TSMC surges after posting stellar Q4 results, impressive Q1 outlook

Shares of Robinhood Markets and Webull are surging in premarket trading after the US Securities and Exchange Commission gave the green light to removing a rule that had impeded small traders from day trading.

The pattern day trading rule will no longer bar traders from making more than four day trades over a five-day period if their margin account has less than $25,000. The changes were initially proposed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Under the SEC order published Tuesday after the close of regular trading, all traders, regardless of account size, will just need to have enough in their margin account to cover their exposure.

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

Snap jumped as much as 10% in premarket trading on Wednesday after the social media company announced that it may cut about 1,000 roles, or roughly 16% of its full-time employees, in an attempt to improve profitability.

In an SEC filling that followed its Investor Update presentation on Wednesday, Snap also added that it will be closing more than 300 open roles. As a result of the job cuts and other measures, the company expects to save roughly $500 million in annualized expenses by the second half of 2026.

Through the latest moves, Snap is “pivoting towards profitable growth,” per CEO Evan Spiegel, doubling down on its more than 60% gross margin target for 2026. It also joins a growing list of tech companies cutting jobs citing AI, with Spiegel adding that “rapid advancements in artificial intelligence [will] enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers.”

In the same investor update event, Snap also updated parts of its Q1 financial outlook, including reduced guidance on its stock compensation and adjusted operating expenses. The company now expects revenue of approximately $1.529 billion, up 12% year over year and just above analyst expectations of $1.524 billion, as compiled by Bloomberg. Snap expects adjusted EBITDA to come in at $233 million, again ahead of Wall Street’s current forecasts ($184 million).

Broadcom is ticking up 3% in premarket trading on Wednesday after yesterday’s announcement that it will expand its partnership with Meta to produce multi-generation custom chips to power Meta’s in-house AI accelerators through 2029.

As the “first phase of a sustained, multi-gigawatt rollout,” the announcement includes an initial commitment of over 1 gigawatt of computing capacity (or enough to power some 750,000 US homes). JPMorgan estimates that this first deployment implies a $12 billion to $15 billion revenue opportunity for Broadcom.

The partnership also builds on the two companies’ goal to “co-design and scale the hardware required to bring real-time generative AI features and personal superintelligence to billions of people globally” across Meta’s apps.

It’s the latest in a series of positive announcements from Broadcom, which spiked after issuing an optimistic AI sales outlook when delivering its quarterly results last month. The custom chip specialist followed that up with expanded deals with Anthropic and Google, its most important customer.

More broadly, custom chips have been having a moment as hyperscalers look to utilize tailor-made offerings in their data centers for both training and inference, with even Nvidia pouring in $2 billion to Broadcom’s rival, Marvell Technology, proving its commitment to working toward other companies’ hardware integrating well on its platform.

“Overall, Broadcom continues to benefit from the accelerating shift toward custom chip designs by hyperscalers and original equipment manufacturers seeking greater performance, power efficiency, and cost differentiation tightly integrated with their software frameworks,” wrote JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur following this announcement.

Meta is currently developing its AI silicons with a “portfolio approach,” by matching the right accelerator out of its multi-generation chips to each workload needed for its many apps and services. Broadcom’s XPU platform will allow Meta to design and scale hardwares in a way to best optimize Meta’s custom AI infrastructure. That platform-based strategy will also be backed by Broadcom’s high-bandwidth Ethernet networking technology for better efficiency and precision.

As part of the deal, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan will leave Meta’s board of directors to move to an advisory role on its custom silicon strategy, the companies shared in a joint statement.