Premarket action on Wednesday had the three major U.S. indexes trading mixed. The Dow Jones industrials were up 0.21%, the S&P 500 up 0.10% and the Nasdaq 0.07% higher.
Nine of 11 market sectors closed higher on Tuesday. Energy (0.89%) and financials (0.85%) posted the day’s best gains. Technology (−1.03%) and communications services (−0.42%) lagged. The Dow closed up 0.29%, the S&P 500 closed flat and the Nasdaq closed down 0.43% on Tuesday.
Two-year Treasuries rose three basis points to end Tuesday at 4.03%, and 10-year notes added two basis points to close at 3.43%. In Wednesday’s premarket, two-year notes were trading at around 4.05% and 10-year notes at about 3.44%.
Tuesday’s trading volume was below the five-day average. New York Stock Exchange winners outpaced losers by 2,218 to 787, while Nasdaq advancers led decliners by about 5 to 3.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the March consumer price index (CPI) before markets open on Wednesday. Economists expect an increase of 0.3% month over month, down from a January-to-February increase of 0.4%. Core CPI, excluding energy and food, is expected to increase by 0.3%, compared to a 0.5% increase in February. Year over year, February’s total CPI was 6% and core CPI rose 5.5%. Forecasts for March see CPI rising to 5.2% and core CPI rising to 5.6%.
Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Reserve will release the minutes of the FOMC’s March meeting.
After markets closed Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute reported U.S. crude oil inventories added 377,000 barrels last week, compared to a withdrawal of 3.74 million barrels in the previous week. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports petroleum inventories after markets open on Wednesday.
Among S&P 500 companies, CarMax Inc. (NYSE: KMX) led Tuesday’s winners with a gain of 9.64% after reporting better-than-expected earnings and revenue for its fourth quarter. The used car seller also affirmed guidance issued last April for sales of 2 to 2.4 million vehicles by 2026, generating $33 billion to $45 billion in revenue.
COVID-19 vaccine developer Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ: MRNA) dropped 3.06% Tuesday and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. (NYSE: WBD) fell 3.05% to post the biggest losses among S&P 500 stocks. Moderna reported that its experimental flu vaccine failed to meet the “early success” statistical threshold of at least 200 flu cases to be included in the study. The company said it would continue the testing.
Warner Bros. Discovery is set to announce its new streaming service Wednesday. Dubbed Max, the service will offer HBO’s biggest hits alongside Discovery’s less well-known programs. Now that consumers have literally hundreds of choices of streaming services, there have been some questions about how successful Max can be in an industry that appears to be reaching saturation. CEO David Zaslav, who was paid $246.6 million last year, was named 24/7 Wall Street’s worst CEO of 2022, beating out Mark Zuckerberg, Andy Jassy and Ernest Garcia III.
Shares of Manchester United PLC (NYSE: MANU) rose more than 6% on Tuesday after reports that the investment bank hired by the Glazer family to sell the team asked bidders for a third round of bids. The Glazers are reportedly seeking something around £6 billion ($7.5 billion), and the three known bidders — British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, Qatari Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani and Finnish entrepreneur Thomas Zilliacus — have yet to meet that demand. At Tuesday’s closing price of $22.69, the soccer club’s market cap is about $3.7 billion. The stock has added about 60% to its value over the past 12 months, all of it since late November when the potential sale was first revealed.
More than 75 million shares of ContextLogic Inc. (NASDAQ: WISH) changed hands on Tuesday, following the company’s announcement of a 1-for-30 reverse stock split effective Wednesday morning. The stock opened at $0.4155 per share Tuesday morning and dropped more than 21% by the end of the session. At Tuesday’s closing price of $0.3269 per share, one new split-adjusted share would be worth about $9.80. Split-adjusted shares begin trading Wednesday morning and were last seen at $9.10, down nearly 7.2%.
ContextLogic, a mobile e-commerce platform, came public in late December 2020 at $24.00 a share, raising $1.1 billion. At the height of the meme stock frenzy in 2021, ContextLogic traded above $31.00 a share, nearly 100 times the value of the stock just over two years later. And there is plenty of spare ammo to sell: 3 billion split-adjusted shares are authorized, while only about 23.2 million will be outstanding. Some of those 3 billion shares will be used to adjust “outstanding equity-based awards and other outstanding equity rights.”
WW International Inc. (NASDAQ: WW) soared 59% on Tuesday. Formerly known as Weight Watchers, WW completed its acquisition of Weekend Health, which operated under the Sequence name, and provides a subscription telehealth platform for health care providers who specialize in helping patients manage obesity. Goldman Sachs raised its rating on the stock from Neutral to Buy and raised its $3.80 price target to $13. WW shares jumped even more when it announced last month that it would acquire the company.
Originally published at 24/7 Wall St.
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