Thursday was an interesting day for the stock market. Major market benchmarks opened mixed but generally improved over the course of the day. Investors appeared content with the path that the Federal Reserve has chosen with interest rates and are now waiting to see what the holiday season says about the strength of the U.S. economy. The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 0.68%),remained in negative territory at the close, but the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.26%) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI +0.09%) set new record highs.
|
Index |
Daily Percentage Change |
Daily Point Change |
|---|---|---|
|
Dow |
+1.34% |
+646 |
|
S&P 500 |
+0.21% | +14 |
|
Nasdaq |
-0.25% |
-50 |
Data source: Yahoo! Finance.
Earnings continued to be the most important cause of major moves among individual stocks. In the tech stock realm, there were significant movers in both directions. Yet there were also some sizable share-price changes in other sectors of the market.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Top Stock Losers Today
ORCL: -11%
Tech giant Oracle (ORCL 2.30%) was the big stock loser in the stock market, as investors punished the AI stock after it reported its latest quarterly financial results late Wednesday. Oracle's fiscal second-quarter earnings were better than expected, but the company failed to meet the heightened expectations of investors for revenue, despite seeing overall sales growth of 14%. Oracle posted year-over-year gains of 34% in total cloud sales and 66% in cloud infrastructure revenue, but investors didn't like the extent to which the company is planning to double down on spending on AI. The move lower suggests that investors are growing impatient to see a monetary payoff from AI investment, and Oracle will need to work harder to show tangible results from its efforts.
NYSE: ORCL
Key Data Points
HOOD: -9%
Investor favorite Robinhood Markets (HOOD 3.43%) suffered a 9% loss on Thursday after reporting its trading activity metrics for the month of November. Volumes were down across the board, with equity trading experiencing the biggest drop of 37%. Options and cryptocurrency trading also showed weakness, and the resulting 5% drop in assets under custody was the first monthly decline in nine months. However, with the popular meme stock still up sharply this year, Robinhood continues to excite long-term investors about its future.
NASDAQ: HOOD
Key Data Points
Top Stock Gainers Today
PL: +35%
Planet Labs (PL 1.54%) soared 35% on Thursday, with investors reacting favorably to the space stock's third-quarter financial report. Revenue of $81 million was up 33% year over year, but investors were particularly pleased with a 361% rise in remaining performance obligations to $672 million. Planet Labs' also saw its backlog more than triple as demand grew for its AI-enabled global monitoring business. Space-based AI looks to be gaining traction, and Planet expects to work with Alphabet's (GOOGL 0.39%) (GOOG 0.45%) Google unit to scale up extraterrestrial AI computing. The top stock gainer has captured the imagination of investors with aspirations for space exploration, and Planet Labs is in solid financial position to keep pursuing its goals well into the future.
NYSE: PL
Key Data Points
HL: +13%
Lastly, Hecla Mining (HL 4.60%) was a big winner, as the silver stock rose with the price of silver. The precious metal climbed above $64 per ounce for the first time ever before falling back slightly in afternoon trading, and many investors believe that silver has a long way to move higher in order to catch up with gold's larger move earlier in the year. Some analysts also attributed part of the move to news earlier this week that Hecla would join the S&P MidCap 400 index. With silver seen as a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty, Hecla could well see further gains.
