To The Moon

The S&P 500 eked out a fractional gain on Wednesday after a see-saw session, as investors weighed whether to start bargain hunting following a sell-off fueled by elevated Treasury yields and uncertainty about the path ahead for interest rates.

Market Snapshot

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 68.61 points, or 0.2%, to 33,550.27, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 0.98 points, or 0.02%, at 4,274.51 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) rose 29.24 points, or 0.22%, to 13,092.85.

Market Movers

$Sea(SE)$ stock closes 4.8% higher on Wednesday. Indonesia is prohibiting social commerce companies from facilitating direct e-commerce payments on their platforms, Ministry of Trade officials said on Wednesday. That means ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, the only social media company that sells goods directly on its app, will need to separate the shopping feature from its popular video-scrolling service.

Traditional online retailers, meanwhile, are set to benefit from restrictions that could make TikTok Shop less attractive. The country’s online-shopping market leaders include Singapore’s Sea Ltd., which runs the Shopee app, and Jakarta-based GoTo’s Tokopedia.

$Palantir(PLTR)$ Palantir shares jumped 6.38% on Wednesday. Palantir has won a $250 million firm-fixed-price contract to conduct research and development services in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The work is estimated to be completed by Sept. 25, 2026.

$Costco Wholesale(COST)$ reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and sales that beat analysts’ estimates. The stock rose 1.9%. The retailer failed to provide an update on a potential increase in membership fees, a move that many on Wall Street believe is overdue.

Furniture company $MillerKnoll(MLKN)$ raised its fiscal 2024 outlook, saying it expects adjusted earnings $1.85 to $2.15 a share, better than its previous guidance for profit between $1.70 and $2 a share. MillerKnoll also posted first-quarter earnings and sales that beat analysts’ expectations. The stock jumped 28%.

$NextEra Energy(NEE)$ fell 8.2%, putting it on pace for its lowest close since June 30, 2020, when it closed at $60.04, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The largest U.S. electric utility said Tuesday its subsidiary Florida Power & Light Company has agreed to sell Florida City Gas to Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (CPK) for $923 million in cash, and NextEra reaffirmed its long-term guidance. Its stock was also the leading decliner in the S&P 500.

$Guardant Health(GH)$ was up 7.1% after shares of the oncology company were upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at Piper Sandler.

$Blink Charging(BLNK)$ rose 4.4% after UBS initiated coverage of the electric-vehicle charging equipment company with a Buy rating and price target of $7. ChargePoint (CHPT) gained 3.5% after also being initiated at Buy at UBS.

$Cloudflare(NET)$ rose 6.9% after the internet infrastructure company made several announcements including a partnership with Meta Platforms (META) to make Llama 2, an open source large language model, available to developers building AI applications on Cloudflare ‘s developer platform, Workers.

$Hasbro (HAS)$ and $Mattel (MAT)$ were falling 0.4% and rising 2.9%, respectively, after coverage of the toy makers was initiated at Overweight at Morgan Stanley.

Market News

Micron Slides 4% After Predicting Steeper Loss Than Expected

$Micron Technology Inc.(MU)$ fell about 4% in late trading after predicting a steeper loss than anticipated in the current quarter, indicating that an industry slump is still weighing on the largest US maker of memory chips.

The company projected a fiscal first-quarter loss of as much as $1.14 a share, excluding some items. Analysts had estimated a 96-cent loss. On the bright side, revenue is expected to start recovering in the period. Micron predicted sales of $4.2 billion to $4.6 billion, compared with an estimate of $4.21 billion.

$Lucid(LCID)$ Receives Green Light For Production In Saudi Arabia

California-based automaker Lucid Motors is a technological powerhouse in the EV sector. The Lucid Air Grand Touring sedan produces 819 horsepower and can travel 516 miles on a single charge, per the EPA. Some entities have taken note of Lucid's advancements, and one of which was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Lucid shares jumped 2.8% on the news.

Lucid's current primary manufacturing site (AMP-1) is located in Casa Grande, Arizona, and its construction was completed in December 2020. In February 2022, Lucid and Saudi Arabia made a manufacturing location deal, and its government saw this as a beneficial opportunity to electrify its fleet. Within the manufacturing deal, Saudi Arabia said it would buy between 50,000 and 100,000 of Lucid's EVs.

$Li Auto(LI)$ Terminates $2 Billion At-The-Market Equity Offering

$Li Auto(LI)$ announced the early termination of a $2 billion fundraising program announced last year, driving its shares higher in premarket trading Wednesday.

Li Auto terminated its at-the-market (ATM) share offering plan announced on June 28, 2022, effective immediately after the close of business on September 27, US Eastern Time, according to its SEC filing today.