By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Stocks in focus in premarket trade on Wednesday, 22nd January. Please refresh for updates.
9 AM ET: Tesla (NASDAQ:) stock rose 4.8%, taking the company’s valuation above $100 billion for the first time as the squeezing of short-sellers gets ever tighter. If it stays above that level, CEO and founder Elon Musk will be eligible for up to $346 million in stock awards, although one imagines the satisfaction of thwarting the doomsters who have been his chief bugbear for the last four or five years will count for more for him.
Wedbush became the latest house to raise its price target on Wednesday, hoisting it to $550 from $370. That's the latest in a series of analyst upgrades that have followed the commissioning of Tesla's new plant in China, the world's largest market for electric vehicles.
8:50 AM ET: Apple (NASDAQ:) stock was up 0.7% after a Bloomberg report saying that the company was preparing to start manufacturing its new cut-price iPhone in February. The company has said it expects an upsurge in demand for phones this year as companies roll out 5G services.
8:43 AM ET: Capital One (NYSE:) stock was up 2.4% and closing in a new 12-month high after the lender beat consensus forecasts for earnings and revenue after the bell on Tuesday.
08:39 AM ET: Netflix (NASDAQ:) stock was down 0.5%, but vacillating around last night’s closing price, after a mixed set of earnings that showed international subscriber growth well ahead of forecasts, but a third-straight miss on subscribers in the more saturated U.S. market. Analysts saw the signs of growing competition in the U.S. streaming space, a phenomenon which is likely to replicate itself abroad in the long term.
8:35 AM ET: Boeing (NYSE:) stock was down 1.2%, but still above the 13-month low it hit on Tuesday after the company said it didn’t expect the Federal Aviation Agency to clear the 737 MAX for flying again until the middle of the year. That will mean at least a 15-month pause for the program, and suggests airlines will again be short of aircraft during the key summer season in the northern hemisphere.
08:29 AM ET: IBM (NYSE:) stock was up 3.8% at a three-month high after reporting its first quarterly rise in revenue in over five years, a milestone that investors hope will turn out to be a turning point for a company which has struggled to transform itself into a Cloud-based service provider.
Meanwhile, Boeing’s rival Airbus (OTC:) hit a new record high in Europe Wednesday.
08:29 AM ET: IBM (NYSE:) stock was up 3.8% at a three-month high after reporting its first quarterly rise in revenue in over five years, a milestone that investors hope will turn out to be a turning point for a company which has struggled to transform itself into a Cloud-based service provider.
- 8:25 AM ET: Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:) stock fell 1.2% after the company’s net earnings fell 54% to 66c a share due to various legal costs. Damages payments related to past sales of opioids, talc and other products stopped the company from giving an overall forecast for 2019 net profit, although it raised its guidance for its underlying businesses after strong performances from its medical devices and pharma divisions.
