U.S. stocks ended modestly higher on Wednesday and the S&P 500 notched its second straight all-time closing high as investors scrutinized the minutes from the Federal Reserve's January policy meeting and digested U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff plans.
Market Snapshot
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 71.25 points, or 0.16%, to 44,627.59, the S&P 500 rose 14.57 points, or 0.24%, to 6,144.15 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 14.99 points, or 0.07%, to 20,056.25.
Market Movers
Quantum computing stocks jumped. SEALSQ Corp up 12%; D-Wave Quantum Inc., Quantum Computing up around 8%; Rigetti Computing rose 5%. Microsoft Corp. announced its first quantum computing chip, a major step in the company’s effort to produce devices that might someday solve problems beyond the reach of modern computers.
Palantir Technologies Inc. shares fell 10% on Wednesday, and continued to slide in after-hours trading, following a report that US Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth plans to slash military spending.
Grab Holdings shares fell 11% in after-hours trading. The company predicted full-year revenue that trailed estimates, suggesting caution around a Southeast Asian ride-hailing and food delivery market where GoTo Group remains a formidable rival.
Super Micro Computer shares jumped another 8% on Wednesday. The shares spiked 16.5% on Tuesday, exactly one week before its February 25 deadline to file its 2024 annual report, along with its quarterly reports for the September 2024 and December 2024 periods. The shares have soared 32% last week.
Etsy slid 10% after the online marketplace reported fourth-quarter revenue that missed analysts’ expectations. Revenue of $852.2 million for the quarter came in below Wall Street’s call for $861.8 million, according to FactSet. Management acknowledged declining gross merchandise sales, chalking them up to headwinds that included pressure on discretionary spending and stiff competition in the retail environment.
Bumble plunged 30% to $5.65 after the online dating service issued weak guidance for the first quarter of 2025, forecasting revenue in the range of $242 million to $248 million for the current quarter and missing the $257 million forecast analysts anticipated.
Toll Brothers was down 5.9% after the home construction company reported lower-than-expected earnings and sales in its fiscal first quarter. Toll Brothers posted net income of $177.7 million on revenue of $1.86 billion, down from net income of $239.6 million on revenue of $1.95 billion a year earlier.
Howard Hughes Holdings fell 8.9% after investor Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Holdco announced that it had submitted a proposal to the Howard Hughes board to pay $90 per share to acquire 10 million common shares of the company. The stock jumped 6.8% Tuesday after Ackman teased the “potential transaction” to create a diversified holding company, likening it to Berkshire Hathaway. The announcement then came after the market close.
Intel fell 6.1% after surging 16% on Tuesday following reports that Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing were weighing deals to acquire different parts of the chip maker’s business.
Apple stock rose 0.2% after the tech firm unveiled the iPhone 16e, a lower-cost model starting at $599. The iPhone 16e will be available for preorder on Friday, Apple said. While the phone is more affordable than others in the iPhone 16 lineup, some on Wall Street had a lower price point in mind; a Sunday report from UBS analysts suggested $500.
Nvidia fell 0.1% to $139.23, indicating that Wall Street had largely shrugged off President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threat. Trump said he was considering imposing import taxes “in the neighborhood of 25%” on semiconductors, cars, and pharmaceuticals. Nvidia shares were trading at just under $143 before Chinese start-up DeepSeek sparked concerns about competition in the artificial-intelligence market, triggering a broad selloff.
Meta Platforms shares fell 1.8%, continuing their decline after snapping a 20-day winning streak on Tuesday. The stock handily topped its previous record rally of 11 days, which it achieved in September 2015. The stock trades at 27.35 times forward earnings versus the broader S&P 500 index, which trades at 22.37 times.
Arista Networks slipped 6.4% on the heels of the cloud networking company’s fourth-quarter earnings report. While annual revenue jumped 20% to $7 billion in 2024, Meta’s contribution to sales decreased year-over-year to 15% from 21%. By comparison, sales to Microsoft rose to 20% from 18%.
Market News
Fed Minutes Signal Officials on Hold Until Inflation Improves
Federal Reserve officials in January expressed their readiness to hold interest rates steady amid stubborn inflation and economic-policy uncertainty.
“Participants indicated that, provided the economy remained near maximum employment, they would want to see further progress on inflation before making additional adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate,” minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee’s Jan. 28-29 meeting showed.
The minutes, released Wednesday in Washington, said “many participants noted that the committee could hold the policy rate at a restrictive level if the economy remained strong and inflation remained elevated.”
Trump Says He Will Announce a Range of Tariffs over "Next Month or Sooner"
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he will announce tariffs related to lumber, cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals "over the next month or sooner."
"I'm going to be announcing tariffs on cars and semiconductors and chips and pharmaceuticals, drugs and pharmaceuticals and lumber, probably and some other things over the next month or sooner," Trump said at a conference in Miami.
He did not provide further details.
DeepSeek Sources: Financing News Is a Rumor
In response to the news that "DeepSeek is considering outside funding for the first time," sources from DeepSeek denied that this financing news is a rumor. (Tencent Technology)
