The stock market hasn't been all that strong so far this year, but the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 1.59%) managed to rebound somewhat from its recent woes. As of noon ET, the Nasdaq was up 172 points to 15,115, rising more than 1% to try to recover some of its lost ground in the first week of 2022.
A couple of stocks had particularly noteworthy gains on Tuesday morning. Illumina (ILMN 3.50%) was sharply higher, as its business has been doing better than many had expected, while China's JD.com (JD 2.08%) managed to overcome selling pressure from one of the most-followed buyers of high-growth stocks. You'll find the details below.
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Illumina sees gene sequencing grow
Shares of Illumina were up almost 12% at midday. The gene-sequencing specialist released its latest revenue forecast late Monday, and investors liked what they saw from the company.
Illumina's preliminary fourth-quarter revenue came in at $1.19 billion. That figure was up 25% from the year-ago period, lifted by strength in sales of both instruments and consumable products. That brought Illumina's full-year estimated revenue to nearly $4.52 billion, which represented 39% growth from 2020 levels.
Moreover, Illumina said it believes that 2022 will continue to bring solid growth for the company. Guidance for revenue of $5.15 billion to $5.24 billion would work out to annual growth of 14% to 16%. Illumina is also looking for adjusted earnings of between $4 and $4.20 per share.
CEO Francis deSouza was ecstatic about the news, noting the "incredible acceleration of genomics in healthcare" to drive the company's results. With many new partnerships, a strong launch for the multicancer early detection blood test product Galleri, and the development of a breakthrough chemistry to speed up tests while improving precision and accuracy, Illumina isn't holding anything back -- and investors are excited about what they're seeing.
JD goes on without Cathie Wood
Meanwhile, shares of JD.com were up almost 9%. That didn't come close to clawing back all the losses that the Chinese tech stock has seen since mid-November, but it was somewhat surprising in light of the moves that a well-known tech investor has been making in the stock.
Cathie Wood leads the ARK Invest family of exchange-traded funds, and it has been going through tough times during the rout for high-growth tech stocks. That hasn't stopped Wood from continuing to look for the best possible stock holdings, but it has led to some significant readjustments, and JD was the subject of one of those on Monday.
Late Monday night, ARK Invest revealed that two of its ETFs had sold substantial amounts of JD stock. The ARK Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ 1.75%) sold more than 616,000 shares Monday, representing more than 2% of the fund's total assets. Similarly, the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF 3.79%) posted sales of another 267,600 shares, which made up almost 1% of the ETF.
Both ARK Invest ETFs have seen precipitous declines in assets under management that exceed the percentage drop in the funds' stock prices, according to figures compiled by YCharts. The amount of selling dramatically exceeded the amount of buying, and that could force Wood to sell other big growth stock positions like JD to meet redemption requests from ETF shareholders.
