Not too long ago, electric vehicles were on a fast -track to take over America. But lately, the industry has hit a pothole the size of the Grand Canyon.

Stellantis is the latest car wreck, with shares careening off a cliff by 23.85% today after the automaker announced a write-down of $25.9 billion, including $20 billion for its EVs and $4.1 billion in warranty fees. As if that weren’t bad enough, the company slammed the brakes on dividends in 2026, “in recognition of the 2025 net loss.”

The problem, according to CEO Antonio Filosa, boils down to “over-estimating the pace of the energy transition.” In plain English: They bet too big, too fast on America’s appetite for EVs.

To be fair, so did Ford (which took a $19.5 billion EV write-down in December) and General Motors (which took a $7.1 billion EV write-down in January). Even EV OG Tesla has hit a rough patch—slashing prices, cancelling two of its models, and refashioning one of its US factories to build robots instead.

EVs are stalled

EVs ran out of gas after President Trump rolled back a slate of Biden-era federal policies geared to accelerate the adoption of zero-emissions vehicles. As a result, EV sales peaked at 10.3% of market share in September, just before the $7,500 tax credit expired, then slid to an estimated 5.2% in the fourth quarter, according to Cox Automotive.

Meanwhile, Chinese EV companies are racing to fill the void. Although the US slapped a 100% tariff on Chinese EV imports, that hasn’t stopped these brands from capturing nearly 70% of global market share over the past five years. BYD has even overtaken Tesla as the world’s top seller of battery-powered cars, making major inroads into Europe, South America, and more recently Canada, which lifted its own 100% tariff on Chinese EV imports as a defiant middle finger to President Trump amid trade dispute drama.

Some auto experts worry that Chinese EVs could be an “existential threat” to the US auto industry. But GM has downplayed these concerns, pointing out that it’s simply right-sizing its production to fit natural demand rather than trying to satisfy regulators. Still, GM CFO Paul Jacobson admitted, “You can see the type of intensity and competitiveness that [Chinese] vehicles bring to the marketplace. And therefore, we’ve got to be ready.”

Meanwhile, Ford is downsizing in a different way by ditching its plans for large EVs in favor of smaller models instead. This reset to match the competition is what CEO Jim Farley called a make-or-break “Model T moment for the company.”

Or maybe Americans will trade in those battery packs and embrace gas guzzlers as cool again.—JD

🟢 What’s up

• Under Armour rose 20.54% after delivering a surprise quarterly profit and more than doubling its full-year earnings guidance.
• Novo Nordisk climbed 9.9% after the FDA commissioner pledged to crack down on illegal copycat weight loss drugs.
• GoodRx gained 6.55% after becoming a key pricing partner on TrumpRx, a new government site offering discounted drug prices.
• Lumen Technologies rose 29.21%, CoreWeave jumped 20.5%, Applied Digital added 25.52%, WhiteFiber climbed 28.92%, and Nebius Group advanced 16.56% as investors piled back into AI infrastructure stocks following last week’s tech sell-off.
• Roblox soared 9.66% after reporting a strong Q4, with bookings surging 63% year over year.
• Strategy rebounded 26.11% as bitcoin prices recovered, easing pressure after a $12.6 billion Q4 loss.
• Liberty Global surged 49.71% on a five-year AI partnership with Google Cloud to boost automation across its European networks.

What’s down

• Molina Healthcare fell 25.51% after forecasting a steep drop in profit for the year ahead due to persistent Medicaid cost pressures.
• Centene dropped 3.66% after posting a $1.1 billion quarterly loss tied to elevated medical expenses.
• Verisign declined 7.6% following a miss on Q4 earnings and weak guidance.

AI might live in the cloud, but Big Tech’s valuations are crashing down to Earth.

Collectively, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft are forecasting roughly $650 billion of capital expenditures in 2026, largely aimed at data centers, chips, and AI infrastructure. That's about a 60% jump from last year, with several companies set to spend as much in a single year as they did across the prior three combined.

Here’s how it breaks down:

• Amazon: $131 billion in 2025 → $200 billion in 2026
• Alphabet: $91 billion in 2025 → $185 billion in 2026
• Meta: $72 billion in 2025 → $135 billion in 2026
• Microsoft: $65 billion in 2025 → $105 billion in 2026

Big tech is betting generative AI tools will become central to work and daily life, but powering those large language models requires vast data centers packed with costly chips, driving the surge in spending.

Hyperscalers are clearly still bullish on AI, but investors are getting nervous about how companies plan to pay for all this. Issuance across bonds, private credit, and structured AI financing is surging: AI firms borrowed more than $200 billion last year, and financing needs in 2026 are expected to swell by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Following its earnings announcement last night, Amazon slid 5.55% today. Over the past five days, Alphabet is down 4.56%, Meta has lost 7.68%, and Microsoft has dropped 6.77%. When you add Nvidia and Oracle into the mix, the biggest names in AI have shed around $1 trillion in market value this week.

Investors now have to decide: Does this selloff signal trouble, as investors lose faith that high AI spending will yield returns, or a rare opportunity to buy some of the best-performing stocks in recent history at a discount.—SY

Super Bowl Sunday is almost here, which means Wall Street is reviving its favorite superstition.

It all started back in the 1970s, when a sportswriter noticed an interesting phenomenon: When a team from the National Football Conference won the Super Bowl, the stock market went up that year, and when a team from the American Football Conference won, the stock market went down.

Investors dubbed this the Super Bowl Indicator, and following the logic, this year investors should be rooting for the Seattle Seahawks. It seemed to hold true last year: After the NFC’s Philadelphia Eagles won the championship, the S&P 500 gained 9.5% through the rest of 2025.

Obviously, nobody should actually be making investing decisions based on a silly urban investing legend—in fact, it turns out that since 1978, the S&P 500 has risen in 74% of the years an NFC team won, while the index rose 86% of the time an AFC team won. So don’t feel bad rooting for the New England Patriots on Sunday.

Carson Group strategist Ryan Detrick has another take on the trend: which team wins doesn’t matter as much as how much they win by. “That’s right, when it is a single digit win in the Super Bowl, the S&P 500 is up less than 7% on average and higher about 62.5% of the time. A double-digit win? Things jump to 11% and 80%. Last year the Eagles beat the Chiefs by 18, which was a clue it would be a good year,” Detrick wrote.

The real economic impact

The Super Bowl Indicator is a myth, but the economic impact of the big game is very real. 213.1 million US adults will be tuning in to the Super Bowl this year, and the event is expected to generate about $20.2 billion in consumer spending, largely on drinks and snack food.

Don’t forget about the ads, either: expect a slew of high-priced ads for beverage companies, sports betting, and of course, a feud between AI titans.

We really can’t even have one day off from the AI wars.—LB

• Here’s how Anthropic just pulled off a huge comeback in the AI race, and turned the stock market upside down.
• US consumer sentiment rose to a six-month high, mainly propelled by stockholders.
• Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Bank of America just raised their bonus pools for bankers and traders.
• The Justice Department has opened a probe into Netflix.
• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy doubled down on the company’s $200 billion spending plan.
• The Trump administration is reportedly considering opening an antitrust probe into homebuilders.

This week’s theme was the labor market, and while the US jobs report was pushed back to next Wednesday, the theme for the week ahead is still FedSpeak.

Monday: Speeches from Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, Fed governor Christopher Waller, and Fed governor Stephen Miran. We've also got earnings from Apollo, ON Semiconductor, Upwork, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and of course, Monday.com.

Tuesday: Speeches from Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack and Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan, earnings from Coca-Cola, AstraZeneca, Gilead Sciences, S&P Global, Welltower, Spotify, BP, CVS Health, Barclays, Marriott International, Robinhood Markets, Cloudflare, Ferrari, Lyft, Ford, Datadog, and Fiserv. And don’t forget we’ll get a look at small businesses with the NFIB optimism index, plus the delayed US retail sales report from December.

Wednesday: Fed speeches continue with Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack. The big report of the day is the delayed January US jobs report, but we’ve also got earnings announcements from Cisco, McDonald's, T-Mobile US, Shopify, AppLovin, Siemens Energy, EssilorLuxottica, NetEase, Vertiv, Heineken, Cisco, Kraft Heinz, Humana, Hilton Worldwide, and Albemarle.

Thursday: We’ll hear from Fed governor Stephen Miran again, and we’ll get the existing home sales reading and the usual initial jobless claims report. Earnings galore from the likes of Applied Materials, Hermès, Siemens, L'Oréal, Arista Networks, SoftBank, Unilever, Anheuser-Busch InBev, British American Tobacco, Vertex, Agnico Eagle Mines, Howmet Aerospace, Mercedes-Benz, Zoetis, Expedia, DraftKings, Airbnb, PG&E, and Crocs.

Friday: The week ends on a high note with the CPI reading for January. Earnings courtesy of Advance Auto Parts, NatWest, Cameco, Moderna, and Wendy’s.