#stock-market-reaction

#stock-market-reaction

Shares of Dollar General Corp (NYSE: DG) fell more than 6% in premarket trading on Thursday following the report's early-morning release. And yet the discount retailer's financial results include figures such as a 5.9% increase year-over-year (YOY) in quarter-four, with net sales increasing to $10.9 billion.

Out of all the earnings periods Target reports over the year, Q4 is the most important because covers the holiday shopping season when consumers are traditionally most willing to spend on non-discretionary items-a category that is Target's bread and butter.

Nvidia posted record quarterly revenue of $68.1bn for October-December 2025, up 20% compared with the third quarter of last year and a sizzling 73% more than a year earlier. The company said sales were being driven by accelerated computing and AI, with customers scrambling to get their hands on its high-powered Blackwell chip.

Specifically, analysts pulled some numbers out of their... hat, and decided that Amazon would end up spending $150 billion on CapEx for 2026. Amazon then proclaimed that it was going to be a lot closer to $200 billion ("no worries, you only missed by the GDP of Croatia"), and the industry spent the next two business weeks just beating the absolute stuffing out of their stock for it. How badly? Shares fell 11% after hours, then kept falling for nine straight sessions - the longest losing streak since 2006 - erasing more than $450 billion in market value. That's more than the entire market cap of most companies that analysts are supposedly experts at evaluating.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday brought the issue front-and-center when he pledged in a social media post to stop institutional investors from buying more homes. Some major owners of single-family rental homes were blindsided by the news, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Traders immediately dumped shares thought to be exposed. Blackstone's stock fell as much as 9.3% and Invitation Homes Inc., the biggest owner of rental homes in the US, as much as 10%.

Just yesterday, markets celebrated the latest quarter-point cut from the Federal Reserve, which lowered rates to a range of 3.5% to 3.75%. With that, the S&P 500 closed up at 6,886. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF ( SPY) closed at $687.57. The central bank also announced that it would again purchase short-term bonds, thereby driving down short-term yields. It also removed language that the labor market "remained low."

The contract includes a 20% prepayment and positions IREN as a key hyperscaler partner for the first time. Four new liquid-cooled data centers, Horizon 1 through Horizon 4, will support 200 megawatts of critical IT load, while a separate $5.8 billion agreement with Dell Technologies covers the purchase of GPUs, servers, and associated infrastructure. CEO Daniel Roberts said the partnership could generate roughly $1.94 billion in annualized revenue once fully deployed.

Consumer giant Kimberly-Clark, which makes Huggies diapers and Kleenex tissues, is buying the company that makes Tylenol and Band-Aids in one of the biggest mergers of the year. The deal, worth almost $49 billion, comes at a particularly difficult time for Tylenol-maker Kenvue, after the Trump administration linked acetaminophen the active ingredient in this common painkiller to autism. The assertions came despite a lack of clear scientific evidence, and Kenvue has called them simply false.

This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates. As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced a 0.25% reduction in its target interest rate yesterday, to a range of from 3.75% to 4% - but the stock market reacted almost not at all. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF ( NYSEMKT: VOO) gained less than 0.1% yesterday, and it's down a sizeable 0.5% in early trading this morning.

Mphasis stock fell despite the company saying in a stock exchange filing that it didn't expect the visa charge to impact its financials or operations. The firm, which has offices in several US states, said it has only made around 130 new applications for H-1B visas this year. It added that it has reduced its reliance on the program through local hiring, acquisitions, and partnerships, and said that it plans to address any challenges on this front with AI tools.