NEW YORK, December 31, 2025, 14:13 ET — Regular session
- AppLovin shares fell 1.3% to $685 in afternoon trading, after swinging between $682.73 and $698.23.
- The stock is under pressure in thin, year-end trading as investors rebalance away from high-priced growth names.
- Treasury yields edged higher after jobless claims fell, keeping the market focused on January economic data and the Fed.
AppLovin Corp shares fell 1.3% to $685.00 in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The stock ranged between $682.73 and $698.23.
The move tracked a modest dip in major U.S. indexes in the final trading session of 2025, with technology shares among the biggest drags as holiday-thinned liquidity amplified small swings. 1
Treasury yields ticked higher after new data showed jobless claims fell to 199,000 in the week ended Dec. 27, undershooting economists’ expectations for a rise. Higher yields raise the discount rate investors use to value future profits, a headwind for growth stocks priced on earnings years out. 2
The Invesco QQQ Trust, a proxy for the Nasdaq 100, was down about 0.2% in afternoon trading, while the S&P 500-tracking SPDR fund slipped a similar amount. AppLovin was underperforming both benchmarks.
Several ad-tech and app-economy names traded unevenly. Unity Software fell about 1% and Magnite was down roughly 0.7%, while The Trade Desk edged higher.
Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, described the recent weakness as a repositioning rather than a panic. “It’s just a healthy rebalancing of allocations more so than an emotionally driven sell-off,” Hackett said. 3
AppLovin runs a marketing platform that helps developers and advertisers buy, place and measure mobile ads, and sells analytics tools through its Adjust unit. Its products include AppDiscovery and the MAX in-app bidding platform, alongside the Axon software it uses to optimize ad targeting. 4
In its Nov. 5 quarterly report, AppLovin said revenue rose 68% from a year earlier to $1.405 billion and it generated $1.05 billion in free cash flow. The company also increased its share repurchase authorization — a buyback program — to $3.3 billion remaining as of end-October, and guided fourth-quarter revenue of $1.57 billion to $1.60 billion. It forecast adjusted EBITDA, a profit measure that strips out some costs such as interest and taxes, of $1.29 billion to $1.32 billion. 5
Regulatory scrutiny has also hovered over the stock. Reuters reported in October that the U.S. SEC was probing AppLovin over data-collection practices tied to its ad business. 6
For the broader market, investors are watching the Federal Reserve’s path after minutes from its December meeting showed deep divisions over the latest rate cut. The minutes flagged a restart of key releases after the government shutdown, including December jobs data on Jan. 9 and consumer price data on Jan. 13, ahead of the Fed’s Jan. 27-28 meeting. 7
U.S. stock markets are closed on Thursday for New Year’s Day and reopen on Jan. 2. That calendar, along with year-end positioning, has kept trading volumes light and price action choppy. 8
For AppLovin, traders will be watching whether the stock holds above this week’s lows and whether the move higher in yields extends into early January. A sustained rise in rates can keep pressure on high-multiple growth stocks because more of their valuation depends on future earnings.
