H&R Block shares surged 15% on Wednesday after the tax-preparation giant issued an upbeat forecast for its 2027 fiscal year that easily cleared Wall Street's bar. The company projected adjusted earnings per share in a range of $6.04 to $6.24, well ahead of the $5.86 per share analysts polled by LSEG had modeled. Revenue guidance of $4.11 billion to $4.16 billion also topped the Street's $4.05 billion estimate. The move pushed the stock to one of its strongest single-day gains in recent memory, even as the broader market traded mixed.The guidance beat matters because H&R Block operates ...

Quantinuum shares rallied more than 21% on Wednesday after the quantum computing company delivered a stronger-than-expected debut earnings report as a newly public company. Second-quarter revenue came in at $8 million, up 279% year-over-year, driven primarily by growth in its cloud business. Management raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to a range of $28 million to $32 million, topping the roughly $26.5 million analysts polled by FactSet had expected. The stock's move made it one of the biggest gainers on the Nasdaq for the session, just two months after the company's June initial public o...

Wendy's shares spiked as much as 16% on Wednesday after the Financial Times reported that activist investor Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management is preparing a bid to take the fast-food chain private. Trian, Wendy's largest shareholder with roughly a 16% stake, is reportedly assembling a consortium of co-investors that could include Flynn Group, one of Wendy's biggest U.S. franchisees, and Abu Dhabi-based BlueFive Capital. No offer price has been disclosed, and a deal is not guaranteed, but the report sent the stock to its highest level in more than a month and made it the top trending ticker ...

Michael Burry, the investor famous for calling the 2008 housing crash, has made two new bets that are turning heads: Lululemon (NASDAQ: LULU) and MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI). Both stocks have taken a beating this year despite real underlying business strength, which is exactly the kind of setup Burry has built his reputation on chasing.Lululemon shares are down more than 40% year-to-date after fiscal Q1 revenue grew just 4% and North American sales stayed soft. But the bull case has real numbers behind it — China revenue grew 23% year-over-year in constant currency, international revenue overa...

CoreWeave investors got a jolt Wednesday morning as shares surged nearly 20% in premarket trading after the AI cloud provider reported that second-quarter revenue doubled year-over-year. The company posted $2.6 billion in revenue, up 112% from $1.2 billion a year ago, and guided for third-quarter revenue between $3.4 billion and $3.6 billion. Citi analysts called it "one of the cleaner quarters" CoreWeave has delivered since its IPO, citing stronger pricing power and better-than-expected margins.The numbers behind the pop are striking. CoreWeave's revenue backlog stood at $104 billion as of Ju...

Wall Street got the inflation news it wanted on Wednesday. The Consumer Price Index rose just 0.1% in July, matching Wall Street's forecast and putting the annual inflation rate at 3.4%. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, also came in at 0.2% for the month. Stock futures jumped on the release while Treasury yields fell, as traders read the numbers as a green light for the Federal Reserve to stay on hold at its September meeting.The details matter here. Energy prices fell another 1.5% in July after a 5.7% drop in June, even though energy costs are still up 14.7% year-over-year followin...

Lockheed Martin just landed one of the largest single contract awards in company history. On July 29, the Department of War handed the defense giant a seven-year, up to $53.86 billion undefinitized contract action for PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptors — pushing the total multiyear deal to $58.62 billion once a prior $4.7 billion award from April is factored in. The scale of the order reflects a stark supply gap: fewer than 800 Patriot missiles reportedly remain in U.S. inventories, with a CSIS report estimating the stockpile lost 65% of its prewar count during the recent Iran conf...

Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms just struck a 20-year compute deal with AI firm Anthropic worth $9.1 billion in guaranteed revenue — a figure that could climb to $16.1 billion if the agreement gets extended for two additional five-year terms. The deal leases 191 megawatts of power at Riot's Rockdale, Texas campus, giving Anthropic access to scarce, grid-connected electricity for AI computing. Shares initially spiked more than 20% on the news before giving back almost the entire gain, a reminder that even blockbuster contracts can get a mixed reaction once traders digest the details. The Anthropi...

China controls roughly 90% of the world's rare-earth magnet production, and it just showed investors exactly how far it's willing to go to keep that grip. After Washington pushed to build a rare earth supply chain outside Beijing's control, China's Ministry of Commerce added several U.S. companies to its export-control blacklist this past June. MP Materials, the only U.S. company that can mine, refine, and manufacture rare earths into finished magnets at commercial scale, was directly in the crosshairs — and the stock dropped nearly 30% on the news before clawing all the way back within weeks....

The weight-loss drug wars just went international. Eli Lilly won UK approval for its oral GLP-1 pill Foundayo (orforglipron) on Monday, its first green light outside the United States, setting up a direct clash with Novo Nordisk's Wegovy pill in one of the world's most closely watched pharmaceutical markets. It's only the second oral weight-loss pill approved in Europe, arriving just two months after Novo's version launched there.The competitive dynamics are worth tracking closely. Foundayo launched in the U.S. back in April and generated $98 million in second-quarter sales — a respectable sta...