New York, Feb 17, 2026, 05:00 ET — Premarket
- Palantir slipped roughly 1% in premarket trading following last week’s close.
- An Australian Defence contract disclosure threw the spotlight back on the company’s government work.
- Fed minutes are on deck this week, along with a slate of U.S. economic data that traders are watching closely.
Palantir Technologies Inc slipped 1.2% to $129.83 ahead of Tuesday’s opening bell, with shares pulling back in premarket action. The previous session closed at $131.41.
U.S. investors are back from the Presidents Day break, kicking off their week with not much on the calendar so far, but plenty lined up in the days ahead. Moves can get jumpy on these post-holiday sessions, with high-growth tech names often seeing the most action.
The Federal Reserve will release minutes from its Jan. 27-28 meeting on Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. ET. Stocks such as Palantir, driven more by sentiment than steady payouts, tend to react sharply if rate expectations move.
Crikey has it: Australia’s Department of Defence handed Palantir a one-year contract worth A$7.6 million for work with its Cyber Warfare Division. It’s tagged as an “ICT System Platform” award, and the contract went through a limited tender—so, no open bidding on this one. Crikey
By U.S. large-cap measures, the dollar figure isn’t huge. Still, it fits right into Palantir’s usual story—government deals that latch on and typically grow in jolts, not on a steady curve. It comes as investors are busy parsing the difference between simply signing more contracts and actually delivering material revenue.
Palantir projected both first-quarter and full-year 2026 revenue to beat LSEG estimates after reporting a notable surge in quarterly sales, driven largely by its U.S. government contracts, Reuters reported. CEO Alex Karp emphasized the company’s surveillance software comes with built-in safeguards. Still, eToro’s Zavier Wong flagged ongoing valuation concerns: “valuation question marks won’t disappear.” Reuters
Following the results, Morningstar analysts said Palantir might see a boost from “political tailwinds” linked to reindustrialization and rising defense budgets, according to Reuters. Jefferies flagged the “outsized run” in Palantir shares in the same note, cautioning that volatility could persist. Reuters
The risk? It practically writes itself. Government contracts don’t always arrive on schedule; procurement can get tangled up in politics. If commercial sales growth trips up at all, it’s hard to miss in a stock trading on momentum.
Next up: Friday’s U.S. personal income and outlays data for December 2025, set for release at 8:30 a.m. ET. On everyone’s radar is the core PCE price index—the Fed’s go-to inflation read, minus food and energy. Any shock there hits yields fast, and that tends to ripple through tech valuations, Palantir among them.
