Stock futures pointed to a mostly lower start for Wall Street on Thursday, a day after the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
closed at an all-time high and the
S&P 500
inched toward its own record on expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates next year.
These stocks were poised to make moves Thursday:
Microsoft
rose 0.3% to $375.30 in premarket trading. Analysts at Wedbush raised their price target on the stock to $450 from $425 and maintained an Outperform on the shares. The analysts said artificial intelligence is ”set to change the cloud growth trajectory” for
Microsoft
in the next few years. Microsoft, along with OpenAI, were sued Wednesday by
New York Times,
which alleged the companies used the newspaper’s content without its permission.
Chile’s
SQM
and the National Copper Corporation of Chile, or Codelco, have formed a public-private partnership to develop lithium in the Salar de Atacama, a huge lithium resource, from 2025 to 2060. SQM shares jumped 6%.
Marathon Digital Holdings,
the cryptocurrency miner, declined 6.6% in premarket trading after jumping 15% Wednesday and extending its winning streak to 11 sessions.
Altice USA
was rising 6%. Bloomberg reported that billionaire Xavier Niel has expressed interest in buying the Portuguese operations of Altice, which are separate from cable operator
Altice USA.
The stock gained 12% on Wednesday. It has declined 33% this year.
Penn Entertainment
was up 1.9% following a report from The Wall Street Journal that said hedge fund HG Vora Capital Management, which has an 18.5% economic interest including swaps, was in talks with the casino operator about placing directors on the company’s board.
Netflix
rose 0.3% to $493.30 after analysts at KeyBanc raised the price target on shares of the streaming company to $525 from $510 and kept an Overweight rating on the stock. The analysts reduced their price target on
Match Group
to $48 from $56. Match shares were down 0.6% to $35.61.
EchoStar
will replace
Dish Network
in the S&P SmallCap 600 index on Jan. 2, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. It was announced in August that satellite-communications company EchoStar would be merging with Dish, the pay-TV provider.
EchoStar
was rising 2.2%.
Apple
closed with a slight gain on Wednesday, putting an end to a four-session losing streak. The tech giant on Wednesday won a temporary reprieve from a U.S. government ban on the sale of some
Apple
Watch models. In premarket trading Thursday, Apple was rising 0.3%.
Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com
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