Investopedia Markets News (all except PF)

Healthcare was the best-performing sector in the S&P 500 over the past week, at a time when the broader index lost ground
Credit: Michael Nagle / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Healthcare stocks have outperformed the broader market over the past week, as investors rotated out of tech and into more defensive plays.
• Analysts at UBS and SentimenTrader suggested they see more gains ahead for the sector, which has underperformed the broader market in 2026 so far.

Tech stocks are pulling back, and healthcare is surging.

The S&P 500's health care sector climbed over 1% Tuesday while the broader index lost ground, weighed down by a sell-off in tech shares. Over the past five sessions, healthcare was the best-performing sector, up close to 6%, while the broader index slipped about 3%. Major insurers such as Humana (HUM) and UnitedHealth Group (UNH) have been some of the biggest gainers during that time, with Humana shares up 13% and UnitedHealth adding about 10% over the past week amid anticipation of improving cost trends. Medical device makers such as Medtronic (MDT) and drugmakers like Eli Lilly (LLY) have also gained, with their shares up around 11% and 8%, respectively.

Why This Matters to Investors

Healthcare stocks have long been seen as defensive plays, as medical products and services are often viewed as less sensitive to economic downturns, and may outperform other sectors in a risk-off environment.

The recent momentum highlights the sector's value as a defensive play, UBS analysts wrote Tuesday. The sector has outperformed the S&P 500 on 85% of the days when the benchmark was down 1% or more, the analysts said; between Wednesday and Friday, it outperformed tech by the widest margin over three trading days since 2002, according to Bespoke. (It has, however, lagged the broader market year-to-date: The healthcare sector is little changed for 2026, compared to the broader S&P 500's roughly 8% gain. Read Investopedia's full coverage of today's trading here.)

Expectations of growth tied to booming demand for weight-loss drugs and falling costs related to AI's use in drug discovery, along with demographic shifts that could raise healthcare needs, "underpins our positive outlook on the sector," UBS wrote.

SentimentTrader analyst Jay Kaeppel, who wrote in a report Monday that healthcare has "rarely performed worse relative to the S&P 500 Index," suggested its weak showing year-to-date could mean more gains ahead, making the present an "excellent buying opportunity."

"Its time to put Healthcare back on the radar," he wrote.

Oracle shares remain roughly 40% off their highs last September
Credit: Michael Nagle / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Several analysts lifted their price targets for Oracle's stock ahead of the cloud services firm's earnings report due Wednesday, anticipating strong results as big tech companies spend heavily on AI.
• The stock has lost ground recently and remains well off its highs last September amid some concerns about the concentration of its backlog and debt load to build out AI data centers.

Oracle's stock has taken a hit lately, but robust AI spending trends have some Wall Street analysts growing more bullish on the cloud services provider's stock ahead of its earnings report due tomorrow.

Shares of Oracle (ORCL) dropped close to 3% to just under $206 Tuesday, leaving the shares down nearly 16% over the past week amid a broader pullback in tech shares after a monthslong runup. The stock remains about 40% off last September's highs amid concerns around Oracle's debt load and its reliance on a few large customers like OpenAI.

Still, recent earnings reports that Oracle's other big tech customers such as Meta Platforms (META) are continuing to spend heavily on AI data centers have several analysts raising their price targets for the shares ahead of Wednesday's results.

Why This Matters to Investors

The string of target hikes for Oracle's stock would suggest analysts view its losses as temporary, and could boost confidence in a rebound.

Bank of America analysts, who have a "buy" rating on the shares, lifted their price target for Oracle stock to $240 from $200 in a note to clients Tuesday, pointing to the growing strength of demand for Oracle's cloud computing and database services.

Citi and Oppenheimer analysts have also raised their targets in recent days, to $330 and $275, respectively. The consensus of analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha at just over $260 would suggest upside of nearly 30% to Tuesday's close.

Oracle is widely expected to report another quarter of growing revenue and profits, per Visible Alpha estimates, though analysts have said investors may be more focused on its growing network of data centers and spending outlook.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI confidentially filed IPO paperwork on Monday.
Credit: Robert Way / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• OpenAI on Monday confidentially filed IPO paperwork, making it the third mega-cap tech company to potentially hit public markets later this year.
• Experts say the flood of new shares from SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI could create headwinds for other AI stocks and test Wall Street's appetite for AI exposure.

Flows in the IPO pipeline have officially reached torrential levels.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI filed confidential IPO paperwork on Monday, possibly setting the stage for a mega-IPO before the end of the year. “We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company,” OpenAI said in a statement. 

The filing made the company the third AI mega-cap this year to start the process of going public. Its chief rival, Anthropic, filed its own confidential IPO paperwork last week. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expected to debut in a record-smashing IPO as early as Friday. 

Why This Is Important

The public listing of three $1 trillion companies in a year represents an unprecedented test of Wall Street's ability to absorb new stocks.

The hype cycle leading up to SpaceX’s blockbuster debut has coincided with a run-up in stocks fueled by seemingly insatiable investor appetite for AI exposure. Ten S&P 500 stocks exposed to the AI buildout have doubled in value since the start of the year, buoyed by Silicon Valley’s plans to spend trillions on data center infrastructure in the coming years. 

There’s ample evidence investors are hungry for new AI plays. The SpaceX IPO is reportedly two times over-subscribed, meaning $150 billion worth of capital is competing for the $75 billion of stock SpaceX plans to sell. Google parent Alphabet (GOOG) last week announced plans to sell $40 billion of shares to fund its AI investments, and ended up selling nearly $45 billion due to strong demand.

The sheer size of the offerings could be detrimental to their success. Market intelligence firm PitchBook estimates the three giants will raise at least $180 billion with their IPOs, more than the combined total raised by the more than 400 U.S. companies that listed in 2021. Some experts warn a dramatic increase in the supply of stocks is often negative for prices, and question whether demand can support a tsunami of new offerings.

Experts say three trillion-dollar listings in short order could generate headwinds for other stocks. The debuts could “force reallocation pressure,” according to Harrison Rolfes, senior research analyst at PitchBook. “Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and large-cap growth mandates will need to fund IPO allocations by selling NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google, and Meta,” he added.

Nancy Tengler, CEO of Laffer Tengler Investments, says her firm is already selling some high-flying chip stocks to free up capital, a repositioning to which some experts have attributed tech stock weakness since late last week. 

The blockbuster listings are already crowding out other private companies. Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi last week told Bloomberg Television his company would not go public in 2026. “This is a terrible year to go public,” he said, nodding to the impending listings of OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which are valued at more than five times Databricks’ $134 billion.

Experts say the order in which these IPOs occur will influence their prices and reception by the market. “The first to list sets the comp for the other two,” said Rolfes, who expects the healthy profit margins of SpaceX’s Starlink to "anchor high infrastructure valuations.”

Anthropic’s beating OpenAI to markets, meanwhile, could create headwinds for the latter. “If Anthropic lists first and reports its first profitable quarter, OpenAI prices against a profitable competitor at a higher valuation” with, by PitchBook’s measure, a more structurally sound business, according to Rolfes. “There is no scenario where that comparison favors OpenAI.”

A lot is riding on the listings, especially for other AI companies. “There will be ripple effects if they don’t go well,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told CNBC on Tuesday. “Their success means they’ll be able to invest more into frontier model development, and every time AI gets better, Perplexity gets better."

A poor showing for OpenAI “reprices private AI across the board,” Rolfes said.

Credit: O2O Creative / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• The Social Security retirement benefit trust fund will run out of money in the fourth quarter of 2032, a quarter earlier than previously thought, according to a new estimate.
• The finances of the nation's largest social program have been in a downward spiral since 2010 due to an aging population.
• A fix will require cutting benefits or raising taxes, the trustees said.

The doomsday clock for Social Security benefits is ticking down faster than previously thought.

The trust fund that helps pay out Social Security retirement benefits is projected to run out of money in the fourth quarter of 2032, a quarter earlier than estimated last year, the Social Security Administration's board of trustees said in its annual report Tuesday. After that, beneficiaries will be paid only from incoming payroll taxes and will get 78% of their scheduled benefits, declining to 62% by 2100, the board said. The fund that supports disability benefits is similarly in the red and on track to run out in 2034.

The report underscored the dwindling time lawmakers have to fix the finances of the government's largest program, which pays benefits to 70 million people, including retirees, their beneficiaries, and people with disabilities. Social Security kept 23.5 million people out of poverty in 2024, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank.

What This Means For The Economy

The impending expiration of the Social Security trust fund could disrupt the economy in six years if lawmakers fail to address the program's financial deficits.

"Lawmakers have many options for changes that would reduce or eliminate the long-term financing shortfalls," the trustees wrote. "Taking action sooner rather than later will allow consideration of a broader range of solutions and provide more time to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare."

The crisis has been slow in the making.

Social Security benefits are funded by a 12.4% payroll tax paid equally by employers and workers. For decades, those taxes exceeded the benefits that the administration pays out. But the program's finances have become increasingly untenable as birth rates have fallen and the population has grown older.

Since 2010, the math hasn't added up, and the program has run a negative cash flow, prompting the trustees to issue increasingly urgent warnings about impending benefit cuts if nothing changes.

The crucial date was brought forward by three major factors last year, the trustees said: a further decline in birth rates; President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration; and the One Big Beautiful Bill tax cut, which included a $6,000 break for people over 65.

Solving the problem will take either a tax increase or a cut to benefits, the trustees said. Over the years, various proposals have been floated, including raising the retirement age, but have gone nowhere.

The report reignited the debate over how to fix the problem. The AARP senior advocacy group released a statement arguing against benefit cuts.

"This should be a wake-up call: Congress needs to act," the group said in a statement. "Americans have worked hard and paid into Social Security their entire lives, and they deserve to count on it when they retire."

Democratic lawmakers on the House Social Security committee said the hole should be plugged by taxing the wealthy, and blasted Elon Musk's DOGE cost-cutting task force for failing to improve the program's finances after making unsubstantiated claims it was rife with fraud.

The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, a budget watchdog think tank, proposed several reforms, including capping benefits at $100,000 for a couple, expanding employer taxes, and several other ideas.

"Washington is sleepwalking into a retirement crisis, allowing our nation’s most important trust funds to go insolvent at the expense of over 70 million beneficiaries who count on these programs," Maya MacGuineas, president of the group, said in a statement.

Analysts are bearish on gold in the near term after its lackluster performance so far this year.
Credit: Photo by: Visions of America / Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Gold has given back all of its gains for the year as the precious metal's slow season begins.
• Citi Research on Monday downgraded its near-term view on gold, cutting its price target by $300 to $4,000 per troy ounce.

It's been a rough year for gold bulls.

Futures have been sliding from record highs around $5,600 per ounce in January, and some think the near-term outlook for the precious metal may not improve for months. According to Citi Research, gold is trading below its 200-day moving average, a technical gauge some use to measure market momentum, for the first time in nearly three years. That's a sign that the wind—after a 2025 in which it rose more than 65%—has gone out of its sails: Gold, recently around $4,300, is pretty much where it started the year.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU

If gold analysts' long-term views prove correct and precious metal prices reach record highs again, the implied upside from recent prices is about 15%.

It's unlikely to go anywhere in the near term between the impasse over the Strait of Hormuz and gold in the thick of what Citi analysts said is a slow season for demand for jewelry, bars, and coins. Yet some analysts are maintaining their bullish views, and pushing their expectations down the road, because the underlying reasons for gold's strength seen last year—among them the debasement trade, high government debt levels, and optimism about increased central bank buying of gold—remain intact.

Citi's Kenny Hu attributes much of the weakness in gold to a host of issues stemming from the war in Iran, which has stoked inflation that has contributed to increased expectations that the Federal Reserve might raise interest rates. Higher rates can make interest-bearing assets more attractive than gold, which doesn't pay a dividend; they can also increase the demand for dollars, which can weigh on gold purchases by international buyers.

"Dip buying here makes sense only with a strong view of no re-escalation of the war and resumption of [Straight of Hormuz] flows," Hu said. He cut his three-month price target by $300 to $4,000, though he left unchanged his $5,000 six-to-12-month price target.

"Gold's high liquidity makes it a natural source of cash if private investors face liquidity needs -- for example, if equity markets sell off amid higher rates and weaker growth expectations linked to geopolitical risks," Goldman Sachs analysts wrote last month. Their forecast for gold is more bullish, at $5,400.

DataTrek's Nicholas Colas and Jessica Rabe said gold's lackluster performance lately can be explained simply: It "rallied too far, too fast" last year and into early 2026. The pair remains bullish on gold over the longer term, but they expect the precious metal will "likely underperform stocks" in the next six to 12 months, they said.

Tuesday's decline puts Vail Resorts shares back into the negative for the year.
Credit: Michael Ciaglo / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Vail Resorts shares fell Tuesday after the ski resort operator missed profit estimates and cut its earnings forecast for the full year.
• The company said historically poor snowfall has hampered skiing and snowboarding demand.

Worries about a weaker outlook have ski operator Vail Resorts' stock facing a wipeout of its progress this year.

Shares of Vail (MTN) were down about 5% in recent trading, dragging them back into negative territory for the year, a day after the company lowered its full-year forecasts for the second time this year, citing "one of the worst snowfall years in history in the western U.S."

CEO Rob Katz said the company saw "extremely unfavorable" weather persist in its fiscal third quarter, which negatively impacted demand for skiing and snowboarding, especially at its resorts in the Rocky Mountains. Vail Resorts said it now expects full-year profits of $128 million to $162 million, down from the previous range of $144 million to $190 million.

Why This Matters to Investors

Vail's outlook cut and lackluster third quarter could make it more difficult for the stock to recover, after a yearslong slide.

Katz said on the company's earnings call that industry-wide visits to ski resorts in the Rockies were down 24% over the past skiing season. Aside from COVID-19-related drops in visits, Katz said the previous worst performance over the last 40 years was an 8% drop in 2012, "which illustrates the unprecedented severity of the conditions and the anomaly we just experienced," per an AlphaSense transcript.

Vail reported third-quarter revenue of $1.2 billion, down 7% year-over-year and roughly in line with the analyst estimates, while earnings per share declined to $8.81 from $10.46 the same time a year ago, missing the Visible Alpha consensus by 16 cents.

With Tuesday's slump, Vail shares are down about 17% over the last 12 months.

Inflation could rise to its highest in three years if economists' predictions prove correct.
Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• The Consumer Price Index likely rose 4.2% over the year in May, the highest annual inflation in three years.
• The Iran war has driven up fuel prices, hurting household budgets and raising concerns that inflation will spread to other products and become persistent.
• A report in line with expectations could add pressure on the Fed to raise interest rates later in the year.

The economy is starting to feel like 2021, and not in a good way.

A report on the Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is due out on Wednesday. Economists expect it to show the cost-of-living measure rose 4.2% over 12 months ending in May, according to a survey of forecasters by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. If economists' predictions prove to be true, that would be the largest increase since April 2023.

"Core" prices, which exclude the volatile costs of food and energy, are expected to have risen 2.9% over the year, up from 2.8% in April.

A report in line with expectations would show inflation following a trajectory similar to that in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. And it is for a similar reason: supply chain disruptions are pushing up prices for important commodities, especially fuel, and those price hikes are spreading to other products. This time, however, the largest disruption is not COVID-19 but the Iran war's restriction of oil and other resources.

"The inflationary effects of the Iran conflict continue to ripple through consumer prices," economists at Wells Fargo led by Tom Porcelli wrote in a commentary. "Higher costs of necessities continue to pinch consumers."

What This Means For The Economy

Rising inflation a one of the biggest threats to the health of the overall economy, since it can hurt consumer spending and could force the Federal Reserve to slow down growth by raising interest rates.

The report could also have implications for the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy. A jump in prices could put further pressure on the central bank to raise its key interest rate, pushing up borrowing costs across the economy to discourage spending and counter rising inflation.

That could be especially true if the price hikes are widespread and not limited to gasoline, indicating that higher transportation costs are being passed on to consumers.

"Evidence of broader pass-through would add to concerns about inflation persistence," Jim Reid, head of macro research and thematic strategy at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a commentary.

The Fed meets next week to set monetary policy, the first meeting for incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh. The central bank is widely expected to keep the fed funds rate steady as it waits to gauge how sharp and persistent the war's impact on prices is, and how the labor market holds up amid rising uncertainty.

In recent months, some Fed officials have become more vocal about the possibility of rate hikes later in the year, especially as the job market has held firm amid intensifying concerns about inflation. The Fed's dual mandate from Congress requires it to keep core inflation running at a 2% annually and employment high.

As Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX move toward the public markets, investors must focus on a simple question: How real is the revenue?

OpenAI, like Anthropic, recently filed confidentially with the SEC for an IPO. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is seen here speaking at an event last year.
Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Upcoming mega-IPOs could create significant wealth for investors but also pose risks due to the interconnected relationships between the companies and major tech giants.
• Investors face challenges in determining how much AI revenue reflects genuine demand versus self-reinforcing growth within an interconnected ecosystem of suppliers, customers and investors.
• A new Nasdaq rule allows companies to join its Nasdaq 100 index within 15 trading days if their market cap ranks in the top 40 constituents, potentially increasing exposure to AI IPOs for index investors.

Investors are being asked to value trillions of dollars worth of soon-to-be public AI companies that are simultaneously customers, suppliers, partners and portfolio holdings of the same handful of technology giants. 

SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI will be among the defining IPOs of this decade. Given their recent valuations, their public debuts could create enormous wealth for investors - especially early investors - and validate hundreds of billions of dollars in investments made by Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN) and Nvidia (NVDA).

But these blockbuster IPOs are also leading investors into a financial labyrinth that may prove inescapable, and potentially dangerous. In fact, we are already in it. 

Individual investors’ largest holdings—Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Nvidia—are highly exposed on both sides of the AI trade, as investors in these companies and as beneficiaries of the revenue they generate. If the AI IPO boom succeeds, they stand to benefit from appreciating equity stakes and continued demand for cloud services, computing power, and infrastructure. If it falters, they could face pressure on both fronts, and investors could get squeezed in the middle.

Much of the concern surrounding the AI-hype has been focused on valuation multiples and exorbitant capital expenditures. But technology investor Om Malik recently suggested that critics may be fighting on the wrong terrain.

"The question is not whether 25x revenue is too much. The question is whether the revenue is the revenue," Malik wrote recently, referring to the lofty valuation that is being assigned to Anthropic.

Investors Risk Wandering Into Hall of Mirrors

Consider the increasingly intertwined relationships that the Big Tech behemoths have with OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX.

Microsoft has tied much of its AI strategy and future growth to OpenAI, while OpenAI has become one of Microsoft Azure's largest customers. Amazon and Alphabet have invested tens of billions in Anthropic while simultaneously providing the cloud infrastructure that powers its business. Alphabet also has a long-standing equity stake in SpaceX and partners with the Elon-Musk led company on a variety of projects, as do Microsoft and Amazon. Meanwhile, Nvidia is the dominant supplier of the chips underpinning the AI boom while also investing in several of its leading participants.

Bottom line: Everyone is in everyone’s business.

None of this is improper. In fact, these partnerships have accelerated innovation at a remarkable pace. But it’s nearly impossible for investors to follow the thousands of threads of revenue and discern which are real, and which are mythical.

It’s even harder given that Open AI and Anthropic submitted confidential S-1 filings with the SEC and the paper trail is thin.

"Whether it is OpenAI or Anthropic, revenue cannot be resolved without an S-1." Malik said. "I would believe it only after it shows up in SEC filings, and there too I am expecting part fact, part fiction."

In Greek mythology, Theseus, the Prince of Athens, entered the Labyrinth to slay the Minotaur, the mythical beast with the head of a man and the body of a bull. He escaped only because Ariadne gave him a thread to follow back to reality.

Investors navigating today's AI ecosystem need some thread. Without it, investors risk wandering into a hall of mirrors where every reflection reinforces the next.

Echoes of the Telecom Boom

During the telecom boom of the late 1990s, investors celebrated explosive growth without always examining how much of that growth depended on capital circulating among the same participants. In Japan's bubble era of the late 1980s, cross-shareholdings among corporations and banks created a similar sense of self-reinforcing strength—until confidence cracked sending the Nikkei into a 60% tailspin.

The challenge for investors now is determining how much of today's growth reflects independent demand and how much is being reinforced by an increasingly interconnected ecosystem of investors, suppliers and customers. If just one of them slows spending, the thread could snap.

Before buying into the next generation of AI IPOs—or adding to positions in the companies funding them—investors should focus on Ariadne's thread: Where does the revenue ultimately come from, and how much of it would remain if the mirrors disappeared?

Ironically, index investors might not have a choice. As of May 1, Nasdaq started allowing companies to join its marquee Nasdaq 100 index within 15 trading days instead of waiting a minimum of three months to a year as long as their market cap puts them within the top 40 constituents. 

News of the day for June 9, 2026

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed higher yesterday as tech stocks rebounded from a sell-off on Friday.
Credit: Michael Nagle / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Stock futures are pointing to a higher open Tuesday as the market looks to extend its recovery from last week's losses; President Trump said last night that the U.S. and Iran are close to a "very, very good deal;" OpenAI has confidentially filed with the SEC for an IPO, but said in a statement it doesn't have a timeline for going public; Nuvalent shares are soaring after the drugmaker agreed to be acquired by British pharmaceutical giant GSK; and Vail Resorts shares are down after the company cut its outlook for the second time this year. Here's what you need to know today.

Futures Rise as Chip Stocks Extend Rally

Stock futures are higher this morning as chip stocks add to the big gains they posted yesterday. Futures tied to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were recently up 0.4% and 0.8%, respectively, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures added 0.2%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed higher Monday, rebounding from steep losses to close out last week. WTI crude oil futures were down roughly 2% at just under $90 per barrel after President Trump said a deal could be reached with Iran soon (more on that below), while gold futures were little-changed at $4,365 an ounce. Bitcoin was at $62,800, after recovering from a weekend slump to trade as high as $64,100 yesterday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which influences rates on a range of consumer loans, fell to 4.55% from yesterday's close of 4.57%.

Trump Says Iran Deal Could Be Coming in Days

Speaking to reporters after attending Game 3 of the NBA Finals last night, President Trump said the U.S. and Iran are close to a "very, very good deal" that could be finalized in the next few days. Trump has made several similar promises since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran back at the end of February, only for no deal to materialize. The latest comments from Trump come after Israel and Iran launched strikes against each other over the weekend. Israel reportedly issued an evacuation warning in southern Lebanon this morning, potentially adding another hurdle as Israel's attacks in Lebanon have been one of the sticking points in U.S. and Iran talks.

OpenAI Confidentially Files With SEC for IPO

OpenAI said Monday afternoon that the company has filed confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. OpenAI said it has no timeline for an initial public offering, as there are still "things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company." That means it could still be a while before investors see a prospectus with details on the ChatGPT maker's financials. Investors are eager to see whether OpenAI has a path to profitability as the company burns through billions training and running its chatbot. OpenAI joins Anthropic, which has also confidentially filed, and SpaceX, which is set to debut as soon as this week, in a trio of IPOs that will test investors' appetites for not-yet profitable AI companies with massive valuations.

Nuvalent Stock Soars on Deal to Be Acquired by GSK

Shares of Nuvalent (NUVL) are surging after an announcement that the pharmaceutical company has agreed to be acquired by GSK (GSK). The British drugmaker said Tuesday that it will acquire Nuvalent for $124 per share, or a total equity value of $10.6 billion, touting two of the company's drugs in development that treat a form of lung cancer. GSK CEO Luke Miels called the two drugs "potential best-in-class assets" that could launch this year if they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Nuvalent shares were up nearly 40% in recent premarket trading, poised to hit a new all-time high above $120. U.S.-listed shares of GSK were down slightly ahead of the opening bell.

Vail Resorts Stock Slips on Weak Outlook

Shares of Vail Resorts (MTN) are sliding, a day after the ski resort operator lowered its full-year forecasts for the second time this year. The company cited "one of the worst snowfall years in history in the western U.S.," which has hampered demand for skiing and snowboarding. CEO Rob Katz said the company saw "extremely unfavorable" weather persist in its fiscal third quarter. Vail Resorts said it now expects full-year profits of $128 million to $162 million, down from the previous range of $144 million to $190 million. Shares were down 5% recently, and are on track to fall back into negative territory for the year.

Oracle shares are up about 9% so far this year.
Credit: Michael Nagle / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

• Oracle's latest earnings report is slated to be released Wednesday afternoon, with the cloud firm's stock seen making a big swing after the results.
• Analysts expect Oracle to report growing revenue and profits as big tech companies invest heavily in AI.

Oracle is set to report earnings after the closing bell Wednesday, with the cloud computing giant's stock seen making a big swing after the results.

Recent options pricing suggests trading expect Oracle's (ORCL) stock could swing up to 11% in either direction by the end of the week. A move of that magnitude from Monday's close could see the tech firm's stock rise to around $236, or slip back below $188.

Oracle shares have added about 9% in 2026 so far, rebounding from their February lows amid a broader tech rally and improving sentiment around the AI trade in recent months. Still, they remain nearly 40% off their September highs, as concerns about Oracle's outsized exposure to OpenAI and its debt load to build out its network of data centers have weighed on the shares.

Why This Matters to Investors

Oracle's latest earnings could offer investors more insights into Oracle's trajectory, after the company has made cuts to its workforce to support its big spending plans.

UBS analysts, who recently lifted their price target to $285 from $250, said investors will likely be looking for assurances about Oracle's ability to continue bringing more data center capacity online, and updates around Oracle's capital expenditures.

Oracle is projected to report fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $19.1 billion, up about 20% year-over-year, while adjusted earnings per share are seen growing to $1.97 from $1.70 a year ago. Oracle's backlog is seen growing to a record $592.52 million, according to Visible Alpha estimates.

Wall Street analysts are widely bullish on Oracle, with all but one of the 11 analysts with current ratings tracked by Visible Alpha recommending buying the stock, while one calls it a "sell." Their mean price target of $257 would suggest more than 20% upside from Monday's close.