Wall Street's main indexes all closed higher on Tuesday, with gains in megacap and growth stocks bolstering benchmarks in a truncated Christmas Eve session.
Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite scored four straight sessions of gains, with the S&P 500 taking its winning streak to three sessions, marking the first day of the seasonal Santa Claus rally.
Market Snapshot
The S&P 500 climbed 65.97 points, or 1.10%, to 6,040.04 points, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 266.24 points, or 1.35%, to 20,031.13. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 390.08 points, or 0.91%, to 43,297.03.
Market Movers
Tesla Motors rose 7.4% to $462.28, making it the best-performing stock in the S&P 500. It has gained 86% this year. Shares rose 2.3% on Monday even as Honda and Nissan announced plans to merge. The deal would create the world's third-largest auto maker by annual sales. The move came amid increasing competition in the car industry from China's increasing car exports and electric-vehicle specialists such as Tesla.
Bitcoin briefly climbed back above $99,000 on Tuesday, driving a broad rally in cryptocurrency stocks. Canaan Inc. rose 9%, MicroStrategy rose 8%, Coinbase Global, Inc. rose 4%.
Broadcom rose 3.2% after the semiconductor and software company ended Monday's session up 5.5%. Morgan Stanley also chose Broadcom as one of its favorite ideas for 2025. Analyst Joseph Moore likes Broadcom for its growth opportunity beyond 2025.
SUPER MICRO COMPUTER INC gained 6% to $34.33. Shares of the server maker closed 2.6% higher on Monday. The stock -- after an up and down 2024--has traded between $18 and $119 since Jan. 1. The company has delayed filing its latest financial reports but earlier this month received an extension until Feb. 25, which helped it avoid the immediate threat of delisting from the Nasdaq.
Semiconductor company, NVIDIA , the maker of chips that are the favored choice for training artificial-intelligence models, ticked up 0.4% after jumping 3.7% on Monday. Analysts at Morgan Stanley last week issued a bullish report on AI chip companies and called Nvidia a top pick for 2025, optimistic about the growth prospects for the company's latest graphics processing unit named Blackwell. Nvidia shares have gained 183% in 2024.
U.S. Steel rose 1.9%, with Nippon Steel's plan to acquire the U.S. steel company referred to President Biden after a government panel reviewing the plan failed to reach a consensus. Biden has opposed the proposed $14.1 billion acquisition. The president now has 15 days to reach a final decision, said the White House.
American Airlines ultimately finished up 0.6% after the carrier canceled an earlier ground stop on all its flights nationwide on one of the busiest travel days of the year because of technical issues.
D-Wave Systems Inc. dipped 2.5% after filing a $125 million mixed shelf offering. Shares of the quantum computing company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., closed up 27% on Monday. It has risen 803% this year. IONQ Inc. rose 8%, Rigetti Computing rose 4%, QUANTUM CORP fell 5%, Arqit Quantum Inc. fell 6%, Quantum Computing Inc. fell 6%.
International Seaways Inc jumped 9.3% following the announcement it will be joining the S&P SmallCap 600 on Dec. 30. The company is a transporter of crude oil and petroleum products.
The price target on shares of Netflix was raised to $1,000 from $785 by analysts at KeyBanc, which maintained an Overweight rating on the streaming giant. KeyBanc listed several reasons why it believes Netflix can outperform the S&P 500 into 2025, with one being that "competitive intensity is moderating," and another that live events should drive more engagement. The company will be showing two National Football League games on Christmas Day. The stock gained 2.3%, moving to $932.12.
Market News
Apple Seeks to Defend Google's Billion-Dollar Payments in Search Case
Apple has asked to participate in Google's upcoming U.S. antitrust trial over online search, saying it cannot rely on Google to defend revenue-sharing agreements that send the iPhone maker billions of dollars each year for making Google the default search engine on its Safari browser.
Apple does not plan to build its own search engine to compete with Alphabet's Google, whether or not the payments continue, the company's lawyers said in court papers, filed in Washington on Monday. Apple received an estimated $20 billion from its agreement with Google in 2022 alone.
OpenAI Ponders Humanoid Robot in Quest to Take AI to New Level: Report
Microsoft-backed OpenAI has recently considered the possibility of building humanoid robots capable of a wide range of tasks, according to a report today by The Information.
This would bring OpenAI to the mindset of other leaders in the artificial intelligence revolution, such as Nvidia and Tesla, which are openly pursuing the commercial reality of the futuristic technology.
Netflix Sues VMware; Suit Part of a Bigger Conflict with Broadcom - Report
Streaming giant Netflix has sued Broadcom unit VMware, alleging patent infringement connected to virtual machine operations, according to a report from GuruFocus on Tuesday.
The report said VMware's vSphere program allegedly violates Netflix's technology.
The report said the case is part of a larger legal conflict that started in 2018. Broadcom's individual case against Netflix in the U.S. is scheduled for trial in mid-2025.
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