Reuters is reporting that the U.S. Department of Energy is forming a $1 billion “partnership” with three big tech companies to build a pair of “supercomputers” to solve complex scientific problems.
Citi analyst Michael Ward raised his price target on Ford (NYSE: F) stock to $13.50 this morning, maintaining a neutral rating on the automotive stock. Ford beat earnings in Q3 despite taking a $1 billion hit from higher tariffs, and now Citi is raising its earnings forecast for Ford stock.
Despite the good news and optimistic words, Ford stock is down 3% today.
Not everyone’s thrilled with the prospect of a U.S.-China trade truce. Shares of companies attempting to build up a Western-only rare earth mining and refining capability, to defang the threat of a China rare earth embargo, are tumbling.
In early trading today, industry bellweather MP Materials (NYSE: MP) stock is down 6.5%. Companies less advanced in their rare earth mining quests, such as Trilogy Metals (NYSEMKT: TMQ) and Energy Fuels (NYSEMKT: UUUU) are down even more, 15% and 12%, respectively.
The Voo still opened 0.8% higher, however.
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The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) ran up 0.8% premarket as investors bet on a likely truce in the latest U.S.-China trade war this morning.
On Sunday, reports began filtering out that a “very successful framework” (as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described it) had been agreed upon by trade negotiators — and that Presidents Trump and Xi might finalize a trade truce in a meeting as early as Thursday.
“What’s in the box,” you ask? A repeal of President Trump’s threat to impose additional 100% tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. on one hand. And on the other, a repeal of China’s threat to restrict sales of rare earth elements to U.S. companies. Side benefits could include finalizing the details of a sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a consortium of Western investors, and also a resumption of U.S. soybean purchases by China.
What does not appear part of the deal is any relaxation of export restrictions on the sale of advanced artificial intelligence semiconductors, nor semiconductor manufacturing equipment, to China.
So bad news for Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction), but good news for just about everybody else.
In earnings news, the week is starting out slow with only a handful of reports.
Keurig Dr Pepper (Nasdaq: KDP) is the biggest of these, with the S&P 500 component company reporting “in-line” earnings of $0.54 per share on $4.3 billion in Q3 sales. (The revenue number, at least, is ahead of expectations for $4.15 billion).
Keurig also tweaked its full-year sales forecast higher, saying revenue will now be up high-single digits instead of mid-single digits. The weak U.S. dollar remains a headwind to sales and earnings growth, however, costing Keurig perhaps half a percentage point of growth.
Kids clothier Carter’s (NYSE: CRI) also reported earnings this morning, beating the forecast by two cents with a $0.74 per share profit. Sales, however, fell short of forecasts at $758 million. Worse, Carter’s warned that tariffs will add $200 million to $250 million to its costs annually going forward.
Carter’s stock is down more than 5% premarket on the news.
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Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
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