Stocks went on a roller-coaster ride Thursday with up-and-down price action sparked by a fresh round of corporate earnings and hawkish Fed commentary.
After spending time in both positive and negative territory today, the Nasdaq Composite closed down 0.5% at 15,601 and the S&P 500 shed 0.2% to 5,011 – a fifth straight loss for both indexes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a 0.06% gain to 37,775.
Helping boost the main indexes early on was strength in several Magnificent 7 stocks. Notably, Meta Platforms (META) gained 1.5% after the Facebook parent launched Llama 3, its generative artificial intelligence (AI) assistant.
Alphabet (GOOGL) was also in the green, adding 0.4% after the company said it is reorganizing areas of Google to have a stronger focus on AI.
Deutsche Bank thinks Tesla can fall another 18%
Tesla (TSLA), on the other hand, fell 3.6% after Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner downgraded the electric vehicle (EV) stock to Hold from Buy. The analyst also cut his price target to $123 from $189, representing implied downside of 18% to current levels.
Rosner says delays of Tesla's next-generation Model 2 vehicle beyond 2025 create "the risk of no new EVs to the company's lineup for the foreseeable future." The analyst adds that Elon Musk's recent announcement that the company's Robotaxi will be unveiled in early August "in no way means the technology is ready."
Today's loss is just more of the same for Tesla stock. Not only has it closed lower for five straight days, but it's down 37% for the year-to-date – the most of any Mag 7 stock. At today's close, Tesla's market valuation was $478 billion, equivalent to the market cap of discount retail giant Walmart (WMT, -0.7%).
Chip stocks swoon after Taiwan Semiconductor earnings
In other single-stock news, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) fell 4.9% after the chip manufacturer reported Q1 earnings. While TSM beat top- and bottom-line estimates, a lower-than-anticipated outlook for the global chip market spooked investors.
Several other semiconductor stocks, including Arm Holdings (ARM, -2.5%), Broadcom (AVGO, -1.8%) and Intel (INTC, -1.8%), fell in sympathy with TSM.
Fed officials talk interest rates
Also in focus Thursday were speeches from a handful of Federal Reserve officials – many of whom echoed the "higher-for-longer" outlook Fed Chair Powell gave earlier this week.
Among them was New York Fed President John Williams, who said in a panel discussion in Washington D.C., that he doesn't "feel urgency to cut rates." Williams added that "at some point," the central bank will want to start cutting interest rates, but "the timing of that is driven by the economy."
The next Fed meeting kicks off on April 30. A steady stream of economic data signaling persistent inflation and a strong labor market has made it all but certain the Fed will keep the federal funds rate at its current 23-year high. And according to CME Group's FedWatch Tool, futures traders are pricing in low expectations of any rate cuts coming at all this year.
