Stocks pop to new highs as DC drama builds

Wall Street soars to new highs, even as drama in DC builds. Plus, the long awaited Spotify IPO may finally be here. And there’s a twist. Will other tech unicorns follow? And, forget buying bitcoin, why not mine it? We explain bitcoin mining … Plus, are vacation homes another casualty of the tax cuts? We explain. Catch The Final Round at 3:55 ET p.m. with Dan Roberts and Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer.

Winners and losers

Stocks in the red include Hughes Corporation as Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square will sell 2.5 million shares of the company. Harley Davidson as Longbow research downgraded the motorcycle-maker to Underperform; MoneyGram, with shares tanking after the US government nixed MoneyGram’s deal to sell itself to Alibaba’s Ant Financial.

Stocks in the green today include GM after it beat estimates on December sales as its average transaction price climbed; IBM as RBC upgraded it to ‘Outperform’ citing demand for mainframe upgrades and currency tailwinds; and AMD, with shares of the chipmaker surging on reports Intel’s chips have a design flaw that has hurt Windows and Linux performance. Intel has refuted the report.