This week, which stocks lagged? Weekly Winners column keeps up with market trends, helping Tigers sort out the week's hottest sectors, stock winners and important news.
Below are top 10 S&P 500 stock gainers for the week ended Oct.11:
Uber Stock Spikes 16% As "Toothless" Tesla Robotaxi Is "Best-Case Outcome"
Uber stock jumped Friday as investors didn't see much of an immediate threat to the ride-hailing giant after Tesla's (TSLA) much-anticipated robotaxi event Thursday night. Analysts at Jefferies said Tesla's "toothless taxi is a best-case outcome for Uber."
"We consider the event a best-case outcome for Uber, given Tesla did not provide verifiable evidence of progress toward (Level 3 autonomous driving) or quantify the number of robotaxis planned," wrote Jefferies analyst John Colantuoni in a client note early Friday. "We expect Uber to react positively now that investors can focus on fundamentals."
Super Micro Shares Surge as AI Boom Drives 100,000 Quarterly GPU Shipments
Super Micro Computer said on Monday it is currently shipping more than 100,000 graphics processors per quarter and unveiled a new suite of liquid cooling products. Shares surged nearly 16% this week.
A boom in generative artificial intelligence technology has bumped up demand for the hardware required to process the large amounts of data genAI uses, helping Super Micro, which makes servers featuring leading AI chips including Nvidia's.
It "recently deployed more than 100,000 GPUs with liquid cooling solution (DLC) for some of the largest AI factories ever built," Super Micro said in a statement.
Why Cruise Line Stocks Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Rallied This Week
Shares of cruise lines stocks rallied this week, with Carnival Corp., Royal Caribbean Cruises, and Norwegian Cruise Line up 13.37%, 9.06%, and 14.66%, respectively.
Cruise lines had been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, but have been digging themselves out of their respective debt holes for the past two years. Fortunately, pent-up desire for travel and experiences has led to strong and resilient demand for cruising, even through high oil prices in 2022 and higher interest rates in 2022 and 2023.
With the economy remaining resilient and interest rates now coming down, cruise stocks got even more good news this week, when one Wall Street analyst upgraded the sector.
On Wednesday, Citigroup analyst James Hardiman upgraded the entire cruise sector, while raising the firm's price targets on all three names. The analyst raised the price target on Carnival from $25 to $28, Royal Caribbean from $204 to $253, and Norwegian from $20 to $30.
Analysts have grown more optimistic on each cruise line's ability to continue profitable growth and dig themselves further out of debt as time goes on.
Palantir Stock Has Gained 17% Since Being Added to the S&P 500
Palantir shares didn’t lose steam after being added to the S&P 500 index, and the company reach the doorstep of a $100 billion valuation. It was the second-best performer of the 2024 additions. Palantir rose 17% in the 18 days following its addition. It outperformed the index by 16 percentage points.
Getting added to the S&P 500 is significant for a stock because it means more demand for shares. For 2023, S&P Global estimated that $18 trillion was benchmarked to the S&P DJI indices. About half of that, or $9 trillion, was passively managed, like in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF.