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Who would have thought that one of the hottest IPOs of 2026 could be a bookstore chain dating back to 1873? But thanks to a return to its indie roots and some help from BookTok, Barnes & Noble is back. With in-store visits last month reaching 22 million, up 15% from the same period in 2017, the once beleaguered bookstore appears to be turning a new page as it looks to add 60 new stores this year, in addition to its potential multibillion-dollar IPO. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 climbed higher on Monday, led by tech, as investors await earnings from Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla on Wednesday and Apple on Thursday. The Russell 2000 dropped. |
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Shares of GameStop surged over 4% yesterday after Michael Burry, former hedge fund manager of "The Big Short" fame and current Substacker, announced that he's been buying the video game and collectibles retailer recently. |
- The revelation came in Burry's long-anticipated follow-up post on GameStop. The stock initially jumped in November when Burry tweeted about his history of being long the stock, and again in December as he teased a more thorough write-up of the experience.
- Trading volumes in GameStop went parabolic after the news crossed the wires. As of noon ET yesterday, 11.9 million shares had changed hands, more than 6x the average by that time of day.
- And while Burry said he's "willing to hold long-term," his ownership is spurring a big rush into short-term call options on GameStop. As of 12:20 p.m., call volumes had more than doubled their 20-day moving average, with the four most active contracts being calls that expire this Friday with strike prices of $25, $24, $20, and $23.
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"I own GME. I have been buying recently," Burry wrote. "I expect I am buying at what may soon be 1x tangible book value / 1x net asset value. And getting a young Ryan Cohen investing and deploying the company's capital and cash flows. Perhaps for the next 50 years." |
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GameStop is a stock that has traded off of nostalgia, its exposure to things that are cool or entertaining, and leaders with big main character energy. And Burry's the first injection of main character energy into the shares since Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, came back to spur another meme stock rally in GameStop in the second quarter of 2024 and then disappeared almost as quickly as he'd arrived. |
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Large defense-centric government consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton dove over 8% Monday after the US Treasury Department announced it was canceling all its contracts with the firm. |
- The rationale for the cancellation? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cited a former employee who pleaded guilty to leaking the tax information of thousands of the country's richest people to media outlets like The New York Times and ProPublica between 2018 and 2020. The man, Charles Edward Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison in January 2024.
- One of those rich people was a New York real estate magnate named Donald Trump. Donald Trump, eagle-eyed political watchers may recall, is now the president.
- The US government accounts for nearly all revenues generated by Booz Allen, with more than 70% coming from defense and intelligence clients as of its most recent earnings report. The remainder comes from civil clients, a division that includes the Treasury.
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The Treasury Department said it canceled all 31 contracts it had with the company, which were worth a total of $21 million. Is that a lot of money? Not particularly. But is it good when your primary customer starts yanking contracts in a fit of pique? Not especially. |
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"Booz Allen failed to implement adequate safeguards to protect sensitive data, including the confidential taxpayer information it had access to through its contracts with the Internal Revenue Service," Bessent said in a statement. Just last week, management had raised its annual profit outlook after reporting better-than-expected third-quarter earnings. |
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- 🏛️ Government: The probability of a government shutdown on January 31 shot up over the weekend after crucial Senate moderates pulled support from the spending bill over the actions of the Department of Homeland Security in Minneapolis. The market-implied probability* of a shutdown jumped from 8% last Thursday to 73% as of last night.
- 🎵 Grammys: The Grammy Awards are this coming Sunday, and the inside track for Album of the Year is Bad Bunny's "DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS," seen as having a 58% chance of winning the night.
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*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC. |
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- January consumer confidence
- Earnings expected from UnitedHealth Group, Boeing, American Airlines, General Motors, United Parcel Service, Seagate Technology Holdings, Northrop Grumman, Kimberly-Clark, HCA Healthcare, RTX Corp., and Texas Instruments
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