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The nuclear-powered AI data-center trade roars into a new year

It’s early going, but so far the trade of the year is clearly another big bet on an ongoing boom in an AI-related investment.

Just check out the top gainers of the S&P 500 in the first two days of 2025 trading.

Nuke stocks Vistra and Constellation Energy — the second- and 10th-best peformers in the index last year — exploded out of the gates amid rising expectations of growing demand from power-hungry data centers.

Giant landowner Texas Pacific Land, which traditionally leased its massive holdings of West Texas land for oil and gas drilling but has recently talked up the potential for slapping up data centers, comes next.

Then embattled server-hardware maker Super Micro Computer, another nuke stock NRG, the Magnificient 7’s Nvidia, renewables and power-generation firm GE Vernova, disk-drive maker Western Digital, a newly enlivened Uber, and finally Micron. We could go on, with the next tier of top performers including more tech, AI, and energy-related firms like First Solar, Enphase Energy, and Palantir.

For what it’s worth, there are plenty of reasons to believe that this bet on the continued boom in AI investment is pretty much a sure thing.

For instance, Friday Microsoft said it was going to spend $80 billion to build AI data centers in fiscal 2025 alone. That can buy a lot of chips.

But from a slightly longer-term perspective, nervous Nellies can’t help but wonder whether such a single-minded investment mania might be setting up the US economy — and potentially the markets — for the mother of all malinvestment cycles, akin to or perhaps worse than the tech-stock boom of the late 1990s that turned into a gnarly stock-market bust by 2001. But that’s all ancient history.

This time is, of course, completely different.

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Luke Kawa

Opendoor surges on bullish options bets as traders look to potential real estate tokenization

Opendoor Technologies is surging on Friday amid bullish options bets and social media posts referencing unconfirmed rumors about the company.

The stock moved higher in the premarket session after the soft inflation report boosted stocks and briefly pushed long-term bond yields lower (positive for a real estate company). But the real gains came after the opening bell rang and options demand picked up.

As of 12:11 p.m. ET, roughly 664,000 call options have changed hands versus a 10-day average of about 364,000 for a full session.

What seems to be galvanizing members of the “$OPEN Army” is the potential for the company to pursue the tokenization of real-world assets, with Robinhood often bandied about as a potential partner in this endeavor.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

Opendoor bulls have often pointed to signs that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev appears to be fond of the company, from what appeared on-screen during a demo of a social trading feature at HOOD’s conference in Las Vegas in September to offering support to Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian in setting up an opportunity for retail shareholders to ask questions during the online real estate company’s next earnings call.

Opendoor is currently in a quiet period ahead of earnings, which restricts what type of announcements a company can make.

The call options seeing the most demand expire this Friday with strike prices of $8, $8.50, and $9.

Intel Earnings Researchers

Wall Street analysts see some issues with Intel’s earnings

Even with the US government as a partial owner, Intel’s turnaround has a long way to go.

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Luke Kawa

Beyond Meat gains amid slightly better-than-expected Q3 sales, positive commentary on legal issues

Shares of Beyond Meat built on their premarket gains after the plant-based meat seller reported preliminary Q3 sales a bit ahead of Wall Street’s expectations, before paring this advance after the market opened.

For the three months ended September 27, management said net revenue would be approximately $70 million. That’s in line with their guidance range of $68 million to $73 million, but Wall Street was expecting sales to skew toward the lower end of that range, at $68.7 million.

However, its anticipated gross margin of 10% to 11% is lower than analysts had been expecting (13.8%). That’s still the case even adjusting for expenses related to its downsizing of operations in China, which would have left margins around 12% to 13%, per Beyond.

Perhaps more importantly, the company provided positive commentary regarding arbitration discussions with a former co-manufacturer that appear to bring it closer to a resolution while limiting potential damages:

“As previously disclosed, in March 2024, a former co-manufacturer brought an action against the Company in a confidential arbitration proceeding claiming that the Company inappropriately terminated its agreement with the co-manufacturer and claimed damages of at least $73.0 million. On September 15, 2025, the arbitrator issued an interim award (the ‘Interim Award’) and found that the Company had a valid basis to terminate the agreement with the Manufacturer. The details of the Interim Award are confidential, and a final arbitration award has not been issued. Additional proceedings will be held to determine the award of attorneys’ fees, prejudgment interest and costs, if any, before a final arbitration award will be issued. On September 25, 2025, the Manufacturer filed a request with the arbitrator to re-open the arbitration hearing. On September 29, 2025, the Company opposed this request. On October 20, 2025, the arbitrator denied the Manufacturer’s request.”

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