#market-sentiment

#market-sentiment

Given good results no longer mean a good reaction, perhaps it's only natural to think about taking a few chips off the table, at least until Dr. Michael Burry, who maintains his bearish bets against the company, looks to cover and move on. After a disappointing move to an impressive quarter, though, the stock is becoming cheaper.

When an asset is hated, owning the physical metal is the cleanest way to be right. When an asset is loved, the physical metal starts to be an inefficient way to capture further upside.

Remodeler sentiment remained generally positive in the first quarter, as it was at the end of last year, even as many remodelers are still working to manage their customers' cost expectations.

The Fear & Greed Index compresses volatility, trading volume, social media sentiment, Bitcoin dominance, and Google Trends into a single number between 0 and 100. Below 25 means extreme fear, 26 to 49 is fear, 50 to 74 is greed, and above 75 is extreme greed. Crypto markets typically spend only 15% to 20% of their time below 25, so 34 days there means the market sentiment has been in extreme fear for a long period.

S&P 500 futures are down 0.22% this morning after the index closed down 0.21% yesterday. The STOXX Europe 600 fell more than a full point in early trading. Asia had a good day on news that the International Energy Agency is preparing the largest release of strategic oil reserves in its history.

In 2026, we are deliberately prioritizing user growth and teaching better. We'll focus on improving the free learner experience to grow word of mouth and feed our next user growth engines like chess, math and music, even though that moderates near-term financial growth.

The markets are higher out of the gate, with technology leaders including Nvidia and Oracle leading the way. Traders and investors are looking to Nvidia's earnings report after the bell alongside comments from CEO Jensen Huang to improve market sentiment, which has taken a hit of late, with the Nasdaq Composite clocking declines of 3% over the past month.

A major problem for software companies is that their opponent is largely hypothetical. Even if both companies report blockbuster earnings, there's still the counterargument that AI will eventually eat their lunch.

DoorDash ( Nasdaq: DASH), Figma ( NYSE: FIG) and eBay ( Nasdaq: EBAY) all report calendar Q4 2025 earnings tonight after the close. The companies represent starkly different corners of the internet economy: one powering local delivery at scale, another reinventing a 30-year-old marketplace with AI, and a third a recent SaaS IPO. Yet, each stock has been under the same pressure recently. Fears around AI disruption have sent each of these company's stock south.

Berkshire slashed its Amazon position by 77%, continuing a pattern of reducing big tech exposure. This follows Berkshire's well-documented Apple trimming and reflects Buffett's broader cash-raising mode as the company transitions to Greg Abel's leadership. Buffett has never been comfortable with businesses he doesn't fully understand, and Amazon's sprawling empire of AWS, advertising, and retail may be too complex for his taste.

The meeting, held from 19 to 23 January under the theme "A Spirit of Dialogue," took place at a time when the global situation still feels uncomfortable. Inflation has eased in some places, but not enough to make central banks relaxed. Growth is holding in parts of the world and slowing in others. Debt remains high, and trade has become more political.

The quantum computing stocks boomed for most of 2025, only to go bust in the last quarter. In 2026, it's been mostly looking lower for many of the top quantum plays, including some of the more speculative plays. That said, the technology is still worth keeping tabs on, even as the quantum pure-play stocks continue to take more backward steps. Of course, investors have taken on more of a risk-off approach in the past couple of quarters.

At the time of writing, gold is down to $4,700 per Troy Ounce, having sat comfortably above $5,000 for the latter part of January. Silver is also down to $80 per Troy Ounce, similarly dropping on Thursday when news that Kevin Warsh would receive the nomination for Fed chairman firmed up. The price of precious metals, seen as an asset of safe haven, had pushed steadily higher over the past year in response to economic volatility.

Here's the thing about The Trade Desk's upcoming report: the numbers almost don't matter. I mean, they do -- analysts want roughly $841 million in revenue (up from $749 million) and $0.34 per share in earnings (down from $0.59). Management guided for revenue of at least $840 million. But this stock fell after strong reports all 2025 long. The market is in a mood, and even solid numbers are no guarantee of a bullish Street reaction.

When Oracle failed to meet revenue expectations and suggested that large-scale data centers may not be ready until 2028, it immediately chilled sentiment across the entire sector. On the same day the Dow pushed to new highs, the Nasdaq was hit hard, with anything even loosely tied to AI selling off aggressively. That divergence told us the market was reassessing the timeline, not the technology.

The company is seeking a $1.5 trillion valuation - the richest listing in history, per Bloomberg. Combined with other possible listings, Bloomberg estimates that as much as $2.9 trillion worth of private companies could go public next year. Other AI-linked "centicorns" - companies valued at $100-billion plus-are reportedly weighing listings, including Databricks and Anthropic. OpenAI has an implied valuation of over $500 billion, fueling speculation about a future stock listing, though it has attempted to tamp that down.

"OpenAI was the golden child earlier this year, and Alphabet was looked at in a very different light," said Brett Ewing, chief market strategist at First Franklin Financial Services. "Now sentiment is much more tempered toward OpenAI."

What I find most fascinating about the markets in general (mostly the headlines in the financial media) is the amount of certainty that can go into bullish or bearish calls. Whichever side of the fence a particular analyst or talking head finds themselves on, I feel as though a given position can become more entrenched over time. For the better part of the past two decades, bulls have been correct in digging their heels in and calling recession calls "insane," or at least unlikely.

It will certainly be interesting to write the obituary for 2025. Given that there's one month left in this fiscal year (plenty of time for lots to take place), I wouldn't be surprised to either see an incredible Santa Claus rally materialize into year end, or a continuation of some of the bearish momentum we've seen build form into a full-blown market selloff as investors reposition their portfolios for more downside as this AI selloff continues.

Alphabet Inc. ( NASDAQ: GOOG) shares climbed 2.1% on Friday, November 28, 2025, as retail sentiment surged to 64 (bullish) while NVIDIA Corporation ( NASDAQ: NVDA) sentiment dropped to 33 (bearish). The catalyst: reports that Meta Platforms Inc. ( NASDAQ:META) is in advanced talks to spend billions on Google's TPU chips instead of NVIDIA's GPUs, triggering discussion about the first real crack in NVIDIA's dominance.