Robinhood - January 26, 2026

This week’s tech earnings

This earnings season is a chance for AI hyperscalers to get their...

Hey Snackers,

ETHZilla, known for its ethereum treasury, has acquired two aircraft engines (!?!?) in a bid to boost the company’s tokenization efforts to bring real-world assets from high-value vertical markets, such as aerospace, maritime, and heavy equipment, on-chain.

The S&P 500 whipsawed on Friday before finishing marginally higher ahead of this week’s Big Tech earnings, when Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, and Apple will report (more on that later). The Nasdaq 100 outperformed, officially erasing all losses after President Trump’s European tariff threats. The Russell 2000 sank, breaking its 14-session streak of outperforming the S&P 500.

🧠 Quiz time… Check out our Snacks Seven Quiz. Here’s the first question:

Which state consumes the most hot sauce?
Check your answer.

MAG 7 AI-SSEMBLE

This earnings season is a chance for AI hyperscalers to get their mojo back

Investors can be attracted to themes and seduced by narratives. But there’s nothing as irresistible as a line on a chart that goes up very quickly. That simple fact may help explain the magnitude of the rotation within AI-linked stocks, where investors are eager to hitch their wagons to pockets of accelerating growth driven by supply shortages that force hardware prices skyward.

This week, much of Big Tech will deliver quarterly results, headlined by Meta and Microsoft on Wednesday.
If you’re a portfolio manager who came into 2026 wanting to maintain the same amount of AI exposure while focusing on the pockets within that theme with the best improvement in prospective earnings growth, well, that likely means you’ve been lightening up on the Magnificent 7 heavyweights.
Their size, high margins, and dominant positions in fast-growing markets have helped the hyperscalers outperform most US companies over the past decade, and that’s what allows for persistent capex outlays on such a grand scale.
One issue? Not all of hyperscalers’ AI spending supports immediate moneymaking opportunities. A lot of compute is still used for training The Next Great Model Update, rather than to support internal products or cloud capacity that can be sold to customers.

Earnings season could serve as fuel for a rotation back into megacap tech — whether that’s thanks to its successes or the inability of these new market hot spots to live up to sky-high expectations. Look no further than Intel, which fell 17% on Friday, for an example of what happens when a parabolic rally is followed by anything less than perfect results.

THE TAKEAWAY

Hyperscalers need more “hype,” or to deliver a clear sign about their “scale,” to continue producing earnings through this spending binge.

There’s a welcome sign that the Mag 7 is poised to rebound: last week, the cohort entered (and exited) “oversold” territory, based on the 14-day relative strength index, judged to be a positive technical development. The last time the group had been this washed out, based on this metric, was after onerous tariffs kneecapped the market in April 2025.

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ZOOM OUT

Stories we’re obsessed with

Which restaurant chains are winning?
We’re eating more chicken than ever, which you’d think would be good news for KFC, but as the chicken wars wage on, the chain ranked worst out of 76 restaurant brands, per a new market share analysis by Barclays. The report won’t make great reading for KFC owner Yum! Brands, with its other two major brands, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, also among the industry’s biggest market share losers. As for the restaurants gaining market share, Mexican, Texan, and Italian chains took the top three spots.
AI has given public markets the software scaries... and it’s spreading to private markets
Just a few years ago, B2B SaaS (“software as a service” companies that cater to HR teams, accounting teams, finance teams, etc.) was the hottest thing in venture capital. VCs poured hundreds of billions into traditional software companies, but as AI replaces software engineers and vibe-coding startups surge, venture bets on SaaS companies are facing a brutal reset. These three charts show “the Great SaaS Meltdown.”

THE BEST THING WE READ TODAY

PlusAI CEO David Liu on the future of autonomous driving

PlusAI is building software to enable freight trucks to drive themselves, and is set to hit the public markets in February. In our interview with CEO David Liu, he describes his vision of a future where most vehicles, commercial or not, are driving themselves.

Read our exclusive interview

Snacks Shots

📺 Netflix: Markets* are pricing in a 79% chance that Netflix hikes the price of its “Standard with ads” subscription plan before the end of the year. It comes at a moment when investors are rewarding streaming companies that plan to jack up prices, as seen last week when Spotify got a boost from Goldman Sachs.
🤖 Optimus: While Elon Musk certainly sounded optimistic about Tesla’s Optimus robot being for sale to the public “by the end of next year,” some believers still think there’s a shot of Tesla selling a bot to the general public in 2026. Traders are still pricing in a 14% chance of that happening, even exceeding Musk’s confidence.

*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.

What else we’re Snackin’

An unexpected benefit of the AI boom? Anguilla, whose top-level domain is “.ai,” has received an estimated $70 million in domain name sales in the past year
SpaceX makes up 22% of the Baron First Principles ETF’s portfolio, offering investors a potential arbitrage opportunity
In its earnings call last Thursday, Intel tumbled as its management asked for time to deliver a turnaround that traders have already aggressively been pricing in
…but Intel’s loss was AMD’s gain, which posted its ninth consecutive gain on Friday, its longest winning streak in two decades

Snack Fact of the Day

Nathan’s Famous hot dogs originally sold for a nickel apiece.

This Week

Monday: Earnings expected from Ryanair, Baker Hughes, Steel Dynamics, and WR Berkley
Tuesday: January consumer confidence. Earnings expected from UnitedHealth Group, Boeing, American Airlines, General Motors, United Parcel Service, Seagate Technology Holdings, Northrop Grumman, Kimberly-Clark, HCA Healthcare, RTX Corp., and Texas Instruments
Wednesday: Fed interest rate decision. Earnings expected from Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, IBM, Lam Research, ASML, AT&T, Amphenol, Corning, GE Vernova, General Dynamics, Raymond James, Starbucks, Danaher, Progressive, Lennox, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Textron, and United Microelectronics
Thursday: Earnings expected from Apple, Mastercard, Caterpillar, SAP SE, Lockheed Martin, Altria, Nasdaq, Nokia, Comcast, Visa, Western Digital, and Sandisk
Friday: Earnings expected from SoFi, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, American Express, and Verizon

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