Small Caps Can Only Lead Stocks So High: Stock Market Today

Stocks struggled for most of Friday's session and closed lower. They were down on a weekly basis, but the long-term trend remains up for all three main U.S. equity indexes as participation continues to broaden beyond the Magnificent 7. And incoming economic data remains solid.

By the closing bell, the broad-based S&P 500 was off 0.06% at 6,940, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had slipped 0.06% to 23,515, and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.2% at 49,349.

The Russell 2000 Index was up again, though, and it's a good sign for the bull market that small-cap stocks are doing well.

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"All the major indexes are in the green year to date," Louis Navellier of Navellier & Associates writes, "with the Russell 2000 leading by far." Indeed, the Russell 2000 is trading at new all-time highs. "It's encouraging that small caps are so strong; it reflects a risk-on sentiment about the economy."

The Federal Reserve said today that industrial production was up a better-than-expected 0.4% in December and that November's print was revised upward to 0.4%. "Overall output broke through the tape with a combined two-month gain that is about as strong as we saw all year," Wells Fargo economists Shannon Grein and Tim Quinlan observe.

Note that the stock and bond markets are closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Day.

What does IBRX do?

ImmunityBio (IBRX,+39.8%) began the week with a market cap of $2.29 billion and will end it well north of $5 billion after rising more than 125% since last Friday.

Management of the biotech stock said it expects to see revenue growth of 700% for its bladder cancer drug, Anktiva. ImmunityBio also announced the approval of Anktiva by the Saudi Food and Drug Authority for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer.

"Risk-on" names such as ImmunityBio make for a good "field bet" through one of the best biotech ETFs to buy.

Price action for the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI, -0.1%) vs the iShares Biotechnology ETF (IBB, -0.4%) today reflects the former's heavier weighting to mid- and small-cap stocks such as IBRX.

More and more Trump stocks

GE Vernova (GEV, +6.1%) was up as much as 7.8% on reports that President Donald Trump and governors of states in the northeast will ask the biggest electricity grid operator in the U.S. to hold an emergency auction so hyperscalers driving the AI boom will bid on and pay for the construction of new power plants to support their data centers.

PJM Interconnection serves about 65 million customers in 13 states and Washington, D.C. The president teased the plan in a post on Truth Social on Monday. "I never want Americans to pay higher Electricity bills because of Data Centers," the president said.

Trump said his team has been working with Microsoft (MSFT), which he said "will make major changes beginning this week to ensure that Americans don't 'pick up the tab' for their POWER consumption, in the form of paying higher Utility bills."

GE Vernova was spun off from General Electric in April 2024. The old GE survives as GE Aerospace (GE) and is one of five stocks to buy for a Trump presidency.

Susquehanna analysts Charles Minervino and Eric Clay are "bullish on GEV given its position as the leading gas turbine supplier globally in an environment where load growth expectations continue to accelerate."

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Its electrification segment is also "well positioned to take advantage of secular trends around grid upgrades." The analysts rate GEV Positive (Buy) with a 12-month target price of $775.

Constellation Energy (CEG) and Vistra (VST), which rallied 58.8% and 17.7%, respectively, in 2025 based on rising demand for electricity from its existing power plants to fuel data centers and the AI boom, were down 9.8% and 7.5% on Friday.

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David Dittman is the former managing editor and chief investment strategist of Utility Forecaster, which was named one of "10 investment newsletters to read besides Buffett's" in 2015. A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, and the Villanova University School of Law, and a former stockbroker, David has been working in financial media for more than 20 years.