4:20pm: Positive start to earnings week
US stocks closed Monday on a cheerful note, shrugging off worries about AI-driven trades as investors digested a wave of earnings and navigated lingering Federal Reserve uncertainty.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 515 points, or 1.1%, to 49,408, while the S&P 500 added 37 points, a 0.5% gain, to finish at 6,976. The Nasdaq climbed 130 points, or 0.6%, to 23,592, and the Russell 2000 rose 27 points, or 1%, to 2,640.
Precious metals continued their wild ride. Gold and silver seesawed on Monday after last week’s dramatic sell-off, which erased much of 2026’s early rally. Silver in particular suffered its largest single-day drop on record last Friday.
Looking ahead, the earnings calendar heats up this week. Palantir is set to deliver its results after the bell Monday, while tech giants Amazon, Alphabet, and Advanced Micro Devices are set to report later this week.
3:45pm: Proactive news headlines
- Pinnacle Silver and Gold Corp closed the final tranche of its private placement, raising C$1.53 million for a total of C$2.6 million, issuing units with shares and warrants exercisable over 24 months.
- Eldorado Gold Corp agreed to acquire Foran Mining for C$3.8 billion in a share-and-cash deal with no premium to Foran’s recent price.
- EnWave Corp signed a royalty-bearing commercial license with BGGA to use its REV dehydration technology for tropical fruit snacks and ingredients in North Queensland.
- Aftermath Silver Ltd appointed mining executive Danny Keating as COO to advance work at its Berenguela silver-copper-manganese project in Peru.
- Trust Stamp Inc completed a 2025 financing round to fund growth initiatives in 2026, including acquisitions, customer expansion, and service development.
- New Era Energy & Digital appointed longtime board member Charles Nelson as president and COO to lead the company’s transition from development to execution.
- Meren Energy Inc CEO Roger Tucker stepped down, with COO Oliver Quinn succeeding him and joining the board.
2:50pm: Market movers
- Wedbush expects AMD to deliver a strong Q4 driven by its CPU and services businesses, maintaining an 'Outperform' rating with a $290 price target.
- Eldorado Gold Corp (ELD) agreed to acquire Foran Mining for C$3.8 billion in a share-and-cash deal with no premium to Foran’s recent closing price.
- Oracle Corp (ORCL) plans to raise $45–50 billion in 2026 to expand its cloud infrastructure and meet demand from major tech customers.
- Walt Disney Co (DIS) shares fell over 6% after guiding for modest Q2 operating income growth due to international park headwinds and pre-launch costs for new attractions.
1:45pm: Behind the gold selloff
Gold plunged 9% on Friday, its sharpest one-day drop since April 2013, as investors reacted to President Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh for Federal Reserve chair and a rebound in the U.S. dollar, according to LPL Financial’s chief technical strategist Adam Turnquist.
Turnquist said the sell-off was exacerbated by crowded positioning after gold’s parabolic rally. “When price action enters the later stages of a parabolic trend, fear of missing out turns into fear of losses, leaving investors on edge and looking for excuses to take profits," he commented.
Warsh’s reputation as more hawkish than other candidates and his calls for a Fed “regime change,” including balance-sheet reduction, helped fuel the dollar’s bounce, adding pressure to gold.
However, Turnquist said the pullback also reflects an overdue technical reset, with gold previously extremely overbought and the dollar extremely oversold. Despite the volatility, he said gold’s longer-term trend remains higher, though past corrections suggest patience may be needed before prices stabilize.
12:45pm: Nvidia rethinking OpenAI investment
Nvidia is reportedly rethinking its proposed $100 billion investment in OpenAI, citing internal concerns over scale, competitive positioning against rivals like Google and Anthropic, and strategic fit, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A September 2025 plan to provide OpenAI with up to 10 gigawatts of computing power has stalled, with no formal agreements.
CEO Jensen Huang emphasized the $100 billion figure was “non-binding” and confirmed Nvidia will participate in OpenAI’s next funding round on a smaller, carefully evaluated scale.
11:40am: Manufacturing expansion signals relief
Wells Fargo notes that the US manufacturing sector showed signs of stabilization in January, as the ISM manufacturing index rose to 52.6, ending a 10-month stretch in contraction.
Gains were led by new orders, which jumped to 57.1—the fastest pace in nearly four years—although Wells Fargo cautioned this may partly reflect “post-holiday replenishment and customers’ desire to get ahead of additional tariff-driven price increases as possible reasons for the increase [in orders].”
Supplier deliveries and production also improved, signaling some brighter trends, even as employment remained in contraction at 48.1. Prices paid edged higher, reflecting persistent inflationary pressures, and many respondents expressed ongoing concerns about tariffs, supply chain volatility, and shifting manufacturing out of China.
Overall, Wells Fargo sees “some sign of stabilization in underlying manufacturing activity” despite these challenges.
10:50am: Week ahead
Markets face a busy week as investors digest a mix of economic data and mega-cap earnings, with Friday’s January jobs report taking center stage. Analysts expect around 70,000 jobs added and the unemployment rate steady at 4.4%, though seasonal adjustments could make the data noisy.
Early-week indicators include S&P Global and ISM Manufacturing PMIs, JOLTS job openings, ADP private payrolls, and initial jobless claims, providing a lead-up to the headline numbers.
Earnings are equally in focus, with Alphabet, Amazon, AMD, Merck, and Pfizer reporting. AMD’s results will reveal CPU demand trends, while Amazon’s cloud growth and supply updates could influence investor sentiment.
Markets opened cautiously amid a sharp sell-off in gold and silver. XTB’s Kathleen Brooks called the precious metals decline “a sign of an extremely crowded trade that is unwinding,” while equity volatility remains muted. A partial US government shutdown is expected to be short-lived, leaving investors focused on data and earnings.
10:30am: US manufacturing surges
The US manufacturing sector showed stronger-than-expected growth in January, according to the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). The ISM Manufacturing PMI rose to 52.6, well above the 48.5 estimate, signaling expansion.
New orders jumped to 57.1 from 47.7 in December, while employment improved to 48.1 versus 44.9 previously. Prices paid edged up slightly to 59.0 from 58.5, indicating continued inflationary pressures in input costs.
10am: Stocks quickly climb out of the red
US stocks started in the red but turned green in less than five minutes as markets seemed to quickly forget their worries from last week.
The Dow Jones was up almost 0.6% after half an hour of trading, with the broader S&P 500 climbing 0.3% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq edging up 0.2%. The small-cap Russell 2000 added 0.3%.
Top of the S&P leaderboard was SanDisk, up 10%, followed by fellow data storage groups Seagate Technology and Western Digital, both up around 4.5%.
All reported earnings last week, and on Monday, Bernstein hiked its target price for SanDisk to $1,000.
Fallers on the S&P were led by Robinhood Markets, down 8.4%, and Walt Disney, which reported earnings and warned of a hit to US theme parks as foreign tourist numbers fall.
Coinbase Global was down amidst more crytpo selling.
7.45am: S&P 500 and Nasdaq set to fall, but losses pared
US stock losses were trimmed as the first opening bell of the week and of February approached, as investors braced for a big week of corporate earnings and a new round of macroeconomic data.
Dow Jones futures were down less than 0.1%, having earlier been pointing to losses of close to 1%.
S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.4% and 0.7%, compared to falls of around 1.4% and 1.8% earlier.
Among individual shares, Nvidia was down 1.75% in premarket trading, with Apple and Microsoft down 0.9% and 0.6%.
Earnings highlights this week begin with Palantir Technologies Inc (NYSE:PLTR) and Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS) after the close today; AMD, Merck, Pepsico and Pfizer tomorrow; Google, Eli Lilly, Abbvie, Novartis, Uber and Qualcomm on Wednesday; and Amazon on Thursday.
The metals meltdown that began on Friday deepened during Asian and European trading on Monday, but declines began to ease.
Gold was down 2.3% at $4,775 an ounce, having tanked from near $5,600/oz last Thursday to lows of $4,400/oz in the early hours; similarly, silver was down 1.8% at $83.54/oz, having dropped from above $120 to below $72/oz.
WTI crude oil also retreated from the four-month highs seen last week, dropping to $62.22 a barrel, down 4.5% on the day.
Prices for natural gas, copper, iron ore, steel were also down.
"Oil prices are joining in on the declines, as concerns around a potential weekend attack on Iran fail to come to fruition," said market analyst Joshua Mahony at Scope Markets.
"Taken in totality, this is good for inflation expectations, pushing back against the concerns seen following Friday’s 0.5% PPI figure."
He said the price action seen in the past three trading days has been "nothing short of historic," with the nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair "sending shockwaves" throughout markets.
"This appears to mark the end of easy money, with the repeated desire to shrink the Fed balance sheet and avoid constant monetary intervention meaning that markets could lose a key factor which has helped deliver the stable and consistent 10% average S&P 500 return.
"For a market which faces up to the possibility of an AI-led collapse at some point over the coming years, there is a concern over how things could play out if Warsh refuses to step in to limit the fallout if necessary."
He said market concerns around an apparently hawkish Fed chair "could also come with a flurry of cuts if his likely promises to the President are followed through on".
Looking ahead, this week ends with the always-important Friday’s jobs report, preceded by rate decisions from central banks in England, Europe and Australia.