US stocks end week on a soft note

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.