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Stock market today: Dow eyes record on UnitedHealth surge, S&P 500, Nasdaq fall as rate-cut bets cool
- Yahoo Finance’s Francisco Velasquez reports:
- Read more here.
- UnitedHealth Group’s (UNH) stock rallied on Friday following the revelation that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B) purchased 5 million shares last quarter.
- The more than 10% jump in shares of the healthcare insurance giant helped lift the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) into green territory, as the rest of the major averages dropped.
- UnitedHealth has suffered multiple setbacks in the past couple of years. With earnings misses piling on top of that, the stock has been under constant pressure and is down more than 45% year to date.
- Read more here.
- Opendoor Technologies (OPEN) shares spiked as much as 10% in morning trading after the company announced the departure of its CEO Carrie Wheeler effective immediately.
- Opendoor said it is searching for a new CEO to lead the ibuyer in its next growth phase, just weeks after the stock skyrocketed in a meme-fueled rally.
- The board appointed Shrisha Radhakrishna, Opendoor’s chief technology and product officer, as president and interim leader of the company.
- Shares of Opendoor have been on a wild ride over the past month, powered in part by Carvana (CVNA) turnaround spotter EMJ Capital and speculative investors on Reddit’s wallstreetbets.
- EMJ Capital founder and president Eric Jackson wrote in mid-July that his firm was taking a long position in Opendoor, which was then trading under $1 per share.
- Jackson has been critical of Opendoor’s top leadership, most recently following the company’s latest quarterly results in early August, when the stock sank 20% following a disappointing earnings forecast.
- “The communication on the earnings call from the CEO and the CFO was really awful,” Jackson told Yahoo Finance last week.
- “The management team didn’t do anything to get this thing up from 51 cents to almost five bucks,” he said. “It was basically all of us retailers who saw the value in this platform, supported it. We got not a word from management over these last few weeks. So I think she’s got to go.”
- Chip stocks dropped Friday after President Trump said he will set tariffs on semiconductors as soon as next week.
- “I’ll be setting tariffs next week and the week after on steel and on, I would say, chips,” Trump told reporters Friday while aboard Air Force One while traveling to Alaska to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, Reuters reported.
- Nvidia (NVDA), AMD (AMD), and Broadcom (AVGO) fell more than 1%, while Micron (MU) dropped more than 3%.
- Trump said earlier this month that semiconductor companies building out their domestic manufacturing footprint — this includes the world’s leading contract chip manufacturer, Taiwanese firm TSMC (TSM) — would be exempt from his planned 100% tariffs on chips. That commentary sent chip stocks up. But on Friday, he implied that the exemption may only be temporary.
- “I’m going to have a rate that is going to be lower at the beginning — that gives them a chance to come in and build — and very high after a certain period of time,” he said.
- US consumer sentiment deteriorated in August, falling for the first time in four months. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index fell to 58.6 from a reading of 61.7 in July. It was also less than the 62 reading expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
- “This deterioration largely stems from rising worries about inflation,” wrote Joanne Hsu, the director of the university’s Surveys of Consumers.
- Consumer sentiment had improved in June and July after plummeting in the spring as Americans worried about the impacts of Trump’s tariffs. In May, the index showed sentiment at its second-lowest level on record as consumers expressed concerns over long-term inflation, fueled by uncertainty surrounding Trump’s trade policies. Sentiment improved in June as Trump dialed back some of his aggressive stances on tariffs.
- “Overall, consumers are no longer bracing for the worst-case scenario for the economy feared in April when reciprocal tariffs were announced and then paused,” Hsu said. “However, consumers continue to expect both inflation and unemployment to deteriorate in the future.”
- Read more here.
- US stocks were mixed on Friday at the open as Wall Street tempered its hopes for the Fed to cut interest rates in September, as economic data this week showed higher than expected wholesale inflation and a rise in July retail sales.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose around 0.5%, putting the index on track for its first record since December. The benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose less than 0.1%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell below the flatline.
- Intel (INTC) stock spiked more than 7% Thursday and continued to climb 3% before the market open on Friday, following a report that the US government is considering taking a stake in the troubled chipmaker.
- Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration is in talks with Intel about the deal, which would help the company complete its Ohio factory expansion that had been put on hold.
- The report follows a meeting between President Trump and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan earlier this week, which came after the president called for the CEO’s resignation due to his ties with China.
- “As Intel’s prospects have dimmed, the idea of support (governmental or otherwise) has gained traction, understandable given the company, for better or worse, remains the only US-headquartered prospect for leading edge semiconductor chips and processes; it seems like Trump may have been persuaded to see the light,” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a note to investors Friday.
- It’s not the first time the Trump administration has allegedly floated ideas to prop up Intel. In February, a news report said the US was pitching proposals to its rival TSMC to help support its turnaround by establishing a joint venture with Intel.
- Read more here.
- Retail sales rose 0.5% in July from the prior month, according to data from the US Census Bureau released Friday — marking the second monthly gain in a row, as consumer spending steadies following a dramatic drop in earlier in the year.
- Still, the jump was less than the 0.6% gain expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
- Excluding auto and gas sales, retail sales were up 0.2%, also less than the 0.3% projected.
- An even narrower slice of retail sales called the “control group” — a more precise measure of consumer spending that excludes certain sales such as those from office supply and tobacco stores — climbed 0.5%, ahead of the 0.4% expected.
- Retail sales rebounded in June, a sign that consumer spending habits were remaining resilient despite President Trump’s tariffs.
- Read more here.
- Shares in Applied Materials (AMAT) sank 14% before the bell on Friday after the chip equipment maker issued weak fourth-quarter forecasts on sluggish China demand, fueling concerns over tariff-related risks.
- Reuters reports:
- Read more here.
- UnitedHealth Group stock rose 12% before the bell on Friday after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B, BRK-A) acquired 5 million shares in the company.
- A regulatory filing showed the purchase on Thursday.
- Reuters reports:
- Read more here.
