Closing Bell Movers: Zoom up 4% on earnings beat

Tech, Communication Services, and Consumer Discretionary led the S&P 500 at the expense of the more defensive Staples and Energy sectors once again on Monday, building on the relief rally that commenced on Friday, though the opening hour of the evening session has not seen much follow-through, with S&P 500 e-minis, Nasdaq 100, and Dow Industrials futures all down marginally.  In commodities, WTI Crude Oil is flat below $59 per barrel, though metals are notably firmer with Gold around $4,140 and Silver above $51 per ounce – both gaining over 1%.

With the earnings season trailing off, investors are focusing on more idiosyncratic themes, and one of those has been the narrative of dominance for Alphabet’s (GOOGL) AI offerings among the MAG-7.  Earlier today, Salesforce CEO Benioff said he has a strong preference for Gemini 3 over ChatGPT, and afterhours, The Information reported that Google is pitching Meta for use of its TPU chips in its datacenters.  Shares of Alphabet hit record highs, while Nvidia is down slightly on the implied competitive threat.

With US government data collection functioning renewed, investors get a “fresh” – albeit delayed and stale – set of economic datapoints with the release of September Retail Sales and Wholesale PPI inflation reports on Tuesday.  The threat of wait-and-see FOMC that contributed to the market sell-off last week has subsided, as Fed Funds Futures are showing a probability skew that is much more biased toward another 25bps cut by the Fed in just over two weeks.

Check out this evening’s top movers from around Wall Street, compiled by The Fly.

HIGHER AFTER EARNINGS –

• Symbotic (SYM) up 17.1%
• Keysight Technologies (KEYS) up 14.0%
• Woodward (WWD) up 8.4%
• Zoom Communications (ZM) up 3.6%
• Blue Bird Corporation (BLBD) up 3.5%

ALSO HIGHER –

• Sandisk (SNDK) up 8.2% after admission into S&P 500
• PTC Therapeutics (PTCT) up 5.2% after admission into S&P SmallCap 600
• First Interstate BancSystem (FIBK) up 4.8% after admission into S&P SmallCap 600
• Upwork (UPWK) up 4.0% after admission into S&P SmallCap 600
• Rapid7 (RPD) up 3.0% after insider buy
• Alphabet (GOOGL) up 2.5% after The Information report the company is targeting Meta, large financials to sell its datacenter chips;  Nvidia (NVDA) down 1.3%, AMD (AMD) down 1.0% after report
• Bath & Body Works (BBWI) up 1.6% after insider buy

DOWN AFTER EARNINGS –

• Semtech (SMTC) down 7.0%
• PennantPark Investment  (PNNT) down 3.3%
• Agilent (A) down 1.5%
• Alico (ALCO) down 1.5%