US stock futures stalled on Friday as investors digested economic data that showed US economic growth cooling in the fourth quarter, while the Fed's favored inflation gauge heated up to end last year. Wall Street also kept an eye out for US-Iran tensions, private credit jitters, and a potential Supreme Court tariff decision.

Contracts on the tech-exposed Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) and the S&P 500 (ES=F) moved down roughly 0.3%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) fell 0.2%, coming off the end of a three-day winning streak on Thursday.

The "core" personal expenditures index — the Fed's preferred gauge of inflation — showed signs of accelerating last month, rising more than economists expected on a monthly and annual basis. Meanwhile, US GDP cooled last quarter, coming in at 1.4%, far lower than Wall Street had forecast.

At the same time, Wall Street is on alert for stress in the private credit sector, after Blue Owl's (OBDC, OWL) halt to withdrawals. Fears are the move is a "canary in the coal mine" financial crisis-style moment amid concerns about the sector's holdings of software stocks threatened by AI. Blue Owl shares continued to fall in premarket after it sold $1.4 billion in private loans, including to the lender's own insurer.

US-Iran tensions are also in focus, after President Trump said he will decide within 10 days on military strikes unless a nuclear deal is struck. Oil prices retreated, seen as due to relief that a full-on conflict seems off the cards.

Investors are also keyed into whether the Supreme Court will strike down Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs on Friday, as a decision is possible. A host of outcomes remains possible, with perhaps the only certainty for investors being that markets will react, regardless of how the decision goes.

Prices rose by 0.4% in December over the previous month, marking an increase from the previous month, according to Personal Consumption Expenditures index data released Friday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The growth exceeded economists' expectations of 0.3%, according to Bloomberg's consensus estimates.

So-called \\"core\\" PCE, which excludes the more volatile food and energy categories, also rose 0.4% on the month, a step up from the previous month's 0.2% growth. Economists had predicted that the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure would rise by 0.3%.

On an annual basis, the headline and core PCE price indexes rose 2.9% and 3.0%, respectively, in December from the previous year, also slightly above economist estimates for the two gauges.

Meanwhile, personal income remained consistent, rising 0.3% in December on a monthly basis, in line with the previous month's growth and matching economist expectations.

Personal spending increased 0.4% from last month, coming in above expectations of 0.3% but falling below the previous month's growth of 0.5%.

The US economy grew at a slower pace than expected in the fourth quarter of 2025.

New data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday showed the economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.4% in the final three months of 2025. Economists had expected GDP to grow at an annualized rate of 2.9% in the fourth quarter.

In a post on Truth Social ahead of the report, President Trump said the government shutdown that lasted 43 days back in the fall cost the US economy \\"at least two points in GDP.\\" The president also again called for lower interest rates.

In its release, the BEA said, \\"Compared to the third quarter, the deceleration in real GDP in the fourth quarter reflected downturns in government spending and exports and a deceleration in consumer spending that were partly offset by an acceleration in investment.\\"

Underlying spending trends, however, remained solid, with real final sales to private domestic purchasers — the sum of consumer spending and gross private fixed investment — increasing 2.4 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with an increase of 2.9 percent in the third quarter.

Friday's report had been set for release on Jan. 29, but data collection was delayed by the shutdown that covered all of October and parts of November.

Chemours Co. (CC) stock slumped 9% before the bell on Friday after reporting a loss of $47 million in its fourth quarter earnings.

The AP reports:

The Wilmington, Delaware-based company said it had a loss of 31 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs, came to 5 cents per share.

The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was breakeven on a per-share basis.

The chemical company posted revenue of $1.33 billion in the period, matching Street forecasts.

Read more here.

Grail (GRAL) stock sank over 40% before the bell on Friday after the healthcare company's cancer trial results failed to impress investors.

Barron's reports:

The biotech company said its multi-cancer screening test Galleri did not lead to a “statistically significant reduction” in stage 3 and 4 cancer in a U.K. National Health Service (NHS) trial of more than 142,000 people between the ages of 50 and 77.

Galleri is a blood test, developed by Grail, to screen for a number of cancers before they become symptomatic.

However, Grail said there was a “favorable trend” toward fewer stage 3 and 4 cancers in a group of 12 deadly cancers, as well as an increase in diagnoses of early stage cancer types that are typically detected later.

Read more here.

Chemours (CC) fell 9% during premarket trading on Friday after reporting a loss in its fourth quarter earnings and a dip in revenue. This was driven by a drop in its titanium technologies and advanced performance materials businesses.

Live Nation (LYV) stock rose more than 3% before the bell on Friday after the ticket provider posted an 11% increase in fourth-quarter revenue to $6.31 billion, driven by a 12% gain in concert sales.

AppLovin's (APP) stock jumped 5% during premarket hours on Friday after the release of its fourth quarter earnings and the company's plan to launch a social networking platform.

Beyond the splashy AI chip news, there's something else worth a deeper look in the stepped-up data center partnership agreed by Nvidia (NVDA) and Meta (META) this week.

The agreement will also see Meta roll out Nvidia Grace CPU-only servers in its data centers, the first large-scale deployment of the chips. It's part of Nvidia's CPU play — and that could ring alarm bells for Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD).

Yahoo Finance's Daniel Howley writes:

Grace is the processor that Nvidia pairs with two Blackwell or two Blackwell Ultra GPUs to form its GB200 and GB300 AI superchips.

The Grace-only servers come at a time when Nvidia is angling to capitalize on the growing demand for traditional CPUs as hyperscalers increasingly look to the chips to help power some AI inferencing and agentic AI applications.

“Nvidia has been on the path of providing more of the content in the data center for a while,” Gil Luria, managing director and head of technology at D.A. Davidson, told Yahoo Finance.

“The addition of Mellanox [a networking company Nvidia acquired in 2020] put them into the networking category as well. So when they sell into the data center, they're actually selling almost a vast majority of the value. But it makes sense for them to increase that value even further by adding CPU capacity.”

Read more here.

Opendoor's (OPEN) stock jumped 14% in premarket trading on Friday after the company reported that home purchases rose 46% quarter over quarter. Revenue reached $736 million, surpassing Wall Street estimates of $576.94 million.

The digital real estate company posted a fourth quarter loss of $1.26 per share, missing analysts' estimates.

Investing.com reports:

Chief Executive Officer Kaz Nejatian emphasized that the current results validate the company's long-term roadmap toward sustainable profitability. He noted that structural improvements in pricing and inventory turns are now beginning to materialize in the financial data.

“These results reflect structural improvements in how we operate with more accurate pricing, faster inventory turns, and disciplined selection,” Nejatian said in the earnings release. “The evidence of progress is clear.”

Looking ahead, management is prioritizing a return to positive adjusted net income by the end of 2026 on a rolling twelve-month basis. For the first quarter of 2026, the company anticipates an adjusted EBITDA loss between $30 million and $35 million.

“We're focused on making the right long-term decisions to rebuild Opendoor rather than managing to short-term guidance,” the company stated regarding its forward-looking guideposts. Revenue is expected to decline by approximately 10% in the upcoming quarter.

Read more here. 

Reuters reports:

Nvidia (NVDA) is close to finalizing a $30 billion investment ‌into OpenAI that will replace ‌the long-term $100 billion commitment agreed upon by the ​companies last year, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing sources.

The deal, which would be part of ‌a new ⁠funding round for the artificial intelligence start-up, could be ⁠finalized as early as this weekend, the report added.

Reuters could ​not immediately ​verify the ​report. Nvidia declined ‌to comment.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI is looking to raise up to $100 billion in its latest funding round, valuing it at about $830 billion, Reuters ‌reported in January.

Read more here.