If you ever think you’re a bad parent… just remember Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick once took his kids on vacation to Epstein’s island.

If you couldn’t already tell from that opener, today’s market had about as much action as Bill Clinton got from Hillary after the infamous “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” line. After the chaos that kicked off what I’m now officially calling Fear-bruary, a boring tape honestly felt like a blessing.

Aside from Lutnick admitting he skipped the Disney trip and instead opted for Epstein’s Magical Kingdom (read: island… kids included… nannies included), stocks were pretty tame.

The Dow squeaked up 0.1%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq slipped 0.1% and 0.2%, respectively. If you’re looking for someone to blame, look no further than the latest retail sales data that came in anemic and confirmed holiday shopping was horrendous.

America’s favorite hot-dog restaurant (aka Costco) and Walmart both fell around 2% as the market once again found the American consumer guilty of the same recurring offense: being broke.

But while retail quietly wheezed into a paper bag… a completely unrelated financial napalm strike went off.

Altruist rolled out a new AI-powered tax planning tool (probably vibe-coded by some bro at a standing desk using Claude last night) and legacy financial firms reacted like they’d just seen the future and hated every second of it. LPL Financial got smoked (-10%), Charles Schwab wasn’t far behind (-8%), and Morgan Stanley caught a lighter version of the smoke (-3%).

Live footage of your accountant seeing the news: 

Turns out Wall Street does not enjoy the idea of software doing in seconds what it’s been charging clients thousands to do badly for years.

There was, however, one bright spot in an otherwise paint-drying market.

Joe Rogan’s sugar daddy popped 15% after earnings, despite spending nearly two decades pretending profits were optional. Spotify reported 11% MAU (monthly active users) growth and its biggest Spotify Wrapped ever… the annual internet confession booth where hundreds of millions of users overshare their playlists.

Now the market looks ahead to the real mood-setter.

All eyes now turn to the YUGE jobs report tomorrow and Friday’s CPI print, two releases with BIGLY implications for where this emotionally unstable market decides to wander next. So be on the lookout for those.

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

>Zuckerberg Follows Billionaire Exodus To Florida As California Pushes New Wealth Tax (ZeroHedge): Imagine living in a neighborhood with Zuck, a ‘roided up Bezos, Tom Brady, and Donnie’s favorite daughter.

>Doctors discover new virus can cause dementia... and 20 million Americans already have it (Daily Mail): When you click to research the ‘newly discovered’ virus… and the link is already purple.

>JPMorgan workers fear ‘career suicide’ for defying Jamie Dimon’s return-to-office order (New York Post): Did Work From Home sleep with his wife or something?

>Trump Commerce Sec. Lutnick admits visiting Epstein island during family vacation (CNBC): Bold choice for a family getaway.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Disney and Spotify as mentioned in the article.