Luke Kawa12/19/24

US stocks turn early gains into losses

Major US stock indexes started the session off well, but the wheels fell off the rally as the day progressed.

The S&P 500 ended virtually flat, while the Nasdaq 100 and Russell 2000 each gave back 0.5% on Thursday.

Bad breadth continues, with the S&P 500’s advance-decline line negative for the 14th consecutive session.

Utilities, financials, and tech were the S&P 500 sector ETFs that managed to gain; real estate and materials paced the losses.

Tech’s modest gain came despite a retreat in the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, due in large part to Micron’s post-earnings plunge.

High-flying quantum computing stocks like D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, and Quantum Computing saw a massive reversal of much of their recent gains.

Homebuilders slumped, with Lennar getting whacked on poor first-quarter guidance that points to continued margin pressure.

Darden Restaurants did great after reporting earnings and boosting its outlook; on the other side of the carb spectrum, Lamb Weston cratered in the wake of a poor one.

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D-Wave Quantum CEO on what’s next after the most eventful month in the company’s history

“If 2025 was the international year of quantum, 2026 is the international year of D-Wave Quantum,” said CEO Dr. Alan Baratz.

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Matt Phillips1h

SoFi bests Wall Street’s Q4 expectations, shares rise

SoFi Technologies reported better-than-expected Q4 sales and earnings-per-share numbers Friday before market open, sending the shares higher in the premarket.

The online lender reported:

Adjusted Q4 earnings per share of $0.13 vs. the $0.12 consensus estimate collected by FactSet.
Adjusted revenue of $1.01 billion in Q4 vs. the Wall Street forecast for $977.4 million.
Q1 2026 adjusted net revenue guidance of approximately $1.04 billion vs. the $1.04 billion consensus expectation, according to FactSet.

SoFi shares rallied roughly 70% last year, as the company’s growing menu of financial products — including trading, wealth management, mortgages, credit cards, and cryptocurrency trading — showed signs of gaining traction beyond its traditional base of student borrowers. But the stock has stumbled in early 2026, falling nearly 7% in January through Thursday’s close, though most of that slump seems to have been reversed this morning.

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Matt Phillips2h

Exxon Mobil beats Q4 earnings bogeys, despite softer chemical results

Exxon slid in early trading Friday despite reporting better-than-expected Q4 numbers.

The largest US energy company by revenue reported:

Q4 revenue of $82.31 billion vs. analysts’ $80.63 billion consensus expectation, per FactSet.
Adjusted earnings per share of $1.71 vs. the $1.70 analysts predicted, according to FactSet.
Global production of 4.99 million oil-equivalent barrels per day vs. a 4.84 million expectation on Wall Street.

Analysts at RBC Capital spotlighted weaker margins in its chemical division, which is one factor that could be weighing on sentiment. Writing about the division’s earnings, they noted:

“Chemicals products results were particularly weak (-$11m vs consensus +$271m). Notably, this is the first negative result for XOM’s chemicals product division since 4Q19, and highlights the severity of the chemicals downturn the industry is facing.”

Low oil prices have dogged sales and profits at oil giants like Exxon over the last year.

But the recent surge in tensions between the US and oil-rich nations like Venezuela and Iran have contributed to rising oil prices in early 2026, with benchmark US crude oil up roughly 12% since the start of the year.

This morning’s immediate reaction might just be traders taking some of the air out of the stock — Exxon was up 17% for the year through Thursday’s close, compared to a 1.8% gain for the S&P 500.

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Claire Yubin Oh3h

Deckers soars on record revenue thanks to Hoka and Ugg demand

Deckers had a lot to celebrate over the holiday period, with the footwear company’s shares up more than 14% as of 6:45 a.m. ET on Friday, after the Hoka and Ugg maker posted record revenue for the quarter ended December 31, 2025. The company notched:

Record revenue of $1.96 billion, ahead of the $1.87 billion forecast by analysts (Bloomberg consensus).
Adjusted earnings per share of $3.33, a whopping 21% higher than the $2.76 predicted by analysts.

Looking ahead, the company also hiked its guidance for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, to $5.4 billion to $5.425 billion, up from the $5.35 billion expected in the quarter before.

Deckers’ record revenue and EPS figures were “driven by the significant global demand for UGG and HOKA,” CEO Stefano Caroti said in a press release. Both brands saw “high levels of full-price selling” that resulted in a strong gross margin of 59.8%. Between the two brands, winter favorite Ugg maintained the upper hand with $1.3 billion in revenue, but Hoka saw a whopping 18.5% sales uptick (versus Ugg’s 5%) to $629 million last quarter.

Deckers also shared that the company has now repurchased stock worth $813.5 million in the last nine months, and that it expects its share repurchases to exceed $1 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026.

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TechCreate keeps going parabolic and the company doesn’t know why

Singapore-based payment software company TechCreate mooned on Thursday, rising 889% and prompting management to issue a statement that “it is not aware of any material nonpublic information that has not been publicly disclosed that would account for the recent trading activity.”

This no-news momentum is continuing: shares are up more than 100% in premarket trading on Friday, as of 5:30 a.m. ET. All told, some $280 million changed hands in the stock in US trading yesterday, roughly 24x its average volume from the previous 20 sessions.

As of mid-January, roughly one-quarter of the stock’s float was sold short, per data from Bloomberg, and that float makes up only about 15% of shares outstanding.

Can’t say I remember the last time I’ve seen a $150 million market cap company turn into a $3 billion market cap company in under 24 hours.

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