Ahead of the two-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting starting tomorrow, the market opened strong and reached fresh all-time highs. The market was also bullish on President Donald Trump’s positive remarks on the ongoing U.S. and China trade negotiations.
The S&P 500 recorded a 52-week high today during trading hours and closed 0.47% higher. After a stellar performance last week, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite reached another 52-week high mark and closed 0.94% higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.11%, riding high on Amazon and IBM. The low-cap stock index, the Russell 2000, was up 0.37%.
The technology sector was up, with Alphabet entering the $3 trillion club, up 3.38%. Tesla rose 5.5%, making it one of the top Nasdaq performers, while Texas Instruments, a global semiconductor company, slipped 3.2%.
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Stock movers for today
Five S&P 500 stocks making big moves today are:
- Seagate Technology Holding STX: +7.7%
- Albemarle Corp ALB: +6.6%
- Western Digital Corp WDC: +4.8%
- Alphabet A GOOGL: +4.5%
- Estee Lauder EL : +4.5%
The worst-performing five S&P 500 stocks today are:
- Corteva Inc: -5.7%
- JM Smucker Co SJM : -5.2%
- Erie Indemnity Co: -4.9%
- Factset Research Systems: -4.8%
- LyondelBasell Industries LYB: -4.8%
Stocks also worth noting include:
- Nvidia NVDA : -0.04%
- Warner Bros Discovery WBD: +3.1%
- ASML ADR ASML: +6.6%
- Tesla TSLA: +3.6%
- Opendoor tech OPEN: +4.7%
- Apple AAPL: +1.1%
Elon Musk buys Tesla shares
Tesla shares surged, up 3.6% after CEO Elon Musk announced that he bought $1 billion worth of company shares on Sept. 12, in an insider purchase.
This is good news for the EV maker after a dismal first quarter report, and Jed Dorsheimer’s analyst William Blair notes that this purchase is a “clear signal of confidence from Musk,” sharing that he is “becoming more bullish” on Tesla stocks, as reported at The Fly.
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Barclays raised Tesla’s Q3 deliveries to 465,000 units year-over-year, much above the market consensus of 430,000 units.
However, expecting a decline in demand for electric vehicles in the future owing to the expiration of the EV tax credit, it kept an Equal Weight rating on Tesla.
Related: Elon Musk made one of his biggest bets on Tesla’s future
Alphabet enters the $3 trillion group
As the market opened today, Alphabet stock (GOOGL) soared 4% higher and became the fourth company to enter the $3 trillion group after Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia.
The stocks closed 4.5% higher, reaching a 52-week high at $252.4 during trading hours, a massive surge from its 52-week low of $140.53 that it suffered in April this year.
Related: Alphabet stock soars after Judge rules that Google can keep Chrome, Android
The latest antitrust suit from Penske Media, which has sued Google for illegally using its reporting in its AI summaries, adds to the Department of Justice’s lawsuits questioning its monopoly in the search space and digital advertising.
On the other hand, Citi raised Alphabet’s price target to $280 from $225 and kept a Buy rating on the shares. According to analysts, Citi expects Google’s adoption of Gemini to ramp up across its advertising and cloud businesses, as The Fly reports.
Texas Instruments stocks affected by Chinese probe
China launched two investigations into the US semiconductor sector. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-discriminatory probe into US measures against China’s chip sector, which affected the semiconductor industry in the U.S.
Texas Instruments, a global semiconductor company, dropped 2.5%. Morgan Stanley lowered the analog chip manufacturer’s price target to $192 from $197.
According to an analyst note, the firm believes that while the June quarter was “good overall” for the semiconductor industry, expectations for the September quarter were too high and reported “prints underwhelmed,” as reported at The Fly.
This probe results from the ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and China. The announcement came after the U.S. added 23 Chinese companies to a list of businesses that allegedly pose a risk to the country’s national security and will face restrictions.
