NASA’s Perseverance rover isn’t ready to start rolling on Mars just yet.
The SUV-sized Perseverance landed inside Mars’ 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater yesterday (Feb. 18), kicking off an ambitious surface mission that will hunt for signs of ancient Red Planet life and collect dozens of samples for future return to Earth, among other tasks.
But it’ll likely be a few months before Perseverance, the heart of NASA’s $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission, really starts sinking its teeth into that science work.
Related: Here’s the 1st photo from NASA’s Perseverance rover! Live updates: Follow the Perseverance Mars rover mission
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For starters, the rover’s handlers will spend the next few Martian days, or sols, getting Perseverance up to speed in its new digs. (A sol lasts 24 hours and 40 minutes, just slightly longer than an Earth day.) The team will stabilize the six-wheeled robot’s power, thermal and communications systems so that new, surface-tailored flight software can be uploaded from Earth, Mars 2020 deputy project manager Jennifer Trosper said during a post-landing news conference yesterday.
As this “critical infrastructure” work is proceeding, “we’re also doing other health checks of other instruments,” said Trosper, who’s based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Over the course of the three sols or four sols of these early activities, we’ll get all the instrument health checks done; we’ll charge the rover battery.”
Perseverance’s head-like, instrument-laden mast will also be deployed in these first few sols, allowing great new imagery to be captured. For example, the rover’s MastCam-Z camera system is scheduled to take its first color panoramas on sol 3, Trosper said. (Landing day was sol 0, and today, Feb. 19, is sol 1.)
The new software upload will begin on sol 4, if all goes according to plan. And that important step will take some time to complete.
“Once we start to do that, we do about four days of transitioning to the new software,” Trosper said. “We do it very carefully. We toe-dip; we make sure that nothing goes wrong, and at the end of that is when we start the next set of checkouts where we’ll deploy the arm. We’ll do our first drive — about five meters forward and back.”
Related: NASA’s Mars 2020 rover mission in pictures
The test driving will ready Perseverance for its first big trip — a journey to a Martian airfield. The mission team will send the rover to a good, open spot where the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) helicopter Ingenuity, one of the mission’s technology demonstrations, can strut its stuff. (Perseverance also carries a tech demo designed to generate oxygen from Mars’ carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere, gear that could aid future human settlers on the Red Planet.)
Ingenuity will then drop onto the ground from Perseverance’s belly, where it has been attached since before the mission’s July 2020 launch, and the rover will drive a safe distance away. Ingenuity will fire up its blades and attempt to become the first rotorcraft ever to ply the skies of a world beyond Earth.
If Ingenuity is successful, helicopters could soon become exploration fixtures on Mars, gathering data on their own and/or serving as scouts for rovers, NASA officials have said.
Getting Perseverance to the helipad, and then safely out of the way, might require 10 sols or so, and the demo flights are expected to take a total of 30 sols, Trosper said. After that work is done, the team will upgrade the rover’s auto-navigation capability, and Perseverance will then start driving toward its first main science site, which the mission team will identify over the coming days and weeks.
So the expected timeframe, Trosper said, is helicopter prep and flights in the spring, with science work starting in earnest in the summer.
But “those things can change,” she stressed. “They might go faster. Or if we have to drive, traverse, to different places that take a longer period of time, they might go slower.”
Perseverance should have lots of time to get its diverse work done on the floor of Jezero, which harbored a big lake and a river delta in the ancient past. Mars 2020’s prime mission lasts one Mars year, or about 687 Earth days.
And there’s every reason to expect mission extensions if the nuclear-powered Perseverance remains in good health. After all, its predecessor, the Curiosity rover, is still going strong inside Mars’ Gale Crater, more than nine years after touching down there. Perseverance is based heavily off Curiosity; the two rovers share the same basic body plan and the same type of power source (radioisotope thermoelectric generators), and they both landed using a dramatic “sky crane” strategy.
There will be lots to look forward to along the way. Ingenuity will fly before you know it, for instance. And mission team members said during yesterday’s news conference that they hope to release on Monday (Feb. 22) high-definition video (with sound!) that Perseverance captured during its dramatic but picture-perfect descent — provided this recording gear all worked as planned, of course.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
The White House says winter weather affecting parts of the country has slowed down vaccinations. This comes as the Biden administration admits if Johnson & Johnson vaccine gets approved, it will be slow rollout. (Feb. .17)
AP Domestic
If the COVID-19 vaccine rollout seems chaotic and incomprehensible, with numbers that don’t add up and allocations that don’t make sense, you’re not alone.
Even people who study this for a living are at a loss.
“None of us know what’s going on,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
He has been trying to understand how figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House and the states fit together, but can’t.
“I don’t understand why there’s not more transparency,” he said. “They could easily hold a webinar every day to go through the numbers – this is how many boxes we shipped, this is how many boxes are coming next week. The more they don’t do that, the more acrimony that’s created between states and the federal government.”
Overall, the trends are positive but the pace will need to intensify significantly to meet deadlines the White House announced this week.
Tracking COVID-19 vaccine distribution by state: How many people have been vaccinated in the US?
Since Jan. 25, COVID-19 vaccine distribution from the federal government has increased 57%. As of this week, it’s up to 13.5 million doses shipped per week.
“We are on track to have enough vaccine supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July,” Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said in a task force briefing Wednesday.
To get the scheduled two doses of the authorized vaccines to 300 million people, distribution from the federal government will need to ramp up by about one-third. At the current level, it would take until September.
Given how fast things have been increasing, that seemsfeasible. However, no actual data on future increases has been announced by the White House.
So, what happened? Why are there questions about supply and deliveries?
If things appear to be on track, why is there so much chaos at the state level, with long lines, people unable to get appointments and clinics closing due to lack of vaccine?
There are several reasons. One is a lack of federal transparency about vaccine supply and shipments and continued fluctuation of vaccine deliveries, all of which confuse and confound states.
Public health officials are frustrated over an ongoing lack of clarity. It’s impossible to know exactly how much vaccine is being shipped and to where and to whom it’s been administered – information they need to plan.
‘It’s like we’re trying our best to help the virus’: A fourth wave is looming if US fails to contain COVID-19 variants, experts say
Vaccine is delivered, and tallied, through several separate programs, including ones for states, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, Federally Qualified Health Centers and private pharmacies. Some doses are controlled by states themselves and some by federal programs.
The National Governors Association sent a public letter to President Joe Biden this week asking for more clarity, including “visibility into the federal vaccination efforts at the facility level happening in our borders.”
The letter cited “the anxiety created by the demand and supply of the vaccine,” and asked for better reporting to avoid confusion.
This didn’t help, either: Some states decided to play by their own rules
States also shoulder a share of the blame. Experts say they opened up vaccinations to ever-widening groups too quickly, even though supplies were in short supply.
“We knew all along there would be a limited number of doses at the beginning and we would have to prioritize,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “Somewhere in there, the vaccine got overpromised.”
That hasn’t always happened.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices spent months creating a carefully-designed series of vaccine eligibility tiers from the most vulnerable to the least.
Luck, foresight and science: How an unheralded team developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time
Some state officials promptly ignored the recommendations and began opening up vaccination to broader groups of people, said Plescia.
The ACIP guidelines from December said frontline heath care workers and long-term care facility residents would be first in line, in what was known as Phase 1a. Next could come frontline essential workers and people 75 and older, in Phase 1b. People 65 and older and people with high-risk medical conditions would be in a larger Phase 1c.
Just one week after the first COVID-19 vaccine was distributed, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis overrode the ACIP guidelines and unilaterally declared his state was prioritizing people 65 and older.
That resulted in long lines, seniors waiting overnight for vaccine, crashing appointment websites and general chaos as Florida’s more than 4 million seniors clamored to get vaccinated.
What needs to happen now to fix this? Let’s start with honest messaging.
Currently, in 35 states plus the District of Columbia, people 65 and older can seek an appointment, according to the White House. But other states haven’t moved beyond vaccinating essential workers and those 75 and above.
Wisconsin’s legislature is debating this week whether to add teachers to phase 1a.
Early finger-pointing that states were going too slow may have driven the rush for speed and bypassing of the guidelines. In any case, he said, vaccine got overpromised.
“We suddenly skipped through the ACIP guidelines and told all these people they were eligible, he said. “I don’t know if that was the most judicious thing to do. It probably would have been better if we’d held our ground.”
‘It doesn’t make you a bad person’: Vaccine envy is normal, but here’s when it can become dangerous
Other states, such as Georgia, have resisted widely broadening who is eligible for vaccine, said Glen Nowak, director of the University of Georgia’s Center for Health and Risk Communications and a former communication director for the National Immunization Program at the CDC.
The governor there has been consistent saying there isn’t yet enough vaccine for the first priority groups so he’s not going to open it up yet. “He’s saying, ‘I hear you, I want to do that. but we don’t have enough vaccine right now,'” Nowak said.
To make the rollout not seem like it’s out of control, states need to manage expectations. “Broadening it isn’t going to help, it’s going to make things worse,” he said.
What’s needed are honest messages that this process can’t happen overnight. While not everyone will get the vaccine immediately, everyone will get vaccine eventually, said Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, and editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine.
“The cure is tincture of time,” he said. Though he did acknowledge, “That’s easy for me to say now that I’ve now gotten both my doses.”
Where Operation Warp Speed fell short: ‘A huge communications failure’
A big part of the problem, since before the first doses of the vaccine were shipped, has been the lack of clear, consistent communication, experts say. That’s made the job of explaining what’s happening now with the vaccine supply even harder.
Even the man who played a key role in making COVID-19 vaccines possible, Moncef Slaoui, says messaging was a major failure of Operation Warp Speed’s otherwise stellar work.
“It was a huge communications failure, honestly,” Slaoui said of the rollout at a recent New York Academies of Science conference.
USA TODAY analysis: What went wrong with COVID-19 vaccine distribution and how it has tarnished the ‘miracle’
There was no way everyone in America was going to be immunized immediately, he said, but that message didn’t get out. Millions of Americans have expressed anger and frustration about something that Slaoui and his team thought they had clearly explained.
“Every single time we said, ‘We will produce enough vaccine doses to immunize the U.S. population by the summer of 2021.’ It is understood in that statement that it’s going to take six, seven months to have enough vaccine to immunize everybody,” he said. “But, in fact, I think we should have communicated much, much better that there will not be enough vaccine for everybody immediately.”
It’s going to take time to overcome that deficit of trust and information, said Dr. Kelly Moore, deputy director of the nonprofit Immunization Action Coalition.
“We will never recapture the opportunities that were lost to build a solid foundation for the vaccination program before vaccines began rolling out,” she said, “but we’re getting back on track and the signs give me hope.”
Contact Elizabeth Weise at eweise@usatoday.com
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California has released its contract with Blue Shield of California outlining how the nonprofit health insurer will serve as the state’s third-party administrator to build a vaccine network and increase the rate of allocation for doses.Vaccines will be sent directly to providers, and “real-time transparency” will show where the doses are and to whom they’ve been administered, according to the contract, which went into effect the beginning of this month.A release from the state said it chose to partner with Blue Shield “because of its robust network management expertise — its PPO network comprises 63,000+ physicians and 370-plus hospitals — and its experience as a health plan administrator for large employers, including large state accounts.Clark Kelso is a professor with the PacificMcGeorge School of Law. He said he believes this contract with Blue Shield will help pick up the state’s pace with vaccinations, particularly with people who might have had trouble accessing vaccine clinics.”This contract makes sure that people who are particularly at risk and people who have perhaps difficulty in getting access to health care, people who are in remote areas of the state, people who may be at home and can’t get out for the vaccine,” Kelso said. “This contract makes sure that those people are going to be served.”Below are some of the key goals for vaccine administration under the new contract:ACCESSTravel distance for a “sufficiently healthy person to drive or be transported in a vehicle from their home to a place they can receive a vaccine” should be less than 30 minutes for 95% of people living in urban areas and less than 60 minutes for those living in rural areas.Blue Shield will work with the state’s government operations agency to deliver vaccines to people “who are homebound or suffering from illnesses/disabilities that make it unsafe or prohibitively difficult for them to visit a Vaccine Provider for a vaccination.” This should be available in all 58 counties in the priority order designated by the Agency.CAPACITYThe number of vaccines that can be administered per week statewide should be 3 million a week by March 1 and 4 million a week by April 30.EQUITYStarting March 1 and on the first day of each subsequent month in the contract, the government operations agency will establish a monthly goal for the percentage of vaccines administered for populations identified as “under-resourced or disproportionately impacted populations.This also includes people who rank in the lowest quartile in the Healthy Places Index.”This is an extraordinarily complex venture that Blue Shield is willing to take on,” Kelso said of the contract’s guidelines. “To manage to get very quickly 30 million, 25 million doses or more spread around the state equitably, it’s going to take all of Blue Shield’s expertise in management and logistics to make this happen.”Read the full contract here.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
California has released its contract with Blue Shield of California outlining how the nonprofit health insurer will serve as the state’s third-party administrator to build a vaccine network and increase the rate of allocation for doses.
Vaccines will be sent directly to providers, and “real-time transparency” will show where the doses are and to whom they’ve been administered, according to the contract, which went into effect the beginning of this month.
A release from the state said it chose to partner with Blue Shield “because of its robust network management expertise — its PPO network comprises 63,000+ physicians and 370-plus hospitals — and its experience as a health plan administrator for large employers, including large state accounts.
Clark Kelso is a professor with the PacificMcGeorge School of Law. He said he believes this contract with Blue Shield will help pick up the state’s pace with vaccinations, particularly with people who might have had trouble accessing vaccine clinics.
“This contract makes sure that people who are particularly at risk and people who have perhaps difficulty in getting access to health care, people who are in remote areas of the state, people who may be at home and can’t get out for the vaccine,” Kelso said. “This contract makes sure that those people are going to be served.”
Below are some of the key goals for vaccine administration under the new contract:
ACCESS
Travel distance for a “sufficiently healthy person to drive or be transported in a vehicle from their home to a place they can receive a vaccine” should be less than 30 minutes for 95% of people living in urban areas and less than 60 minutes for those living in rural areas.
Blue Shield will work with the state’s government operations agency to deliver vaccines to people “who are homebound or suffering from illnesses/disabilities that make it unsafe or prohibitively difficult for them to visit a Vaccine Provider for a vaccination.” This should be available in all 58 counties in the priority order designated by the Agency.
CAPACITY
The number of vaccines that can be administered per week statewide should be 3 million a week by March 1 and 4 million a week by April 30.
EQUITY
Starting March 1 and on the first day of each subsequent month in the contract, the government operations agency will establish a monthly goal for the percentage of vaccines administered for populations identified as “under-resourced or disproportionately impacted populations.
This also includes people who rank in the lowest quartile in the Healthy Places Index.
“This is an extraordinarily complex venture that Blue Shield is willing to take on,” Kelso said of the contract’s guidelines. “To manage to get very quickly 30 million, 25 million doses or more spread around the state equitably, it’s going to take all of Blue Shield’s expertise in management and logistics to make this happen.”
“It’s what we’re doing right: staying apart, wearing masks, not traveling, not mixing with others indoors,” Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Sunday.
Covid-19 infection and hospitalization numbers are now plummeting nationwide after rounds of devastating surges that followed the holidays. But that doesn’t mean the US is in the clear.
“We’ve had three surges,” Frieden added. “Whether or not we have a fourth surge is up to us, and the stakes couldn’t be higher — not only in the number of people who could die in the fourth surge, but also in the risk that even more dangerous variants will emerge if there’s more uncontrolled spread.”
That’s why it’s especially important state leaders don’t ease restrictions and lift mask mandates now, experts have warned.
“It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told NBC on Sunday. “If we want to get our children back to school, and I believe we all do, it all depends on how much community spread is out there.”
“We need to all take responsibility to decrease that community spread, including mask wearing, so that we can get our kids and our society back,” the director added.
Homegrown Covid-19 variants spotted in US
Among the most concerning Covid-19 strains that has been detected in the US is the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant, first spotted in the UK. More than 1,100 cases of the variant have been reported across 39 states — with roughly a third of the cases reported in Florida, according to data from the CDC.
The US has also reported at least 17 cases of a strain initially seen in South Africa and at least two cases of another strain, this one first linked to Brazil.
Meanwhile on Sunday, researchers announced they have identified a batch of similar troubling mutations in Covid-19 samples in the US that also appear to make the virus more transmissible.
Those mutations all affect the same stretch of the spike protein — the knob-like extension on the outside of the virus that it uses to dock onto the cells it infects, researchers wrote in a pre-print report that has not yet been peer reviewed.
But these mutations appear to be “relatively rare” so far, one of the researchers said.
States still struggle with vaccine supply
Public health experts say the US is now in a race against time to vaccinate as many Americans as possible before the variants continue to spread and mutate further.
But while states ramp up their vaccinations, challenges remain — including a short supply.
In San Francisco, officials announced that a high volume vaccination site will pause for a week and will reopen “once supply is sufficient to resume operations.” A second high-volume site expects to resume vaccinations Friday — but only for second doses. A third high volume vaccine site is set to launch this week, officials said, but “with available appointments far below full capacity.”
“The vaccine supply coming to San Francisco’s healthcare providers and the Department of Public Health (DPH) is limited, inconsistent, and unpredictable, making vaccine roll out difficult and denying San Franciscans this potentially life-saving intervention,” officials said in a news release Sunday.
“The City has the capacity to administer more than 10,000 vaccines per day but lack the vaccine supply,” they added.
Supply shortage has also hindered operations across other parts of the state, even as officials recently announced they’ll add millions more people to the state’s vaccine priority list. Several of Los Angeles’ Covid-19 vaccination sites were forced to temporarily close because of a lack of vaccine doses.
In Washington state, officials said appointments for the first dose will be “extremely limited” this week as the state will focus on administering second doses.
“We are monitoring the distribution of doses closely and making adjustments as needed,” Secretary of Health Umair A. Shah said in a statement. “While the limited availability of first doses will be challenging this coming week, focusing on second doses will help pave the way for an improved and more sustainable allocation of vaccines in future weeks.”
The two states are far from alone in their struggles. Officials have said supply will likely remain a challenge for a while, and experts say vaccines will likely not be widely available to the American public until late spring or summer.
Walensky, the CDC director, told Fox News on Sunday she anticipates that “by the end of the summer, we will have enough vaccine in order to vaccinate the entire US population that is eligible.”
Expert: Teacher vaccinations ‘essential’ for school reopening
Meanwhile, among the central questions in vaccinations right now is when educators across the country will be able to get their shots.
Emergency physician Dr. Leana Wen told CNN on Sunday that teacher vaccinations are crucial when it comes to reopening school — differing in opinion from school reopening guidance released last week by the CDC.
The agency’s guidelines did not list vaccination as a “key” strategy for opening schools, focusing instead on measures like masks and physical distancing among others. Vaccinations for staff and teachers are “an additional layer of protection,” Walensky previously said.
On Sunday, Walensky told CNN that while vaccination for teachers is not a prerequisite for reopening schools, current CDC guidance does specify that those who are at higher risk should have virtual options.
“I’m a strong advocate of teachers receiving their vaccinations, but we don’t believe it’s a prerequisite for schools to reopen,” she said.
But Wen called teacher vaccinations “essential.”
“If we want students to be in school for in-person learning, the least that we can do is to protect the health and well-being of our teachers — especially as in so many parts of the country, teachers are already being made to go back to school in poorly-ventilated, cramped areas, with many students who may not always be masking and practicing physical distancing,” Wen said.
CNN’s Keith Allen, Ben Tinker, Michael Nedelman, Maggie Fox and Naomi Thomas contributed to this report.
British hospitals have been inundated with COVID-19 patients.Credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AFP via Getty
The news is sobering, but complicated. Scientists have released the data behind a British government warning last week that the fast-spreading SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.7 increases the risk of dying from COVID-19 compared with previous variants. But some scientists caution that the latest study — like the government warning — is preliminary and still does not indicate whether the variant is more deadly or is just spreading faster and so reaching greater numbers of vulnerable people.
The latest findings are concerning, but to draw conclusions “more work needs to be done,” says Muge Cevik, a public-health researcher at the University of St Andrews, who is based in Edinburgh, UK.
Last week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said preliminary data from several research groups suggested that B.1.1.7, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, was spreading more quickly than previous variants and was also associated with a higher risk of death. On 3 February, researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) released an analysis1 of some of those data, which suggests that the risk of dying is around 35% higher for people who are confirmed to be infected with the new variant.
In real terms, that means that for men aged 70–84, the number who are likely to die from COVID-19 increases from roughly 5% for those who test positive to the older variant, to more than 6% for those confirmed infected with B.1.1.7, according to the analysis. For men aged 85 or over, the risk of dying increases from about 17% to nearly 22% for those confirmed infected with the new variant. The analysis has not been peer reviewed.
Other groups are also studying whether B.1.1.7 and other new SARS-CoV-2 variants are more deadly than earlier versions of the virus.
Dominant variant
Since B.1.1.7 was first identified in September in southern England, it has become the dominant variant in the United Kingdom and has spread to more than 30 countries. To investigate whether the lineage causes an increased risk of dying, Nicholas Davies, an epidemiologist at LSHTM, and colleagues analysed data from more than 850,000 people who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 between 1 November and 11 January but who were not in hospital.
Despite the fact that the B.1.1.7 variant was new, the researchers were able to identify people infected with it because of a glitch in a standard diagnostic kit used in the United Kingdom. The test normally looks for three SARS-CoV-2 genes to confirm the presence of the virus. But, in the case of B.1.1.7, changes to the spike protein mean that people who are infected still test positive, but for only two of these genes.
The team found that B.1.1.7 is more deadly than previous variants for all age groups, genders and ethnicities. “This provides strong evidence that there indeed exists increased mortality from the new strain,” says Henrik Salje, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Although Cevik says that the small number of deaths among young people included in the analysis is not enough to conclude that the new variant hits all ages equally. “It seems to really be affecting older age-groups,” she says.
This is to be expected, given that the chances of dying from COVID-19 increase significantly with age, says Tony Blakely, an epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
The findings are also consistent with other preliminary work summarized in a document published on 22 January by the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (known as NERVTAG), a government advisory group. One research team at Imperial College London found that the average case fatality rate — the proportion of people with confirmed COVID-19 who will die as a result — was some 36% higher for people infected with B.1.1.7.
Other explanations
Cevik says more data and analysis are needed to conclude whether the variant is more deadly than other lineages. For instance, the latest study doesn’t consider whether people infected with the variant have underlying comorbidities, such as diabetes and obesity, and are therefore more vulnerable and at higher risk of dying, she says.
The study also covers only a small fraction of COVID-19 deaths in the United Kingdom — some 7% — and the effect could disappear if deaths in people tested at hospitals are included, says Cevik. Preliminary work by other groups has not found an increased risk of death in people admitted to hospitals with the new variant, and this complicates the latest results.
Davies says it is possible that the new variant could be causing more severe disease, resulting in more people ending up in hospital, but that once there, their risk of dying could be the same as before. But he agrees that more data are needed before researchers can understand what’s going on.
Some researchers had also suggested that B.1.1.7 could contribute to an increase in deaths because of its fast spread, which would overwhelm hospitals and affect the quality of care. But Davies says that he and his team ruled that out because they compared the risks of death associated with the new and older variants for people who were tested at the same time and place, and so would be subject to the same conditions in hospitals.
Everyone loves free stuff. And if you have a gaming PC, you can pretty much always find a game or two you can download from a digital storefront for free. Honestly, it’s one of the best perks of playing games on PC. The only problem is it can be tough to keep track of what free games are available at any given time.We thought we’d make it easy on you. Whenever there’s a free PC game to download at one of the major online stores, we’ll highlight it below. All you have to do is check back often to make sure you get the free PC games you so richly deserve.
Free Games from Epic Game Store
For years and years, Steam seemed unstoppable. It was the storefront for PC games. How could any company possibly compete with such an entrenched powerhouse? Turns out the answer is: by offering tons of high-quality games for free.
Anyone with an Epic Games Store account can download at least one free game each week from the online retailer. It’s a heck of a perk, and one you should take advantage of on a weekly basis if you like free games. And who doesn’t?
Free Games from Amazon Prime Gaming
Free Games and DLC with Prime
Get a new batch of free PC games each month, plus DLC for popular titles.
Amazon Prime members get a batch of free PC games each month. Granted, you need to sign up for Prime, which costs money, but if you’re already a member for the free shipping or Prime Video, you might as well take advantage of the free games each month.In addition to free PC games each month, Prime members also get in-game items in all kinds of titles, ranging from Destiny 2 and League of Legends to Red Dead Online and Star Wars Squadrons.
Unless you’re really into indie titles, t’s probably not worth signing up for Prime just to get the free games. Prime’s free PC games don’t tend to be as big or well-known as the ones Epic Games Store doles out for free. But if you’re already a Prime member for the many other benefits, there’s no reason not to take a look at what’s on offer each month.
If you don’t have a gaming PC, or you also have a console, you can check out our best PlayStation deals, best Xbox deals, and best Nintendo Switch deals as well. We keep those articles updated with all the best deals on games, consoles, accessories, and more.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
GameStop’s and AMC’s stocks have been on an epic rollercoaster ride. Here’s what’s going on.
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For years, Wall Street investors piled on bets that video game retailer GameStop would fail. The company wasn’t adjusting well as the world moved to online game buying, they’d say. And the pandemic appeared to speed up those changes, too. Wall Street was so sure GameStop would fail that investors made it one of the most heavily bet-against stocks on the market. Over the past few months though, a bunch of Reddit users has been buying up shares, pushing up GameStop’s value and undermining Wall Street’s big bets. At first, these forum traders bought because they believed the company was better off than the Wall Street doubters thought. Then, as GameStop value soared, Wall Street’s bad bets started to cost investors billions of dollars.
Now the Reddit users are trying to make the price rise even more, as they wage an epic battle against Wall Street.
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At one point, the Reddit users from the forum r/WallStreetBets sent the stock up more than 14,300% (you read that right), though it’s gone through wild fluctuations. They’ve spread their strategy to struggling movie chain AMC and tech company BlackBerry, too. In their wake, these online market players have upended Wall Street. It’s not just big-time investors losing billions of dollars though. There are endless memes, app trading disasters and weird internet lingo (like calling stocks “stonks”).
It’s a crazy story, complete with cameos by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and CNBC financial commentator and former hedge fund manager Jim Cramer. There’s even Michael Burry, one of the subjects of the book and movie The Big Short, who happens to be a prominent investor in GameStop.
Even Silicon Valley found a way to get in the middle of this mess. It’s wild.
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What does GameStop’s skyrocketing stock have to do with…
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Despite the move being characterized as “insane” and a “Ponzi scheme,” “market manipulation” and “mass psychosis,” GameStop’s stock has become the theater for a war between Wall Street and internet traders. Nearly all of them expecting it to fail. The questions are when, and who will be on the losing end when it does.
“We’re seeing a phenomenon that I have never seen,” Jim Cramer, a Wall Street commentator on CNBC and a former hedge fund manager, said during a segment as GameStock’s stock began rocketing up. And GameStop could be just the start. “It’s insane.”
It all started in late January, when posters on the Reddit stock trading chat community r/WallStreetBets pushed up shares in the struggling game retailer. With much of Wall Street betting against GameStop’s success, r/WallStreetBets investors believed they could force a market rally by creating demand where there had been little before.
As a result, GameStop stock jumped more than 822%, from $17.25 per share at the beginning of the year to a high of $159.18 on Jan. 25. The next day, it dropped by nearly half, only to rise back up. And then Elon Musk tweeted about it to his 43 million followers (using that weird internet vocabulary, of course), and the price jumped 40%.
Later that week, the stock jumped even higher, to $483 per share, before halving again. Amid all the chaos, the stock market temporarily halted GameStop share trading more than a dozen times some days because share price moves were wildly swinging by large amounts. On Monday, the stock price fell more than 30% to $225.
It’s not just GameStop either. Reddit traders set their eyes on BlackBerry too, attempting to pull the same trick against Wall Street’s negative bets. So far, they’ve pushed shares up more than double from $6.58 per share, where they started at the beginning of the year, though its price has swung up and down as well..
There’s also AMC Theaters, which saw its business crater as movie releases were pushed back and people stayed at home. But Reddit users think Wall Street’s being overly pessimistic about that one too, leading them to spawn the hashtag #SaveAMC on Twitter. Its stock jumped from $2.01 per share at the beginning of the year to $19.90 on Jan. 27, before halving the next day.
Some trading companies such as Robinhood, TD Ameritrade and WeBull responded to the fluctuations by restricting trades of GameStop, AMC and other fast-moving stocks during the chaos.
Robinhood drew particular ire, leading US Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as Sen. Ted Cruz, to criticize its decision. Some people had already raised concerns about Robinhood before, saying it “gamified” stock trading. Now it’s being accused of outright market manipulation, including through at least one class action lawsuit filed already. Robinhood, for its part, said market rules effectively forced it to put those restrictions in place.
It’s a lot to take in. So, here’s what you really need to know about GameStop, AMC and Wall Street.
How’d this start?
GameStop is one of the largest video game retailers in the world, but it’s struggled to remain relevant in the age of online sales.
Effectively, the r/WallStreetBets crowd realized Wall Street made a huge mistake. People known as short sellers who were betting GameStop stock would fall had been too aggressive.
The r/WallStreetBets crowd understood that if they could create artificial demand for GameStop shares with their own money, they could force Wall Street to recalibrate its bets, pushing prices even higher. And some investors who couldn’t even back up their bets against GameStop, would have to pay even more.
As of Jan. 27, there were 3.8 million members of the r/WallStreetBets community, though it’s nearly impossible to determine how many people are involved in the GameStop, AMC and BlackBerry schemes.
What we do know is that all this activity appears to have created a “short squeeze,” where the short sellers betting against GameStop are being forced to buy more GameStop stock to cover their losses. That pushed the price up even more, which forces more short sellers to cover their losses, which pushes the price up even more. Some of the Reddit crowd believe that GameStop stock could reach into the thousands of dollars just because of this mechanism.
And that’s why we’re suddenly seeing GameStop’s value jump.
See also: GameStop’s stock spike fueled by slang from Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets community. Here’s what it means
How does short selling work?
When people buy a stock normally, they’re betting it’ll rise or share enough profits that they’ll make more money than they put in.
Short sellers, or “shorts,” do the opposite. Shorts trade with borrowed shares and sell them, with hopes they can make money if the stock falls in the future.
Imagine Ian Corp. is a public company, and its shares are worth $10. A “short” would borrow shares of Ian Corp. and sell them for $10. Their bet is that Ian Corp. stock will actually drop below that — maybe to $4. If it does, then, they can buy the shares at $4 and pocket the other $6.
If Ian Corp. stock jumps to $25, then the lender who made this bet possible may push the short to cover their bet. That would mean the short effectively has to buy the shares at the new, higher price.
When a short is right, betting against a company, they can make a lot of money. But if they’re wrong, they can lose a lot more money too.
There are other options and tools to bet against a company’s future as well.
GameStop stock from Jan. 19 to Jan. 25.
Google Finance
How much money did GameStop shorts lose?
The losses appear to be tremendous. As of Jan. 27, shorts seemed to have lost $5 billion betting against GameStop this year, according to Investopedia. About $1.6 billion, or about half, of those losses happened on Friday, Jan. 29 when the stock jumped 51%.
It’s also worth noting that GameStop began the year as one of the most shorted companies on the market.
That’s a lot of money
It is, but what’s perhaps an even bigger indication of how dramatic these moves were, stock markets temporarily halted share trading for AMC, GameStop and other fast moving shares dozens of times since the drama began.
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How long will these big share price swings continue?
Part of what’s driven this behavior is the popularity of retail investing, or when traders who aren’t Wall Street professionals buy and sell stocks. Stock trading apps, often with no fees, have made it easy for people to jump into the market. And social media has helped people to rally together, egging one another on to buy more and more of a stock.
“GameStop’s rally is one in a series of eye-catching market moves to stir concerns among fund managers, some of whom say trading by individual investors is pushing stock prices out of whack with fundamentals,” The Wall Street Journal wrote when the drama began.
That said, it’s hard to pin all dramatic market swings on the r/WallStreetBets traders. For example, the value of silver jumped to eight-year highs on Monday, Feb. 1, but people in the Reddit community say they aren’t the ones doing it.
What does Wall Street say?
Many Reddit users accuse Wall Street investors of manipulating the market against them.
Getty Images
Big name trading apps like Robinhood, ETrade and others have reportedly struggled to remain online amid all the hysteria. TD Ameritrade on Jan. 27 acted to restrict the sudden spikes in demand, “out of an abundance of caution amid unprecedented market conditions.”
Robinhood has also come under particular scrutiny for appearing to severely restrict trades of some stocks while the market was wildly fluctuating that week. Politicians on both sides of the aisle in the US have called for an investigation into the app maker. Meanwhile, many angry Redditors say they’ll stop using Robinhood. Some have even threatened to join a class action lawsuit.
Nasdaq said it will halt trading on a stock if it finds a link to unusual activity on social media. The company said it sees its role as a “self-regulatory organization” is to make sure its markets act in a “legitimate” way. “Regulators kind of have to catch up with the technology that’s now available,” Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman told CNBC on on Jan. 27.
Throughout the past week, the markets have temporarily halted trades of GameStop and AMC stocks in particular because of the wide price swings and heavy volume.
I heard people are angry at Robinhood. Why?
Of the stock trading apps, Robinhood appeared to be the most aggressive in shutting down purchases of highly volatile stocks like GameStop and AMC. The company hasn’t given clear reasons, other than vaguely saying it’s working in the interest of users. But the US government may not agree.
On Jan. 29, the Securities and Exchange Commission said it’s “closely monitoring and evaluating the extreme price volatility of certain stocks’ trading prices over the past several days.”
The statement didn’t mention Robinhood by name, but the commission said it would “closely review actions taken by regulated entities that may disadvantage investors or otherwise unduly inhibit their ability to trade certain securities.”
Robinhood declined to comment about the SEC statement. The White House referred questions about GameStop and brokerage firms to the Treasury Department, which houses the SEC.
What does Robinhood say?
On Jan. 29, the company published a blog post explaining that the company it works with to help users trade stocks was what had set off all the drama. That company, a clearinghouse that helps facilitate the transaction of stocks and cash between buyers and sellers, requires Robinhood and other trading companies it works with to have a specific amount of money in deposits each day to cover their customer’s stock trades. That amount changes each day, based in part on market volatility.
Robinhood said the increased share trading led its clearinghouse to demand Robinhood increase its deposits tenfold. “That’s what led us to put temporary buying restrictions in place on a small number of securities that the clearinghouses had raised their deposit requirements on,” the company said. The requirements were so large, it said, that it had to restrict trades in order to meet its requirements.
“It was not because we wanted to stop people from buying these stocks,” the company added. “This is a dynamic, volatile market, and we have and may continue to take action to make sure we meet our requirements as a broker so we can continue to serve our customers for the long term.”
Has Robinhood been in trouble with the SEC before?
It has. A little over a month ago, on Dec. 17, the SEC charged Robinhood with “repeated misstatements that failed to disclose the firm’s receipt of payments from trading firms for routing customer order to them.” What that means in plain English is that Robinhood didn’t tell users that their share trades might be accessible by people competing against them in the market.
Robinhood made its name by offering stock trades without a standard commission that people often payed at other firms. The SEC said that between 2015 and 2018, Robinhood made misleading statements and omissions, including “in FAQ pages on its website, about its largest revenue source when describing how it made money – namely, payments from trading firms in exchange for Robinhood sending its customer orders to those firms for execution, also known as ‘payment for order flow.'”
The SEC estimated that Robinhood’s approach deprived users of $34.1 million, even after taking into account the savings from not paying a commission.
Robinhood agreed to pay $65 million to settle the charges “without admitting or denying” the SEC’s findings.
“There are many new companies seeking to harness the power of technology to provide alternative ways for people to invest their money,” Erin E. Schneider, director of the SEC’s San Francisco regional office, said at the time. “But innovation does not negate responsibility under the federal securities laws.”
What does GameStop think of all this?
GameStop didn’t respond to a request for comment. BlackBerry executives told MarketWatch it was “not aware” of any reason for the recent trading activity. BlackBerry did reach a settlement with Facebook earlier this month over a patent fight, though the terms were not disclosed.
Why is the Reddit community doing this?
There’s the seeming easy money aspect, which is compelling in and of itself if you’re that comfortable with risk. But some of them are also framing this as a crusade against Wall Street. “We’re in a war,” one Redditor posted. “A war for the redistribution of wealth.”
You promised me Elon Musk, I want Elon Musk.
Aside from being a prolific Twitter user, Musk has also recently learned he can drive people to various companies’ stocks. He tweeted about how much he enjoyed buying something for his dog off Etsy, and the stock jumped. Now he’s tweeted about GameStop, stirring up more frenzy.
Have any other notable people weighed in?
If you’re a fan of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Jon Stewart posted his first ever tweet in support of the Reddit crowd on Jan. 28. Among other things, he also said we clearly hadn’t learned from the financial crisis.
This is bullshit. The Redditors aren’t cheating, they’re joining a party Wall Street insiders have been enjoying for years. Don’t shut them down…maybe sue them for copyright infringement instead!! We’ve learned nothing from 2008. Love StewBeef
— Jon Stewart (@jonstewart) January 28, 2021
I went to r/WallStreetBets and saw a post of someone’s brokerage account worth tens of millions of dollars in GameStop stock.
That’s Keith Gill, or Roaring Kitty on YouTube, one of the first people to kick off this rally. He spoke to The Wall Street Journal, telling his story about how he never expected this to happen.
He posts a screenshot of his share values from his ETrade brokerage every trading day, in what he calls a YOLO (“You only live once”) update. Many r/WallStreetBets members cite his holding onto shares despite stock fluctuations as inspiration for them to hold as well. “REMEMBER: If [he] can hold even through a 130% dip, so can YOU,” one Reddit user posted as the stock started to fluctuate.
“I thought this trade would be successful,” Gill told the WSJ in the story published Jan. 29, “but I never expected what happened over the past week.”
This is nuts
It is. Saturday Night Live of course got a good laugh over the whole thing when the comedy show lampooned the Reddit investors.
“This is crazy, dude,” said SNL’s stand-in for the Reddit investors. “I put all my money in GameStop and I can’t lose.”
Aside from the good laughs, just watching this drama is enough to make your head spin. For example, on Jan. 27, the popular chat app Discord temporarily banned the r/WallStreetBets community from its service for violating its rules against hate speech and glorification of violence. Apparently, some of the nastier elements of the community had repeatedly broken Discord’s rules. Discord said the group needed to do a better job keeping control of that behavior.
The group in charge of the r/WallStreetBets Reddit board made it private during one evening, locking out anyone else who might be interested in joining.
That appeared to spook investors, who suddenly sent GameStop and AMC stock diving that same time. Soon, the group was publicly available again. And it reversed the ban and promised to work with the community instead.
A little over an hour later, the Reddit community was publicly available again, denizens had created a new Discord chat group, and GameStop and AMC stocks were recovering from their sudden slumps. If you’d put down your phone to watch a movie before it happened, you might never have noticed by the time it was done.
Except you may have seen Elon Musk tweeted about how Discord wasn’t cool anymore (Discord eventually reversed its decision.)
What about The Big Short guy?
Michael Burry is an interesting subject himself. He became famous for betting against the housing market before the great recession kicked in around 2007 and 2008. He’d invested in GameStop, but also said he believed all this behavior was “unnatural, insane and dangerous.”
Of course, some of the Reddit members say they see this battle over GameStop as their Michael Burry moment, making it all that much more interesting.
Should I get in on the frenzy?
It’s always smart to consult a financial professional before making investing decisions.
Correction Jan. 25 at 5:52 p.m. PT: Fixed the explanation of short selling to make clear how the process works and that there are different ways to bet against a company’s stock price rising.
Dow Jones futures will reopen Sunday evening, along with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures, with investors looking for signs that the stock market rally will find support or keep retreat. Last week the major indexes broke through key levels, with leading stocks also struggling.
X
The stock market rally may be undergoing a character change. Investors need to be more cautious, perhaps reducing exposure, especially if they haven’t already done so.
The GameStop (GME) saga is likely far from over. GME stock, AMC Entertainment, Koss (KOSS), Express (EXPR) and other short-squeeze plans had another mammoth week of ultra-volatile swings. But the risks are extremely high. Investors are better served following a consistent strategy and trading rules, not taking wild bets.
China-based Tesla (TSLA) EV rivals Nio (NIO), Xpeng Motors (XPEV), Li Auto (LI) and BYD Co. (BYDDF) will report January sales in the coming days, perhaps as early as Monday. All four EV stocks suffered sharp weekly losses, with Nio stock closing slightly below a buy point. Tesla stock also retreated last week following its earnings miss.
Keep an eye on MSFT stock. Microsoft (MSFT) retreated below a buy point Friday, but closed the week with solid gains. It’s the best-looking tech titan after fellow Dow Jones component Apple (AAPL) reversed lower last week on its earnings.
Microsoft, Tesla and Apple stock stock are on IBD Leaderboard. Microsoft stock also is on IBD Long-Term Leaders and the IBD 50.
Dow Jones Futures Today
Dow Jones futures will open Sunday at 6 p.m. ET, along with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures.
Remember that overnight action in Dow futures and elsewhere doesn’t necessarily translate into actual trading in the next regular stock market session.
Join IBD experts as they analyze actionable stocks in the stock market rally on IBD Live.
Coronavirus cases in the U.S. have hit 26.52 million, with deaths above 447,000. The actual number of Americans who have contracted Covid-19 may have topped 100 million.
New Covid cases are falling sharply in the U.S., with hospitalizations also tumbling. Deaths appear to have peaked as well. California has lifted restrictions on much of the state, while New York City will allow indoor dining starting on Valentine’s Day.
Coronavirus Vaccines
Coronavirus vaccinations have picked up over the several days, topping one million shots for 10 straight days. Nearly 29 million shots of the Pfizer or Moderna (MRNA) vaccine have been given as of Jan. 29. While the country is months away from herd immunity, as vaccinations expand, that should start to have a impact on the spread.
Meanwhile, more vaccines are on the way.
Novavax (NVAX) said Thursday night that its Covid vaccine was 89.3% effective in a late-stage U.K. trial But it was 95.6% effective vs. the original coronavirus strain and 85.6% effective vs. the highly contagious U.K. strain. A separate trial found that it’s 60% effective vs. a South African variant.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) said its one-shot vaccine is 72% effective in the U.S., but less so in trials in Latin America and South Africa. J&J fell 3.6% Friday. Novavax skyrocketed 65% to a new high. Moderna stock leapt to a high but pared its gain to 8.5%.
What Is A Short Squeeze And What Is Going On In GameStop, AMC
Stock Market Rally Last Week
U.S. Stock Market Today Overview
Index
Symbol
Price
Gain/Loss
% Change
Dow Jones
(0DJIA)
29980.84
-622.52
-2.03
S&P 500
(0S&P5)
3714.04
-73.34
-1.94
Nasdaq
(0NDQC )
13070.70
-266.46
-2.00
Russell 2000
(IWM)
205.47
-3.25
-1.56
IBD 50
(FFTY)
43.12
-0.96
-2.18
Last Update: 4:10 PM ET 1/29/2021
The stock market rally last week started off strong, but sold off Wednesday and Friday for big losses. Selling was broad-based.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.2% in last week’s stock market trading. The S&P 500 index lost 3.3%. The Nasdaq composite skidded 3.5%, or 4.8% from Monday’s all-time intraday high.
Microsoft stock fell 2.9% on Friday to 231.96, back below the the 232.96 buy point, according to MarketSmith analysis. But shares still rose 2.7% for the week. That followed a 6.25% jump for MSFT stock in the prior week.
In contrast, Apple stock fell 5.1% last week, and 9% from Monday’s all-time high. Shares fell below their buy point on Thursday and through the 21-day line on Friday.
Among the best ETFs, the Innovator IBD 50 ETF (FFTY) tumbled 6.7%, while the Innovator IBD Breakout Opportunities ETF (BOUT) skidded 6.6%. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) lost 2.7%, even with MSFT stock as the top component. The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) retreated 5.9%.
This is an important time to read The Big Picture.
GME Stock Won’t Stop
GME skyrocketed 400% last week and 1,625% for January. AMC stock shot up 278% for the week and 525% last month. KOSS stock erupted for an 1,816% gain last week and 1,760% for the month. Express stock rallied 235% last week and 559% in January.
But that belies enormous volatility. On Thursday, GME stock plunged 77% in less than 90 minutes from its intraday high to low.
In a game of musical chairs, you don’t want to be the one left standing. When the squeeze plays finally end, GME stock, AMC stock and others will likely come under enormous pressure.
Beating the market consistently requires a lot of hard work and sound principles. Jumping into wild story stocks is nothing like that.
Nine Investors Instantly Make $16 Billion On GameStop Stock ‘Squeeze’
China EV Sales Loom
China electric car makers Nio, Xpeng, Li Auto and BYD had a rough time last week but have boomed over the last several months, as production and deliveries skyrocket. Can the companies and stocks keep up the momentum?
All these EV makers are ramping up output as fast as they can, with pro-EV license plate policies in Shanghai and elsewhere fueling demand. So expectations are generally high for January sales.
However, some government policies may wane after February. Meanwhile, China EV supply is set to explode. In addition to Nio, BYD, Li Auto and Xpeng, many other global automakers, local giants and startups flooding the market.
Tesla is looking to double production from its Shanghai plant in 2021. Volkswagen (VWAGY) is beginning a huge EV push in China with the ID.4.
If supply starts to outstrip demand, the impact on sales and prices could be fierce.
In particular, the Nio EC6 crossover faces competition from the Tesla Model Y and the upcoming VW ID.4. The made-in-China Model Y, which began deliveries last month, is slightly cheaper than the EC6. Meanwhile, the soon-to-launch made-in-China ID.4 is $20,000 cheaper than the Model Y.
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Nio Stock, Tesla Stock
Nio stock fell 8% last week to 57, just below a 57.30 buy point. Shares could end up forming a new consolidation with a 67.09 entry.
Li Auto stock sank 6.4% and Xpeng stock nearly 15%, both closing slightly below now-declining 10-week lines. Investors should probably wait for Li and XPEV stock to retake late January highs before starting a position.
BYD stock lost 8.2%, reversing from record highs to about its 21-day line. The profitable EV and battery maker is extended from a buy zone.
Tesla stock fell 6.3% last week after earnings missed and core margins came in well below views. Shares closed below their 21-day line for the first time since Nov. 16, when news broke late that Tesla stock would join the S&P 500 index. The TSLA stock chart doesn’t look damaged, but it also doesn’t have a reasonable buy point in sight. Tesla stock likely needs to forge a new base or rebound from its 50-day or 10-week line before investors start or add to a position.
Stock Market Rally Analysis
The stock market rally suffered serious losses on Wednesday and Friday, with earnings and guidance from Apple, AMD, Facebook and Tesla among the catalysts. But to understand last week’s retreat you have to start at the beginning. On Monday, stocks briefly sold off, then rebounded to end at new highs.
But the Nasdaq closed 8.2% above its 50-day moving average, the biggest gap since early September.
When the Nasdaq is more than 6% above its 50-day line, the risks of a pullback are relatively high. The more the Nasdaq gets extended, the higher the odds a pullback will be larger.
Of course, as the late August frenzy showed, the Nasdaq can get even more extended, but the goal is to play the odds, not try to top-tick every rally. (Besides, the late August-early September run-up ended very abruptly.)
Think of it this way. Investors should buy in confirmed market uptrends because, on balance, the broader market and most stocks should trend up. But when the Nasdaq is extended, the odds that the market will continue to trend up are lower, at least temporarily.
Monday was a day where you could have been defensive. It was definitely a signal to take the foot off the gas a little bit. Selling into strength, cutting laggards, being wary of new buys and trimming overall exposure somewhat were all prudent steps.
Taking those action could have better prepared you up for later in the week. After Tuesday’s quiet session, the stock market rally suffered a significant sell-off on Wednesday, with AMD spurring selling in many chip names. The Nasdaq fell to its 21-day exponential moving average, while the S&P 500 undercut that level. The Dow Jones dropped all the way to its 50-day line.
On Thursday, the stock market rally rebounded, but gains faded in the late afternoon, especially on the Nasdaq. Apple stock and Facebook reversed lower, but it was also a sign that the market may not rush to new highs.
On Friday, the stock market rally tried to erase early losses, but soon sold off through Wednesday’s lows. Apple again was a problem, but so were Facebook, Lam Research and Tesla stock.
The Nasdaq plowed below its 21-day line, closing below its key level for the first time since Nov. 3. The S&P 500 closed just below the 50-day line, while the Dow sharply undercut that level.
What’s Next For The Market Rally?
Can the Nasdaq reclaim its 21-day line while the Dow and S&P 500 find support at the 50-day line? Or will the Nasdaq drop to or even below its 50-day?
Remember, even if the stock market rally regains old highs in the near future, that doesn’t mean all leaders will follow. Software stocks have slumped for a few weeks. Cyclicals reversed hard the past couple of weeks. Chip-equipment names sold off hard in recent days.
Ideally, the stock market would move sideways for a few weeks, letting the major indexes ride their 50-day lines for a time. Leading stocks would set up in new bullish bases or pull back gracefully to their 50-day or 10-week lines.
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What You Should Do Now
Investors should be more defensive after this past week. You may want to take some more profits, cut losers loose and generally reduce exposure, especially if you didn’t so last week. So analyze your current holdings. What are your must-holds and which are lower tier?
Game plan for the week ahead. If the market closes below last week’s lows, that would be a bad sign. What will you do with your stocks at various points?
Keep in mind that earnings season is still very heavy. Just on Tuesday, Amazon.com (AMZN), Alibaba (BABA), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) and Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) report earnings.
Yes, the stock market rally could race right to new highs. It’s still a market uptrend and not a correction. But the investing climate is not as favorable right now as it was in November or after the post-crash April follow-through day. Staying invested but not reckless is prudent to preserve your capital and your psyche.
Please follow Ed Carson on Twitter at @IBD_ECarson for stock market updates and more.
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Some chains tried their best to slim down, while others did the exact opposite. The flurry of chicken sandwich additions are notable because several chains have eliminated a number of items over the past year to shed complexity and costs.
However, with a new year kicking off and sales on the rise once again, restaurants are doing all they can to sustain the growth after a bleak 2020.
As if there weren’t enough options for a basic fried chicken sandwich, Boston Market is here to up the ante.
The Nashville Hot Crispy Chicken Sandwich is now being sold for a limited time, with a confident company saying that the “chicken sandwich wars are over.” It gets its spiciness from a hot sauce that “perfectly blends cayenne pepper and chili powder with sugar, garlic and a handful of secret spices.”
Chick-fil-A
The creator of the fried chicken sandwich is changing things up with a grilled version. The Grilled Spicy Chicken Deluxe Sandwich is its first new chicken sandwich in nearly two years and has its own specially created Cilantro Lime Sauce.
“We know guests are looking to add more variety to their meals, especially after a year where new food experiences were limited,” said Leslie Neslage, director of menu and packaging at Chick-fil-A, in an acknowledgment that last year’s start of the pandemic complicated menu debuts.
Chipotle
Chipotle(CMG) added cauliflower rice to its menu as customers’ tastes keep shifting toward healthier options, including low-carb or more plant-based alternatives. The rice alternative, which costs $2 extra, was tested last summer before making its nationwide debut earlier this month.
Starbucks
Despite the frigid temperatures, cold drinks continue to be a success for the coffee chain. Starbucks(SBUX) said sales of the icy concoctions have grown 45% over the past four years, which has prompted it to unveil another cold drink.
This month, the Honey Almondmilk Cold Brew, was added to menus — a new drink that also capitalizes on the growth of non-dairy milks.
Pizza Hut
The pizza chain added two new items this month: A crusty ring of cheese-stuffed dough called the Nothing But Stuffed Crust and a Detroit-style pizza.
Competition among big chains has been fierce during the pandemic, which has fueled a surge in pizza demand from Americans who are spending more time at home and avoiding dine-in restaurants. Pizza Hut hopes the new menu items sustain last year’s growth, a trend that’s likely to continue.
“What we saw in 2020 was that many of these pizza delivery guys had a big boom in their sales because there was nowhere else to go,” Peter Saleh, a restaurant analyst with research firm BTIG, previously told CNN Business. He predicts pizza sales will remain healthy in 2021 as the “environment for dining continues to be challenged.”
Spoiler Alert: The following article contains spoilers about Episode 3 “Now in Color” of Disney+’s WandaVision
After all the Dick Van Dyke Show and Bewitched satirical hijinks on WandaVision, the series began to deliver in a way that put fans at the edge of their seats: Wanda Maximoff delivered her twin boys, Thomas and William (Billy) at the end of episode 3.
And in Marvel lore those guys will become the Young Avengers: Wiccan and Speed. Wiccan will have the sorcery powers of his mother, and Speed, the rapid mutant talents of his late uncle, Quicksilver.
From there, the fanboy universe is prognosticating a slew of details: that big bad villain Mephisto is lurking around the corner in the WandaVision neighborhood; Easter eggs sprinkled galore throughout the series’ first three episode indicate this (i.e. the ‘666’ upside down in the toaster commercial, Agnes’ (Kathryn Hahn) unseen husband being named ‘Ralph’ — a name associated with the protagonist from Lord of the Flies, the list goes on). Tommy and Billy are reabsorbed into Mephisto and ultimately cease to exist. Let’s also not forget that Wanda is Magneto’s daughter (Is Michael Fassbender or Ian McKellen reprising their role?).
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We spoke with WandaVision EP, head scribe and creator Jac Schaeffer today who pleaded the 5th to whether most of these Marvel canon details will be played out on the series; in particular the notion that Agnes’ husband Ralph is Mephisto.
“I cannot answer that,” she laughed, explaining to us when asked that “there is not an Easter eggs staff member” on the series who plants hints throughout the show.
The breadcrumbs that are doled out in each episode actually come from the show’s department heads.
“There are so many people who have worked on Marvel productions, it’s a lot of talented people coming together and contributing their ideas that they know,” explains Schaeffer who has a story by credit on the upcoming MCU feature Black Widow.
There are other looming questions in WandaVision, i.e. how S.W.O.R.D., the organization that’s monitoring Vision and Wanda, came to be (in the comics, they’re the counter-terrorism intelligence group that’s the spaced-based counterpart of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Darcy Lewis’ (Kat Dennings) involvement with the org. The notion is that her Thor character has been monitoring the duo, and she’ll make her debut on WandaVision in the near future. How did Darcy go from wisecracking scientist sidekick to Jane Foster to mutant caretaker?
Schaeffer says, “Like everything in the MCU, there’s the version that exists in the comics, and the version that makes it to the screen.”
Wanda is a pretty powerful person, and it’s agreed she’s created this virtual world. But what’s with her whole sitcom obsession?
“The obsessions with sitcoms are mine, Kevin Feige’s and Matt Shakman’s” says Schaeffer, “Sitcoms are a place of comfort and safety for us as a community and culture. The superhero movies exist in these enormous stakes environments; more than life or death, it’s the fate of the galaxy. In a sitcom everything is going to be fine, no matter what. I think we were fascinated between the intersection of those two things.”
While we know from the promos that a Family Ties homage is at hand in WandaVision, when the sitcom well runs dry, will the show offer alternative universes of popular hour-long TV shows, i.e. Dallas, Love American Style, The Love Boat, B.J. and the Bear, C.H.I.P.S. and The Sopranos? How long will the TV parody conceit hold up on WandaVision?
Promises Schaeffer, “The show will continue to push the boundaries of television and continue to be surprising and subvert expectations.”
