By Heard Editors

What Happened in Markets Today

Wealth-management stocks sank after Altruist, a financial-technology firm, announced an artificial-intelligence tool that it says can create personalized tax strategies by interpreting financial documents without manual entry. Shares of Raymond James and LPL Financial fell 9% and 8%, respectively, while Charles Schwab's shares dropped 7%. The sell-off was reminiscent of last week's plunge in software and data-provider stocks after Anthropic announced new AI tools to help automate analysis and research tasks.

U.S. retail sales were flat in December, a disappointing datapoint for economists who had expected growth. Sales at U.S. stores were roughly unchanged in December versus November at $735 billion, after rising 0.6% in November, according to the Commerce Department. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal were expecting a 0.4% increase. Steady consumer spending has helped insulate an economy jolted by sweeping policy changes on trade and immigration. An extended pause in retail-sales growth would likely put economists on edge.

Paramount enhanced its hostile offer to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including agreeing to pay the $2.8 billion termination fee Warner would owe its chosen suitor, Netflix, should that deal collapse. Paramount's latest offer comes as Netflix and Warner continue to make the case for their deal to Washington lawmakers and regulators, as well as European authorities. Warner said its board will review Paramount's new offer but isn't modifying its recommendation regarding its agreement with Netflix.

The Trump administration plans to repeal the Obama-era scientific finding that serves as the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas regulation, in the most far-reaching rollback of U.S. climate policy to date. The final rule, to be made public later this week, removes the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify and comply with federal greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles, and repeals associated compliance programs, credit provisions and reporting obligations for industries, according to administration officials.

Major stock indexes were mixed. The Dow industrials gained 0.1%, while the Nasdaq fell 0.6%. The S&P 500 fell 0.3%; the index's biggest decliner was S&P Global, which fell almost 10% after a disappointing earnings report.

This analysis comes from the Journal's Heard on the Street team. Subscribe to their free daily afternoon newsletter here.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 10, 2026 16:55 ET (21:55 GMT)

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