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Briefing.com Summary:
*Palantir and Teradyne have injected some added enthusiasm in the AI trade with their earnings results and guidance.
*Walt Disney has tapped Josh D'Amarco to be its next CEO.
*PayPal is sinking after its earnings report and the related news that it has hired a new CEO.
The stock market got swept off its feet yesterday by the encouraging ISM Manufacturing Index and was carried to the doorstep of a new record high. There was ample growth enthusiasm wrapped up in the move, evidenced by the outperformance of the micro-cap stocks, small-cap stocks, high-beta stocks, and semiconductor stocks.
There is added enthusiasm today, too, although it stems more from the earnings news than it does from the economic data. The December JOLTS - Job Openings report was supposed to be released today, but it has been delayed, along with Friday's Employment Situation report for January, due to the government shutdown.
The House is scheduled to hold a vote today to reopen the government.
In the meantime, Palantir (PLTR) and Teradyne (TER) have helped put a bid in the equity futures market by sharing some better-than-expected earnings results and guidance that was tied to AI-related activity. PLTR is up 12% and TER is up 22%.
Their news has injected some enthusiasm into the tech sector in general, which explains the outperformance of the Nasdaq 100 futures.
Currently, the S&P 500 futures are up 13 points and are trading 0.2% above fair value, the Nasdaq 100 futures are up 120 points and are trading 0.5% above fair value, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are down 16 points and are trading fractionally below fair value.
Walt Disney (DIS), up 1.0%, is lending the DJIA futures some needed support. The move in DIS follows the news that the company's board elected Disney Experiences Chairman, Josh D'Amaro, to be the new CEO, effective at the annual meeting on March 18. Current CEO, Bob Iger, will serve as Senior Advisor and member of the board until his retirment on December 31.
Merck (MRK), however, has been an offsetting influence, down 0.9% after posting better-than-expected Q4 results but issuing disappointing FY26 guidance.
Pfizer (PFE) isnlt helping the health care space either. It is down 4% after its earnings report and update that its ultra-long-lasting injectable GLP-1 RA met the primary endpoint in its Phase 2b trial. In other words, there is still a good bit of time and testing left until it gets to an approval stage.
Separately, investors are disapproving of PayPal's (PYPL) latest earnings results. The stock is down 17% after coming up short of estimates and announcing that Enrique Lores, who had been CEO of HP, Inc. (HPQ), will be the new CEO, effective March 1.
PepsiCo's (PEP) report passed muster on the top and bottom lines. The stock is up 1% in pre-market trading and is competing with a Wall Street Journal report that suggests PepsiCo is planning price cuts up to 15% on some of its snack products.
There are no more price cuts at the moment, though, for metals prices. Gold futures are up 6.8% to $4,968.30/toz., while silver futures have surged 15.4% to $88.92/toz., with some speculative buy-the-dip energy at work.
