Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading: Hershey , Mondelez International — Hershey shares jumped roughly 13% after Bloomberg News reported that Cadbury and Oreo maker Mondelez is again trying to buy the chocolate company. News of the attempted takeover put Hershey shares on pace for their best day since June 2016, when Hershey previously publicly disclosed a $23 billion bid from Mondelez. Mondelez fell 2%. China-based stocks — U.S.-listed shares of stocks PDD Holdings , JD.com and Trip.com each skyrocketed more than 10% after China’s Politburo pledged to ease its monetary policy stance to boost domestic growth in 2025. Alibaba and Tencent shares gained 9% and 5% on the news, respectively, while automaker Nio rallied more than 14%. Macy’s — The stock gained 1% following activist investor Barington Capital’s call for the department store chain to cut spending and reevaluate alternatives for its Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury operations. Workday , Apollo Global Management — Shares of software firm Workday jumped 5% after S & P Dow Jones Indices announced that the stock would be added to the S & P 500 later this month. Apollo Global Management was also announced as a new S & P 500 addition and hit a new 52-week high on Monday, but the stock was down about 2%. Warner Bros. Discovery , Comcast — Warner Bros. shares added 2% after the media company signed a wide-ranging, multiyear cable distribution deal with Comcast, which allows for the European launch of the Max streaming service and resolves a legal dispute over the “Harry Potter” television series rights. Comcast shares fell 9%. Stellantis — Shares of automaker Stellantis edged nearly 2% higher after CNBC reported that well-known executive Tim Kuniskis is returning to the automaker effective immediately to again lead the company’s Ram Trucks brand. The decision comes just about a week after Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares unexpectedly resigned amid the company’s problems with its North American market. Nvidia — Shares slid about 2%. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation launched an investigation into the chipmaker over its potential violations of the country’s antimonopoly law, particularly in relation to Nvidia’s acquisition of Mellanox. Advanced Micro Devices — The chipmaker slid about 4% on the back of a Bank of America downgrade to neutral from buy. The firm cited higher competitive risks in artificial intelligence given Nvidia’s market dominance, and growing preference for custom chips from other chipmakers that could limit AMD’s market share gain potential. Dow — The chemical maker climbed 3% after announcing it would sell a 40% equity holding in some of its U.S. Gulf Coast infrastructure assets to a Macquarie Asset Management-run fund. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2025. Interpublic Group of Companies , Omnicom Group — Interpublic gained 7%, while Omnicom lost more than 8%. Both companies announced that Omnicom will acquire Interpublic in a stock-for-stock transaction . The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025. Super Micro Computer — Shares of the beleaguered server maker rose about 5% after Super Micro was given an extension from Nasdaq that allows the company to publish its delayed annual report . The company now has until February to maintain its listing on the exchange. SoFi Technologies — Shares dipped almost 2% after Bank of America Global Research downgraded the fintech company and lender to underperform from neutral, saying the stock is overvalued after more than doubling over the past three months. Shares had rallied in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election victory, as investors figured the company would benefit from more stringent student loan forgiveness policies expected under Trump. SolarEdge Technologies — Shares jumped 16% after the solar energy company announced it has started shipping its “USA Edition” home battery . This product was designed to qualify for the domestic content bonus tax credit , a provision that is part of the Inflation Reduction Act that incentivizes the development of green technology that is built with specified percentages of steel, iron or manufactured products that were domestically produced. Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC. — CNBC’s Alex Harring, Jesse Pound, Sarah Min and Michelle Fox Theobald contributed reporting.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after doing a television interview on the North Lawn of the White House on March 13, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the sell-off in the stock market is due more to a sharp pullback in the biggest technology stocks instead of the protectionist policies coming from the Trump administration.
“I’m trying to be Secretary of Treasury, not a market commentator. What I would point out is that especially the Nasdaq peaked on DeepSeek day so that’s a Mag 7 problem, not a MAGA problem,” Bessent said on Bloomberg TV Wednesday evening.
Bessent was referring to Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, whose new language models sparked a rout in U.S. technology stocks in late January. The emergence of DeepSeek’s highly competitive and potentially much cheaper models stoked doubts about the billions that the big U.S. tech companies are spending on AI.
The so-called Magnificent 7 stocks — Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia — started selling off drastically, pulling the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite into correction territory. The tech-heavy benchmark is down about 13% from its record high reached on December 16.
However, the secretary downplayed the impact from President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs, which caught many investors off guard and fueled fears of a re-acceleration in inflation, slower economic growth and even a recession. Many investors have blamed the tariff rollout for driving the S&P 500 briefly into correction territory from its record reached in late February. Wall Street defines a correction as a drop of 10% from a recent high.
S&P 500, YTD
Trump signed an aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy at the White House Wednesday evening, slapping duties of at least 10% and even higher for some countries. The actions sparked a huge sell-off in the stock market overnight, with the S&P 500 futures declining nearly 4% and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 1,100 points. The losses will likely but the S&P 500 back into correction territory in Thursday’s session.
“It’s going to be fine if we put the best economic conditions in place,” Bessent said in a separate interview on Fox Wednesday evening. “If you go back and look, the stock market actually peaked on the [DeepSeek] Chinese AI announcement. So a lot of what we have seen has been just an idiosyncratic tech sell-off.”
A Newsmax booth broadcasts as attendees try out the guns on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022.
Callaghan O’hare | Reuters
Shares of conservative news channel Newsmax plunged more than 70% on Wednesday as its meteoric rise as a new public company proved to be short-lived.
The stock tumbled a whopping 72% in afternoon trading, following a 2,230% surge in Newsmax’s first two days of trading after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. At one point, the rally gave the company a market capitalization of nearly $30 billion — surpassing the market cap of legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.
Newsmax was listed on the NYSE via a so-called Regulation A offering, instead of a traditional IPO. Such an offering allows small companies to raise capital without undergoing the full SEC registration process. The primary focus is to sell to retail investors, in this case It was sold to approximately 30,000 retail investors.
The public offering indeed garnered the attention from retail traders, some of whom touted the stock as the “New GME” in online chatrooms. GME refers to the meme stock GameStop, which made Wall Street history in 2021 by its speculative trading boom.
Newsmax has a small “float,” or shares available for trading. Less than 6% of Newsmax shares, or 7.5 million shares out of a total of 128 million fully diluted shares, are available for public trading.
The conservative TV news outlet has seen its ratings rise with the election of President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans — although it still falls behind the dominant Fox News. Overall, Newsmax ranks in the top 20 among cable network average viewership in both prime time and daytime, Nielsen said.
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Tesla – Shares jumped more than 5%. Politico , citing three Trump insiders, reported President Donald Trump told members of his inner circle that Tesla CEO Elon Musk could leave his current role in the coming weeks. Amazon – Shares of the e-commerce and cloud giant popped more than 2%. The New York Times , citing three people familiar, reported that Amazon has put in a bid to acquire TikTok. The video app is staring down an April 5 deadline to part with its Chinese owner or face a ban in the U.S. Rivian Automotive – Shares of the electric vehicle maker slid more than 5%. Rivian said that it delivered 8,640 vehicles for the first quarter , marking a 36% drop in deliveries compared to a year ago. However, that figure exceeded the consensus estimate of 8,200, per Visible Alpha. nCino – The cloud banking firm’s stock pulled back more than 20% after nCino reported weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and soft guidance for the first quarter and full year. For the fourth quarter, nCino posted adjusted earnings of 12 cents per share, below the 19 cents per share that analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The stock tumbled more than 30% in the premarket, which KBW said was ” overdone .” BlackBerry – The software and communications stock tumbled 6%. BlackBerry guided for fiscal first-quarter revenue of between $107 million to $115 million, lower than the $124.6 million analysts had expected, per FactSet. However, both BlackBerry’s fourth-quarter adjusted earnings and revenue exceeded consensus estimates. Newsmax – The stock sank more than 45%, giving up some of the big gains it reaped following its debut on the New York Stock Exchange Monday. The conservative cable news network surged 179% in the previous session and 700% on its first official trading day. Trump Media & Technology Group – Shares dropped 5% after Trump Media in a securities filing disclosed the possibility of a significant stock sale , including by insider shareholders such as the president’s trust. Petco – Shares of the pet goods retailer soared about 15% after CEO Joel Anderson purchased almost 1.6 million shares, according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. CoreWeave – The stock rose more than 8%, extending its recent gains. On Tuesday, shares of the Nvidia-backed cloud computing company climbed nearly 42% . The recent advances follow a rocky debut for CoreWeave late last week. Nvidia – The chipmaker added roughly 1% ahead of the April 2 tariff announcement. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently downplayed any negative impact from U.S. tariffs. The company’s chips are mostly made in Taiwan, but some of its systems are manufactured in other countries, such as Mexico and the U.S. Scotts Miracle-Gro – The lawn care stock jumped nearly 5% on the heels of Truist’s upgrade to buy from hold . Truist said the stock can benefit as economic uncertainty pushes consumers to shift spending from travel to the home. — CNBC’s Sarah Min, Alex Harring, Lisa Kailai Han and Michelle Fox contributed reporting.