By Joe Woelfel
Stocks rose Monday as Wall Street cheered President-elect Donald Trump's selection of Wall Street veteran Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was on track for a record closing high. The S&P 500 was on track for a record before slightly pulling back.
These stocks were making moves Monday:
Super Micro Computer was rising 11%, with the server maker coming off last week's surge of 78%, the stock's largest weekly gain on record. Lifting shares last week were Super Micro's submission of plans to remain listed on the Nasdaq and the naming of a new auditor. Super Micro shares remain roughly 70% off the record closing high set in March but were on pace for their best month since February, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Snowflake rose 3% to $172.50 after shares of the software company were upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Wedbush with a new price target of $190. Elastic, the data analytics company, also received an upgrade at Wedbush to Outperform from Neutral and a new price target of $135. The stock gained 3.3% to $111.61. Analysts at the firm said the upgrades reflect their "increased bullishness on the next phase of this AI Revolution in the software sector into 2025." Wedbush also raised its price targets on Palantir Technologies to $75 from $57, and Salesforce to $375 from $325. On Palantir, the analysts said the boost to the price target reflected their increased confidence in Palantir's "game-changing" artificial-intelligence-platform strategy as use cases take hold over the next 18 months. Palantir was up 0.8% to $64.84, and Salesforce was down 0.9% at $338.86.
Shares of MicroStrategy were down 3.4%. The largest corporate holder of Bitcoin purchased 55,500 Bitcoin for about $5.4 billion at an average price of $97,862, including fees and other expenses. It now owns 386,700 bitcoin worth $21.9 billion that were purchased at an average price of $56,761. The company closed a $3 billion convertible bond sale on Friday and used the proceeds to buy more of the cryptocurrency.
Brokerage Robinhood Markets was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley and the price target was raised to $55 from $24. Robinhood shares gained 3.4% to $37.88. Needham analysts last week raised their recommendation on Robinhood to Buy from Hold, saying the company stands to benefit from a change in leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission following Trump's election victory.
Quantum Computing jumped 22% and D-Wave Quantum gained 5.7% after Amazon Web Services launched Quantum Embark, a new advisory program for customers. "Quantum Embark aims to help customers get ready for quantum computing by providing an expert-led approach, as they embark on their journey. With Embark, there are no long-term commitments, and customers can get started in as little as a few weeks," said a blog from AWS.
Bath & Body Works surged 15% after third-quarter earnings and sales at the beauty and home fragrance company topped analysts' estimates and fiscal-year guidance was raised. Bath & Body Works said it expects fiscal-year sales to be down 2.5% to down 1.7%, compared with prior guidance for a decline of 4% to 2%.
Macy's was down 3.9% after the retailer delayed the release of its third-quarter earnings that were scheduled for Tuesday to Dec. 11 to complete an investigation into an employee who made inaccurate accounting entries. Macy's did disclose, however, that net sales in the period decreased 2.4% to $4.742 billion from a year earlier.
Cassava Sciences plunged 83% after the biotech company said a trial of a novel Alzheimer's drug missed key milestones during a Phase 3 trial. The treatment, Simufilam, didn't show a significant reduction in cognitive or functional decline compared with a placebo during the 52nd week of the study, the company reported. All patients included in the trial suffered from mild to moderate Alzheimer's.
Earnings reports are expected after the closing bell Monday from Agilent Technologies and Zoom Video Communications.
Reports are expected later in the week from Dell Technologies, Analog Devices, CrowdStrike Holdings, Workday, Autodesk, HP Inc., Best Buy, Nutanix, Dick's Sporting Goods, Abercrombie & Fitch, Macy's, Nordstrom, and Ambarella.
Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 25, 2024 12:26 ET (17:26 GMT)
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