Wednesday’s Top Reads
Here are the top stories to read during Wednesday trading:
Latest Updates
Amazon.com Inc.’s latest deal for nuclear power is giving a fresh boost to nuclear stocks that have been some of the best performers of 2024.
The retail giant struck a deal that will lead to the construction of four advanced small modular reactors, or SMRs, in Washington state. Google also struck an SMR arrangement earlier in the week, continuing Big Tech’s embrace of nuclear power. At the same time, these latest agreements are a departure of sorts from prior ones between large cloud companies and energy providers, as those other prominent ones involved existing reactors.
That Amazon is turning to new SMRs is proving a catalyst for shares of Oklo Inc., up 38%, and Nuscale Power Corp., up 31%, which make SMR technology and are the top two performers on the New York Stock Exchange for Wednesday. Shares of established independent power producers that have nuclear footprints are also up strongly, though to far lesser degrees, with Vistra Corp.’s stock up 5%, in one example.
The Global X Uranium ETF is up about 6%.
(Getty Images)
Bitcoin rose 0.9% on Wednesday to around $67,587, after recording back-to-back gains, as users on crypto prediction platform Polymarket are betting on a 59% chance that Donald Trump, who is viewed as a more friendly candidate towards crypto, will win the U.S. presidential election in November.
The largest cryptocurrency reached as high as $68,390 on Wednesday, rising above $68,000 for the first time since July. Bitcoin is up more than 60% year to date, while it is 7.3% away from its record high at $73,798 reached in March.
Major U.S. stock indexes moved mostly higher as of Wednesday afternoon with investors responding favorably to strong earnings reports from Morgan Stanley and United Airlines.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 236 points, or 0.6%, at 42,976.
The S&P 500 was up 8 points, or 0.1%, at 5,824.
The Nasdaq Composite was down 23 points, or 0.1%, at 18,293.
All three indexes had finished lower on Tuesday.
The Russell 2000 small-cap stock index continued to climb toward its highest level in years on Wednesday, helped by continued confidence that the Federal Reserve will be able to orchestrate a soft landing for the U.S. economy.
The index was up 1.6% at around 2,286 in New York morning trading and appeared to be on pace to surpass its 52-week closing high of 2,263.67 reached on July 16. It was also headed toward its highest closing level since Nov. 24, 2021, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
One exchange-traded fund tracking global airline operators and manufacturers is heading for its highest close in over a year on Wednesday.
The U.S. Global Jets ETF was surging 3.4% to trade at $22.04 as of 11:40 a.m. Eastern time, on track for its highest close since July 11, 2023, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Morgan Stanley’s stock was surging 7.4% in recent trading toward a record high and its biggest gain in four years in the wake of a big earnings beat.
The gain was enough to lead the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF’s gainers, as that ETF (XLF) also rallied into record territory, with 63 of 72 equity components gaining ground.
Morgan Stanley’s stock was up 9.1% so far this week, which puts it on track for a sixth straight weekly gain. That would be the longest such streak since the six-week stretch that snapped at the week ending Aug. 13, 2021.
U.S. stocks were mostly higher on Wednesday morning, but a continued selloff in some of the megacap technology names was limiting the upside for the broader market.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was rising nearly 200 points, or 0.4%, to around 42,930 as of 11:15 a.m. Eastern time, lifted by a 2.8% advance in shares of UnitedHealth Group Inc. and a 2.5% increase in Cisco Systems Inc. Shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. were also surging 1.8%, according to FactSet data.
The S&P 500 was up 0.1%, at 5,828, but its tech-heavy consumer-discretionary and information-technology sectors were losing over 0.1% each.
The Nasdaq Composite was struggling between gains and losses to trade at 18,317. The Nasdaq 100 index was off 0.2%, according to FactSet data.
The S&P 500 index was up slightly Wednesday, with sector gains led by utilities and financials, according to FactSet data, at last check.
The utilities sector was up 1.1% Wednesday morning, while the S&P 500’s financial sector had the next biggest rise at 0.9%. The S&P 500 was up 0.1%, with information technology’s 0.3% decline weighing on the index in morning trading.
Gold futures headed higher on Wednesday to touch an intraday high above $2,700 an ounce — their highest intraday level in almost three weeks.
On Comex, gold for December delivery was up $15.60, or 0.6%, at $2,694.50 an ounce after trading as high as $2,702.50. Based on the most-active contract, that was the highest intraday price since Sept. 26, when prices touched a record-high $2,708.70, FactSet data show.
Recent gains for the precious metal coincided with a general increase in risk aversion, said Ryan McIntyre, managing partner at Sprott Inc. Major stock indices like the S&P 500 declined on Tuesday.
Sprott believes gold will “continue to perform well over the long term, benefiting from several key trends: the ongoing debasement of the U.S. dollar, the precarious fiscal situations of many Western nations, and the global desire for a store of value independent of other assets and institutions,” said McIntyre.
The U.S. stock market is gearing up for the third-quarter earnings reporting season, but one strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute suggests investors should not get too caught up in the hype as “a big earnings surprise” for the overall market is not likely.
“… investors need to realize that in an economy with moderating growth and easing inflationary pressures, the actual results, for most companies, probably will not differ much from guidance,” said Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
That is because when the economy gradually slows, most individual company analysts “have an easier time” confirming the guidance their companies are giving out when it comes to revenues and earnings, Wren said in a Wednesday client note.
“… when the future is uncertain, you can bet that very few companies will go out on a limb and tell investors that everything looks very good — even if they think it does,” he added.
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