Market Movers: Affirm Upgraded To A Buy Rating

Shares of buy now, pay later stock Affirm (NASDAQ: AFRM) are gaining attention.

All after analysts at Needham upgraded the stock to a buy with a $100 price target. The firm added that, “AFRM has submitted an application to establish Affirm Bank, a proposed Nevada-chartered industrial loan company,” as quoted by CNBC.

We have to consider that BNPL is only expected to explode as Americans take on more debt.

In doing so, they’re also using loans more than ever before.  As noted by MarketWatch, shoppers used BNPL to spend about $20 billion between November 1 and December 31. That’s a 9.8% year over year increase.

The global Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) market is experiencing massive growth. It’s projected to reach between $560 billion and over $900 billion in transaction volume by 2030. All are driven by surging e-commerce demand and flexible payment adoption. In the U.S. alone, the market is expected to reach $198 billion in 2026.

All of which should help drive BNPL stock, like Affirm, to higher highs.

CoreWeave

Shares of CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) are up 12%, or by $12.51 on the day.

For one, Nvidia just invested $2 billion to expand AI data center capacity.

“This deal allows us to accelerate our build, which will lead to continued diversification and reducing dependency on any particular client as we scale into this additional data center capacity,” CoreWeave CEO Mike Intrator told CNBC.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank upgraded CRWV to a buy rating with a $140 price target on the Nvidia news.

The firm added, “It provides CoreWeave three key things: (1) an accelerated path to its newly stated goal of adding 5GW+ of Al Infrastructure by 2030 (beyond current 2.9GW backlog), leveraging NVIDIA’s financial strength to secure access to additional land and powered shells; (2) deepened technical integration that should enable CoreWeave to remain among the very first to market with new NVIDIA compute architectures; (3) potential for the company’s SUNK and Mission Control,” as quoted by Seeking Alpha.

Humana

Shares of Humana (NYSE: HUM) are down just over 19%, or by $68 a share.

All after the Trump Administration proposed nearly flat rates for Medicare Advantage insurers.

“The proposal entails a net average payment increase of 0.09% for Medicare Advantage plans in 2027, according to a press release from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as noted by CNBC. That number is significantly less than Wall Street analysts’ expectations that the agency would propose a rate increase of between 4% to 6% for next year.”

Not helping, President Trump has said he wants to get rid of insurance brokers and corporate middlemen. All in an effort to help cut healthcare premiums, as noted in the Administration’s Great Healthcare Plan.

That plan can be read here.

Other health insurance stocks, like UnitedHealth, are down about $70 a share on that news. Not helping, the company just issued softer-than-expected revenue with a poor 2026 outlook.

Apple

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is gaining momentum ahead of earnings on Thursday.

Helping, JPMorgan reiterated its overweight rating on Apple. It also raised its price target to $315 from $305 ahead of Apple’s first-quarter earnings.

Evercore ISI added Apple to its Tactical Outperform list, arguing that strong iPhone demand positions the company for strong earnings. The firm added, “We remain positive on shares of AAPL heading into the Dec-qtr earnings this Thursday, as our checks suggest that there’s near-term upside to street estimates, driven by strong iPhone demand and a minimal memory cost headwind (through the Mar-qtr),” as quoted by CNBC.

Analysts at Citigroup say that the surge in demand for iPhone 17 models carried through the end of the year.

In addition, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, “First-quarter revenue is expected to demonstrate year-over-year growth ranging from 10% to 12%, which translates to $136.7B to $139.2B. This would easily eclipse Apple’s previous record high quarterly revenue of $124.3B set during the first quarter of fiscal 2025. What’s more, it would stand as Apple’s most significant year-over-year revenue jump since the first quarter of fiscal 2022, when it posted an 11.2% increase,” as quoted by Seeking Alpha.

Tesla

Cantor Fitzgerald just reiterated their overweight rating on Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) ahead of earnings. The firm noted that ahead of tomorrow’s call, Tesla is likely to disclose its 2026 vehicle delivery outlook. It’s looking to see if the company is guiding for growth or for another year of soft sales, which will be a key catalyst for TSLA.

At the moment, we know that TSLA finished 2025 with weak European sales as BYD continues to outperform Elon Musk’s company. On an annual basis, Tesla’s European sales were down 27% year over year, as compared to BYD’s 286.6% jump year over year.

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