Meta's Hot, Microsoft's Not, Wallets Open for OpenAI
Let's look at the mega-cap earnings blast and talk of OpenAI's newest funding as we take critical minerals report with a grain of salt.
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I Won't Back Down
Well, I know what's right
I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin' me around
But I'll stand my ground
And I won't back down
- Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), 1989
... And So, It Began
On Thursday evening, mega-cap big tech began the arduous task of reporting fourth quarter financial results. Meta Platforms (META) beat Wall Street's expectations with those results, but hit the ball out of the park with revenue guidance for the current quarter. Tesla (TSLA) suffered a year-over-year contraction in revenue generation, but still managed to beat expectations. Those two stocks, especially META, performed especially well overnight.
Microsoft (MSFT) easily beat consensus view for the period reported. That, however, is where the fun stopped. MSFT was paid a visit by the ugly stick overnight after capital expenditures soared and the pace of sales growth for the Azure cloud-computing platform slowed. This evening, we'll hear from Apple (AAPL) . Among other mega-caps, Amazon (AMZN) and Alphabet (GOOGL) will step to the plate next week and you still have to wait a month for Nvidia (NVDA) to publish some numbers.
While We're on The Topic...
Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft are reportedly in discussion now to invest up to $60 billion in OpenAI. These companies are said to be close to remitting term sheets of investment commitments to the still privately held (difficult to call) "start-up." OpenAI is considered to be the world's most valuable private company, valued at more than $500 billion as recently as late 2025.
Nvidia is thought to potentially be responsible for up to half of that total by itself. Japan's Softbank (SFTBY) is also said to be in talks with OpenAI about investing as much as $30 billion on its own, separate from the above three mega-caps. No, kids, capital spending on generative and agentic (not the same thing) artificial intelligence is not going away and is not going to fade. Learn to defend yourself.
Huang: Up to China, Now
On Thursday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told reporters in Taiwan, "I'm hoping the (mainland) Chinese government will allow Nvidia to sell the H200. It's up to the Chinese government now. They are still deciding and we are waiting patiently."
Huang did say that he has met with government officials and possible customers on his recent trip to China.
That said, his company has seen no new orders from that nation, despite reports that Beijing had told several of China's largest tech firms to prepare orders for those chips. That news was the primary reason why the shares of Nvidia and the shares of key competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) were hot on Thursday. AMD has its own AI-capable chips designed to compete with the H200 in China.
Norway?!
... That Norges Bank Investment Management, overseer of Norway's $2.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund, reduced that funds holdings of major U.S. tech stocks such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet in late 2025, but increased its overall holdings of U.S.-based investment from 52.4% of the fund to 52.9% over the July through December period. Was this the catalyst behind the sideways to lower move for some of those major tech stocks that we had seen over recent weeks, and the broadening out of U.S. equity market success into small and mid-caps? Especially if other key, systemically important funds played copycat into January.
Rug Pull?
Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration was stepping back from plans to guarantee minimum prices for domestic critical mineral projects. This was the "why" behind the serious beatdown suffered by the shares of USA Rare Earth (USAR) , Critical Metals (CRML), Ramaco Resources (METC), MP Materials (MP) , Lithium Americas (LAC) and others over the course of the regular session. Both METC and LAC are "Stocks Under $10" names and Sarge-folio holdings.
MP Materials responded to the story at Reuters on Wednesday evening. MP's statement read, "Today's Reuters report is inaccurate, misleading, and inconsistent with the facts. It follows a pattern of speculative and misleading reporting that has repeatedly mischaracterized government policy and caused unnecessary confusion in the marketplace."
The statement goes on to say, "There has been no change whatsoever to our contract or to the government's obligations under it."
What If ... Nobody Cared About FOMC?
What if the Federal Reserve Bank's Federal Open Market Committee released a policy statement and nobody cared? Not even a little. That was Wednesday. What if lame duck Fed chair Jerome Powell held a press conference and nobody cared? Never thought you'd live to see that day, but up and down Wall Street, while journalists tried their best to make it a news event, literally nobody cared. I have never seen a monetary policy decision that nobody talked about among themselves until yesterday.
If you had the TV on mute, you would never have even known that Chair Powell was even speaking. I had never seen anything like that. Until yesterday. I heard baseball talk on Wednesday. I heard some Minneapolis, Minnesota talk. I did not hear a word from other traders about the Fed. It just was not anyone's focus.
Marketplace
Meh. That was the word. The S&P 500 closed as close to "unchanged" as an index can in the decimal era, at -0.01%. The Nasdaq Composite "roared" to a gain of 0.17%. The Semis had a good day thanks to a 11% run by Intel (INTC) and a 9.6% pop for SanDisk (SNDK) . Micron (MU) also gained 6% for the session. Small caps stumbled again, that streak of out-performance now long over. The Russell 2000 lost 0.49% for the session.
Losers beat winners at the NYSE by a rough three-to-two margin and by about seven-to-four at the Nasdaq. Advancing volume took a 48.4% share of composite Nasdaq-listed trade and a 40.3% share of composite NYSE-listed trade. Additionally, aggregate trade was slightly higher on a day over day basis across both NYSE and Nasdaq-listed securities.
Does that make Wednesday a "Day One" bearish reversal of trend? Not even a chance. The Nasdaq Composite closed in the green, and the S&P 500 closed practically unchanged. The increased volume was not dramatic and was produced by algorithmic churn, not professional decision making.
Note to Readers
Rock on my brothers and sisters.
Economics
(All Times Eastern)
08:30 - Initial Jobless Claims (Weekly): Expecting 203K, Last 200K.
08:30 - Continuing Claims (Weekly): Last 1.849M.
08:30 - Non-Farm Productivity (Q3-rev): Flashed 4.9% q/q, SAAR.
08:30 - Unit Labor Costs (Q3-rev): Flashed -1.9% q/q, SAAR.
08:30 - Balance of Trade (Nov): Last $-29.4B.
10:00 - Factory Orders (Nov): Expecting 0.5% m/m, Last -1.3% m/m.
10:00 - Wholesale Inventories (Nov): Expecting 0.2% m/m, Last 0.2% m/m.
The Fed
(All Times Eastern)
No public appearances scheduled.
Today's Earnings Highlights (Consensus EPS Expectations)
Before the Open: (CAT) (4.71), (HON) (2.53), (LHX) (2.76), (LMT) (5.96), (MA) (4.24), (NSC) (2.76), (TMO) (6.45), (VLO) (3.16)
After the Close: (AAPL) (2.68), (KLAC) (8.80), (SNDK) (3.45), (SYK) (4.39), (WDC) (1.92)
At the time of publication, Guilfoyle was long AMZN, NVDA, AMD, INTC equity.
