Before the bell: busiest earnings day of the quarter

Rumours about disappointing growth prospects at OpenAI unsettled markets, just as a wave of earnings reports is set to determine the direction of the stock market.

Financial markets were focused on OpenAI on Tuesday, the company behind ChatGPT. Reports that OpenAI may have missed its own revenue targets this year raised questions about the massive investments it plans to make in data centres and AI infrastructure in the coming years. Stocks such as Oracle (-4.1%), AMD (-3.4%) and CoreWeave (-5.8%), all of which have deals with OpenAI, moved lower. Spotify (-12.4%) also stood out on the downside. The group reported strong growth figures, but they fell short of analysts’ expectations. There was also notable news from the United Arab Emirates, which will leave OPEC starting this week. The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil remains high and has barely reacted to the news. In Belgium, attention turned to Sequana Medical. The medtech firm has suspended its stock listing as it faces financial difficulties and will now assess whether to sell the entire company or parts of it. Meanwhile, grid operator Elia Group issued 900 million euro in bonds with a fixed coupon of 4.625%.

Asian markets opened higher this morning. Japan’s Topix is up 1% and South Korea’s Kospi gains 0.8%. Today, earnings are expected from AbbVie, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Alphabet, Qualcomm, Ford Motor Company and Chipotle Mexican Grill. It will be one of the busiest days of this earnings season.

Crypto is out

Want to know what is popular among US retail investors? Then it helps to read the quarterly reports of broker Robinhood. Anyone who bought the stock at the start of 2024 saw their investment increase tenfold by the end of 2025. That is no coincidence. During that period, crypto was extremely popular, with trading volumes in crypto transactions surging. Robinhood benefited from this, but there is a downside. Trading in crypto products is highly volatile. In the past quarter, the number of crypto transactions on the platform dropped sharply by 47%. Crypto currently appears to be “out”, putting pressure on Robinhood’s revenue and profit. While crypto may no longer be in vogue, Robinhood seems to have found a new trend. Prediction market contracts are gaining traction. In 2024, for example, users could place bets on whether Donald Trump would win the US presidential election. Given the sharp decline in crypto transactions, we expect a negative market reaction.

Traditional bank cards are in

One sector unaffected by declining transaction volumes is traditional payments. The US payments specialist Visa announced yesterday evening that total payments increased by 9% compared with the same period a year earlier. The number of international transactions even rose by 12%. Visa finds itself in a particular situation. Fundamentally, the company is performing well, but its stock has barely moved since the election of Donald Trump. The reason is that the White House wants to impose limits on the interest rates companies like Visa can charge on credit cards, and because the government is favourable towards so-called stablecoins. These offer lower transaction costs for merchants and could potentially take market share in the future. Currently, Visa trades at 24 times its expected 2026 earnings. We expect the stock to move higher following these results.

Did you know…

that more than one third of the companies in the S&P 500 will report earnings this week? With around 180 companies publishing results, it is the busiest week of the US earnings season.