Stock Market Today (LIVE): Alphabet Shareholders Want More Transparency; Breaking—Fed Pauses Amid Historic Rift; UMG Dumps Spotify Stake for Buybacks

📌 Top story -- scroll down for more updates

3:00 pm — GOOG +0.043%

Alphabet (GOOG +0.43%) is fielding pressure from a group of shareholders managing a combined $1.15 trillion in assets, who want more transparency on how the company governs the use of its cloud and AI services by governments for surveillance.

2:28 pm — NVO -2.95% today

Novo Nordisk (NVO 2.53%) shares fell 3% Wednesday after Canada became the first G7 nation to approve a generic version of Ozempic, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories’ (RDY 2.35%) semaglutide injection for type 2 diabetes. Health Canada is reviewing eight more generic GLP-1 submissions, with decisions expected in coming months. Generic drugs in Canada can run 45%–90% cheaper than brand-name equivalents.

2:11 pm

Rates stayed put, but the real story is what’s happening inside the Fed. Four officials broke ranks in the most divided vote since 1992 — and their pushback on "easing bias" is a signal that rate cuts may be further off than markets think.

1:15 pm — UNVGY -1.8%, SPOT +2.0%

Universal Music Group (UNVGY 1.24%) announced Wednesday it will sell half of its 2.7-billion-euro stake in Spotify (SPOT +2.80%) to fund a doubled share buyback program. The move serves as a strategic defense against an unsolicited $64 billion takeover bid from activist investor Bill Ackman, who argued the market undervalued UMG's equity holdings. Despite a 3.8% dip in adjusted EBITDA due to a weak dollar, constant-currency revenue climbed 8.1% behind top sellers like Taylor Swift and BTS. By selling on its own terms, UMG retains control over the proceeds, which will also be shared with artists under a long-standing contractual commitment, rather than being fully absorbed into Ackman’s proposed acquisition cash.

1:05 pm — UBER -0.6%

Uber (UBER +0.38%) used its annual Go-Get product event to lay out an ambitious push into travel, hotel bookings, and AI-powered ride reservations, sharpening its pitch as an all-in-one super app. The expansion puts Uber in direct competition with Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) and Airbnb (ABNB +0.58%) in the travel booking space.

12:40 pm — NXPI +25.3%

NXP Semiconductors (NXPI +26.20%) shares soared 26% Wednesday, marking the Dutch chipmaker's best performance since its 2010 IPO. The rally follows a first-quarter beat where adjusted earnings of $3.05 per share outpaced the $2.95 expected by analysts. While peers like Nvidia (NVDA 1.99%) dominate the spotlight with GPUs, NXP is carving a high-margin niche in "physical AI" and software-defined vehicles. Revenue rose 12% to $3.18 billion as demand for automotive processing and data center infrastructure — specifically power management and cooling controls — hit new peaks. CEO Rafael Sotomayor now anticipates data center revenue to more than double from $200 million last year to over $500 million in 2026.

12:25 pm

Pershing Square (NYSE: PS) and its newly launched fund, Pershing Square USA (NYSE: PSUS), both began trading today as part of a single bundled initial public offering (IPO). PSUS sold shares at $50 each and raised roughly $5 billion, the low end of the company's $5 billion to $10 billion target range.

PS shares didn't raise any money on their own. They were given away as a bonus to PSUS buyers -- one free PS share for every five PSUS shares purchased -- and now trade independently on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Reports indicate the offering was oversubscribed, with institutional investors making up more than 85% of orders. Here's a breakdown of the highlights from the S-1.

Key Takeaways

11:10 am — SBUX +8.5%

Starbucks (SBUX +8.82%) shares skyrocketed nearly 9% Wednesday after CEO Brian Niccol declared the company’s 18-month turnaround has reached an "inflection point." The coffee giant crushed estimates with a 6.2% jump in global same-store sales, a dramatic reversal from last year's decline. Most impressively, U.S. traffic grew 4.3%, signaling that investments in store labor and a simplified menu are successfully luring back lapsed customers. Bolstered by this momentum, management raised its 2026 earnings per share forecast to a high of $2.45. While China remains a slow grind at 0.5% growth, the domestic surge suggests Starbucks has finally found the right recipe to justify its premium valuation and recapture market leadership.

10:25 am — GOOG +0.8%

Alphabet (GOOG +0.43%) is rapidly filling the vacuum at the Department of Defense after the Pentagon blacklisted rival Anthropic as a supply chain risk. Pentagon AI chief Cameron Stanley confirmed that the DOD is expanding its use of Google’s Gemini for classified wartime projects, seeking to avoid overreliance on any single provider. While Google employees have voiced internal opposition to military contracts, the Pentagon reports that Gemini is already saving "thousands of man-hours" weekly in logistics and cybersecurity. This shift cements Google’s role as a primary beneficiary of the Trump administration's modernization efforts, even as Anthropic remains mired in legal battles to regain access to defense budgets.

10:10 am — YUM +3.0%

Yum Brands (YUM +2.78%) surpassed first-quarter expectations Wednesday, driven by an 8% same-store sales surge at Taco Bell. The company reported adjusted earnings of $1.50 per share on $2.06 billion in revenue, outperforming analyst projections despite ongoing weakness at KFC U.S. and Pizza Hut. Net income jumped to $432 million, bolstered by the recent acquisition of over 100 Taco Bell locations intended to scale profitability. While global same-store sales rose 3% overall, the domestic Pizza Hut division remained a laggard with a 4% decline. Investors are now focused on a pending strategic review of the pizza chain, with private equity giants reportedly circling the business.

9:35 am

The S&P 500 is treading water Wednesday as a "perfect storm" of geopolitical tension and central bank shifts keeps investors on edge. Brent crude jumped 3% to $114 per barrel following reports that President Trump ordered an extended blockade of Iranian ports, throttling global supply. Meanwhile, Jerome Powell presides over his final Federal Reserve meeting before nominated successor Kevin Warsh takes the helm in May. While interest rates are expected to hold steady, all eyes are on the post-close earnings from Alphabet (GOOG +0.43%), Amazon (AMZN +1.60%), Meta Platforms (META +0.29%), and Microsoft (MSFT 0.99%). These titans must prove their massive artificial intelligence investments are yielding tangible revenue to sustain the market’s record-high valuations.

9:20 am -- WING -10.4% in pre-market trading

By Sanmeet DeoTeam Rule Breakers

The main story for Wingstop (WING 3.31%) is the declining same store sales growth as this morning they reported a decline of 8.7% sending shares down over 10% pre-market. Guidance of "low-single digit decline in domestic same store sales growth" doesn't provide hope. This is disappointing and hopefully we'll see some commentary in the upcoming earnings call about what is going on and how they are addressing it. Despite this, they are growing store count and generating income and cash. I'm still bullish for the long-term prospects of the company and believe this could be short-term headwinds.

8:15 am

By Nick ScipleTeam Rule Breakers

The Wall Street Journal dropped a big story yesterday, reporting OpenAI missed internal targets for weekly users and revenue. CFO Sarah Friar has privately worried about whether the company can fund its compute commitments, and the board reportedly is pushing back on Sam Altman's instinct to keep locking up data center capacity. Nvidia (NVDA 1.99%), Oracle (ORCL 1.83%), SoftBank, and other companies tied to open AI all sold off on the news.

OpenAI's response was the kind of denial that tells you the reporting is solid. Altman and Friar issued a joint statement calling any suggestion of a rift ridiculous and insisting they are totally aligned on buying as much compute as possible. When you have to call a story ridiculous, the story is usually closer to true than you'd like. In the words of Shakespeare, "the lady doth protest too much, methinks"

Here's what I think the market is missing. OpenAI losing share is not the same thing as AI demand slowing down. The Journal's reporting tells you exactly where ChatGPT's users went. Gemini took consumer share. Anthropic took coding and enterprise. That's a more competitive market, not a smaller one. The chips, the cloud capacity, the power generation underneath all of it gets used either way.

8:00 am -- TSM +0.17%, ARM +1.35% in pre-market trading

In a notable shift within the semiconductor ecosystem, TSMC (TSM +0.46%) has fully exited its position in UK chip designer Arm Holdings (ARM +1.33%). The Taiwanese foundry giant sold its remaining 1.11 million shares through a subsidiary this week, pocketing approximately $231 million in proceeds. Executed at an average price of $207.65 per share, the sale resulted in a $174 million gain for the company's bottom line. Management characterized the divestment as a routine component of a broader equity disposal strategy aimed at optimizing its massive investment portfolio as it focuses on core manufacturing expansion.

7:30 am -- ENPH -11.08% in pre-market trading

Enphase Energy (ENPH 10.57%) dropped more than 10% in pre-market trading, after posting a 31% fall in non-GAAP earnings per share for its fiscal first quarter, year over year (YoY). Recommended in Stock Advisor by Team Rule Breakers, the maker of solar energy technology saw U.S. revenue fall sharply – against a backdrop of tariff costs and oil-focused energy priorities. Tougher domestic trading was offset in part by international expansion.

7:25 am -- AMZN unchanged in pre-market trading

Amazon (AMZN +1.60%) secured a landmark win for its cloud division, AWS, by bringing OpenAI's frontier models and "agentic" tools to its Bedrock platform. This expansion follows a strategic pivot by OpenAI to loosen exclusivity with long