5/10/24

5/10/24

US stock rally fizzles as confidence tumbles, inflation fears linger

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF rose 0.2% to close out its third consecutive week of gains, but ended shy of its March 28 record high. It’s the first time the benchmark US stock index has booked back-to-back-to-back weekly advances in three months.

Stocks were on the verge of record highs in the morning. But the rally fizzled out after preliminary data from the University of Michigan showed a sharp drop in consumer confidence in May, accompanied by a big uptick in near-term inflation expectations. Bond yields also rose following the release, with the 10-year US Treasury yield ending the day around 4.5%.

Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund, the Financials sector ETF, moved higher every day this week, which hasn’t happened since January.

McDonald’s, Novavax, Sweetgreen, and TSMC were noteworthy stocks that gained on Friday, while the iShares Russell 2000 exchange traded fund of small cap stocks finished 0.8% lower.

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Nebius soars on new report that details the importance of its near $20-billion deal with Microsoft

Nebius is jumping in premarket trading after a Bloomberg report that sheds more light on its near $20-billion deal to supply computing power to Microsoft.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the report says that Nebius will utilize more than 100,000 of Nvidia’s flagship Blackwell chips in order to “provide computing power to internal teams creating large language models and a consumer AI assistant” for Microsoft.

The so-called “neocloud” cohort, of which Nebius and CoreWeave are the most prominent in the publicly-traded space, effectively serve as overflow capacity for the AI boom. The pair have been on fire amid an all-out frenzy from hyperscalers to accumulate more computing power.

Nebius’ arrangement with Microsoft will allow the tech giant to use its own compute to focus on fulfilling demand from customers.

Remember that the stock market’s intermediate peak in February was accelerated by a breakdown in AI-geared momentum stocks amid concerns that Microsoft might have already had too much data center capacity, which came on the heels of the DeepSeek-induced freak out for the industry. Such worries have since been washed away by a steady wave of spending commitments from leading private and public tech giants that total in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

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Stellantis rises after reporting 6.4% jump in US sales

Stellantis is up more than 3% in early trading after the Jeep maker posted upbeat Q3 US sales, ending a string of quarterly declines in the region.

Total US deliveries came in at 324,825 vehicles, up 6.4% from the year prior, driven by strong performances from Fiat (+2%), Jeep (+11%), and Chrysler (+45%).

Jeep, which makes up nearly half of Stellantis' US volume, saw sharp gains across some key models, including Wrangler (+18%), Gladiator (+43%) and Wagoneer (+122%), with the latter hitting record monthly sales in August and September. The company also said Jeep held two of the five best-selling plug-in hybrids in the US in the first seven months of 2025.

The results come on the heels of Monday's unexpected resignation of CFO Doug Ostermann after just a year, with tariffs and dented demand hurting the company. Shares are down around 21% in 2025, despite today’s early jump.

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Claire Yubin Oh3h

Credit bureaus sink as FICO launches a direct program for FICO scores, eliminating reliance on credit bureaus

Nationwide credit bureaus Equifax and TransUnion are down 11% and 5% in pre-market trading on Thursday respectively after Fair Isaac Corp. announced a new program to enable tri-merge resellers to directly distribute FICO scores to customers.

Dublin-based Experian PLC also dropped as much as 5% on the news.

Per FICO’s press release: “with the launch of the FICO® Mortgage Direct License Program, tri-merge resellers have the option to calculate and distribute FICO Scores directly to their customers, eliminating reliance on the three nationwide credit bureaus. This shift will drive price transparency and immediate cost savings to mortgage lenders, mortgage brokers, and other industry participants.”

Through this streamlining effort, resellers that buy and merge reports from Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian into one would rely less on these intermediaries in the chain to directly distribute their FICO scores. In effect, FICO hopes to eliminate “unnecessary mark-ups on the FICO Score” and put “pricing model choice in the hands of those who use FICO Scores to drive mortgage decisions,” according to Will Lansing, Chief Executive Officer of FICO.

FICO calculates this shift will reduce the average fee per score by some 50%, with the royalty fee for the score under the new model set at $4.95 per score, compared to the $10 per score fee in the previous system. Once a FICO-scored loan is closed under the new Mortgage Direct License Program, a funded loan fee of $33 per borrower per score will be applied additionally.

Despite the new program, firms can continue to still work through the credit bureaus if preferred.

Tasha Matsumoto

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 notch new closing highs as investors shake off the government shutdown

The S&P 500 closed 0.3% higher, the Nasdaq 100 was up 0.5%, and the Russell 2000 gained 0.2%.

Germany, Bull running on field

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Matt Phillips19h

Intel jumps on report of customer talks with AMD for foundry division

Intel shares popped in afternoon trading Wednesday after Semafor reported that it’s in preliminary talks for AMD to come aboard as a customer for Intel’s troubled contract chip manufacturing division, known as a foundry.

Shares were recently up 5.7%.

Semafor stressed that sources said, “It’s unclear how much of their manufacturing would shift to Intel if the two companies reach a deal, or whether it would come with a direct investment by AMD, similar to the deals cut by other companies. It is possible that no agreement will be reached, the people said.”

The addition of AMD — which competes with Intel in the CPU space — as a customer would be another big win for the US chipmaker following its partnership with Nvidia announced in mid-September.

TSMC, the primary manufacturer of AMD chips, was only briefly rattled by the news, and remains well in the green on the day.

Intel in early talks to add AMD as foundry customer

Intel in early talks to add AMD as foundry customer

Semafor stressed that sources said, “It’s unclear how much of their manufacturing would shift to Intel if the two companies reach a deal, or whether it would come with a direct investment by AMD, similar to the deals cut by other companies. It is possible that no agreement will be reached, the people said.”

The addition of AMD — which competes with Intel in the CPU space — as a customer would be another big win for the US chipmaker following its partnership with Nvidia announced in mid-September.

TSMC, the primary manufacturer of AMD chips, was only briefly rattled by the news, and remains well in the green on the day.

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