By Robert Teitelman

Markets: Gold, silver, oil, copper, aluminum, and Bitcoin fell hard. Stocks initially shrugged off the selloff, with the S&P 500 approaching a new high. U.S. manufacturing went positive in January and President Donald Trump announced a trade deal with India. Investors dumped software stocks after Anthropic released a productivity tool for lawyers, then tech fell further after Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm reported and fears of artificial-intelligence capital spending spread. Friday saw a rally, with the Dow industrials breaking 50,000. On the week, the Dow rose 2.5%, the S&P 500 fell 0.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite 1.8%.

Companies: Alphabet beat expectations and said it would double AI spending. Amazon.com and Oracle upped capital spending to $200 billion and $50 billion, respectively. China banned flush car door handles starting in 2027. Walt Disney theme park chief Josh D'Amaro will replace CEO Bob Iger. Novo Nordisk said sales will fall this year on price pressures on obesity drugs; Hims announced a $49-a-month weight-loss pill. Walmart hit a trillion dollars in market value.

Deals: Elon Musk's SpaceX acquired his xAI for $250 billion, producing a combined company valued at $1.25 trillion...Spain's Banco Santander agreed to buy Webster Financial in a $12.3 billion deal... Texas Instruments is paying $7.5 billion for Silicon Laboratories... Devon Energy and Coterra Energy finally sealed their $21.5 billion all-stock shale merger... Rio Tinto ended merger talks with Glencore.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 06, 2026 21:30 ET (02:30 GMT)

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