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S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 end the week with fresh record closing highs

Another day, another record high for US stocks.

Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

Another day, another record high for US stocks.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 rose 0.5% and 0.7%, respectively, on Friday.

There was no trifecta of records this time around, though, as the Russell 2000 gave back some of Thursday’s mammoth gains with a 0.8% decline.

Tech was the best-performing S&P 500 sector ETF, while energy was at the bottom of the leaderboard.

Gains on the day were led by Paramount Skydance, which popped 5.8% following reports that Warner Bros. Discoverys bid for the media giant will range between $22 and $24 per share. Declines were led by DexCom, which fell 11% after the medical device maker was the target of a short report by Hunterbrook Media. Elsewhere…

Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum were up 15% and 11.9%, respectively, as speculative small-cap names beloved by retail traders basked in renewed Fed rate cut optimism.

FedEx rose 2.4% after the courier giant delivered better-than-expected fiscal Q1 results and got a price target boost from TD Cowen.

Micron fell 3.7%, snapping a record 12-session rally that had been fueled by a drumbeat of positive news around its AI data center expansion.

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Health insurance stocks lose steam as Trump says he’ll lobby insurers for lower prices

Shares of health insurance companies dropped Friday afternoon, as President Trump said he would ask insurers to meet with him in the coming weeks to seek lower prices.

Stocks including Humana, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, CVS Health, and Elevance Health all either pared gains or went further into the red after Trump’s remarks, which came at the end of a press event to announce pricing deals with nine drugmakers.

“I’m going to call a meeting of the big insurance companies that have gotten so rich,” Trump said, noting that he would lobby them for lower prices.

“I would say that maybe with one talk, they would be willing to cut their prices by 50, 60, or 70%. They’ve made a fortune.”

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Rivian’s surge continues as stock reaches highest level since December 2023 on analyst upgrades

Shares of EV maker Rivian are on pace to close up double digits for the second day in a row on Friday as bullish investors pour into the stock following analyst upgrades.

Rivian shares were up more than 10% on Friday afternoon, with the stock climbing to its highest level since December 2023.

Webush’s Dan Ives boosted his Rivian price target by 56% to $25 in a note on Friday morning. The analyst wrote that 2026 is a “prove-me” year for the automaker, with its lower-cost R2 model set to launch in the first half.

Ives’s note follows a separate optimistic bit of analysis from Baird, which also boosted its Rivian price target to $25 in a note on Thursday.

If today's gains hold, Friday will mark the third day of double-digit gains for Rivian in the past six trading days. An “AI Day” event that saw the automaker detail autonomous updates and tease a robotaxi plan started the recent run.

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The neoclouds are shooting back up into the stratosphere

Investors’ faith in tech CEOs’ pursuit of digital God has seemingly been restored for now, sparking an intense rally in the speculative AI players that had been in full-on meltdown mode over concerns that the boom had passed its best-before date.

The data center companies colloquially known as the “neoclouds” — CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN, and Cipher Mining — are up more than double digits over the past two sessions, as of 10:40 a.m. ET.

The past 48 hours have brought a steady drumbeat of positive news for the AI theme.

CoreWeave received a vote of confidence from Wall Street as Citi resumed coverage with a buy rating and price target of $135. Oracle, the epicenter of AI credit concerns, has seen a reversal in its fortunes as it nears an acquisition of TikTok’s US operations. And OpenAI’s fundraising efforts appear be going so well that its reported valuation has gone up in back-to-back days.

Before that, Micron’s earnings reaffirmed the intense demand for AI compute, which continues to outstrip supply — a positive sign for the neoclouds. The macro backdrop is also turning perhaps a bit more in favor of lower interest rates, as CPI inflation came in well below expectations.

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