Riding along with some other EV stocks, shares of ChargePoint jumped 4.1% in recent trading. The last rush to take advantage of Biden-era federal EV incentives has put a bunch of new EVs on the road, sending ChargePoint up, along with Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid.

Ford said earlier Wednesday that its EV sales hit a quarterly record, and it and other EV makers have been exploring unorthodox ways to replicate the EV tax credits for consumers through year end.

Still, ChargePoint is down over 47% for the year, and narrowly escaped NYSE delisting with a 20-1 reverse stock split back in July. And it’s not hard to see why: The company has never had a profitable quarter.

Power turbine maker GE Vernova is down midday after RBC analysts cut their rating on the stock from “outperform” (essentially a “buy”) to “sector perform” (essentially a “hold”), suggesting that long-term earnings expectations for the company might have gotten too optimistic.

RBC’s Christopher Dendrinos wrote:

“Our longer-term expectations are more conservative than consensus expectations which we think could be over appreciating the cadence of revenue growth in the power segment in 2029-2030. We believe investors are already fully valuing the company on the longer-term 2030 outlook and there could be more limited opportunity for positive rate of change in current expectations.”

Dendrinos argues that the Street’s expectations for when the river of payments will materialize from the service contracts GE sells to maintain the newly installed turbines is too soon. He wrote that it will take a much longer cycle:

“Mgmt sees an opportunity to double the installed base of baseload power over the next 10 years which should support significant rev growth and stronger margins (we estimate gas service margins over 30%).

However, the first major service cycle typically occurs ~3-4 years after installation so the benefit of service price increases and new LTSAs are unlikely to begin to benefit the income statement until later in the decade and will be a gradual increase.”

Earlier in the year, GE Vernova was a top performer as the AI data center trade boomed. It was up roughly 100% for the year in late July, making it the third-best gainer in the S&P 500 for the year.

It has stalled since then, though it remains up more than 80% in 2025.

Federal immigration and prison operator GEO Group popped after announcing late Tuesday that it has won a new contract from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to continue in its role as a vendor of electronic monitoring, case management, and supervision services under the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program.

(That’s a program that keeps track of people as they undergo the immigration review process.)

Since the election, GEO Group has been one of a number of stocks whose business — or leadership — is seen as closely tied to the Trump administration, or set to benefit from White House policy changes.

GEO Group is up 150% since President Trump was elected last November.

Shares of AI medical diagnostics company Tempus AI have shot up over 5% today. The stock is up over 150% for the year.

Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order to boost the use of AI to “produce meaningful solutions to pediatric, adolescent, and young adulthood cancer,” which may be fueling the stock’s rise.

Last week, the company announced FDA approval of its Tempus xR IVD device, an RNA sequencing tool that allows doctors to tailor therapies for cancer patients.

Hydrogen fuel cell company Plug Power is enjoying massive gains and a lot of love in the options market Wednesday after the company announced that it delivered the first electrolyzer to a refinery in Portugal.

“This project, Plug’s largest worldwide, will produce up to 15,000 tons of renewable hydrogen per year, replacing 20% of the grey hydrogen currently used at the Sines Refinery,” per the company’s press release. “This switch will reduce the Refinery’s greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 110,000 tons per year (Scope 1 and 2, CO2e).”

As of 11:03 a.m. ET, over 146,000 call options in Plug have changed hands, already running hotter than the 20-day average of 132,328 for the full session. Activity is more than tilted to the bull side — it’s completely lopsided. Over 11 call options have traded for every one put.

Plug call options that expire in mid-January with a strike price of $2 and contracts with strike prices of $3 and $2.5 that expire this Friday are seeing especially elevated trading activity.

Amazon on Wednesday launched Amazon Grocery, a new private-label food brand that combines its Fresh and Happy Belly lines into one collection.

The label covers more than 1,000 staples, from milk and eggs to olive oil and fresh meat, with most items priced under $5. Shares of Amazon were little changed, but grocery-selling rivals Target, Walmart, and Kroger all slipped around 2% following the announcement. Costco also slipped about 1%.

The launch highlights Amazon’s growing push into both grocery and private-label essentials as more customers trade down to cut costs. In August, the e-commerce giant added perishable groceries to same-day delivery in 1,000 cities and towns across the country.

At the same time, Amazon said shoppers purchased 15% more private-brand products in 2024 compared to the previous year across Amazon.com, Whole Foods Market, and Amazon Fresh.

In September, Tesla sales rose in France and Denmark for the first time this year, while they also continued to grow in Norway and Spain, according to early European sales data reported by Reuters.

That’s a notable shift from the declines of previous months, as Tesla benefits from the rollout of its revamped Model Y and the introduction of numerous incentives across the continent, helping to stabilize its earlier sales slump.

Of course, Tesla’s European sales fluctuate dramatically month to month in Europe in part because the company doesn’t sell that many vehicles in Europe. Typically Tesla sells a few thousand vehicles per month per European country. In comparison, the automaker sells tens of thousands of cars in the US each month.

Tesla is up more than 2% in early trading, after having just capped off its best month since the election.

September marked another banner month for Ford’s electric vehicle business, with EV sales climbing 85% from the same month last year to more than 11,700 units.

For the third quarter as a whole, Ford’s electrified unit sales grew nearly 20%. That’s the division’s best Q3 on record, boosted by the looming end of the $7,500 federal tax credit on Tuesday. Ford, with rival GM, has found some ways to extend that credit in the hopes of keeping sales stable.

Overall, Ford sales rose 8.2% on the quarter, and September was the automaker’s seventh straight month of sales gains. Ford sales have been buoyed this year by panic buying: first from fears of tariff price hikes (and Ford’s strong incentives), and lately from the EV credit expiration.

The US government officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday after senators failed to agree on a last-minute funding bill. Though initially shrugging off the threat of a shutdown during yesterday’s session, stocks were mildly in the red on Wednesday as investors reacted to what is now the 11th shutdown in the government’s history.

Until this latest shutdown, there had been 20 government funding gaps experienced since 1976 — though not all ended in a full shutdown, with full closure averted in half of those cases.

Indeed, prior to the 1980s, funding gaps didn’t typically have major effects on government operations, with agencies continuing to operate on the basis that the funding would come eventually. However, a more stringent interpretation of the rules led to a stricter appropriations process from the early 1980s onward, with many subsequent funding gaps resulting in a shutdown of affected agencies (unless the gaps were quickly fixed or occurred over a weekend).

Obviously, the duration of the latest shutdown is still unclear, but it will continue until Congress passes a funding bill — most likely via a “continuing resolution,” which has ended every shutdown since 1990. Data analyzed by USAFacts suggest that it might not be a one- or two-day affair, as funding gaps have lengthened in recent years.

Indeed, the last shutdown, which began in December 2018, ended up becoming the longest in history, at a whopping 34 days. By the time the government reopened in January 2019, about $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) had been wiped from the GDP in Q4, per data from the Congressional Budget Office, with approximately $18 billion in “federal discretionary spending” delayed over the roughly five-week stretch.

Wall Street analysts are reacting to the sharp slide of online gambling stocks DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment Tuesday, after prediction markets company Kalshi introduced a product mimicking the parlay bets on the betting apps, intensifying concerns about the competitive pressures prediction markets pose.

Citi analysts snipped their Q3 estimates and price target for DraftKings — while maintaining a “buy” rating — after Tuesday’s tumble. They wrote:

“We are lowering our 3Q25 estimates and now forecast 2025 to come in toward the lower end of the firm’s guide. Along with results, we believe investors will be focusing on initial trends since the start of the NFL season, the evolving prediction market landscape, the firm’s recent NBCU partnership, and recent product enhancements.”

BMO Capital, however, kept its “overweight” rating on the stock, which it calls a “top pick,” seeing Tuesday’s nearly 12% drop as a chance to buy the dip: 

“While bears will point to product enhancements (parlays) and trade volume momentum by prediction markets, we believe legal [online sports betting] vendors continue to control the lion’s share of betting volume in the legal betting markets. We view today’s sell-off, in particular, as a ‘back up the truck’ opportunity.”