Investopedia Markets News (all except PF)

• Applied Materials is slated to report its latest quarterly results Thursday afternoon, with traders expecting the stock could climb to new highs after the report.
• Sales and profits are expected to decline year-over-year amid trade headwinds, though analysts said they see meaningful improvement from when the company last reported results in November.

Applied Materials is set to post fiscal first-quarter earnings after the market closes on Thursday, with traders anticipating the semiconductor equipment maker's stock could reach new highs following the results.

Options pricing suggests traders expect Applied Materials (AMAT) shares could move about 6% in either direction. A move of that size from Tuesday's close at $329 would lift shares to $350, above their January record. The low end of the range would bring shares back down to around $308.

Applied Materials, which is a leading producer of equipment for semiconductor manufacturing, has seen its shares jump nearly 30% since the start of this year, and more than 80% in the last 12 months amid strong demand for chips and AI hardware.

Applied Materials is one of the largest makers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and it has seen its stock surge amid the AI boom. However, trade headwinds have hampered sales in recent quarters.

Though Applied Materials is seen reporting a decline in sales and profits year-over-year as the company has grappled with headwinds from export restrictions to China and geopolitical uncertainty, analysts from Morgan Stanley said ahead of the report that demand likely "meaningfully" improved from when the company last reported results in November.

UBS analysts, hiking their price target to $405 from $285, said recently that they expect Applied Materials to top consensus estimates, with results seen getting a boost from "catch-up" sales to China.

Applied Materials is expected to report adjusted earnings per share of $2.21, down from $2.38 the same time a year ago, and a 3.8% decline in revenue to $6.89 billion, according to estimates compiled by Visible Alpha.

Analysts are broadly bullish on the company's stock, with 11 of the 13 analysts with current ratings tracked by Visible Alpha calling it a "buy," compared to just two "hold" ratings. Their average price target just above $366 would suggest upside of about 11% from Tuesday's close.

• Retail sales were flat in December after a strong start to the holiday shopping season, Census Bureau data showed.
• After several months of strong consumer spending, weakening economic fundamentals could mean that spending growth will slow this year.
• Inflation, a weakening job market and a potential stall in stock price growth could keep more consumers home this year, economists said.

After years of revving up the economy, are consumers set to tap the brakes on their spending?

New data shows that retail sales stalled in December, falling short of expectations after several months of robust growth. And it could be an early signal that consumers are set to pull back their spending in 2026 as more face a worrisome jobs market.

“Consumer spending growth has been strong, although I think you can argue it has slowed at least a little bit,” said Scott Hoyt, senior director for Moody’s Analytics, who has also forecasted a slowdown in consumer spending growth this year. ”Part of it is because the labor market is so weak, we're not adding a lot of jobs, and nobody seems to expect that to change materially.”

Consumer spending makes up around two-thirds of the U.S. economy, meaning even slight slowdowns can have a meaningful impact on economic activity. 

When consumer spending cools, it can ripple through the economy because households drive about two-thirds of U.S. growth, shaping everything from corporate profits and stock prices to hiring and interest-rate policy. 

A cooling labor market is likely to be one of the biggest drags on consumer spending, Hoyt said. Recent data show that employers are adding fewer jobs while layoffs are accelerating. 

Much of the recent support for consumer spending has come from the wealth effect, Hoyt said. Higher stock prices and increasing housing wealth have given more people the confidence to spend. The S&P 500 gained 16% in 2025, sending many consumers’ portfolios higher. However, a potential stock market slowdown could provide even more reason for consumers to keep their wallets pocketed this year. 

“Part of it is expectations for a weaker stock market, for it to go relatively flat,” Hoyt said. “That'll take some of the punch out of the spending by the higher-income folks.”

Initial data suggests the pullback could already be underway.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires projected that retail sales would grow by 0.3% in December after a hot November. Instead, the Census Bureau reported today that sales were flat, making the holiday shopping season a little less merry for some sellers.

“That’s not what investors—or retailers—wanted to see coming out of the critical holiday shopping period,” wrote Bret Kenwell, eToro U.S. investment analyst.

Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Economics, said a mix of weakening economic fundamentals has begun to take a toll on the American consumer.

“Slower real disposable personal income growth, a softening labor market, and declining saving rates finally appear to have diminished the U.S. consumers’ willingness and ability to spend, at least temporarily,” Anderson wrote. 

But while sales slowed to end last year, some economists argue it doesn’t guarantee that consumers will stay home this year.

“A weak end isn't necessarily indicative of the start of a new consumer trend,” wrote Wells Fargo economists Tim Quinlan and Shannon Grein. “The latest data ultimately suggest households are still broadly spending in the face of sustained and compounding inflation and an uncomfortable moderation in the jobs market."

• Salaries for private-sector workers rose 0.7% in the fourth quarter, the slowest increase since 2021.
  
• The job market has turned against workers, with unemployed workers now outnumbering open positions, so employers are less motivated to give large raises.
  
• Despite the downturn, average pay raises outpaced inflation in 2025.
  

If you weren't happy with the raise you got this year, you were hardly alone.

Wages and salaries for private industry workers rose 0.7% in the fourth quarter, the slowest pace since the second quarter of 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday. Year-over-year, wages were up 3.4%, the same as in the first quarter but a decline from the third quarter.

The slowdown in salary growth was the latest in a series of indications that the job market is getting tougher for workers as employers cut back on hiring. Job openings have also fallen to a post-pandemic low, with unemployed workers now outnumbering open jobs, and the unemployment rate has edged up since the beginning of 2025.

"The weak fourth-quarter growth in the [Employment Cost Index] aligns with the balance of labor market data, which was increasingly soft in the second half of 2025," Dante DeAntonio, an economist at Moody's Analytics, wrote in a commentary. "Employers are facing much less pressure to increase wages than in previous years."

This is the latest indication of the weak labor market, which could add pressure for officials at the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to boost hiring and prevent a serious jump in unemployment.

On the positive side for workers, wages on average are still growing significantly faster than inflation. The Consumer Price Index rose 2.7% over the course of 2025, well below wage growth.

However, that wage growth hasn't been shared equally: statistics show the trajectory of household finances has been "K-shaped," with higher-income earners gaining while those with lower incomes are falling farther behind. In January, after-tax wages rose 0.9% over the year for lower-income households, 1.6% for middle-income households and 3.7% for higher-income households, economists at Bank of America said Tuesday based on deposit data.

The data on the wage growth slowdown sets the stage for a highly anticipated report on the job market coming Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which will show how well job creation and the unemployment rate held up in January 2026.

The job market has been dragged down recently by tariffs, as businesses, uncertain about trade policy, curtail hiring and expansion plans.

• The unemployment rate for workers with college experience increased in 2025, while it has fallen for workers without college experience.
• Industries that hire the most college graduates lost an average of 9,000 jobs per month from 2023 to 2025, reversing a trend that once favored degree holders.
• A Goldman Sachs analysis points to a frozen labor market, not AI, as the main driver.

A college degree has long been one of the most reliable guards against unemployment. That shield may be breaking, a new Goldman Sachs analysis argues.

The unemployment rate for workers with a bachelor's degree or higher climbed to 2.8% in December, up from 2.6% a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While still below the national unemployment rate of 4.4%, college-educated workers are facing an increasingly unfavorable labor market compared with other groups.

The unemployment rate fell for workers with no college experience compared with a year prior. It rose for workers with some college experience, those with an associate degree, and those with a bachelor's degree or higher.

Unemployment rates are a key indicator of the state of the economy. If unemployment rates continue to rise for any labor group, consumer spending and economic growth will slow, potentially leading to a recession.

While unemployment rates can be volatile month to month, Goldman said labor dynamics could be shifting.

From 2023 to 2025, industries that employ the largest shares of college graduates, including information services, finance, and professional and business services, shed an average of 9,000 jobs per month, according to the analysis by Goldman Sachs economist Jessica Rindels. Before the pandemic, those same industries added 44,000 jobs per month.

A strong labor market and fast-paced hiring in 2021 to 2022 led to low unemployment rates—particularly in fields that mainly hire college graduates. However, in recent years, hiring has stalled, with employers halting hiring or firing workers, essentially locking many college graduates, and especially young college graduates, out of the labor market.

Meanwhile, industries that hire fewer college graduates, such as construction, transportation, and retail trade, kept adding 12,000 jobs per month, the Goldman Sachs analysis noted. That helps explain why degree holders are losing ground even as the broader labor market holds up for other workers.

In December, college graduates ages 22 to 27 had an unemployment rate of 5.6%, just 2.2 percentage points below the 7.8% rate for young workers without a bachelor's degree. That gap has historically often been two to three times as wide. Recent graduates also had a higher unemployment rate than the overall workforce (4.2%), a reversal of historical norms.

Goldman Sachs' analysis suggests that AI has not been the primary driver of rising college graduate unemployment so far. The tech industry, the sector most exposed to AI, had elevated unemployment in 2024, but those rates have since normalized.

That tracks with other recent findings. A Yale Budget Lab analysis of labor market data from ChatGPT's release through late 2025 argued that the share of workers in high-AI-exposure jobs remained "remarkably steady." A Challenger, Gray, and Christmas analysis found that employers cited AI as a reason for fewer than 55,000 of the 1.2 million job cuts announced in 2025, less than 5%.

The longer-term picture is mixed, though. College graduates are disproportionately employed in occupations with the greatest share of tasks that generative AI could eventually automate.

But Rindels noted that degree holders, and young workers in particular, "tend to fare better and transition to other occupations at a higher rate than other age and education cohorts when displaced from their jobs."

• Shares of Oracle, Microsoft, Nvidia, and other tech heavyweights with ties to OpenAI have gained this week after a string of positive developments for the startup.
• Worries about OpenAI's ability to meet its obligations have rattled confidence in the AI trade in recent months, particularly shares of companies that have struck big deals with the company.

Fresh optimism about OpenAI's finances is boosting some corners of the AI trade.

Though OpenAI isn't publicly traded yet, the world's most valuable private startup has been firing back at worries about its competitiveness and ability to make money lately. That's helped inject some enthusiasm into the shares of the tech heavyweights increasingly tied to—and whose shares have benefited from—its success. 

The ChatGPT maker said yesterday it's rolling out ads to its flagship chatbot, in what JPMorgan analysts had suggested ahead of the release would mark a major shift in its ability to monetize the technology. And late last week, as OpenAI released the latest iteration of its code-writing tool Codex, CEO Sam Altman told employees that ChatGPT is “back to exceeding 10% monthly growth,” with an updated model expected sometime this week, according to CNBC. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on that report in time for publication.

Some of America’s biggest tech giants' fortunes are becoming increasingly tied to private startup OpenAI's outcomes, expanding the startup's reach. Even if you don’t own any equity in OpenAI, or hold individual tech stocks, your portfolio’s performance could still feel OpenAI's influence if you have funds that track broad market indexes in which OpenAI's partners, investors, and suppliers hold sway.

OpenAI’s string of positive news lately has been enough to soothe some worries about stiffer competition and whether the company will be able to meet its massive obligations. It has also marked a shift in narratives around the firm; new agentic tools from rival Anthropic recently sent shares of software companies threatened by the tools, along with some stocks tied closely to OpenAI, into a tailspin.

“We believe that a revamped OpenAI will return to its position as Google’s top challenger and with a fresh stack of capital be able to live up to its obligations this year,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria wrote Monday. 

That optimism could be beneficial for shares of Oracle (ORCL), which have taken a hit in recent months amid worries about its dependence on deals with OpenAI, Luria wrote. The stock popped nearly 10% yesterday and was recently up another 4% following an upgrade to “buy” from the analyst. Still, the shares are down roughly 50% from their September highs, before investors found out OpenAI accounted for more than half of Oracle’s cloud backlog.

Microsoft (MSFT), a major investor in OpenAI that derives about 45% of its Azure backlog from the startup, has also seen its shares rise this week. So has Nvidia (NVDA), which is both a supplier and backer of OpenAI.

Some concern remains, however. OpenAI’s turn to ads, which Altman has previously called a “last resort," has for some underscored financial pressures on the company, as well as raised the possbility that it could drive some users to rivals that don't sell ads.

The President Wants to See the Economy Grow at a Rate of 15%

• President Donald Trump said his pick for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, can deliver 15% economic growth.
  
• If Trump was referring to annual real GDP growth, a 15% growth rate would be ambitious.
  
• The economy has only exceeded 15% annualized GDP growth in wartime or when recovering from recessions.
  

President Donald Trump wants his new pick for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, to achieve something that has rarely been seen outside of wartime: an economic growth rate of 15%.

"We should be at 15%," Trump said in an interview with FOX Business aired Monday. "If he does the job that he's capable, we can grow at 15%. I think more than that."

Trump has long argued that the Fed should cut rates sharply to stimulate economic growth.

The president did not specify his exact growth metric or the timeframe. However, economic growth is usually expressed as the inflation-adjusted annual rate of growth of the Gross Domestic Product. If that is Warsh's goalpost, meeting it would take a miracle, or if history is a guide, a disaster.

Some economists predict that easing interest rates could lift economic growth, though far below 15%.

Real GDP usually grows at 2%-3% per year. GDP growth has hit double digits only in extreme circumstances, typically when the country is bouncing back from a catastrophe.

The last quarter in which GDP growth was as high as Trump is predicting was when businesses reopened after COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders were lifted. The last year with growth higher than 15% was 1943, in the midst of World War II.

Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell as Fed chair. Powell's term ends in May.

Trump appointed Powell to his current post in 2018, but the president has since heavily criticized Powell for not sharply lowering borrowing costs. Fed officials have cut interest rates since 2024, but not to the extent Trump wants, out of concern that slashing rates could ignite inflation, which remains above the Fed's 2% annual target. Trump argues there is no inflation.

As Fed chair, Warsh will have one major lever to influence the economy, the Fed's key fed funds rate, which affects borrowing costs on all kinds of loans. However, even his ability to get his way on interest rates is in doubt, since he is just one of 12 members who vote on rates.

The Fed can indeed boost economic growth by lowering interest rates, but it must balance that with its mandate from Congress to keep inflation under control. Other major factors influencing GDP, including consumer and government spending, are outside of the Fed's control.

• UBS on Tuesday downgraded the U.S. tech sector to neutral due to persistent concerns about AI-driven disruption in the software industry and an expected slowdown in AI infrastructure spending.
• Jefferies analysts in a recent note identified slower AI spending as a potential catalyst for a rebound in software stocks after last week's "SaaSpocalypse."

Software stocks have found their footing after last week's rout. Some experts say that's not reason for optimism.

The chief investment office of UBS downgraded the U.S. technology sector to neutral on Tuesday, citing pervasive uncertainty in the software industry and the likelihood that AI infrastructure spending will moderate soon. 

UBS says the spending on AI infrastructure that has fueled the AI rally may be nearing a peak after increasing more than fourfold in the past three years. Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META) and Oracle (ORCL) could report capital expenditures of up to $700 billion this year, a price tag that has at times spooked investors worried that Big Tech will struggle to recoup its investments. 

The AI boom has been the driving force behind the bull market of the past three years. Investors have been questioning for some time whether stocks can sustain their momentum without Big Tech's ever-increasing outlays on data center equipment.

UBS expects capex growth to moderate from current levels, “which could improve investor perceptions of those doing the spending, but is a potential negative for some companies in the enabling layer.” That includes some of the biggest companies in the S&P 500, including chip giants Nvidia (NVDA), Broadcom (AVGO) and Micron (MU), all of which have seen their sales and earnings swell amid the data center boom.

UBS expects uncertainty about AI’s impact on the software industry—concerns that sparked last week’s “SaaSpocalypse”—to remain a drag on the tech sector. Software stocks plummeted when AI startup Anthropic released agentic tools that amplified concerns that AI is more of a threat than an opportunity for software incumbents. 

“The threat of increased competition makes it difficult for investors to have conviction in the growth rate and profitability of firms in the software industry,” wrote UBS analysts, who expect the uncertainty to “linger for some time.” 

Jefferies analysts recently argued the slowdown in capex that UBS considers a tech sector headwind could ultimately help clear the cloud hanging over software stocks. The data center boom, they argue, is taking the air out of the room and making the software industry’s mid-teens revenue growth appear paltry.

UBS and Jefferies agree that some babies were surely thrown out with the bathwater during last week’s sell-off, an assessment shared by retail investors, who bought the dip aggressively, according to data from Vanda Research.

Dip-buyers are being rewarded for taking a risk on stocks at low valuations. Datadog (DDOG) stock soared on Tuesday as investors focused on the software company’s better-than-expected revenue rather than its underwhelming profit forecast, underscoring the benefits investors can reap from low expectations. 

On the other end of the spectrum, high expectations for tech hardware stocks is another headwind UBS credits for its tech downgrade. The segment, they say, is dominated by smartphone manufacturers that have benefited from strong sales “driven partly by an aging installed base of phones.” But the group’s forward price-to-earnings ratio is well above its 5- and 10-year averages, setting a high bar for the segment to clear this year. 

• Strategy recently acquired 1,142 more bitcoin for $90 million. The price of the cryptocurrency was recently around $69,000.
• The broad sell-off in tech and metals last week does not bode well for risk assets like crypto in the near term, experts say.

Strategy is down on its bitcoin purchases—but it's not out.

Executive chair and bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor in a Tuesday interview with CNBC said that Strategy (MSTR) is "not going to be selling" bitcoin anytime soon—and will continue to buy the world's largest cryptocurrency every quarter "forever." The price of the coin is hanging out under $70,000 after last week's sell-off, which took it close to $60,000.

Crypto-linked stocks are mixed Tuesday, with Coinbase (COIN) and Strategy down slightly. Circle (CRCL) has risen by more than 2%. Read Investopedia's full coverage of today's trading here.

That the Strategy chair is vowing not to sell means the company is willing to hold its breath; to bow out now would mean locking in losses with the price of bitcoin below its average cost per coin. At what price buyers will be drawn back in en masse is anyone's guess, but it would appear that the mid-$70,000s wasn't the value zone some experts hoped it would be.

Bitcoin is off last week's lows, offering some relief to crypto investors. But some experts think crypto may not have much room for upside if investors are concerned about risk assets, such as tech stocks, broadly.

Strategy recently bought an additional 1,142 coins for about $90 million for an average cost of more than $78,000. Crypto experts say that wavering tech stocks don't bode well for risk assets at large.

When Saylor was asked about investor concerns that Strategy might be forced to sell—in the event that bitcoin prices fall sharply and don't recover for years—he was sanguine. "If bitcoin falls 90% for the next four years, we'll just refinance the debt," he said, adding that Strategy has enough in its cash reserves to pay dividends on its bitcoin-backed high-yield perpetual preferred shares like "STRC," and cover its debt, for more than two years.

The "only thing" investors need to know, Saylor said in the CNBC interview, is that bitcoin would do double to triple the performance of the S&P 500 over the next four to eight years.

Galaxy Digital's (GLXY) trading expert Beimnet Abebe said that the short-term does not look great for bitcoin given "the pretty bad setup for risk" and the losses investors suffered last week as other parts of the investment complex including tech stocks and metals took a beating. Plus, investors appears to be in portfolio-tweaking mode, and their "flight to value" in stocks doesn't exactly put bitcoin in that line of sight.

"Who's going to want to buy crypto when they're worried about the Nasdaq?" he said on the "Galaxy Brains" podcast last week.

Episode 281 of the Investopedia Express podcast with Caleb Silver (Feb. 9, 2026)

Subscribe Now: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / PlayerFM

The icy winds of volatility could not break through investors’ willingness to buy the dip, sending the Dow Jones Industrials beyond 50,000 for the first time, but trends have been broken inside the market and what used to work just doesn’t anymore. Paul Hickey of Bespoke Investment Group takes us inside the sectors to survey the damage and discover opportunities. Plus, we reveal the latest results of our sentiment survey, and nothing seems to scare us… at least not yet.

• Spotify shares popped Tuesday after the streamer's fourth-quarter profits and user metrics came in well above estimates.
• The streamer is expected to benefit from rising prices, after announcing higher premium subscription costs starting this month.

Spotify's quarterly profits blew past expectations, and investors are cheering the results.

Shares of Spotify Technology (SPOT) were up over 18% in recent trading after the music, podcast, and audiobook streaming provider reported fourth-quarter results that topped projections. Revenue of 4.53 billion euros ($5.39 billion) narrowly beat estimates, while the streamer's earnings per share of 4.43 euros came in well above the analyst consensus compiled by Visible Alpha.

Spotify also said it reached 751 million monthly active users (MAUs) and 290 million premium subscribers, each metric topping estimates. Spotify added 38 million net new monthly active users in the quarter, which Co-CEO Alex Norström said was the company's largest-ever quarterly rise.

Tuesday's surge could point to growing confidence in Spotify's stock, which has taken a hit in recent months amid some concerns about its valuation and the scope of potential disruptions from AI.

Spotify said it expects 4.5 billion euros of revenue in the first quarter, along with 759 million MAUs and 293 million premium subscribers. Analysts were looking for first-quarter revenue of 4.57 billion euros, with 752.6 million MAUs and 293 million premium subscribers.

The company is widely expected to benefit from rising subscription prices, after Spotify announced plans last month to hike the cost of premium plans starting this month.

Despite Tuesday's gains, Spotify shares are down about 15% for the year so far, and nearly 40% off their highs last June.