Hey there weekday warrior. Here’s what’s on tap today… Elon is pivoting, Nicki Minaj joins the ranks of Jamie Dimon (kinda), and the Fed (still) won’t cave to political pressure, apparently.

Enjoy the next 3 minutes and 38 seconds of blue-chip news and commentary.

Keep on snapping necks and cashing checks,

– tyler

You know what they say… if you can’t beat ‘em… just pivot your $1.3T EV business to an AI/robotics company.

Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 3.5% ) dropped its Q4 earnings after the bell. And Tim Walz’s least favorite EV maker managed to beat analysts' forecasts on the top and bottom lines. But those assumptions were already lower than Elon’s kids' expectations of their father.

Revenue fell for the third straight quarter, and net income plummeted more than 60% vs. a year ago. Thanks a lot, R&D. Turns out, making people dressed as robots become actual robots is expensive af.

Oh, and the results confirmed what we already sorta knew… in 2025, Tesla recorded its first annual revenue decline ever.

Did I mention that BYD officially overtook TSLA as the leading EV seller globally in the year of our lord 2025?

So, what’s a South African (almost) trillionaire to do?

That’s right, say “f*ck cars, all my homies hate cars” and go all in on AI and robotics.

During the Cybertruck maker’s earnings call, Grimes’ baby daddy said it was the end of the road for the higher-end Model S and Model X (we’re never getting a Roadster, are we?). The S and X factory space will be retooled to make Optimus Robots. No, really.

And if it wasn’t abundantly clear that Elon just hit electric vehicles with the “I don’t want to play with you anymore,” he also announced Tesla had invested $2B in xAI. Friendly reminder: investors had previously voted to NOT invest in OpenAI competitor… and *class action lawyers have entered the chat*.

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+ Now it’s starting to make sense why Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella asked us to stop calling it “AI slop” last week…

Microsoft $MSFT ( ▲ 1.9% ) dropped earnings after the close yesterday, and it probably wishes it hadn’t. MSFT managed to beat on the top and bottom lines, but the Street wasn’t impressed with its Azure numbers. Despite capex spend (think: GPUs) soaring 66% vs. a year ago, the cloud computing biz (read: AI) barely grew. Woof.

Speaking of spending recklessly on AI…

During its earnings call, Meta $META ( ▼ 1.31% ) said it plans to spend as much as $135B on AI alone in 2026. That’s more than double its 2025 total (which was also a f*ck ton, for the record). But investors gave zero f*cks, because not only did the ‘book beat expectations, it provided some rosy revenue guidance for 2k26 (think: ads, not AI).

+ Brian Niccol can’t wipe that sh*t eating grin off his face after the holiday szn Starbucks just had. Revenue jumped 6% to $9.9B for the quarter, ahead of expectations of $9.6B. Earnings came in at 56 cents per share, just below the Street’s consensus. Which, thanks, tariffs.

Bry guy credited his turnaround plan. “The shine is back on our brand, both in the US and around the world.”

“But what really made the difference?” you’re probably asking.

Simple: it was this f*cking bear cup that looks like an insufferable hipster from Williamsburg…

In a move that feels like it’s straight out of Nathan Fielder’s Dumb Starbucks, the viral “Bearista” cup helped put a**es in the seats and drive sales. God bless America.

+ Things that were not on my 2026 BINGO card…

Nicki Minaj joined JPMorgan Chase $JPM ( ▲ 3.95% ) and Bank of America $BAC ( ▲ 2.89% ) in contributing to Uncle Sam’s new children’s savings accounts.

Huh?

First up, the big swinging banks both pledged that they’ll match Donny Donation’s one-time contribution of $1k to the new children’s Trump accounts… for all their eligible employees. No extra contribution for you. ICYMI, BlackRock $BLK ( ▲ 0.15% ), Robinhood $HOOD ( ▲ 13.95% ), Charles Schwab $SCHW ( ▲ 3.02% ), and others are already on board to do the same.

Then, the news came out that Roman Zolanski herself is planning to contribute between $150k-$300k personally to fund her fans’ new Trump accounts. Your move, Cardi B…

+ “Same, same, but same.” - J-Poww, probably

As expected, the Fed left #47 disappointed after voting to keep rates in the 3.5% to 3.75% range. J-Poww et al. are continuing their wait-and-see campaign as their fearless leader lame-ducks his way to the end of his term in May.

Current frontrunners (per prediction markets) to replace the criminal mastermind as head of the Central Bank are BlackRock exec Rick Rieder and Kevin Warsh.

In other exciting Fed news, turns out Jerome really might be a bit of a bad boy. The Fed has not yet complied with its grand jury subpoenas as part of the DOJ’s criminal investigation into J-Poww’s renovation.

> Amazon laying off about 16,000 corporate workers in latest anti-bureaucracy push (CNBC) // Don’t they know you’re supposed to wait till Friday?

> Jersey Mike’s Said to Work With Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan on IPO (Bloomberg) // Will Danny DeVito be ringing the bell at the NYSE?

> Elon Musk floats mid-June SpaceX IPO to coincide with his birthday — and planetary alignment: report (NY Post) // I only buy stocks when Mercury is in retrograde…

> Snap gets serious about Specs, spins AR glasses into standalone company (TechCrunch) // Have we learned nothing from the Vision Pro?

> Ok, which one of you did this?

Yesterday, I asked, “Hypothetical: you're given $100k tax-free, but you must invest it for the next 10 years in one of the following. Which one are you picking to maximize profits?”

22.9% of you said, “Nancy Pelosi's ETF.”

Here’s what some of you guys had to say…

Here’s today’s question(s)…

+ US stocks “were little changed on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve held interest rates unchanged in its first policy decision of the year. Wall Street also braced for earnings from megacap tech companies in a day that saw the S&P 500 vault briefly over the 7,000 mark for the first time.” (Yahoo! Finance)

+ The 10-year yield “moved higher on Wednesday as the Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged and upped its assessment of the U.S. economy.” (CNBC)

+ Oil “prices rose to their highest since late September on Wednesday on looming Iran concerns while a weak U.S. dollar lent further support.” (Reuters)

+ The “smart” money (prediction markets) thinks there’s currently a 91% chance we’re not getting a rate cut in March either... (Polymarket)

⏪ Yesterday…

+ ASML, Starbucks, GE Vernova, AT&T, MSCI, Automatic Data Processing, Amphenol, Progressive, Corning, Elevance, General Dynamics, and Danaher reported before the bell

+ Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, ServiceNow, IBM, Lam Research, Waste Management, Celestica, Fair Isaac, Southwest Airlines, and Levi's dropped earnings after hours

+ The Nevada Gaming Control Board was expected to release its gaming revenue report for December

+ The Federal Reserve announced its interest rate decision, and J-Poww held a press conference

⏩ Today we’re keeping an eye on…

+ Mastercard, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, Altria, SAP, Honeywell, Blackstone, Nasdaq, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Comcast, L3Harris, and Sherwin-Williams report before the bell

+ Apple, Visa, Western Digital Corp, Sandisk, KLA-Tencor, Deckers, and Stryker report after hours

+ Shareholders with Kenvue and Kimberly-Clark vote on the proposed $49B merger between the companies

Oh, and one more thing…

Sent from my Amazon Fire Phone. Please excuse any mistakes and typos.

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