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Lucy Brewster

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Quantum stocks took a quantum leap today…before the rally fizzled out.

 that the Trump administration is in talks to take equity stakes in a slew of quantum computing companies in exchange for federal funding.

Word of the government’s possible investment sent shares of quantum computing stocks flying. But there was a catch: The White House stepped in this afternoon to say that it is 

 in the companies, bringing stocks back down to earth.

Why did this rumor gain so much traction? 

The Trump administration—like an idealistic liberal arts college grad who realizes what taxes are for the first time—has been 

. The White House has already invested $400 million in rare earths mining company MP Materials and took a roughly 10% stake in Intel earlier this year. Every time the government invests in a company, its shares head straight for the moon—so investors jumped in at the first sign of a potential purchase in the quantum computing industry.

Even though quantum stocks gave up some of their gains, they ended the day far higher than where they began: Rigetti Computing gained 9.8%, Quantum Computing jumped 7.2%, D-Wave Quantum surged 13.86%, and IonQ rallied 7.07%

What’s the big deal with quantum, anyway?

The rumor seemed so real partially because the federal government—and President Trump himself—has taken a particular interest in quantum computing, which uses advanced mechanics to solve problems that traditional computers are unable to handle.

 the National Quantum Initiative Act, which pledged $1.2 billion in federal funding for quantum research. Under Biden, the CHIPS and Science Act gave funding to a slew of quantum programs. And most recently, a group of senators introduced a law that would pledge an additional $2.7 billion for research into quantum computing.

Quantum computers are of interest for national security because the uber-fast computers can defend from cyberattacks, and have potential military and intelligence uses as well. The Trump administration has made a point this year to invest in companies with strategic value, such as critical mineral miners, which just made today’s rumor seem all the more realistic.

Quantum stocks have had a volatile run this year thanks to the promise—and perils—of the technology. But today, investors bought the rumor and sold the news, leaving quantum stocks looking forward to their next big pop.—

Quantum stocks soar on White House rumor

Reports that the Trump administration would invest turned out to be false.

Rumor mill boosts quantum stocks

Judy Dutton

 Railbird Technologies, scoring a CFTC license that paves the way to launch DraftKings Predictions. On this peer-to-peer platform, users can bypass their bookie and place bets with each other on everything from Nvidia’s stock price to who slaps who at the Oscars.

The sports-betting powerhouse has been getting punished by investors lately for letting upstart prediction platforms muscle in on its turf. For example, Kalshi recently began allowing its users to place bets on NFL games using uber-profitable parlay wagers, which helped the company score 

 earlier this month. So, DraftKings decided to take a page out of the competition’s book and try its hand at prediction markets.

DraftKings’ wager has already paid off: Shares jumped 3.21% today. Investors are especially excited about the prospect of DraftKings offering sports bets in major markets like Texas and California, where sports betting is illegal. Prediction markets are regulated by the CFTC, and therefore outside the jurisdiction of state regulators, and may present a loophole that DraftKings takes advantage of.

Both Kalshi and Polymarket have only grown more popular in the months since the presidential election shone a spotlight on the entire prediction market. In fact, trading volume on both platforms just climbed 

 for the first time ever last week, according to Bloomberg—beating the high-water mark they reached last November.

That’s why it’s unsurprising to see that they aren’t just sitting this one out: Today, Kalshi and Polymarket just landed 

 sports deal with the National Hockey League.

Terms like “Super Bowl” are off-limits on these platforms, which must get creative with phrases like “Pro Football Championship.” The new licensing agreement allows the prediction market players to use trademarked terms like “NHL” and “Stanley Cup,” and puts it on a more level playing field with DraftKings, which already has deals in place with the NHL, NFL, and a wide swath of leagues.

“This feels less like a zero-sum cage match and more like the rise of a new sports-fintech multiverse,” said Running Point CIO Michael Ashley Schulman. “DraftKings brings scale, licensing muscle, and brand recognition. Kalshi brings regulatory chops, financial sophistication, and a Silicon Valley-style playbook. If regulation plays ball, both could score.”

DraftKings has entered the prediction market

The sports betting powerhouse is contending with Kalshi and Polymarket on their home turf.

Bettors are betting on everything everywhere

Warner Bros. Discovery is ready for a bit of price discovery.

The parent company of HBO and CNN is conducting a “strategic review,” which includes exploring all of its options for a sale—an announcement investors 

. Shares of the entertainment giant surged 10.97% today on the news.

“The Warner Bros. Discovery board will evaluate a broad range of strategic options, which will include continuing to advance the company’s planned separation to completion by mid-2026, a transaction for the entire company, or separate transactions for its Warner Bros. and/or Discovery Global businesses,” the company said in a statement.

Back in June, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it planned to spin off its legacy cable-television network, including CNN, MTV, and Nickelodeon, into a separate entity from its film studio and HBO Max.

Then in September, rumors started swirling that Larry Ellison’s Paramount Skydance Corp. could be looking to buy Warner Bros. Since then, Warner Bros. stock has surged over 50%.

But today, the company revealed it has received “unsolicited interest” from multiple parties, according to CEO David Zaslav—meaning Paramount has some competition. What we’re seeing today is a 

worthy tactic: Warner Bros. is going public with this information now because management has 

 from Paramount, according to CNBC, and thinks it deserves a higher price tag.

One interested party might be Comcast, according to Semafor. Comcast could add Warner Bros. to Universal Pictures to expand its 

. On top of that, combining Peacock and HBO would create the second largest streamer by subscribers.

Netflix could also throw its hat in the ring to help it expand its movies portfolio, but others (including co-CEO Greg Peters) argue that it 

—and that a Netflix offer may only be to prevent competitors from getting Warner Bros. for themselves. Then there’s

which is looking to build up its own content business. But the tech giant has shied away from acquisitions of late, and is spending so much money on AI that it may not have any left over for the movie business.

There’s always the original suitor, Paramount, which could still end up offering Warner Bros. the best deal if Ellison decides it's worth the spending money. In fact, it may not even be his money: Ellison has reportedly tapped Apollo Global Management for help footing the bill.

All we know is figuring out who owns what streaming platform is about to get even more confusing than it already is.—

Warner Bros. Discovery is up for sale: Who's going to buy?

The media giant could see multiple bidders emerge as the industry consolidates.

Warner Bros. Discovery puts itself up for sale

There’s boardroom drama—and then there’s your entire board of directors quitting all at once.

Today, all the independent directors of Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, including the board chair, announced 

 due to a disagreement with the controlling foundation about the makeup of the firm going forward.

Shares of the Ozempic maker dropped 1.72% on the news.

 what went down, something tells us this dispute was about more than just what flavor of Keurig pods were being stocked in the break room.

Reports vary, but it seems like the current board wasn’t in favor of a preplanned shakeup of the boardroom. In an investor call today, the foundation’s chair, Lars Rebien Sørensen, said, “It was impossible to reach an agreement between the views of the current board and the foundation board.” The foundation now proposes that Sørensen, who was previously the CEO of the company from 2000 to 2016, become the chair of the new board of directors.

Reuters reported that the foundation wanted faster decision-making from the board, and argued that the board failed to foresee the key market changes in the US weight-loss drug market.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation is planning to hold a 

 on Nov. 14, where a new slate of board members will be elected. But the outcome seems predetermined: The foundation owns 25% of the company’s shares and controls over 70% of the votes.

Tension has been building for a reason: Novo’s had a rough 2025. Its stock has sunk 36.1% this year so far after blowing its lead on the GLP-1 race and announcing it had to conduct a sweeping layoff of 9,000 employees. In May, the board announced it was firing its previous CEO, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen. Mike Doustdar, the new top dog, has only been at the company two months.

Meanwhile, Novo’s major competitor, Eli Lilly, has rolled out its own slate of GLP-1 drugs, gaining US market share and catching up with Novo. Now, the next battleground is weight-loss pills, which are set to be a huge market internationally.

Between the CEO, then employees, and now the entire board, there’s not much left to shake up at Novo Nordisk.—

Novo Nordisk fired its entire board of directors

The pharma giant has struggled this year, causing serious boardroom drama.

No mo Novo board

We’re approaching another make-or-break moment for the future of America’s biggest tech companies—and the bar couldn’t be any higher.

The AI trade has become quite frothy, so traders will be closely scrutinizing every financial metric these companies report. They’re particularly worried about paying high prices for tech stocks with little to show for their massive AI investments. Five of the seven Mag 7 stocks are trading at forward price-to-earnings valuations 

, with the exceptions being Amazon and Nvidia, according to Barron’s.

 Netflix will kick off the tech earnings season on Tuesday, while Tesla, the first of the Mag 7 stocks to report, drops its latest numbers on Wednesday. Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta all report next week. Nvidia, ever the outlier, isn’t until November 19.

Overall, analysts still expect growth, albeit 

 that these tech companies saw last quarter. Some estimates foresee tech earnings growing by around 20%, according to MarketWatch, while the S&P 500 as a whole should see earnings growth of about 8%.

For AI favorites like Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft, Wall Street will be hoping and praying for some kind of monetization of the technology—anything to prove that big tech companies aren’t splashing out hundreds of billions a year on data centers for nothing.

That’s why all eyes will be on these companies’ latest updates on their capex numbers. “Recent multibillion-dollar partnerships between hyperscalers and AI chip firms have strengthened our confidence that AI-related capital expenditures (capex) will exceed expectations and remain robust for longer,” explained UBS Head of Equities Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi.

As for Netflix, investors will be keeping a close eye on its "engagement" metric, or hours viewed on the platform. That will be especially important since the company no longer reports subscriber counts, according to MarketWatch.

And beyond simply hoping to hear CEO Elon Musk speak, Tesla investors will want to know how the company will handle the expiration of the federal EV tax credit, and when we’re going to start seeing humanoid robots roll off the assembly line.—

Big tech earnings preview: What to expect this quarter

This earnings season will make or break the AI bubble.

To bubble or not to bubble

Weight-loss drug makers may need to tighten their belts now that President Trump has announced plans to trim the price of these popular treatments.

In a press conference Thursday, Trump unleashed off-the-cuff plans to put the sizable profits of “

” on a crash diet. The list price of GLP-1 treatments like Ozempic and Wegovy currently run around $1,000 per month. But Trump said, “Those are going to be $150 out of pocket.” These cost cuts have not been negotiated yet, but Trump vowed that they’d happen “pretty fast.”

Although this news might thrill anyone hoping to slim down without emptying their wallets, the companies behind these blockbuster drugs suffered stomach-dropping losses today. Novo Nordisk, maker of Wegovy and Ozempic, dropped 3.07%, while Eli Lilly, maker of Zepbound, lost 2.02%.

Trump is working to whittle down a wide variety of medication costs. After putting a 

 on brand-name or patented pharmaceuticals made outside the US, firms including Pfizer, Merck, and AstraZeneca have haggled for tariff moratoriums by promising to lower prices. No huge surprise, then, that Novo and Eli have popped up as Trump’s next targets.

But whether these industry heavyweights will suffer permanent downsizing is unclear, since they’ve already begun bending to public pressure to pare down prices. Eli Lilly offers a version of Zepbound starting at $350 a month; Novo’s monthly cash option for Ozempic and Wegovy is $499. The catch? You’ll need to draw the syringes yourself rather than use ready-to-go injector pens, which could be worth it if you’re determined to squeeze into your skinny jeans for cheap.

“The CEOs of both Novo and Lilly have expressed a desire to reduce GLP-1 pricing, but not as aggressively as this,” president of healthtech platform Impiricus Sandy Donaldson told Brew Markets. “In the short term, pricing pressure and political theater are shaking investor confidence.” But in the long run, he thinks that the applications and demand for these drugs are expanding so fast, “Pricing will normalize, but volume is going to scale massively. That tradeoff still benefits the manufacturers.”

 With weight-loss drugmakers on shaky ground, one health care company is hedging its bets. After trying to butt into the weight-loss drug industry with middling success, angering big boys Eli and Novo, Hims & Hers Health has explored other avenues for growth and hit upon a humdinger: 

, which are expected to pad annual revenue by over $1 billion next year. It’s a good reminder that it pays to not put all your eggs in one weight-loss basket, as big as it may be.

Weight-loss drugs get surprise price cut

President Trump's unplanned remarks took a toll on Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.

Will cheaper weight-loss drugs slim down stocks?

Wall Street has a pest control problem. And no, it’s not all 

Auto parts retailer First Brands and subprime auto lender Tricolor both 

 in September, and investors are beginning to worry that they’ll bring the entire financial system down with them. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon only added fuel to the fire when he was asked about the bankruptcies on an earnings conference call earlier this week, telling reporters that, “When you see one cockroach, 

Earnings announcements from two regional banks yesterday seemed to prove Dimon correct. Investors believed the mess was contained to Jefferies, whose exposure to First Brands has spurred on a 22% selloff over the past month. But when Zions Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp disclosed 

 related to the two auto industry companies, shares of both companies tumbled lower, and the entire banking industry and the rest of the stock market sank with them as investors fretted that this was just the beginning.

All told, the 74 largest banks in the US watched $100 billion in market value disappear yesterday.

The private credit market has ballooned over the past year, creating an entire class of 

 with it. But the opaque credit business can be tricky, and the implosion of these auto companies reveals how difficult it can be to spot credit fraud 

The combination of bad loans, high interest rates, and contagion fears reminded investors of the collapse of 

 in spring 2023, which led to the biggest bank failure since 2008. And while it may be Halloween season, there’s nothing spookier to Wall Street traders than the threat of bank failures.

So is this a momentary crisis of confidence, or the beginning of the next market crash? Analysts argue that we’re not yet in danger.

“One cockroach does not a trend make,” explained Moody’s Ratings analyst Marco Pinto today on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “When we dig deeper here and look to see if there’s a turn in the credit cycle, which is effectively what the market seems to be focusing on, we can 

The market perked up today as traders decided an SVB-style crash was indeed unlikely. Western Alliance Bancorp recovered 3.07%, while Zions Bancorp rose 5.84%.