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postUS stocks turned higher on Friday, set to rebound from a week-long tech bruising as Wall Street reassessed worries about the impact of AI disruption and the risks of hefty Big Tech spending.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.5%, while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) added roughly 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) also reversed course, moving up 0.8% as the indexes began retracing sharp closing losses.
Wall Street is looking to end the week with a bounce back, as Big Tech CEOs and analysts brush aside concerns about the impact of new AI tools on legacy tech. But the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are still set for weekly losses, having slipped into negative territory for 2026.
The tentative risk-on tone extended beyond stocks, as bitcoin (BTC-USD) climbed steadily back to above $68,000, having touched a 16-month low overnight. But the biggest cryptocurrency is still on track for its worst weekly performance since 2022 after wiping out all of its post-Trump election gains this week.
Strategy (MSTR), one of the companies most affected by the crypto’s slump, revealed a loss for the quarter. The results initially weighed on its stock, but shares were up over 13% on Friday as bitcoin revived and Strategy’s CEO played down concerns about debt-servicing risks.
Some tech gloom persisted as Amazon’s (AMZN) shares tumbled 9%. In its earnings, the major cloud provider outlined plans for a massive 2026 jump in spending to least $200 billion, even as its forecast for operating income fell short.
Elsewhere, Stellantis (STLA) warned it will take a charge of over 22 billion euros ($26 billion) in a plan to scale back its EV push. Shares in the Jeep maker tanked over 20% on Wall Street and in Milan (STLAM.MI), adding to a picture of EV malaise painted by this week’s $60 billion wipeout for Chinese carmaker BYD (BYDDF, 1211.HK).
In commodities, silver (SI=F) whipsawed but broadly resumed its decline as Chinese selling continued ahead of a national holiday.
Looking ahead, the release of the closely watched January jobs report, originally scheduled for Friday, has been pushed to Wednesday next week. Fresh signs of trouble in the labor market emerged in recent days, as job openings sank to their lowest level since 2020 and layoff announcements surged.
LIVE 10 updates
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Nvidia shares rise nearly 5% as Big Tech’s 2026 capex set to soar above $600 billion
Nvidia (NVDA) stock spiked 4.6% in Friday morning trading as the chipmaker was set to benefit from the more than $600 billion in capital expenditures planned by the four Big Tech hyperscalers: Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Meta (META).
Amazon said on Thursday that it will spend around $200 billion in 2026.
On Wednesday, Alphabet said its capex would fall between $175 billion and $185 billion.
The previous week, Meta forecast it would spend anywhere from $115 billion to $135 billion. Microsoft hasn’t shared its full-year spending outlook, but if it continues to spend at the same rate as the first half of its fiscal year 2026 — which began in July of 2025 — the Azure cloud provider would see about $145 billion in capex.
At the low end of that range, the four would spend about $635 billion this year, marking a roughly 67% spike from the companies’ $381 billion expenditures in 2025. At the high end of their guidance, the group would spend around $665 billion, or a 74% jump from the previous year.
” It’s all going to Nvidia,” DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Friday morning of the capex figures.
He said that while Nvidia shares have come down about 4% over the past three months — as have fellow AI chip designers Broadcom (AVGO) and AMD (AMD), which dropped about 9% and 14% in that time frame, respectively — investors will likely start once again “giving credit to the companies that are capturing all the profits” from Big Tech’s AI investments.
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Stocks turn higher at the market open
US stocks rose early Friday in a sign of cautious optimism for rebound after a week-long tech rout.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.5%, while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) added roughly 0.2%, recovering from early premarket declines. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) also climbed 0.8% after sharp losses for stocks on Thursday.
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Hims & Hers stock tanks, Novo Nordisk rises as FDA targets copycat drugs
Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) and Novo Nordisk (NVO) stocks saw a reversal of fortunes on Friday morning after the FDA announced a crackdown on GLP-1 copycat drugs amid fierce competition in the weight-loss drug market.
On Friday, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Marty Makary said on X that the agency will take “swift action against companies mass-marketing illegal copycat drugs.”
The move came just after Hims & Hers announced it would launch a compounded weight-loss pill that would rival Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy medicine for $49 to $99. Compounded drugs are customized medicines that are not FDA-approved and are sometimes considered “dupes” of branded medicines.
Novo Nordisk’s stock dived following the news, and the company immediately threatened legal action, saying in a statement, “Novo Nordisk will take legal and regulatory action to protect patients, our intellectual property and the integrity of the US gold-standard drug approval framework.”
After the FDA seemed to weigh in on the matter, shares of Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) fell around 7%, while Novo Nordisk (NVO) stock jumped 7%.
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Premarket trending tickers: Molina, Doximity, and Coty
Molina Healthcare (MOH) stock fell 28% before the bell on Friday after forecasting 2026 profit below analysts’ expectations. The US health insurer said medical costs have risen across its government-backed plans.
Doximity (DOCS) stock sank 30% during premarket hours today after lowering its full-year sales outlook.
Coty (COTY) stock slumped 13% before the bell on Friday. The beauty brand withdraw its fiscal year guidance on Friday.
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Crypto pessimism is setting in, but Michael Saylor is still holding on
Strategy (MSTR) stock jumped 6% on Friday morning, defying the ongoing decline in bitcoin and the stock’s 17% drop on Thursday.
On Thursday afternoon, the company reported that it held 713,502 bitcoins with an average purchase price of $76,052, roughly 20% more than what bitcoin is trading for. Strategy reported operating losses of $17.4 billion, compared to $1 billion in the same period in 2024.
With bitcoin’s price of $66,227 on Friday, the company is still underwater on its investment amid a crypto sell-off. But Strategy’s Michael Saylor is urging the crypto faithful to stay strong, echoing their mantra and battle cry: “HODL.”
Yahoo Finance’s Hamza Shaban writes in today’s Morning Brief how Strategy’s problems have been years in the making:
Read more here.
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Stellantis stock craters after taking $26 billion charge on EV push
Jeep maker Stellantis (STLA, STLAM.MI) warned on Friday that it will book a €22.2 billion ($26 billion) charge as it scales back its EV push.
Shares plummeted over 20% in premarket on Wall Street and in Milan, where trading was halted briefly. They plunged as much as 24% in Italy, the biggest drop on record for the Peugeot and Fiat automaker, to erase over €5 billion off its market cap.
Bloomberg reports:
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Reddit jumps after posting upbeat guidance and positive Q4 results
Reddit (RDDT) stock jumped 7% before the bell on Friday after posting better-than-expected fourth quarter results and issuing positive guidance, helped by AI tools to bring more marketers to the platform.
Investing.com reports:
Read more here.
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Roblox forecasts strong annual bookings as gaming platform momentum grows
Reuters reports:
Read more here.
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Low liquidity spikes silver price after steep decline
Bloomberg reports:
Read more here.
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Bitcoin slump hits retail investors expecting governmental pro-crypto boon
Bloomberg reports:
Read more here.
