U.S. stock futures traded higher Wednesday as Wall Street tries to recover its footing after a tough first session of the year. Sentiment was boosted in part by encouraging inflation data from Europe, including a greater-than-expected decline in the French consumer price index and a drop in German import prices.
Market Snapshot
At 7:50 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 41 points, or 0.12%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 5.5 points, or 0.14%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 30.75 points, or 0.28%.
Pre-Market Movers
General Electric Co — GE HealthCare Technologies begins trading as a separate company on the S&P 500 Wednesday. GE, in 2021, revealed plans to break up into three companies so it can focus on its aviation business. It plans to spin off its energy segment in 2024. Shares of GE were up about 2% in premarket trading.
Salesforce.com — Shares of the cloud giant rose about 2% in early trading after the company announced a restructuring plan that includescutting its staff by about 10%and the closure of some offices.
Chinese ADRs – Shares of Chinese companies listed in the U.S. jumped after Ant Group received approval to expand its consumer finance businessin a sign of progress in resolving regulators’ concerns. Alibaba, which owns 33% of Ant, and JD.com rose more than 6% in the premarket. Pinduoduo added 4.5%.
Microsoft — Microsoft shares dropped about 2% after UBS downgraded the tech giant to neutral from buy. UBS cited concern over the company’s Azure and Office businesses following a series of field checks.
Corning — Corning got a 2.5% lift after Credit Suisse upgraded the shares to outperform from neutral and raised revenue estimates, noting headwinds could change to tailwinds in 2023.
Target — The retail giant lost 1.3% after Wells Fargo downgraded the stock to equal weight from overweight. The firm said Target’s “outlook has deteriorated” and the stock is not an attractive investment amid broader economic uncertainty.
Merck — Merck’s stock rose about 1.7% after being upgraded to buy from neutral by Bank of America. Analysts cited the company’s consistent revenue upside, as well as the substantial progress it has made strengthening its cancer drug Keytruda’s position and softening the impact of when it goes off patent
Pfizer — Shares of the pharma giant were down about 1.4% after being downgraded by Bank of America to neutral from buy. Among the reasons for the call was the uncertainty over the magnitude of the revenue decline for its Covid drugs, Comirnaty and Paxlovid.
JB Hunt Transport — Shares of the transportation and logistics company fell nearly 2% in early trading after UBS downgraded the stock to sell, predicting that earnings will be flat to modest in 2023 and will show a “real cyclical decline.”
AstraZeneca PLC — The pharmaceutical giant saw a 1.8% lift in its shares after the European Medicines Agency validated its Type II Variation application for the treatment of a “non-small cell lung cancer.”
Honeywell — Shares of Honeywell slipped 1.8% in the premarket after being double downgraded by UBS to sell from buy. The firm said shares are at a premium and it’s anticipating an order slowdown.
Tesla Motors — Shares gained 1% in the premarket. The stock dropped 12% Tuesday, a day after the electric-vehicle maker reported missing expectations on fourth-quarter delivery and production numbers.
Market News
Apple's stock market value shrank sharply on Tuesday following its steep drop last year, leaving it below $2 trillion for the first time since March 2021. The sell-off came a year after the iPhone maker became the first company to reach the $3 trillion market capitalization milestone.
Microsoft is in the works to launch a version of its search engine Bing, using the artificial intelligence behind OpenAI-launched chatbot ChatGPT, citing two people with direct knowledge of the plans.
Alphabet has told a tribunal in India that the country's antitrust investigators copied parts of a European ruling against the U.S. firm for abusing the market dominance of its Android operating system, arguing the decision be quashed, legal papers show.
On Tuesday, Tesla Motors’s market cap fell below that of consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co., with a current market cap of $359.18 billion, and was just below Nvidia Corp. at $352.15 billion
Rivian Automotive, Inc. announced on Tuesday that it produced 10,020 vehicles at its manufacturing facility in Normal, Illinois during the fourth quarter. That report brings the full-year production to 24,337 vehicles produced for the full year, just short of the 25K forecast by the company as recently as November. The EV manufacturer delivered 8,054 vehicles in Q4, bringing total deliveries to 20,332.
Shopify on Tuesday launched a new service aimed at big retailers that will allow them to select tools and services the Canadian tech giant offers and integrate it with their own online platform.
Southwest Airlines has been sued by a passenger who said it failed to provide refunds to passengers left stranded when an operational meltdown led the carrier to cancel more than 15,000 flights late last month.
Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges he looted billions of dollars in customer deposits to his bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
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