Wall Street's main stock indexes closed higher on Tuesday, boosted by gains in Tesla and megacap growth stocks, but volumes were thin ahead of the July Fourth holiday and the closely watched release of June nonfarm payrolls on Friday.
Market Snapshot
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 162.33 points, or 0.41%, to 39,331.85 the S&P 500 rose 33.92 points, or 0.62%, to 5,509.01 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 149.47 points, or 0.84%, to 18,028.76.
Market Movers
Tesla was up 10% to $231.26 after the electric-vehicle maker’s second-quarter deliveries of 443,956 cars topped analysts’ estimates. Wall Street expected Tesla to report deliveries of 436,000 vehicles in the period, down from 466,000 vehicles a year earlier. The stock has risen for six straight sessions.
Rivian Automotive gained 7%. Second-quarter deliveries of 13,790 vehicles at the EV maker rose 9.1% from a year earlier and beat expectations of 12,000.
Shares of Nvidia were down 1.3%. The stock closed with a gain of 0.6% on Monday, snapping a two-session losing streak. A Reuters report on Monday said Nvidia, the dominant maker of graphics-processing units for powering artificial-intelligence technology, would be charged by the French antitrust regulator for allegedly anticompetitive practices.
Chewy was down 2.2%. Shares of the pet-supplies retailer rose as much as 20% in Monday’s premarket session after Keith Gill, better known as Roaring Kitty, disclosed a 6.6% stake in the company. The stock closed with a decline of 6.6%.
Paramount Global shares surged 7.93% in after-hours trading after reports it had reached a preliminary deal to combine with Skydance Media.
Lennar and D.R. Horton were downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citi. The analysts said they were lowering estimates and target multiples for home builders “to reflect a slowing housing market.” Citi said it sees “softness in data—permits, starts, sales and prices all recently below expectations—potentially continuing” in the second half of the year. Lennar fell 1.6% and D.R. Horton was down 1.3%.
Pure Storage declined 4.2% to $62.77. Analysts at UBS downgraded shares of the company, which provides systems based on flash memory technology to enterprise customers, to Sell from Neutral and raised their price target to $47 from $44. UBS cited the stock’s elevated valuation and competition concerns.
CrowdStrike Holdings was downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at Piper Sandler. While the firm’s analysts reiterated a target of $400 for the stock price, they said the balance between risks and potential rewards is less appealing given the stock’s recent outperformance. Shares of the cybersecurity company fell 1.8% to $385.05.
Eli Lilly fell 0.8% and U.S.-listed shares of Novo Nordisk declined 1.7% after President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized the prices of the company’s obesity and diabetes drugs in an op-ed in USA Today. Lilly makes Mounjaro, its medicine for Type 2 diabetes, and Novo Nordisk produces the diabetes drug Ozempic and the weight-loss treatment Wegovy.
Lilly regained some ground relative to earlier in the day after disclosing that the Food and Drug Administration approved Kisunla, a treatment for adults with early symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease.
Market News
Apple Poised to Get OpenAI Board Observer Role as Part of AI Pact
Apple Inc. will get an observer role on OpenAI’s board as part of a landmark agreement announced last month, further tightening ties between the once-unlikely partners.
Phil Schiller, the head of Apple’s App Store and its former marketing chief, was chosen for the position, according to people familiar with the situation. As a board observer, he won’t be serving as a full-fledged director, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t public.