The “Can You Hear Me Now” Guy be like…

(Source: Imglip) 

The market woke up today and chose violence as tech tripped over itself, banks disappointed by not being exciting enough, China slammed the door on chips, the Fed chair is getting side-eyed by the DOJ, and half the country briefly couldn’t make a phone call. All before lunch. 

Starting off with tech, since that’s where the damage was the loudest… chip names took it on the chin after reports surfaced that Chinese customs officials have been advised that Nvidia’s H200 chips are not welcome at the border. Talk about a blue ball moment, especially after it all seemed fine and dandy just last week when the Red Dragon and Donnie Tariff seemed to come to an agreement. 

(Source: Reuters) 

Naturally, Nvidia puked -2%, Broadcom nuked ~5%, and Micron Technology (-2.27%) caught strays because of it. Translation: This is what happens when the most crowded trade on Earth runs face-first into a customs agent with a stamp and a bad mood. AI is still the future. It’s just not immune to borders, paperwork, and national security pissing-matches. 

Aaaaan then, there’s the banks. Long story short, Wells Fargo got smoked, down more than 5% after posting revenue that failed the “markets at all-time highs” test. Bank of America (-4%) and Citigroup (-4%) technically beat expectations, which normally earns you a cookie but it just wasn’t enough to keep shares from sliding anyway. Why? Because President Trump decided to remind everyone he hates credit card interest rates. The market heard “reform,” pictured margin pressure, and immediately threw the banks into traffic. BofA is down ~7% on the week. Citi and Wells are closer to ~8%. 

Live look at bank stocks today: 

(Source: X) 

Meanwhile, macro data showed up looking fine. CPI rose a smidge to 2.7% over the last 12 months ending in December 2025… and yet, it just made the selloff feel prettier. However, the funniest subplot today had nothing to do with the usual laundry list of f*ckery. In short, Verizon went dark. 

Around noon ET, phones across Washington, NYC, and beyond flipped to “SOS,” bars disappeared, and Twitter/X turned into a support group. Verizon confirmed an outage affecting data and voice services. But, but, but… the stock was still up over 1% on the day. Translation: The math ain’t mathin. So yeah… chips and banks bled, while phones went dead. Basically, another reminder that markets don’t fall apart cleanly anymore. They just glitch. And by tomorrow, half of this will be forgotten, the other half will be priced in, and everyone will be staring at the next headline pretending this was obvious the whole time. What a time to be alive. Until next time, friends… 

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

☕ Market Gossip

> Netflix likely to adjust Warner Bros. Discovery offer to make it all-cash (CNBC): And I thought the Paramount-Skydance buyout was insufferable…

> Tesla will only offer subscriptions for Full Self-Driving (Supervised) going forward (TechCrunch): Bold strategy Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for ‘em… 

> Smart Glasses Market Will Be Worth $200 Billion by 2040, HSBC Says (Bloomberg):  Hey ChatGPT, make a billion nerds purchase AR technology by tomorrow. Do NOT fail.

> Exxon Mobil hit a record after Trump threatened to cut it out of Venezuela (CNBC): Translation: Exxon just got the “Art of the Deal” treatment… 
 

“WTF” Meme of the Day

Your move Donald (Source: X) 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Meta, Verizon, Netflix, and Exxon Mobil as mentioned in the article.