Stock futures traded higher Monday as investors looked ahead to U.S. inflation data later in the week and pondered what influence the consumer price index and producer price index readings will have on monetary policy from the Federal Reserve.
These stocks were poised to make moves Monday:
Tesla
(TSLA) rose 5.6% to $262.31 after shares of the electric-vehicle maker were upgraded to Buy from Hold by Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, who also boosted the stock’s price target to a Wall Street high of $400 a share, up from $250. The upgrade centers around artificial intelligence with Jonas writing that
Tesla
“has developed an advanced supercomputing architecture that pushes new boundaries in custom silicon and may put Tesla at an asymmetric advantage in a $10 trillion total addressable market.”
American depositary receipts of
Alibaba
(BABA) edged up 0.3% in premarket trading. Hong-Kong listed shares of
Alibaba
declined 2.7% after Daniel Zhang, former chairman of the e-commerce giant, stepped down as chairman and chief executive of its cloud business unit. Alibaba is aiming for a public listing of its cloud unit, the company’s second-largest business by revenue.
J.M. Smucker
(
SJM
) is nearing a deal to acquire Twinkies owner
Hostess Brands
(TWNK) for about $4 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Hostess Brands’ value currently stands at about $3.7 billion. Hostess Brands was up 6.7% in premarket trading. Smucker shares rose 0.9%.
Apple
(AAPL) shares were up 0.8% in premarket trading, a day before the tech giant’s annual fall launch event, dubbed “Wonderlust” this year. The event is expected to focus on the debut of the iPhone 15. The most notable change to the phone likely will be a shift to the widely used USB-C standard port from
Apple’s
proprietary Lightning connectors.
Alphabet
(GOOGL) rose 0.3% as the Department of Justice finally will bring its three-year-old antitrust case against Google to trial beginning Tuesday. The DOJ argues that the
Alphabet
unit has an illegal monopoly in the internet search market.
Kenvue
(KVUE) was up 3.5% to $22.04. Shares of the company, which sells such products as Band-Aid, Listerine, Neutrogena, and Tylenol, were upgraded to Buy from Hold at
Deutsche Bank
and the price target was left unchanged at $27.
Meta Platforms
(META), the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is working on a new artificial-intelligence system intended to be as powerful as the most advanced model offered by OpenAI, the Journal reported. Meta aims for the new AI model to be ready next year, according to the Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. Meta shares rose 0.9%.
Earnings reports are expected Monday from
Oracle
(ORCL),
FuelCell Energy
(FCEL),
Casey’s General Stores
(CASY), and
Skillsoft
(SKIL).
Software company
Adobe
(ADBE) reports earnings later this week as does home builder
Lennar
(LEN).
Write to Joe Woelfel at [email protected]
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