Dow Hits All-Time High for Third Straight Session; S&P 500, Nasdaq Slip

Goldman Sachs Issues Warning: Job Market Shifts Against College Graduates

FROM 3 hr 13 min ago

A college degree has long been one of the most reliable guards against unemployment. That shield may be breaking, a new Goldman Sachs analysis argues.

The unemployment rate for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher climbed to 2.8% in December, up from 2.6% a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While still below the national unemployment rate of 4.4%, college-educated workers are facing an increasingly unfavorable labor market compared with other groups.

The unemployment rate fell for workers with no college experience compared with a year prior. It rose for workers with some college experience, those with an associate degree, and those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

While unemployment rates can be volatile month to month, Goldman said labor dynamics could be shifting.

Read the full article here.

–Elizabeth Guevara

AI Giant OpenAI Is Getting a Lift Lately. So Are Stocks Linked to It. Here’s Why

FROM 3 hr 18 min ago

Fresh optimism about OpenAI’s finances is boosting some corners of the AI trade.

Though OpenAI isn’t publicly traded yet, the world’s most valuable private startup has been firing back at worries about its competitiveness and ability to make money lately. That’s helped inject some enthusiasm into the shares of the tech heavyweights increasingly tied to—and whose shares have benefited from—its success. 

The ChatGPT maker said yesterday it’s rolling out ads to its flagship chatbot, in what JPMorgan analysts had suggested ahead of the release would mark a major shift in its ability to monetize the technology.And late last week, as OpenAI released the latest iteration of its code-writing tool Codex, CEO Sam Altman told employees that ChatGPT is “back to exceeding 10% monthly growth,” with an updated model expected sometime this week, according to CNBC. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on that report in time for publication.

OpenAI’s string of positive news lately has been enough to soothe some worries about stiffer competition and whether the company will be able to meet its massive obligations. It has also marked a shift in narratives around the firm; new agentic tools from rival Anthropic recently sent shares of software companies threatened by the tools, along with some stocks tied closely to OpenAI, into a tailspin.

Read the full article here.

–Kara Greenberg

Trump Expects an Economic Miracle From the New Fed Chair

FROM 4 hr 5 min ago

President Donald Trump wants his new pick for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, to achieve something that has rarely been seen outside of wartime: an economic growth rate of 15%.

“We should be at 15%,” Trump said in an interview with FOX Business aired Monday. “If he does the job that he’s capable, we can grow at 15%. I think more than that.”

Trump has long argued that the Fed should cut rates sharply to stimulate economic growth.

The president did not specify his exact growth metric or the timeframe. However, economic growth is usually expressed as the inflation-adjusted annual rate of growth of the Gross Domestic Product. If that is Warsh’s goalpost, meeting it would take a miracle, or if history is a guide, a disaster.

Read the full article here.

–Diccon Hyatt

Major Wall Street Firm Issues Warning on Tech Stocks: What It Means for Investors

FROM 4 hr 14 min ago

Software stocks have found their footing after last week’s rout. Some experts say that’s not reason for optimism.

The chief investment office of UBS downgraded the U.S. technology sector to neutral on Tuesday, citing pervasive uncertainty in the software industry and the likelihood that AI infrastructure spending will moderate soon.

UBS says the spending on AI infrastructure that has fueled the AI rally may be nearing a peak after increasing more than fourfold in the past three years. Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META) and Oracle (ORCL) could report capital expenditures of up to $700 billion this year, a price tag that has at times spooked investors worried that Big Tech will struggle to recoup its investments. 

UBS expects capex growth to moderate from current levels, “which could improve investor perceptions of those doing the spending, but is a potential negative for some companies in the enabling layer.” That includes some of the biggest companies in the S&P 500, including chip giants Nvidia (NVDA), Broadcom (AVGO) and Micron (MU), all of which have seen their sales and earnings swell amid the data center boom.

Read the full article here.

–Colin Laidley

Financial Shares Lead S&P 500 Sector Decliners

FROM 4 hr 42 min ago

Financial stocks are pulling the S&P 500 slightly lower Tuesday afternoon.

The S&P 500 Financials Sector was 1% lower in recent trading, the worst performer of the 11 industries tracked by the benchmark index.

S&P Global (SPGI), Charles Schwab (SCHW), and Raymond James Financial (RJF) were the worst individual performers in the sector, with respective declines of 8.4%, 8.2%, and 7.9%.

Six sectors were in the red with about 90 minutes to go in the training day. Of the five sectors in positive territory, Utilities led the charge with a 2.2% advance.

Datadog Stock Leads S&P 500 Gainers After Q4 Results, Rosy Q1 Outlook

FROM 5 hr 25 min ago

Datadog’s fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter results and current-quarter projections were not ruff.

Datadog shares soared 15% to pace the S&P 500 Tuesday after the company, which describes itself as “the AI-powered observability and security platform for cloud applications,” reported better-than-expected Q4 revenue and adjusted operating income and issued rosy fiscal 2026 guidance.

The New York-based firm posted adjusted operating income of $230 million on revenue that increased 29% year-over-year to $953 million. Analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha had expected $205 million and $918 million, respectively.

For the current quarter, Datadog sees adjusted operating income between $195 million and $205 million and revenue between $951 million and $961 million. Visible Alpha consensus calls for about $196 million and $935 million, respectively.

“Looking forward to 2026, we are excited about our plans to deliver more AI-powered innovation and help our customers with their complex challenges in modern Observability, Security, Software Delivery, Service Management, and Product Analytics,” Datadog co-founder and CEO Olivier Pomel said.

Even with today’s sharp gains, Datadog shares have lost more than 10% of their value over the past year.

Strategy’s Michael Saylor Says ‘We Are Not Going To Be Selling’ as Company Buys More Bitcoin

FROM 6 hr 4 min ago

Strategy is down on its bitcoin purchases—but it’s not out.

Executive chair and bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor in a Tuesday interview with CNBC said that Strategy (MSTR) is “not going to be selling” bitcoin anytime soon—and will continue to buy the world’s largest cryptocurrency every quarter “forever.” The price of the coin is hanging out under $70,000 after last week’s sell-off, which took it close to $60,000.

Crypto-linked stocks are mixed Tuesday, with Coinbase (COIN) and Strategy down slightly. Circle (CRCL) has risen by more than 2%. Read Investopedia’s full coverage of today’s trading here.

That the Strategy chair is vowing not to sell means the company is willing to hold its breath; to bow out now would mean locking in losses with the price of bitcoin below its average cost per coin. At what price buyers will be drawn back in en masse is anyone’s guess, but it would appear that the mid-$70,000s wasn’t the value zone some experts hoped it would be.

Read the full story here.

–Crystal Kim

AI Can Now Handle Your Taxes: Is It the Right Choice for You?

FROM 6 hr 22 min ago

Not long ago, doing your taxes with artificial intelligence meant chatting with a bot while you manually entered numbers into boxes. Today’s AI-powered tax tools deliver much more, allowing you to upload your forms, answer questions conversationally and complete your taxes from start to finish.

While it has many advantages, you’re entrusting quite a bit of information to the process. Your tax return is a legal document filed under your name that represents your entire financial life. If you’re handing that over to AI, you need to carefully consider the risks.

Tax software used to be mostly rules-based. You input X, and the software applied rule Y. AI now enables tools to add additional insight by reading and understanding documents, explaining jargon in plain language and identifying patterns that appear suspect before filing.

Read the full article here.

–Adam Hayes

Spotify Just Reported Its Best Quarter of User Growth Ever. The Stock Is Surging

FROM 7 hr 48 min ago

Spotify’s quarterly profits blew past expectations, and investors are cheering the results.

Shares of Spotify Technology (SPOT) were up over 18% in recent trading after the music, podcast, and audiobook streaming provider reported fourth-quarter results that topped projections. Revenue of 4.53 billion euros ($5.39 billion) narrowly beat estimates, while the streamer’s earnings per share of 4.43 euros came in well above the analyst consensus compiled by Visible Alpha.12

Spotify also said it reached 751 million monthly active users (MAUs) and 290 million premium subscribers, each metric topping estimates. Spotify added 38 million net new monthly active users in the quarter, which Co-CEO Alex Norström said was the company’s largest-ever quarterly rise.

Spotify said it expects 4.5 billion euros of revenue in the first quarter, along with 759 million MAUs and 293 million premium subscribers. Analysts were looking for first-quarter revenue of 4.57 billion euros, with 752.6 million MAUs and 293 million premium subscribers.

The company is widely expected to benefit from rising subscription prices, after Spotify announced plans last month to hike the cost of premium plans starting this month.

Despite Tuesday’s gains, Spotify shares are down about 15% for the year so far, and nearly 40% off their highs last June.

–Aaron McDade

Student Loan Forgiveness Was Paused Most of 2025—But Thousands Still Received It. Here’s How

FROM 8 hr 39 min ago

Although federal student loan borrowers faced many changes to their repayment plans during President Donald Trump’s first year of his second term, thousands still got their debt forgiven last year.

Borrowers faced a pause in forgiveness on income-based repayment plans, a reworking of the Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness program, and an overhaul of the entire repayment system last year. Despite the changes, roughly 121,000 received forgiveness in 2025.

While that number may be smaller than the sweeping forgiveness of Trump’s predecessor, it’s still far more than historical numbers.

Investopedia estimates that in 2025, the Department of Education forgave the loans of about 117,280 borrowers through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, also known as PSLF. The program forgives public service workers’ loans after 10 years of payments.

Investopedia calculated the amount of student loan forgiveness granted last year using publicly available data from the Department of Education and court filings in two cases that involved the federal student loan program.

Read the full article here.

–Elizabeth Guevara

How a Hidden Twist Could Keep Trump Account Savings Tax-Free Forever

FROM 9 hr 51 min ago

The Trump Accounts created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) are government-funded investment accounts designed to help children build wealth from birth. Babies born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, will automatically receive a one-time $1,000 deposit from the government.

For parents of children born in that window, opening a Trump Account is a no-brainer. The government sets up the account and provides the seed money, and then the funds can compound over decades into a modest nest egg—all at no cost to the family.

But Trump Accounts aren’t just for newborns. Families with children up to age 18 can open one and contribute up to $5,000 per year. That’s where the hidden twist comes in: At age 18, the account converts to a traditional IRA, which can then be converted to a Roth IRA—creating a powerful opportunity to build tax-free wealth no matter the initial age of the Trump Account owner.

That matters because traditional and Roth IRAs are taxed very differently. Traditional IRAs are funded with pretax dollars and taxed when money is withdrawn. Roth IRAs flip the formula: Taxes are due upfront, but qualified withdrawals later on are tax-free.

For many young adults, it’s an unusually good moment to make that switch. Earnings are often low enough to fall into the 0% federal income tax bracket, which means converting a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA could trigger little or no tax at all.

Read the full article here.

–Sabrina Karl

You Can Split Your Rent With ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Plans—But It Will Cost You

FROM 10 hr 46 min ago

Need some flexibility with your monthly rent payment? There are now options to spread your rent payments out over the month. But using a rent-now, pay-later service comes with some costs, which can balloon if renters have trouble repaying the loan.

Affirm, one of the biggest Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) providers, has launched a pilot program with rent reporting firm Esusu that lets people split their rent payment into two installments. There are several other firms providing similar rent now, pay later services.

However, finance charges can quickly add up on these plans, as with other BNPL options.

While the Affirm plan advertises that it doesn’t charge interest, it’s not free to use. Consumers don’t access the service directly through Affirm: Instead, it’s offered through a partnership with Esusu, a company that lets users count their rent payments toward their credit scores.

Read the full article here.

–Terry Lane

Here’s How Much McDonald’s Stock Is Expected to Move After Earnings Wednesday

FROM 11 hr 34 min ago

McDonald’s is set to release its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday morning, with traders anticipating the fast food giant’s stock could reach new highs following the results.

Current options pricing suggests traders expect McDonald’s (MCD) stock could move up to 3% in either direction by the end of the week. A move of that size from Monday’s close near $326 would lift the stock close to $336, exceeding Friday’s record. At the low end, the stock could slip to $315.

McDonald’s has climbed recently amid a broader rotation out of tech stocks and into more consumer-focused stocks amid some caution about the AI trade. The fast food leader’s stock has added about 6% since the start of the year.

UBS analysts wrote ahead of the report that they expect solid sales growth in the U.S. and internationally in the fourth quarter, along with updates about strong first-quarter sales as consumers reward the chain’s focus on value and efforts with win customers over with deals.

Read the full article here.

–Aaron McDade

What to Expect From Wednesday’s Report on the Job Market

FROM 12 hr 5 min ago

You could get a job anywhere you wanted in January, as long as you wanted to work in health care.

That’s the upshot of what forecasters expect a report Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show. U.S. employers likely added 55,000 jobs that month, up from 50,000 in December, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

As in recent months, job gains are expected to be concentrated in health care, with careers in other fields becoming harder to find as employers remain in a no-hiring mindset. The unemployment rate is forecast to remain at 4.4%, a relatively low level by historical standards.

The data will shed light on the job market as the economy’s trajectory remains uncertain. Officials at the Federal Reserve are increasingly concerned about a possible surge in unemployment. Among the recent red flags about the job market: employers had fewer openings in December than at any time since 2020. Economists look at job openings as a leading indicator of future job growth.

Read the full article here.

–Diccon Hyatt

Stock Futures Little Changed After Dow Closes at Record

FROM 12 hr 39 min ago

Futures contracts connected to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were 0.1% higher.

S&P 500 futures pointed up 0.1%.

Nasdaq 100 futures were fractionally higher.