In midday trading, performance was all over the place among large-cap stocks, showing the continued investor response to quarter earnings surprises and expectations for what comes next. Tesla’s shares fell sharply by 6.8% following a price target cut by Barclays, just ahead of its first-quarter earnings report. This production shortfall added to a brutal month that saw Tesla’s stock value plummet by more than 14% for all of April.
Tesla’s troubles were underscored by Barclays’ chief market analyst, which bodes trouble in the weeks and months ahead. The investment bank continued, “it will be harder and harder” for Tesla to achieve volume growth in 2025. Until yesterday, the expectation of its earnings report had kept investors on the sidelines as they tried to determine the company’s long-term prospects.
Netflix got a lift, rising over 1% after the company announced stronger-than-expected Q1 earnings and revenue. Yet fears still remain about how tariffs could affect its bottom line. Moffett Nathanson cautioned, stating that tariffs could “hurt the company’s earnings in the longer term.” Regardless, Netflix did show some influence of the tariffs – a quality we would expect considering their relative insulation – as per Netflix’s own testimony.
Nvidia had to contend with the disappointment, as its shares slumped almost 3% Thursday. This came after a major plunge of close to 7% on Wednesday. The company recently announced that it expected to incur a $5.5 billion charge as a result of these new export controls on its H20 graphics processing units. This announcement has sent investors up in arms.
The other news that captured the headlines was Hertz’s return to the public markets. Pershing Square owned 19.8% of the company through direct share ownership and total return swaps. Sure enough, immediately following that news, a handful of Wall Street analysts raised their price targets on Hertz. In spite of this optimism, the stock ended up dropping 6.4%. Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman touted Hertz as being “uniquely well-positioned” to take advantage of the current economic landscape. Second, he pointed out that under Trump’s tariff regime auto duties may be raised, raising used car prices.
Amazon’s share price took a hit, falling over 3.3% after Raymond James lowered their ranking of the stock from strong buy to outperform. Similarly, Apple’s stock slipped more than 2.5% amid growing uncertainty linked to President Trump’s tariffs.
The wider market was plummeting too, with shares of Alphabet down 2.8%. This decrease came on the heels of a federal judge’s ruling that found Alphabet’s conduct an unlawful monopoly in the online advertising markets. Bigger than expected Comerica’s regional bank stock fell over 4%. This drop came a day after the bank initially forecasted lower average loans and deposits for 2025.
On Monday, MicroStrategy’s shares recovered a bit, gaining 3.1%. This increase underscores a much more positive trend than the boom and bust cycle of recent tech stocks.