Apple, Twitter and other tech leaders tread water in mild broad market trading
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Tech stocks tried to take some tentative steps forward Wednesday, but couldn't find any consistent momentum as Wall Street remained largely in a holding pattern as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gave his latest monetary policy report before Congress.
Powell said that more interest rate increases were likely in the weeks and months ahead as the Fed takes a more-active role in trying to get inflation under control and, if possible, keep the U.S. economy from sliding into a recession.
Investors who were looking for the tech sector to build upon Tuesday's broad gains had to be disappointed, as while much of the sector wasn't slumping, it wasn't really scoring too many notable gains, either.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) slipped by 0.3% to close near its breakeven point of $135.35 a share as analysts assessed the latest data on App Store sales. Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring said that while Apple's (AAPL) App Store revenue in May grew by 4% from a year ago, sales showed signs of "underperformance" that shouldn't be surprising due to "harder" business comparisons with May 2021.
Meanwhile, Apple (AAPL) was able to claim a victory as it edged back to a market cap of $2.98T and reclaim the title of world's most-valuable company from Saudi Aramco.
Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) shares closed just below their breakeven point at $83.75 as even positive comments from Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore couldn't give the chipmaker's stock a notable boost. Moore re-started coverage of AMD (AMD) with an outperform rating and a $103-a-share price target on the company's stock, and said AMD (AMD) remains in a strong position in the data center market.
Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) shares gave up 1.2% as Elon Musk's proposed acquisition of the social-media company continue to roll on and build up more questions about how and when the deal might come to a conclusion.
Dan Ives, of Wedbush Securities, said that while many questions need to be resolved before Musk get the proverbial keys to Twitter's (TWTR) headquarters--including addressing the issue of fake or spam accounts to Musk's satisfaction, and any adjustment to the deal's final purchase price--the matter is "clearly coming to some sort of finale."
Meanwhile, Twitter (TWTR) and Shopify (SHOP) said they have teamed up on a method to display merchants' goods and products directly in front of those companies' Twitter (TWTR) followers.
Among other notable tech stocks, Intel (INTC) was off by almost 1% on the day, Microsoft (MSFT) edged down by 0.2%, Meta Platforms (META) shares gave up almost 1%, Adobe (ADBE) climbed by 0.6% and Netflix (NFLX) saw its shares rise almost 5%.
Alphabet (GOOG) shares broke even as a report said Google could face a fine of up to 10% of its "turnover" business in Russia for not deleting content banned by the country's communications agency.