🚀 Alphabet misses Q4 targets

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Market Overview
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Year To Date Performances:

1. Alphabet shares fell over 7% after missing Q4 revenue expectations and announcing a massive $75 billion capital expenditure plan to expand AI infrastructure, far exceeding Wall Street’s $58.84 billion forecast. Revenue grew 12% year-over-year but saw a slowdown in YouTube ads, search, and services. Analysts blamed rising costs, higher-than-expected capex, and weaker-than-expected cloud revenue for the selloff. CFO Anat Ashkenazi said spending would focus on servers, data centers, and networking to support Google Services, Cloud, and DeepMind, but concerns over profitability weighed on investor sentiment.

2. Private sector hiring remained strong in January, with ADP reporting 183,000 new jobs, beating expectations of 150,000. December’s figure was also revised sharply upward to 176,000 from 122,000. Wage growth for workers who stayed in their jobs ticked up slightly to 4.7% annually. However, job gains were concentrated in service sectors like trade (56,000), leisure (54,000), and healthcare (20,000), while goods-producing industries shed 6,000 jobs, including a 13,000 loss in manufacturing. The data comes ahead of Friday’s BLS report, where economists expect a 169,000 job gain and a 4.1% unemployment rate, factors the Fed will weigh as it considers rate moves.

3. The U.S. Postal Service briefly suspended and then quickly resumed accepting packages from China and Hong Kong, citing coordination with Customs and Border Protection to implement new China tariffs. The suspension followed President Trump’s imposition of a 10% tariff on Chinese imports and the closure of the "de minimis" trade loophole, which previously allowed packages under $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free. This move is expected to significantly impact Chinese e-commerce giants Temu and Shein, which rely on de minimis for direct shipments to U.S. consumers. Critics argue the loophole enabled illicit drugs and counterfeit goods to evade scrutiny.

4. Headlines

   1. The National Women’s Soccer League has settled a lawsuit with former players for mistreatment for $5M.

   2. Apple shares fell as China is reportedly considering an anti-trust investigation into the company.

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