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Warm-Up
- Silver, Gold and Crypto (oh my)
- Need a stock for CTP
- Hang on - Wild ride here
- Superbowl, Olympics- Wait until you hear about the CAPex spending!
- Shakeup in Dietville

Markets
- Massive moved during the week -
- Bitcoin clipped $60k before rebounding
- DJIA tops 50,000 for the first time
- Wait until you hear about the CAPex spending!
- CAT == 1,100 points on the DJIA in 2026

Superbowl and Superbowl ads
- Game review
- Any ad stick out?
- $10M per ad this year
- Half Time with Bad Bunny?
- Anthropic busting on OpenAi

Last Week!
- Massive moved - quick calc showed that about $1T was wiped from market caps in the sell-off, particularly in tech names.
- HOWEVER - Friday alone is estimated to have added $1.5T to market cap

AI Ripping Through
- Plenty of names getting cooked over AI announcements
- First it was the software companies
- Now there are names in legal and finance that got clocked
- Today - Altruist.ai can do tax planning and that hurt companies in financial space

Earnings Season Update
- Reporting so far: 59% of S&P 500 companies have reported Q4 2025 results.
- Beat rate: 76% have topped EPS estimates (vs. 5-yr average: 78% (slightly lower) vs. 10-yr average: 76% (in line)
- Magnitude of beats (aggregate): earnings are 7.6% above estimates vs. 5-yr average: 7.7% (about the same) vs. 10-yr average: 7.0% (a bit better)
- Nothing great,  like Goldilocks

Earnings Highlights
- Palantir (PLTR): Reported strong Q4 results early in the week , beating estimates with revenue ~$1.41B (vs. ~$1.33B expected) and EPS $0.25 (vs. $0.23). Guidance for 2026 was upbeat (~61% revenue growth). Shares rallied sharply initially (~7–11% post-earnings), but gave back some gains amid broader tech volatility (e.g., down ~11–22% in parts of the week from peaks).
- AMD: Reported mid-week, beating EPS (~$1.53 vs. lower expectations) with solid data center growth (~39%). However, Q1 guidance disappointed relative to high expectations in the AI chip space. Shares sank dramatically — down ~15–17% the next day, with some reports noting up to 20%+ drops at points, contributing to broader chip sector pressure.
- Alphabet (GOOGL/GOOG): Reported beating on revenue (~$113.8B) and EPS (~$2.82), with strong core performance. But capex guidance for 2026 ($175–$185B, roughly double prior levels) sparked AI spending worries. Shares dipped post-earnings (down ~0.5–5% initially, flat to lower the next day, with some volatility pulling it below key moving averages).
- Amazon (AMZN): Reported after hours on February 5, with mixed results — EPS ~$1.95 (narrow miss vs. ~$1.97 expected), but solid overall. The big negative was a surprise $200B capex forecast for 2026 (well above expectations), tied to AI/cloud buildout. Shares plunged sharply — down ~7–10% in after-hours/extended trading, with Friday moves around -5–8% in some sessions.

Recent Tech CAPEX announcements
- Amazon (AMZN) — Guided to approximately $200 billion in capex for 2026 (a massive jump from ~$125–131 billion in 2025, with ~80% likely AI-related per analyst commentary). This was the largest single-company figure and a major surprise, contributing heavily to the week's "wild" reactions.
- Alphabet (GOOGL/GOOG) — Guided to $175–185 billion in capex for 2026 (roughly double the $91 billion spent in 2025, far above analyst expectations of ~$115–119 billion). Emphasis was on AI compute capacity, servers, data centers, and networking to meet demand for Gemini and cloud services.
- Meta Platforms (META) — Guidance from late January (but heavily discussed last week): $115–135 billion for 2026 (up significantly from ~$70–72 billion in 2025, potentially an ~87% increase).
- Microsoft (MSFT) — No new full explicit 2026 guidance in early February (fiscal year runs July–June), but recent quarterly run-rate and analyst projections put it around $97–145 billion (with some sources citing ~$105 billion or higher based on Q2 spending trends and signals of continued growth from prior levels of ~$88 billion in FY2025).
------!!!!Combined 2026 capex projected at $635–665 billion (low/high ends) or up to $650–700 billion in some reports — a ~60–74% increase from their collective ~$381 billion in 2025.

Market Reaction from all of this....
- Markets were a bit spooked on the Anthropic announcement earlier in the week - software sold off and set a sour mood
- Microsoft dumped pretty hard as the amount of spend was higher than anticipated, especially with some slower growth in Azure.
- Amazon took a beating on the increased spend they anticipate *(extra by $50B)
- BUT: Friday markets rallied as there was realization that the $200B spend by Amazon would seep into the economy and fuel infrastructure spending along with chips, tech etc.

Other Earnings of Interest
-  Reddit reported fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday in which the social media company beat on the top and bottom lines.
- The company said it expects first-quarter sales to come in the range of $595 million to $605 million, which is higher than Wall Street expectations of $577 million.
- Reddit also announced a $1 billion share repurchase program.
- Reddit gets about $250 million a year from OpenAi and Google to have your data for training their LLMs

While we are on the subject
- Friday, DJIA hit 50,000 - first time ever!
- Up 1,200 point of which approx 350 was from caterpillar and 280 was from Goldman Sachs

Hats off to WalMart
- Walmart Inc. shares pushed its market capitalization past $1 trillion on Tuesday for the first time ever|
- Big transformation over the pst year - Walmart has maintained its appeal to households looking for value, its online offerings are drawing new, wealthier shoppers seeking convenience.

Google Bond Offering
- Issuing several tranches of bonds, denominated in Stirling - one as long as 100 years
- Would you buy that?
- The Google parent is set to raise $20 billion from a US dollar bond offering on Monday — more than the $15 billion initially expected — and is also pitching investors on what would be its first ever offerings in Switzerland and the UK.
- The latter would include a rare sale of 100-year bonds, the first time a tech company has tried such an offering since the dotcom frenzy of the late 1990s

Fat Profits in Dietville
- Really interesting sequence of events happening...
- Hims launches compounded pill at prices as low as $49 per month
- Analysts cite questions on efficacy, legality of pill
- Hims' move shifts focus from Novo's strong Wegovy pill launch
- Broader obesity market whipsawed as pricing pressure rises

THEN..
- Hims and Hers Health shares dive 14% after hours on Friday (Down 25% on Monday)
- FDA cites concerns over quality, safety, federal law
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday it would take action against telehealth provider Hims & Hers, for its $49 weight-loss pill, including restricting access to the drug's ingredients and referring the company to the Department of Justice for potential violations of federal law.

AND....
- Eli Lilly last Wednesday posted fourth-quarter earnings and revenue and 2026 guidance that blew past estimates, as demand for its blockbuster weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro soars.
- The pharmaceutical giant anticipates its 2026 revenue will come in between $80 billion and $83 billion. Analysts expected revenue of $77.62 billion, according to LSEG.
- Meanwhile, NOVO had a really bad outlook that took the shares down 13% after the report.

Japan Markets Soar
- Japanese stocks jumped to a record high Monday, leading gains in the region after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi won a landmark election victory.
- The ruling Liberal Democratic Party captured a two-thirds supermajority in the 465-seat lower house, public broadcaster NHK reported.
- Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped past 57,000 for the first time before paring gains to close 3.9% higher at 56,363.94, while the Topix also notched a record high, closing at 3,783.94, up 2.3%.

Employment Report?
- Government shutdown is forcing them to postpone again (Which is dumb)
- Number due this Wednesday
- Maybe because of this:U.S. employers announced 108,435 layoffs for the month, up 118% from the same period a year ago and 205% from December 2025. The total marked the highest for any January since 2009.
- At the same time, companies announced just 5,306 new hires, also the lowest January since 2009, which is when Challenger, Gray & Christmas began tracking such data.
- Also, job openings fell sharply in December to 6.54 million, to their lowest since September 2020. - Available jobs are down by more than 900,000 just since October.
- NO! Ai and advancements in tech have noting to do with this! NO NO NO

M&A
- Texas Instruments Inc. has reached an agreement to buy Silicon Laboratories Inc. for about $7.5 billion, deepening its exposure to several markets for chips.
- Silicon Labs investors will receive $231 in cash for each share of the company’s common stock and the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027.
- The transaction still needs to win approval by investors in Silicon Labs and shares of Silicon Labs surged by 51% to $206.48 after the announcement.

Inflation - This helps
- PepsiCo (PEP.O), opens new tab will cut prices on core brands such as Lay's and Doritos by up to 15% following a consumer backlash against several previous price hikes, the snacks and beverage maker said on Tuesday after it topped fourth-quarter results.

Miran - Moving
- Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran is leaving his post as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, CNBC has confirmed.
- He joined the CEA in January 2025, but had been on leave from that post since last September when he filled the unexpired term of former Fed Governor Adriana Kugler.- He reamins on Fed board

No Biggie????
- There are some astonishing cased being reported of Bad AI in the operating room
- JNJ's TruDi Navigation System - Since AI was added to the device, the FDA has received unconfirmed reports of at least 100 malfunctions and adverse events.
- At least 10 people were injured between late 2021 and November 2025, according to the reports. Most allegedly involved errors in which the TruDi Navigation System misinformed surgeons about the location of their instruments while they were using them inside patients’ heads during operations.
- Cerebrospinal fluid reportedly leaked from one patient’s nose. In another reported case, a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients each allegedly suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured.

Cuba
- The main airport has putt out a bulletin that they are out of Jet Fuel
- Blackouts and lack of other fuels are creating big problems
- No airlines have stopped running at this point, but many will as they cannot refuel
- This is a bigger problem for cargo planes (supplies) that may not be able to risk flying to Cuba as they will not be able to get out.

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