Stock market today: Dow Jones and S&P 500 fall, Nasdaq rises after heavy sell-off in technology products

Jared Blikre of Yahoo Finance reports:

In July, SK Hynix (SKHY) raised $26.5 billion in the largest U.S. listing ever by a foreign company. Today, the company is walking away from one of the biggest tech IPOs ever.

The South Korean memory giant said Friday it had abandoned plans to list Solidigm, its flash memory unit, in the United States, citing market conditions and stock price performance. Solidigm aimed to raise between $10 billion and $15 billion at a valuation of up to $150 billion, according to industry estimates cited by the Wall Street Journal.

To understand why, look at the company’s stock.

SK Hynix valued its U.S. shares at $149 in July. SK Hynix stock is up Friday but still trading below that price, about a third below September’s record high.

Learn more here.

Jared Blikre of Yahoo Finance reports:

Apple (AAPL) takes back the Wall Street crown from Nvidia – for the fifth time.

Apple briefly overtook Nvidia in market value on Friday. This is a decision Apple has made before, and it has rarely lasted.

Apple and Nvidia (NVDA) are each worth about $5.1 trillion, and the gap between them was less than 1% as of Thursday’s close. The turnaround came alongside a record run for Apple shares and the day the tech giant’s $1,999 iPhone Duo hit stores, capping a battle that investors had been watching all morning. Nvidia has since returned to the lead.

Learn more:

Shares of American Express (AXP) fell 3% on Friday after the credit card giant reported third-quarter results and announced plans to cut about 5% of its global workforce as part of a restructuring effort.

American Express CEO Stephen Squeri told analysts the cuts were part of a restructuring effort to make the company a “more agile and efficient organization.” As part of this effort, the company recorded a restructuring charge of $336 million in the third quarter.

A company spokesperson told Yahoo Finance that the reduction would result in the elimination of 3,500 positions worldwide.

Squeri added that earlier this year he asked senior executives to find ways to reduce corporate bloat within the company in order to refocus on American Express’s biggest priorities.

Earlier this month, federal bank regulators fined the credit card giant $350 million for widespread failures in its anti-money laundering controls.

In the third quarter, American Express reported revenue up 9% to $14.5 billion from a year ago, while adjusted earnings per share rose 13% to $4.68. Analysts expected $14.8 billion in revenue.

Brian Sozzi of Yahoo Finance reports:

Don’t expect SpaceX (SPCX) to surprise investors like Meta (META) did this week by announcing it would issue a new class of non-voting shares to help fund its AI development.

“Importantly, in our discussion with management, SPCX also stated that it has no plans to raise its equity,” JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in a new post-earnings note released Friday. “Capital requirements are at the forefront across the market, and SPCX has indicated that it has a number of capital reserves available on the debt side.”

SpaceX gave investors a taste of what could happen in debt financing in its earnings report this week.

Learn more here.

Brian Sozzi of Yahoo Finance reports:

Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPCX) may be about to send another message to telecom giants: We’re seriously coming to your rescue.

The company plans to buy 80,000 cell sites across the United States, Bloomberg reported Friday. SpaceX is reportedly in talks with two of the companies, Crown Castle and American Tower, among the largest cell tower owners.

“Committing about $30 billion to spectrum is serious enough. Committing to 80,000 macro sites could be a point of no return,” said Laurent Yoon, an analyst at Bernstein. “This is a significant number, largely consistent with the scale required for a nationwide terrestrial wireless network. It remains unclear whether SpaceX ultimately leases anything close to this figure, but the reported scope suggests a much higher level of commitment than spectrum accumulation alone.”

Shares of AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ) and T-Mobile (TMUS) saw sharp declines in pre-market trading.

Learn more here.

Thursday’s sell-off in technology products sent investors rushing into bonds, pushing the 10-year Treasury yield (^TNX) to its biggest one-day decline in more than two years and below 5% again.

Behind the move is a shift in rate expectations, as long-term yields have fallen. With the Federal Reserve scheduled to meet next week on October 28, investors were bracing for a rate hike to combat fears of oil-induced inflation.

But those bets quickly faded, with the federal funds futures market estimating the chances of a rate hike in October at around 5%, according to Bloomberg data, down from 15% earlier this week and 37% in late September.

Learn more here.

Brian Sozzi of Yahoo Finance reports:

Tesla’s (TSLA) surprise $5 billion cut in its capital spending plans during its latest earnings call hasn’t shaken investor confidence in the long-term potential of a large Cybercab network.

Perhaps some short-term confidence has been lost in the humanoid Optimus as Tesla faces design challenges, but not in the Cybercabs.

Case in point: Even reasonable modeling assumptions on Cybercab from Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco, who has an equal weight rating on the stock, still project the fleet size to reach 5 million by the end of 2040. This will be fueled by strong growth over the next three years, as shown in the chart below.

Learn more here.