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postUS stock futures held steady on Thursday, signaling a reprieve after a two-day tech sell-off as investors waited for Amazon earnings and assessed Alphabet’s big AI spending plans.
S&P 500 futures (ES=F) moved up 0.1%, while those on the Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) rose 0.3%. Contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F), which includes fewer tech names, hovered just below the flat line.
Investors may be ready to move on from this week’s trillion-dollar tech wipeout, as they weigh whether some software stocks took too big a beating. The losses were spurred by worries about AI disruption — a risk maybe overlooked by investors focused on the fallout from massive AI spending, analysts said.
Wall Street is still digesting the latest batch of corporate earnings, with Big Tech’s AI buildout and demand in high focus. Alphabet (GOOG) shares fell after the Google parent outlined a significant ramp-up in AI investment — to as high as $185 billion — in its quarterly results late Wednesday.
The countdown is now on to Amazon’s (AMZN) quarterly report, set for release after Thursday’s market close. Eyes are on the all-important AWS cloud unit, expected to deliver a 21% jump in sales.
At the same time, silver (SI=F) plunged as much as 17%, erasing all of its two-day recovery as Chinese buyers dumped holdings. While the precious metal is now paring losses to around 10%, Wall Street is debating whether the recent record rally in silver and gold (GC=F) ran too high, too fast, and a further slump awaits.
Elsewhere, bitcoin (BTC-USD) sank after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ruled out a bailout for the digital currency — another disappointment for crypto markets hopeful for a boost from the Trump administration. The token was on the cusp of breaking below the key $70,000 level, seen as potentially prompting another wave of selling amid a crisis of confidence.
An update on weekly jobless claims due later is in focus after an ADP report showed businesses added fewer jobs in January than expected. The data is in higher focus than usual, given the now-ended partial government shutdown has delayed the release of the official monthly jobs report to next Wednesday.
LIVE 10 updates
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Trillion-dollar tech wiipeout ensnares all stocks in AI’s path
From Bloomberg:
There have been many AI-driven selloffs in the three years since ChatGPT burst into the mainstream. Nothing, though, quite rivals the rout rippling through stock and credit markets this week.
For one, there’s the sheer speed and breadth of it. In the span of two days, hundreds of billions of dollars were wiped off the value of stocks, bonds and loans of companies big and small across Silicon Valley. Software stocks were at the epicenter, plunging so much that the value of those tracked in an iShares ETF has now dropped almost $1 trillion over the past seven days.
For another, this drubbing, unlike many previous ones, was triggered not by fears of a bubble but rather concern that AI is on the verge of supplanting the business models of a wide swathe of companies that doomsayers have long predicted were at risk.
“I don’t think it is an overreaction,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at Jonestrading. “For two years, we have been talking about how AI is going to change the world and that it is a multi-generational technology. In the past few weeks, we have seen signs of it in practice.”
The spark was innocuous on its face: AI startup Anthropic PBC (ANTH.PVT) released a new tool for legal work, like reviewing contracts. On its own, the product isn’t seen as a game-changer — yet. But coming after a year in which Anthropic’s coding tools helped transform software development — part of a broader wave of AI innovation — the four-paragraph launch announcement was taken extremely seriously.
“While today it’s legal tech, tomorrow it might be sales or marketing or finance,” wrote Jackson Ader, an analyst at KeyBanc.
Read more here.
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Bitcoin sinks after Treasury Secretary Bessent says US government can’t tell banks to bail out crypto
Bitcoin (BTC-USD) tumbled, falling $71,000 per token on Thursday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the US government would not bail out the cryptocurrency.
But the leading cryptocurrency was paring deeper overnight losses in the wake of Bessent’s comments, after entering the key mid-$70,000 support region.
Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré and Grace O’Donnell report:
Read more here.
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Snap reports upbeat fourth quarter revenue as holiday season boosts ad spending
Snap (SNAP) stock galloped higher after a strong holiday quarter for advertising lifted earnings above Wall Street’s estimates.
Snap stock rose 6% before the bell on Thursday.
For the fourth quarter, the video messaging app reported revenue of $1.71 billion and earnings per share of $0.03. That beat Wall Street estimates of $1.7 billion in revenue and a $0.03 loss per share, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Reuters reports:
Read more here.
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E.l.f. Beauty stock jumps on upbeat profit guidance
E.l.f. Beauty (ELF) demonstrated resilience in the fourth quarter following a difficult 2025, with a strong earnings beat and guidance raise.
The affordable cosmetics manufacturer lifted its full-year 2026 sales outlook to a range of $1.6 billion to $1.61 billion from its previous range of $1.55 billion to $1.57 billion. The company also sees greater earnings per share of $3.05-$3.10, an increase from the previous range of $2.80-$2.85.
The stock soared by as much as 8% in premarket trading on Thursdayas the company looks to regain its footing after higher tariffs and other challenges led the stock to lose 40% in 2025. However, the stock pared some of those gains, perhaps due to lower gross margins amid ongoing tariff costs.
Last year, the company also acquired Hailey Bieber’s Rhode brand.
In the fourth quarter, e.l.f. reported better-than-expected earnings per share of $0.65 versus $0.55 expected by Wall Street analysts. Net sales jumped 38% to $489.5 million, topping estimates of $461 million, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
“Our value proposition, powerhouse innovation and disruptive marketing engine continue to fuel our brands,” CEO Tarang Amin said in a statement. “We remain confident in our ability to grow market share and deliver best-in-class growth in beauty, as reflected by our raised fiscal 2026 outlook.”
Read more about e.l.f.’s quarter from Reuters.
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Arm Holdings shares fall as licensing sales miss estimates
Arm Holdings shares fall as licensing sales miss estimates.
From Reuters:
Read more here.
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Broadcom jumps as Alphabet raises its capex forecast
Broadcom stock rose 5% before the bell on Thursday following Alphabet’s capital expenditure news, which surpassed analysts’ expectations.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, forecast 2026 capital expenditures of $180 billion, news which helps Broadcom, which partners with Alphabet on custom chips.
“That is an incredible number. We are laughing because that number is so good for the Google cohort,” Reitzes told CNBC.
Google is not the only company increasing its capex spend to build AI data centers, Oracle is doing the same and raised its forecast to around $50 billion.
Google’s AI software doesn’t just use Nvidia chips, but it also uses its own tensor processing units (TPUs). For Gemini 3, Google used TPUs, which Broadcom helped to make.
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Silver’s sudden 17% plunge wipes out two-day recovery from rout
Bloomberg reports:
Silver (SI=F) fell sharply, wiping out a two-day recovery, as the white metal struggled to find a floor following a historic market rout. Gold (GC=F) also declined.
Spot silver plunged as much as 17% on Thursday, having flickered briefly above $90 an ounce in early Asian trading. After a record-breaking rally that appeared to run too far, too fast, the metal has retreated by more than a third from an all-time high hit on Jan. 29.
“Sentiment seems to have turned soggy across most asset classes, including regional equities and metals,” said Christopher Wong, a strategist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. This has created “a feedback loop amid thin market liquidity,” he said.
The sudden and sharp decline in precious metals also weighed on sentiment in base metals markets, with copper falling more than 1% to slip below $13,000 a ton. Meanwhile, spot gold dropped as much as 3.5% in choppy trading.
Read more here.
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Qualcomm stock dives as memory chip shortage weighs on financial outlook
Qualcomm (QCOM) stock fell around 11% in premarket trading on Thursday after the chip designer’s results beat on the top and bottom lines but its forecast was lighter than expected. A memory chip shortage stemming from data center developers scooping up chips and chipmakers shifting production to cater to AI demand added pressure to the company’s outlook.
In the fiscal first quarter, the company said revenue increased 5% year over year to $12.3 billion, while earnings per share rose to $2.78. Qualcomm beat analyst estimates on the top and bottom lines, with consensus estimates forecasting $12.1 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $2.75, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
However, the outlook for the fiscal second quarter dimmed as a supply crunch in memory chips weighs on margins and the smartphone market.
Second quarter revenue is expected in the range of $10.2 billion to $11 billion (analysts were looking for $11 billion at the midpoint). Adjusted diluted earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $2.45 to $2.65 (the Street was hoping for $2.87).
“While our near-term handsets outlook is impacted by industry-wide memory supply constraints, we are encouraged by end-consumer demand for premium and high tier smartphones, and remain on track to achieve our fiscal 2029 revenue goals,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said in the earnings release.
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Computer makers debate turning to Chinese chip makers to combat supply deficit
Reuters reports:
Read more here.
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Gold returns to over $5,000 after record fall
Bloomberg reports:
Read more here.
