash into the market, buying the dip in names like Palantir.

That dip-buying activity appears to have been getting dwarfed by institutional divestments at the index level for more than a month now. Now, the retreats in Big Tech megacaps have cascaded down to the parts of the stocks that had previously appeared immune to selling pressure.

Volatility and trading activity, the best-performing US stock-market factors from November 5 through January 6?

Well, since last Monday, those two are at the bottom of the leaderboard.

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StubHub falls after earnings miss, sales beat

StubHub fell in after-hours trading after it reported earnings results that missed Wall Street estimates.

The company reported a loss per share of $4.27, compared to the $2.87 loss per share analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The company said the steeper-than-expected losses were in part related to costs from its recent initial public offering. Still, the company reported $468 million in sales, more than the $452 million analysts were penciling in.

StubHubs larger competitor, Live Nation, also reported earnings earlier this month that missed the Streets estimates.

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Applied Materials dips despite posting modest beats on Q4 sales, EPS

Solid Q4 results and a slightly better-than-anticipated outlook from Applied Materials aren’t inspiring any would-be buyers.

For the three months ended October 26, the firm reported:

  • Revenue: $6.8 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $6.67 billion and guidance for $6.2 billion to $7.2 billion)

  • Adjusted earnings per share: $2.17 (estimate: $2.11, guidance: $1.91 to $2.21)

Shares are down about 2% in after-hours trading.

Q1 guidance was also modestly ahead of estimates, as management pointed to sales of about $6.85 billion (plus or minus $500 million) with adjusted earnings per share of $2.18 (plus or minus $0.05). The consensus estimates for these figures were $6.81 billion and $2.15, respectively.

The company is preparing to meet a bigger pickup in demand by the middle of next year.

“Based on our conversations with our customers and partners, we are preparing Applied’s operations and service organizations to be ready to support higher demand beginning in the second half of calendar 2026,” Chief Financial Officer Brice Hill said.

Applied Materials was up more than 35% year to date heading into this report. That being said, it’s thoroughly lagged peers KLA Corp and Lam Research in the semi wafer fab equipment space, with the bulk of that underperformance coming after its Q3 earnings report in mid-August included underwhelming guidance for these Q4 results.

The entire space has come under scrutiny for its business with China, but Applied Materials has had the worst go of it: in early October, management flagged a $600 million hit to fiscal 2026 sales because of export restrictions.

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Ubisoft delays its earnings at the last minute and requests a freeze on trading

French gaming company Ubisoft, the maker of franchises like “Assassin’s Creed” and “Tom Clancy’s The Division,” took the odd step on Thursday of announcing the delay of its latest earnings report at the 11th hour.

The company also requested that trading of its shares be halted. Ubisoft’s US-listed ADRs are down more than 8% following the news.

“Ubisoft has requested Euronext to halt trading of its shares and its bonds from the market opening on November 14, 2025, until the publication of its first-half 2025-26 results in the coming days,” read an emergency press release. As a few were quick to point out online, Ubisoft advertised Black Friday deals “up to 90% off” shortly after the delay was announced.

According to reporting by Kotaku, Ubisoft CFO Frederick Duguet sent an email to staff stating that they could not share any explanation for the move with employees “due to legal regulations.”

Earlier this year, Ubisoft said it would spin off a collection of its top titles into a new subsidiary, with Chinese gaming giant Tencent taking a 25% minority stake in the carve-out with a $1.25 billion investment.

In September, Ubisoft rival EA announced it would be taken private in a $55 billion deal by a group including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

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High-beta momentum stocks on track for worst day since Trump’s April tariff announcement

Goldman Sachs’ High Beta Momentum Long stock basket of “highly reactive & tradable past winners” is having its worst day — down about 8% — since April 3, the day after the president announced the much more severe tariff regime than Wall Street had expected in his famed Rose Garden presser.

This isn’t just an oddity for Goldman’s high-beta momo basket — whose heaviest weightings include highfliers like Palantir, Applied Digital, Bloom Energy, and Sandisk, among others.

By harkening back to the April tariff shock, today’s tumble also underscores the sense of investors suddenly waking up to a range of serious risks that just a few weeks ago were widely and easily shrugged off.

For instance, Fed rate cuts that the market had been expecting to continue after September is now a less sure thing. Pricing from the CME’s FedWatch tool pegs the odds of a cut at next month’s meeting at roughly a coin flip, after a series of hawkish comments from Fed heads. (A month ago, the odds of another cut were close to 100%.)

Likewise, the consensus view that the hundreds of billions of dollars corporations are dumping into data centers will be easy to finance and inevitably profitable bets seems to be coming in for more scrutiny, especially over in the bond market.

And don’t forget about the blanket of fog surrounding the US economy, where it could still be weeks before government number crunchers get back into gear after the shutdown and are able produce an accurate picture of where the US economy and labor market actually are, even as we continue to get hints of fairly chunky layoffs to come.

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