CNBC Business News Update - Market Close: Stocks Mixed, AMD Shares Down 17%, Alphabet Out With Better Than Expected Quarterly Results 2/4/26

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

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I'm Jessica Eddinger, CNBC. Wall Street opens Thursday morning after a mixed Wednesday for the major averages. The Dow was higher up 260 points. Shares of drug maker Amgen led it higher. They were up 8%. The S&P 500 index dropped 35 points. The NASDAQ was down 350 points, 1.5%. Chipmaker shares lower Nvidia down 3.5%. AMD fell 17%. Companies who shares at fresh all-time highs on Wednesday include General Motors, Hilton, Johnson, and Johnson, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Walmart. Google Parent Alphabet out with better than expected quarterly results after the closing bell, but shares dropped after hours as it forecast a major AI spending increase. Alphabet is a company that's done all the things right, and it was underrated for a very long time, and I think it's now being fully appreciated for what it's doing. That's Futurum Group's Daniel Newman. on CNBC. Software makers took another hit Wednesday as investors fear that AI could replace a lot of software made by a lot of the big names. I mean, this is really about what's happened in AI over the last few weeks. It's shifted from answering questions to doing the actual work. And that is really

what's behind the disruption that we're seeing across the software trade. CNBC's Dear Drabosa for the year so far, Salesforce down 25 percent, Adobe down nearly 20 percent. Service now down. nearly 30 percent. Doc you sign down 31 percent. Here's Sofyes, Liz Thomas on CNBC. Software right now is really a sentiment trade that's going on, and there's a lot of indiscriminate selling going on throughout the space. I think that a lot of the selling will get to a point where it's overdone, and because it's so broad-based, we will find out that this ended up being a decent opportunity. Bitcoin falling to around 73,000, it grazed 72,000. it hit its lowest since around Thanksgiving of 2024.

Oil prices rose Wednesday on reports that U.S. Iran talks hit a snag, and President Trump said Iran's supreme leader should be very worried. Other commodities like gold turned higher to around $4,950 an ounce. It's seen as a safe haven for money. Despite a lot of the rhetoric on the campaign about no more foreign wars, what you've seen is actually the president, I think, have a more realistic foreign policy, whether or not that's in. Venezuela, wars we've seen strikes in Iran before. And I think there should be heightened expectation

of potentially interaction in Iran. Some of the push in the commodities as well as you have administration that's also continuing despite maybe not admitting that rhetorically, but their record shows a continued devaluation of the dollar, which I think pushes capital into commodities. That's Vice President Mike Pence's former chief of staff Mark Short on CNBC. Job creation in January came in very low for private business. and the new numbers from payroll firm ADP at just 22,000. That was far short of expectations. Manufacturing has lost jobs every month since March of 2024.

Small business has been extremely challenged since the Liberation Day. Tariffs at zero, a goose egg right there. It had a slight gain last month, and it's been negative before that. Medium-sized business doing a little better up 41,000 and large businesses. Shetting workers this time around, down 18,000. CNBC Senior Economics Reporter Steve Leesman. On Thursday's watch list, we get earnings from Amazon. We also find out how many people applied for unemployment benefits last week.

And Thursday night, it's the 15th annual NFL honors awards show. Jessica Eddinger, CNBC. I always wanted to teach money management, and that's why we created this club. This is really a great way to learn. Go to CNBC.com slash join Jim.