Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading: Victoria’s Secret — Shares dropped 3.5% after Goldman Sachs initiated coverage of the stock with a sell rating, saying it sees a “tough macro and ongoing competitive pressure” for the lingerie company in the near term. Longer term, the firm is constructive on the company’s loyalty initiatives and renewed merchandise focus. Meta Platforms — The Facebook parent company plunged more than 11%. Meta reported lighter-than-expected second-quarter revenue guidance on Wednesday, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about spending in areas such as artificial intelligence and mixed reality that are not currently profitable. Meta’s first-quarter earnings and revenue both came above analysts’ estimates, however. Tech stocks — Shares of major tech giants dropped on Thursday as Meta’s lackluster revenue outlook led to declines across the sector. Microsoft and Alphabet shares dropped roughly 3% and 2%, respectively, ahead of their earnings due after the bell. Amazon ‘s stock price shed 2%. Monster Beverage — JPMorgan downgraded Monster Beverage to neutral from overweight due to “cost pressure,” pushing shares roughly 3% lower. Honeywell — Shares of the industrial company declined 1.5% after it reiterated its full-year guidance. Honeywell posted adjusted earnings per share of $2.25, beating analysts’ estimates of $2.17 per share, per LSEG. Revenue for the quarter also came in better than expected at $9.11 billion, compared to the $9.03 billion analysts were expecting. Merck & Co. — The pharmaceutical giant added 2% on stronger-than-expected results for the first quarter. Merck earned an adjusted $2.07 per share on $15.78 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG forecast just $1.88 in earnings per share and $15.2 billion in revenue. Deckers Outdoor — Bank of America downgraded the lifestyle footwear maker to neutral from buy, saying it sees a better risk/reward elsewhere in the firm’s coverage. Shares dropped 5%. Southwest Airlines — Shares declined more than 7% after the airlines missed on both top and bottom lines. The company reported adjusted losses of 36 cents per share, wider than the expected loss of 34 cents, per LSEG. Revenue of $6.33 billion also came below the consensus estimate of $6.42 billion. Management warned that Boeing’s airplane delays would pressure its growth into 2025 and lowered growth guidance accordingly. ServiceNow — The digital workflow firm slid 5% after it only narrowly beat analysts’ revenue expectations in the first quarter. ServiceNow posted revenue of $2.6 billion, slightly higher than the $2.59 billion analysts polled by LSEG had anticipated. Adjusted earnings surpassed estimates as well. Chipotle Mexican Grill — Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill rose 5% after the fast-casual burrito chain topped Wall Street’s first-quarter estimates and reported a 7% rise in same-store sales, beating the 5.2% expected by StreetAccount. International Business Machines — IBM’s revenue missed consensus estimates but beat on the bottom line, per LSEG, pulling shares of the tech hardware company nearly 10% lower. IBM also agreed to buy HashiCorp for $6.4 billion in enterprise value, pulling HashiCorp shares 4.7% higher. Bank of America reiterated its buy rating on the stock following earnings. Caterpillar — Shares tumbled 6.5% after revenues of $15.8 billion for the most recent quarter missed analysts’ estimates of $16.04 billion, according to LSEG. The construction equipment maker’s report also revealed soft sales guidance for the second quarter. Nvidia — Shares of the chip giant rose about 3% on Thursday, even as the broader market declined. Nvidia still has not fully recovered from its 10% decline on April 19, as its price remains below where it stood prior to that sell-off. Evercore ISI reiterated Nvidia as outperform, saying investors should use any weakness in the stock to buy the dip. Comcast — The media stock shed more than 6% after quarterly broadband subscriber losses overshadowed a top-and-bottom line beat. Comcast said it lost 65,000 broadband customers during the period. Deutsche Bank — U.S.-listed shares of Deutsche Bank popped nearly 8% and hit a 52-week high. The German lender reported first-quarter revenue and profit that topped expectations as its investment banking unit continued to recover. — CNBC’s Alex Harring, Brian Evans, Samantha Subin, Yun Li, Lisa Kailai Han, Pia Singh and Michelle Fox contributed reporting. Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.
Elon Musk at the tenth Breakthrough Prize ceremony held at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on April 13, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
The Hollywood Reporter | The Hollywood Reporter | Getty Images
On Saturday, Elon Musk shared who he is endorsing for Treasury secretary on X, a cabinet position President-elect Donald Trump has yet to announce his preference to fill.
Musk wrote that Howard Lutnick, Trump-Vance transition co-chair and CEO and chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, BGC Group and Newmark Group chairman, will “actually enact change.”
Lutnick and Key Square Group founder and CEO Scott Bessent are reportedly top picks to run the Treasury Department.
Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, also included his thoughts on Bessent in his post on X.
“My view fwiw is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice,” he wrote.
“Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt so we need change one way or another,” he added.
Musk also stated it would be “interesting to hear more people weigh in on this for @realDonaldTrump to consider feedback.”
Howard Lutnick, chairman and chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald LP, left, and Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a campaign event with former US President Donald Trump, not pictured, at Madison Square Garden in New York, US, on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In a statement to Politico, Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt made it clear that the president-elect has not made any decisions regarding the position of Treasury secretary.
“President-elect Trump is making decisions on who will serve in his second administration,” Leavitt said in a statement. “Those decisions will be announced when they are made.”
Both Lutnick and Bessent have close ties to Trump. Lutnick and Trump have known each other for decades, and the CEO has even hosted a fundraiser for the president-elect.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that Lutnick has already been helping Trump review candidates for cabinet positions in his administration.
On the other hand, Bessent was a key economic advisor to the president-elect during his 2024 campaign. Bessent also received an endorsement from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, according to Semafor.
“He’s from South Carolina, I know him well, he’s highly qualified,” Graham said.
Money manager John Davi is positioning for challenges tied to President-elect Donald Trump’s tariff agenda.
Davi said he worries the new administration’s policies could be “very inflationary,” so he thinks it is important to choose investments carefully.
“Small-cap industrials make more sense than large-cap industrials,” the Astoria Portfolio Advisors CEO told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week.
Davi, who is also the firm’s chief investment officer, expects the red sweep will help push a pro-growth, pro-domestic policy agenda forward that will benefit small caps.
It appears Wall Street agrees so far. Since the presidential election, the Russell 2000 index, which tracks small-cap stocks, is up around 4% as of Friday’s close.
Davi, whose firm has $1.9 billion in assets under management, also likes staying domestic despite the tariff risks.
“We’re overweight the U.S. I think that’s the right playbook in the next few years until the midterms,” added Davi. “We have two years of where he [Trump] can control a lot of the narrative.”
But Davi plans to stay away from fixed income due to challenges tied to the growing budget deficit.
“Be careful if you own bonds for sure,” said Davi.
Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Global pharma stocks — Shares of several vaccine makers declined after President-elect Donald Trump selected prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary on Thursday. Shares of Moderna and Pfizer slipped nearly 9% and 5%, respectively. BioNTech , which helped develop a Covid vaccine with Pfizer, shed 5%, while GSK declined about 2%. Even names such as Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk were lower, with both stocks slipping about 4%, amid concerns that the drug approval process could be slowed. Super Micro Computer — Shares of the embattled server company fell 2% ahead of a Monday deadline that could result in the company being delisted from the Nasdaq. Super Micro is late on filing a year-end report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, putting it on the wrong side of the Nasdaq’s rules. This would be the 11th losing day in the last 13 trading sessions for Super Micro. Alibaba — S hares slipped more than 2% after the Chinese e-commerce giant’s fiscal second-quarter sales fell short of estimates amid a weakening consumer backdrop in China. Alibaba’s revenue of 236.5 billion yuan came out 5% higher year on year but below analysts’ expectations of 238.9 billion yuan, per LSEG. Palantir — Shares jumped 7% after the analytics software provider said it is moving its listing to the Nasdaq Global Select Market from the New York Stock Exchange. Palantir expects to be eligible to join the Nasdaq-100 Index once it makes the switch. Domino’s Pizza , Pool Corp. , Ulta Beauty — Shares of the pizza chain edged up 0.3% after Warren Buffett ‘s Berkshire Hathaway announced a new stake in Domino’s, while Pool Corp. gained almost 2% as the conglomerate purchased a small stake in the swimming pool supplier. Ulta slipped nearly 3% after Berkshire Hathaway revealed in a regulatory filing that it had sold around 97% of its shares, nearly dissolving its position in the beauty retailer. Berkshire had just bought the stock in the second quarter, making Ulta a relatively new bet. AST SpaceMobile – Shares plunged more than 11% on the heels of the company’s weaker-than-expected third-quarter results. AST SpaceMobile reported a loss of $1.10 per share on revenue of $1.1 million. That’s well below the loss of 20 cents per share and $1.8 million in revenue that analysts were expecting, according to FactSet. Applied Materials — The semiconductor equipment manufacturer dropped 8% after providing a softer-than-forecast revenue outlook for the current quarter. Applied Materials told investors to expect $7.15 billion in the first fiscal quarter, less than the estimate of $7.22 billion from analysts polled by LSEG. However, the company beat expectations on both lines in the fourth fiscal quarter and issued positive guidance for adjusted earnings per share. — CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Alex Harring, Jesse Pound, Hakyung Kim and Lisa Han contributed reporting.