Wall Street's main indexes closed lower on Friday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq notching their biggest one-day losses in two weeks, on concerns about slower interest-rate cuts and as investors reacted to cabinet picks by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Market Snapshot
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 305.87 points, or 0.70%, to 43,444.99, the S&P 500 lost 78.55 points, or 1.32%, to 5,870.62 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 427.53 points, or 2.24%, to 18,680.12.
Market Movers
Palantir Technologies rose 11% on a plan to transfer its listing to the Nasdaq from the New York Stock Exchange on Nov. 26. Upon transferring, Palantir said it anticipates meeting the eligibility requirements of the Nasdaq-100 Index, which includes the largest nonfinancial companies listed on the exchange.
Bloom Energy surged 59% to $21.14 after reaching a supply agreement for up to 1 gigawatt with American Electric Power. The stock also was upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at Piper Sandler, and the price target was boosted to $20 from $10.
Super Micro Computer, now under scrutiny as a winner from artificial-intelligence boom that could be forced to delist its stock, just might avoid that fate. A person familiar with the matter told Barron's that Super Micro intends to submit a plan that will allow it to continue to trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market by Monday. This is a look at how the server maker found itself in this position. Super Micro Shares Surged 18% in after hours trading.
Applied Materials reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that beat analysts' estimates, but shares fell 9.2% after the chip-equipment maker issued a disappointing outlook. Applied Materials said it anticipates fiscal first-quarter adjusted earnings of $2.29 a share, plus or minus 18 cents, on revenue of $7.15 billion, plus or minus $400 million. Wall Street was expecting adjusted earnings of $2.27 a share on revenue of $7.24 billion.
Shares of vaccine makers such as Pfizer and Moderna declined after President-elect Donald Trump announced he was nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and harsh critic of federal health agencies, to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Pfizer fell 4.7%, Moderna dropped 7.3%, BioNTech tumbled 3.7% in U.S. trading, and Novavax slid 1.4%. The prospect of Kennedy leading HHS or a similar agency has raised major questions about the future of the health system.
Tesla gained 3.1% after falling 5.8% on Thursday following a report from Reuters that said Trump likely would eliminate $7,500 purchase tax credits for electric vehicles. Analysts generally see the credit rollback as neutral for Tesla, since it has the scale and cost structure to be profitable without the credits. An elimination of the credits, however, was being perceived as a negative for the rest of the industry. Rivian Automotive sank 2.4% after tumbling 14% on Thursday.
AST SpaceMobile, the space-based broadband company, reported a third-quarter loss of $1.10 a share, well wider than a loss of 23 cents a share a year earlier and analysts' estimates that called for a loss of 20 cents. Revenue of $1.1 million also missed forecasts for $1.8 million. The stock declined 9.6%.
Domino's Pizza fell 1.3% after Berkshire Hathaway bought 1.3 million shares of the pizza chain that were worth about $550 million on Sept. 30, according to a quarterly 13-F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Warren Buffett's company also initiated a holding in Pool, buying 404,000 shares that were worth $152 million on Sept. 30. Pool shares jumped 0.5%. Ulta Beauty fell 4.6% after Berkshire Hathaway sold nearly all its position in the beauty products retailer.
Alibaba Group Holding reported fiscal second-quarter adjusted earnings that topped analysts' estimates but revenue that missed forecasts. U.S.-listed shares of the Chinese e-commerce giant dropped 2.2%. Revenue from Alibaba's cloud business rose 7% from the year-earlier period on growth in products related to artificial intelligence.
Market News
Major Trump Media shareholder sells nearly entire stake
Trump Media & Technology Group's key shareholder, ARC Global Investments, has unloaded nearly all its stake in the media company, it said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
ARC and its manager Patrick Orlando now hold about 0.01% stake, down from more than 5% or over 11 million shares in September.
Fed's Goolsbee sees another 125 bps of rate cuts by end-2025
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee on Friday signaled he feels the U.S. central bank will likely end up cutting the policy rate by another quarter of a percentage point this year and a full percentage point further next year, as Fed policymakers projected in September .
"I think we are going to be looking at rates coming down over the next year along the line the dot-plot said," Goolsbee told Bloomberg TV, referring to Fed projections released in September that depict the rate-path forecasts of the Fed's 19 policymakers as dots on a chart.