Stock Market Today (LIVE): Gap Beats Rivals to AI Sales; United Swaps Coach for Costly Suites

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Gap Beats Rivals to AI Sales

11:10 am — GAP +2.2%

Gap (GAP +2.87%) is pioneering "agentic commerce" through an exclusive partnership with Google (GOOG 2.28%), allowing customers to purchase apparel directly within the Gemini AI interface. This integration enables shoppers to discover and buy items — like wedding attire or interview outfits — using conversational AI without being redirected to Gap’s website. By providing curated data directly to Gemini, Gap maintains control over product accuracy and customer information. While early iterations lack loyalty point integration, the move positions Gap ahead of specialty retail peers, leveraging Google Pay to capture the growing segment of users migrating from traditional search to AI-driven discovery.

• Winning the Protocol War: Gap is utilizing the "Universal Commerce Protocol," which offers retailers superior control over the brand experience compared to the discovery-focused models currently tested by OpenAI.
• Precision Fit Technology: Alongside the Gemini launch, the retailer is deploying "Bold Metrics," an AI-powered proprietary sizing tool designed to slash return rates by pinpointing the perfect fit for online shoppers.

United Swaps Coach for Costly Suites

11:45 am — UAL +0.3%

United Airlines (UAL 0.47%) is aggressively shrinking its economy section to make room for high-margin premium cabins, unveiling new layouts for its Airbus A321neo and A321XLR fleets. The carrier’s new "Coastliner" configuration features 20 lie-flat Polaris suites on narrowbody jets, targeting transcontinental travelers willing to pay over $5,000 per seat. This shift mirrors a broader industry trend seen at Delta Air Lines (DAL +1.74%) and JetBlue (JBLU +1.79%), as premium revenue growth consistently outpaces standard coach sales. Despite Boeing (BA 1.30%) delivery delays, United is even upscaling its smallest regional jets, proving that in the current high-fuel environment, every inch of cabin real estate must be monetized.

• The Margin Multiplier: By removing standard seats to install snack bars and lie-flat beds, United is betting that the massive price gap — often ten times the cost of coach — will more than offset reduced passenger density.
• Supply Chain Stranglehold: Intense demand for these luxury installations has created a massive bottleneck for seat manufacturers, with some premium cabin upgrades now directly delaying the delivery of new aircraft.

Top of the Morning

9:50 am — SFD +4.6% in pre-market trading

Smithfield Foods (SFD +5.22%) shares are up over 7% in pre-market trading this morning after the pork giant delivered a fourth-quarter double beat, reporting $0.83 in adjusted earnings per share on $4.23 billion in revenue. The solid report serves as another partial macroeconomic bellwether, highlighting the resilience of a "cautious consumer" who is aggressively trading down from expensive restaurant dining to premium at-home meals.

Furthermore, as retail beef prices remain near record highs due to tight cattle herds, shoppers are actively substituting pricey beef with more affordable pork products. Smithfield capitalized heavily on this trade-down effect, with its flagship Packaged Meats segment crossing the $1 billion operating profit mark for the fourth consecutive year.

8:30 am — TSLA -0.46% in pre-market trading

Shares of Tesla (TSLA +0.30%) have been under a bit of pressure in the past few days, in part because HSBC analyst Michael Tyndall recently cut his price target for shares to $119 and maintained a "reduce" rating for investors. It's the lowest price target for this otherwise outperforming business among major banks, and the argument is something bears will already be familiar with: demand for newer, low-priced models will not offset weakening global demand for electric vehicles, especially when competition is intensifying globally.

While this is certainly one fair and well-reasoned perspective, it's also fair to say that Tesla shareholders, and other major investors, have never really viewed the business as a car company.

Can Zoox Catch Up to Waymo?

10:20 am — AMZN -1.1%

Amazon (AMZN 0.96%) is accelerating its autonomous ambitions as its Zoox unit prepares to launch robotaxis in Austin and Miami later this year. Currently operating in Las Vegas and San Francisco, Zoox has served 350,000 riders but has yet to transition to a paid commercial model. CEO Aicha Evans confirmed the company is ready to begin charging fares pending NHTSA approval for a 2,500-vehicle fleet. While trailing Alphabet (GOOG 2.28%) unit Waymo — which logs 400,000 paid trips weekly — Zoox is scaling up through a strategic partnership with Uber (UBER 2.98%) to integrate its toaster-shaped, pedal-less vehicles into the ride-hailing app by summer.

• Targeting High-Traffic Revenue: The spring expansion in Las Vegas specifically targets major venues like the Sphere and Harry Reid International Airport, move-ins designed to prove commercial viability in dense tourist corridors.
• The Scale Scramble: With 100 custom robotaxis hitting public roads soon, Amazon is betting on a "stubborn" long-term hardware play rather than just retrofitting existing cars, a capital-intensive strategy that creates a high barrier to entry for competitors.

Opening Bell

9:35 am

U.S. equities retreated Tuesday, paring nearly half of Monday’s 800-point surge as the Dow fell 385 points. While the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both dropped 0.7%, investor optimism over an "imminent" peace deal was checked by Iranian state media denying any direct negotiations with Washington. The confusion sent Brent crude back above $101 per barrel, erasing the "war premium" discount seen yesterday. Strategists warn that until the Strait of Hormuz is reliably reopened, the market remains a "coiled spring" vulnerable to headlines, with energy price volatility continuing to threaten corporate margins and the broader disinflationary trend.

FedEx Launches Same-Day Delivery to Rival Amazon

8:15 am -- FDX -0.15% in pre-market trading

FedEx (FDX +0.01%) has officially launched FedEx SameDay Local, a new high-speed shipping program in partnership with AI-logistics firm OneRail. The move is a direct counter to Amazon's (AMZN 0.96%) recent rollout of one-to-three-hour delivery windows and mirrors similar "Express" pushes from Walmart (WMT +2.65%) and Target (TGT +0.21%). By leveraging OneRail's network of over 10,000 drivers and AI-driven "intelligent orchestration," FedEx can now offer retailers precise two-hour and end-of-day delivery windows. This "white-label" approach allows brands to utilize their own store networks as fulfillment hubs while maintaining control over customer data--a key selling point for retailers wary of Amazon's ecosystem.

• Asset-Light Agility: Unlike its retired "SameDay City" service, which relied on internal couriers, this new model uses OneRail's gig and professional delivery network to scale quickly without adding massive fixed overhead to FedEx's "Network 2.0" consolidation.
• The Competitive Moat: By offering a competitive rate card and real-time GPS tracking, FedEx is positioning itself as the primary logistics partner for high-value, time-sensitive verticals like healthcare, electronics, and specialized retail.

This Morning's Breakfast News

7:30 am -- GILD -0.15% in pre-market trading

Gilead Sciences (GILD 0.17%) was little changed ahead of the opening bell after news broke of a $2.18 billion deal to buy Ouro Medicines, in a bid to secure assets to bolster its growing inflammation portfolio.

• "This acquisition underscores our commitment to advancing transformative therapies": Chief medical officer Dietmar Berger talked up the deal, with Ouro's key drug gamgertamig already in the FDA fast-track process. The company is also in talks with Galapagos (GLPG 4.73%) for a potential research collaboration with Ouro's assets.
• "Gilead is looking like a reasonably priced healthcare stock with room for plenty of further growth": Discussing the company last month, Fool contributing analyst Dan Caplinger said it "has had a great start to 2026," with "product sales projected to approach or exceed the $30 billion this year."

S&P 500 Breaks Below Its 200-Day Moving Average

7:25am

Don't count me as a stock-charter but I think this helps set context for the markets. The S&P 500 [yesterday] crossed below its 200-day moving average, which over time doesn't happen that often.

This chart from Y-charts shows the simple 200-day moving average over the last decade. Most of the time we're comfortably above the average. Occasionally we dip below, and sometimes for painful stretches like in 2022. But often the markets catch up.

It's impossible to know if this is a dip or a drag, but for diversified portfolios of 25, 50 stocks, like we guide at Stock Advisor, time is always on our side.

ICYMI: Monday's Scoreboard

6:15 am -- MA unchanged in pre-market trading

Mastercard (MA 0.13%) was the subject of the latest Scoreboard video.

Tesla Ends 14-Month Europe Sales Slump

6:00 am -- TSLA -0.41% in pre-market trading

Tesla (TSLA +0.30%) recorded its first increase in European monthly sales in over a year, with new-car registrations growing almost 12%, providing a positive sign it's able to compete with Chinese EV alternatives.

• Last recorded growth in Europe was in December 2024: The data, released by the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, comes off the back of data last week showing Tesla's retail sales in China jumped over 42% year over year. Tesla is recommended by both Team Hidden Gems and Team Rule Breakers, with the stock beating the S&P 500 by 112% since the Hidden Gems rec in April 2024.
• European EV market subset grew almost 16% last month: Battery electric vehicles (cars powered exclusively by batteries) experienced high demand. Tesla can take confidence from the overall trend in the EV space, with registrations of plug-in-hybrid models growing by 33%. However, competitor BYD (BYDDY +1.54%) saw registrations almost triple in February.

AWS Bahrain Disrupted Again by Drone Activity

5:30 am -- AMZN -0.26% in pre-market trading

Amazon's (AMZN 0.96%) AWS confirmed Tuesday morning that its Bahrain region has been "disrupted" due to ongoing drone activity, marking the second time this month that military conflict has taken the facility offline. While Amazon declined to confirm a direct hit, the disruption follows a devastating early March strike that caused structural and water damage to data centers in the UAE and Bahrain. AWS is now taking the unprecedented step of urging all customers with workloads in the Middle East to migrate to alternate global regions, as "prolonged" recovery efforts are hampered by an unpredictable operating environment. This kinetic targeting of the "cloud" represents a major escalation in the U.S.-Iran conflict, as Tehran-aligned groups have explicitly labeled these facilities as "legitimate targets" for their role in hosting intelligence and defense workloads.

• Fragile Redundancy: The current disruption proves that "Multi-AZ" (Availability Zone) strategies are insufficient against regional warfare; when a drone strike takes out power or connectivity for an entire cluster, even the most resilient cloud architectures can fail.
• The "Sovereign Cloud" Risk: This conflict is cooling the "Big Tech" investment boom in the Gulf; giants like Microsoft (MSFT 2.75%) and Alphabet (GOOG 2.28%) are now facing questions about the physical safety of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure located within the combat zone.

Before the Opening Bell

5:00 am

Stock futures are catching their breath Tuesday morning following a historic 1,100-point "Trump Rally" that pulled the Dow Jones Industrial Average off its 2026 lows. Sentiment remains cautiously optimistic after President Trump postponed planned strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days, citing "productive conversations" aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz. While the S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures are trading near flat, investors are pivoting to macro data. The S&P Global US Manufacturing PMI (due at 9:45 AM ET) is expected to show a slight expansion to 51.6, though any signs of "war-driven" input price spikes could reignite inflation fears ahead of the Federal Reserve's next move.

• Earnings Tail-End: Customer engagement platform Braze (BRZE 2.96%) is the focus after today's close; analysts expect an EPS of $0.14 on $198 million in revenue. Investors will be looking for updates on their "OfferFit" AI integration as a proxy for enterprise software spending resilience.
• Geopolitical Skepticism: While U.S. markets rallied on the "peace pause," Iranian state media has denied direct talks, leading some analysts to warn that the "five-day window" may be a tactical maneuver rather than a definitive resolution.