S&P 500 falls slightly Friday, on track for a losing week: Live updates

14 stocks in the S&P 500 hit fresh 52-week lows during Friday’s trading session. Here are some of those stocks:

• ConocoPhillips trading at levels not seen since July 2023
• Devon Energy trading at lows not seen since September 2021
• Cigna trading at lows not seen since December 2023
• CVS Health trading at lows not seen since December 2012
• Nucor trading at lows not seen since November 2022
• Elevance Health trading at lows not seen since October 2021

Meanwhile, just eight names in the index reached new 52-week highs, with seven of those also scoring fresh all-time highs. Below are some that hit that milestone:

• Broadcom trading at all-time high levels back through Avago history and its IPO in August 2009
• O’Reilly Auto trading at all-time high levels back to its IPO in April 1993
• Tesla trading at all-time highs back to its IPO June 2010
• Arista Networks trading at all-time high levels back to its IPO in June 2014
• F5 trading at all-time high levels back to its IPO in June 1999

— Sean Conlon, Christopher Hayes

A Tesla Cybertruck is parked outside of a dealership in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 14, 2024.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading.

• Broadcom — Shares of the semiconductor maker jumped 20% after the company beat fiscal fourth-quarter earnings expectations and posted artificial intelligence revenue that more than tripled for the year, pushing Broadcom’s market cap above $1 trillion for the first time. CEO Hock Tan said Broadcom is developing custom artificial intelligence chips with three large cloud customers, also driving investor enthusiasm.
• Tesla — Shares of the electric vehicle maker gained about 2.2% after Reuters reported that President-elect Donald Trump’s team recommended ending a car-crash reporting requirement. Tesla has reported the most crashes under the program and the requirement has been disliked by CEO Elon Musk, Reuters reported.
• Upstart Holdings — Shares of the lending platform popped more than 14% after an upgrade to buy from hold at Needham. The investment firm said Upstart now has a “proper balance in funding” and has strengthened its balance sheet after refinancing some debt.

For the full list, read here.

— Pia Singh

The boom in leveraged ETFs shows no signs of slowing down as 2024 comes to a close.

On Thursday, GraniteShares launched a 2x Long SMCI Daily ETF (SMCL), giving daily exposure to the highly volatile data server stock SuperMicro Computer.

GraniteShares CEO Will Rhind said that the fund was delayed when SuperMicro was at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq, but is now live after the company got an extension from the exchange last week.

“It seems like the company is now on a much firmer footing, and indeed swap providers, counterparties that we had, were comfortable moving forward with it. It’s a little bit delayed, but glad that we got it out there,” Rhind said.

Other new leveraged products debuted Friday from Teucrium, a leader in agricultural ETFs. The new funds are the 2x Daily Corn ETF (CXRN) and 2x Daily Wheat ETF (WXET).

Teucrium CEO Sal Gilbertie said that corn and wheat are both trading near the break-even points, which historically have served as the base for big rallies. The leveraged funds could be popular with traders when a rally occurs, he said.

“There’s a lot of money out there that likes to trade, and there’s really smart money that likes to allocate. Now we have a product for both of those audiences,” Gilbertie said.

— Jesse Pound

Wall Street is out with its 2025 outlook, and while strategists are broadly optimistic stocks can still go higher, they are also anticipating a turbulent market in the year ahead.

The S&P 500 is expected to end next year at 6,630, according to the average forecast from the CNBC Market Strategist Survey released Friday. That level represents about a 9.6% advance from where the S&P 500 closed Thursday, in line with the historical returns of any given year for the broad market.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read the full story here.

— Sarah Min

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 18, 2024.

Stephanie Keith | Getty Images

This year, Wall Street extended its AI-powered bull market into a second year, far surpassing the year-end forecasts made by top strategists. In fact, all of them turned out to be very wrong.

Original 2024 outlooks for the S&P 500 ranged from a low of just 4,200 at JPMorgan by Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, to a high of 5,200 from Oppenheimer’s John Stoltzfus. Since then, strategists have updated their outlooks throughout 2024 to reflect a myriad of altered conditions, with one firm now issuing a year-end target of 6,200 for the broad market index.

Barring a December cataclysm, strategists from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and UBS were among those that were far too bearish. The S&P 500 closed Thursday at 6,051.25, more than 800 points above the highest forecast at the start of the year with a year-to-date gain of 27%.

Read here for who on the Street got it right and wrong, and for the factors that caught most strategists off guard this year.

— Pia Singh

Information technology was the top-performing sector in the S&P 500 after Broadcom’s results bolstered investor optimism in artificial intelligence. It was one of four sectors trading in positive territory in early trading.

The sector rallied 0.8%, with the leading stock Broadcom rallying more than 21%. Micron Technology shares popped nearly 3%, and Arista Networks popped more than 4%.

The S&P 500 itself gained 0.1%.

— Sarah Min

Igor Golovniov | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Broadcom stock.

Shares of Broadcom were last more than 22% higher.

— Brian Evans

Robert S. Kaplan, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, on July 13, 2023.

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Goldman Sachs vice chairman Robert Kaplan, also the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is looking to see a slower pace of rate cutting from the Federal Reserve.

“Inflation, I think, looks a little stuck here. There’s some things better, like in services. There’s some things worse, like in food and vehicles,” Kaplan said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” adding that the benchmark rate seems “safe” between a range of 4.25% and 4.5%.

But higher interest rates are necessary to keep up with the current level of government spending, Kaplan noted, saying that he is looking to see how major spending programs will be managed under the new presidential administration. He is also looking to see more workforce growth, which is disinflationary and has allowed for rate cuts thus far, he added.

“Will we actually get fiscal spending under better control and not as stimulative? We’ve got an extraordinary level of fiscal spending going on right now … and I think some of this strength, I think on the margin, is a little bit artificial,” he said. “This [Fed rate decision] is not a no brainer.”

— Pia Singh

Beata Zawrzel | Nurphoto | Getty Images

A strong fourth-quarter report should set PayPal‘s stock up for another big year in 2025, according to Wolfe Research.

Analyst Darrin Peller upgraded the payments stock to outperform from peer perform. Shares of PayPal are already up more than 40% this year, but there is a runway for fundamental improvement going forward, Peller said in a note to clients.

“We see strong 4Q results and a conservative FY25 guide. We believe PYPL’s February ’25 Investor Day will highlight a path from 4%+ (non-float-impacted) GP growth in 2025 to MSD-HSD gross profit growth in 2026 and HSD GP growth longer-term,” the note said.

Peller also highlighted that PayPal has the largest monthly user base of any digital wallet company outside of China.

“Under the right leadership team, we see plenty of opportunity to monetize this base,” the note said.

Peller set a price target of $107 per share for PayPal, which is about 19.7% above where the stock closed Thursday.

Shares of PayPal were up nearly 2% in premarket trading.

— Jesse Pound

These are some of the stocks moving before the bell on Friday:

• Broadcom — Shares surged nearly 18% after the semiconductor maker reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that surpassed Wall Street’s expectations.
• RH — The luxury furniture retailer’s shares skyrocketed nearly 18% in premarket trading after hiking its guidance for financial performance.
• Penn Entertainment — The online sports betting stock popped 5% on the back of JPMorgan’s upgrade to overweight from neutral.

See the full list here.

— Alex Harring

Packages with the logo of Amazon are transported along a conveyor belt at a packing station of a redistribution center of Amazon in Horn-Bad Meinberg, western Germany, on Dec. 9, 2024.

Ina Fassbender | Afp | Getty Images

Fourth-quarter e-commerce trends for Amazon are tracking in line to slightly above initial estimates, according to Baird.

The firm increased its price target on Amazon shares to $260 from $220, implying 13.5% upside from Thursday’s close.

Analyst Colin Sebastian cited expanding generative AI contributions and encouraging trends in the cloud services segment.

“Our checks are also positive with ongoing market share gains as consumers are responding to low prices and speedy deliveries. This [is] despite increasing competition from Shopify/Temu/Walmart/Shein/TikTok Shops,” Sebastian wrote in a Friday note.

— Hakyung Kim

Avishek Das | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Shares of Broadcom surged more than 18% during premarket trading on the heels of the chipmaker’s fourth-quarter earnings topping Wall Street’s expectations and its CEO Hock Tan saying the company is developing custom artificial intelligence chips with three large cloud customers.

For the period, Broadcom posted adjusted earnings of $1.42 per share, while analysts surveyed by LSEG had penciled in $1.38 in earnings per share. Revenue, however, came in weaker than expected, with the company posting $14.05 billion compared to the consensus estimate of $14.09 billion.

This year, the stock has solidly outperformed the broader market, rising nearly 62% year to date.

AVGO, 1-day

European stocks opened lower on Friday, on the back of disappointing data prints from the U.K. and Germany.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 was down 0.2% by 10:25 a.m. London time, with health-care and mining stocks among those pulling the index into negative territory.

Investors were reacting to unexpected contractions in both the U.K.’s October GDP print and key export data from Germany.

The Sterling was lower against the dollar, while the euro edged higher against the greenback.

— Chloe Taylor

A woman, right, looks at herself on her phone as she and others buy warm winter hats at a vendors shop in the Panjiayuan Market on December 6, 2024 in Beijing, China. 

Kevin Frayer | Getty Images

Chinese stocks led losses in Asia after affirmations from Beijing on its economic policies seem to have fallen short of investors’ expectations.

The mainland Chinese CSI 300 lost 2.37% and ended at 3,933.18, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 1.83% in its final hour of trade.

Most other Asia-Pacific markets also fell, tracking Wall Street declines following a hotter-than-expected producer price inflation reading.

The outlier was South Korea’s Kospi, which gained 0.5% to close at 2,494.46, marking a four-day winning streak, while the small-cap Kosdaq rose 1.52% to 693.73, also notching the fourth straight winning day.

— Lim Hui Jie

These are the stocks making the biggest moves after the bell Thursday:

• Broadcom — Shares popped 14% after the company posted better-than-expected earnings and said it is seeing strong demand as it develops custom artificial intelligence chips. The company offered stronger-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter and its semiconductor solutions group.
• RH — RH surged nearly 18% despite posting third-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street’s estimates. The company raised its fourth-quarter guidance and said it expects revenue growth to range between 18% and 20%, versus an LSEG estimate of 7.1%.

— Samantha Subin