Joey Solitro
Stocks closed lower Thursday as investors parsed a hotter-than-expected inflation update. A down day for some of Wall Street's biggest stocks – including Nvidia (NVDA, -1.4%) and Tesla (TSLA, -1.6%) – also weighed on sentiment.
Ahead of the opening bell, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures what businesses are paying suppliers for goods, increased 0.4% month over month in November. Year over year, PPI was up 3% – the biggest annual increase since February 2023.
Core PPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 0.1% from October to November and 3.5% in the past 12 months.
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"Concerns about still-strong service sector prices are now compounded by recent concerns about an acceleration in goods prices, as we also saw yesterday with the release of the Consumer Price Index," says Raymond James analyst Eugenio Alemán. "It is still not clear if businesses will be able to pass these increases in prices to the end consumer, but it increases the red flags for Federal Reserve policymakers."
Separate data from the Department of Labor showed initial jobless claims rose by 17,000 in the week ending December 7, to 242,000.
The reports did little to move rate-cut expectations for the next Fed meeting. According to CME Group's FedWatch tool, futures traders are pricing in a 98% chance the central bank will lower the federal funds rate by a quarter-percentage point next Wednesday afternoon.
ServiceTitan soars 42% in market debut
In single-stock news, ServiceTitan (TTAN) jumped 42.3% in its market debut. The cloud company that provides business management software to services contractors priced its initial public offering (IPO) at $71 per share on Wednesday – well above its previous range of $65 to $67. The stock opened and closed today and hit a high of $105 in intraday action.
The IPO market has picked up steam this year, with 141 offerings priced at this point – a 33% increase from 2023, according to Renaissance Capital. The robust activity is expected to continue into 2025, too, with fintech firms Klarna and Chime among the hottest upcoming IPOs to watch for.
Adobe slumps on weak revenue guidance
Elsewhere in the tech space, Adobe (ADBE) stock plunged 13.7% after the Photoshop parent reported earnings. While ADBE beat top- and bottom-line expectations for its fiscal fourth quarter, it issued lower-than-anticipated revenue guidance for its fiscal first quarter and full fiscal year.
"Adobe reported decent fiscal fourth-quarter results, though net new Creative Cloud annual recurring revenue only shows modest growth (partially from a tough year-over-year comparison with Acrobat), and initiated fiscal 2025 guidance below expectations," says Oppenheimer analyst Brian Schwartz (Outperform, the equivalent of Buy).
He goes on to say that investors may see increased competition and slow monetization of artificial intelligence (AI) offerings as hindering Adobe's growth and guidance.
UnitedHealth keeps falling
UnitedHealth Group (UNH) stock fell 3.4% after lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at breaking up large healthcare companies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).
"Over the past decade, pharmacy benefit managers – the middlemen between pharmacies and insurance companies – have morphed into large healthcare conglomerates that exercise control over every link in the prescription drug delivery chain," the group of legislators that includes Senators Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote a joint press release.
UnitedHealth owns the nation's second-largest PBM, Optum Rx.
UNH was up more than 18% on a total return basis (price change plus dividends) for the year to date in mid-November but has nearly erased this gain following the fatal shooting of the CEO of the company's insurance unit. Shares are clinging to an X% lead at last check.
As for the main indexes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gave back 0.5% to 43,914 – its sixth straight loss and longest losing streak since April. The S&P 500 shed 0.5% to 6,051 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.7% to 19,902.
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