Wall Street stocks advanced on Wednesday with the S&P 500 and the Dow scoring record closing highs after the release of Federal Reserve meeting minutes and ahead of September inflation data and the earnings season.
Market Snapshot
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 431.63 points, or 1.03%, to 42,512.00. The S&P 500 gained 40.91 points, or 0.71%, at 5,792.04 and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 108.70 points, or 0.60%, to 18,291.62.
Market Movers
Tesla - Tesla declined 1.4% after the electric-vehicle maker announced 0% financing dealson qualifying Model 3 and Model Y purchases. The financing deals can save car buyers roughly $100 a month, or about $6,000, over the life of a 60-month car loan. To take advantage, customers must purchase the company’s Full Self-Driving software system.
Alphabet - Alphabet declined 1.5% with the breakup of Google among the remedies the Justice Department is suggesting following a federal judge’s ruling that Google had an illegal monopoly in general search services and general text advertising. In a filing submitted Tuesday, the department said it was considering a “full range of tools” to restore competition, such as “structural and additional behavioral remedies” that prevent Google from using its Chrome browser or Android products to give it an unfair advantage in search.
Google responded in a blog post, saying the government’s “blueprint goes well beyond the legal scope of the court’s decision” and that government “overreach in a fast-moving industry may have negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers.” The judge handling the case will decide what remedies to impose.
Palantir - Palantir Technologies jumped 4.1% and set a record close. The provider of data-analytics software bought shares of struggling electric-vehicle start-up Faraday Future Intelligent Electric, according to a filing. Coming into Wednesday, Palantir had risen 141% this year, rallying on opportunities in artificial intelligence.
Trump Media & Technology - Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group fell 5.6% after the Truth Social parent, which is majority owned by former President Donald Trump, jumped 19% on Tuesday. The stock had been gaining momentum since Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared with Trump at a campaign rally Saturday.
Boeing - Boeing declined 3.4% after S&P Global Ratings placed the plane maker’s credit rating on CreditWatch negative as amachinists’ strikeentered a fourth week and as the company late Tuesday said it haswithdrawn its recent offerto the union. The ratings company estimated the company will incur a cash outflow of about $10 billion in 2024, “due in part to working capital buildup to support manufacturing process overhaul and costs associated with the strike.” Both Moody’s Ratings and Fitch Ratings put Boeing’s debt on review for a downgrade last month.
Nvidia - Nvidia slipped 0.2% to $132.65. Coming into Wednesday, shares of the semiconductor company, which makes chips that are the favored choice for training artificial-intelligence systems, had risen 168% in 2024.
Arcadium Lithium - Arcadium Lithium soared 30.9% to $5.55 after Rio Tinto struck a deal to acquire the lithium producer for $6.7 billion. Rio Tinto will pay $5.85 a share, which represents a 90% premium to the stock’s price on Oct. 4, when news of Rio Tinto’s interest surfaced.
Affirm - Affirm stock gained 5.1% on Wednesday. Morgan Stanley upgraded Affirm Holdings to Equalweight from Underweight as analyst James Faucette expects the company's better distribution, promotion, and pricing to attract higher income consumers.
GitLab - GitLab gained 7.7% to $53.84 after Morgan Stanley initiated coverage of the software and development platform at Overweight and set a price target of $70.
Helen Of Troy - Helen of Troy jumped 17.9% after the consumer products company and owner of the Hydro Flask brand reported fiscal second-quarter adjusted earnings that beat analysts’ estimates.
Norwegian Cruise Line - Norwegian Cruise Line rose 10.9% to $23.07 as Citi analysts upgraded shares of the cruise operator to Buy from Neutral and raised their price target to $30 from $20.
Astera Labs - Astera Labs soared 15.6% after Morgan Stanley analysts raised its price targeton the artificial-intelligence chip company to $74 from $55. After the stock market closed on Tuesday, Astera announced new fabric switches, which are devices that help manage data flow in computing systems. The new switches are designed specifically for artificial intelligence applications and cloud infrastructure, the company said.
Market News
A "Substantial Majority" of Fed Favored Large Cut in Sept, Minutes Show
A "substantial majority" of U.S. Federal Reserve officials last month supported a half-point rate cut to start the turn towards easier monetary policy, but there appeared more universal agreement that the initial move would not commit the Fed to any particular pace of rate reductions in the future, minutes of the two-day policy meeting showed on Wednesday.
The minutes provided further detail on the breadth of opinion within the Fed as policymakers approved a rate cut of a size usually reserved for moments when the central bank is worried the economy is slowing fast and needs the support of looser financial conditions. The half-point cut drew only a single dissent, from Board of Governors member Michelle Bowman, but the minutes said "some" participants supported only a quarter-point cut, while "a few others indicated they could have supported such a decision."
The minutes “paint a slightly more cautious picture” of the Fed’s approach to rate-cutting, wrote Oliver Allen, senior U.S. economist with Pantheon Macroeconomics, and “suggests that the unease about a 50 bp cut went beyond Governor Bowman.”
US Weighs Google Breakup in Historic Big Tech Antitrust Case
The US Justice Department is considering asking a federal judge to force Google to sell off parts of its business in what would be a historic breakup of one of the world’s biggest tech companies.
Antitrust enforcers are weighing a breakup to mitigate the Alphabet Inc. business’s dominance in search, the agency said in a court filing on Tuesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. Judge Amit Mehta could also order Google to provide access to the underlying data it uses to build its search results and artificial intelligence products, it said.
The Justice Department “is considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features,” the agency said.