Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500 falter as Wall Street eyes New Year’s comeback

Yahoo Finance’s Ben Werschkul reports:

A new debt ceiling was established this week, sparking a debate for months to come about averting a sovereign default.

The parameters of the upcoming standoff are already making Donald Trump unhappy.

The question for the president-elect is how events conspire — thanks to the prodding of both Democrats and Republicans on the right — to make the inevitable move by Trump and his allies to authorize new government borrowing a mess.

Read more here.

Mortgage rates continued their rise last week, reaching nearly 7%.

Yahoo Finance’s Claire Boston reports:

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 6.91% in the week through Wednesday, from 6.85% a week earlier. December 26, according to Freddie Mac data. 15-year mortgage rates rose to 6.13% from 6% a week earlier.

“At 7%, mortgage rates hit their highest point in nearly six months,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, said in a statement. “Compared to this time last year, prices are elevated and the market’s affordability headwinds continue.”

It is the third week in a row of interest rate increases and the highest level since July.

Read more here.

On Thursday, FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia said authorities have found no “definitive connection” between Wednesday’s Bourbon Street attack in New Orleans and the explosion of a Tesla ( TSLA ) Cybertruck filled with fireworks and fuel tanks outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas.

“At this point there is no definitive connection between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas,” Raia said in a press conference Thursday morning, adding that the investigations are still at a very early stage.

Earlier Thursday, CNN reported the suspect believed to be connected to the explosion of a Cybertruck in Las Vegas on Wednesday was a US special forces soldier.

The cybertruck had been rented on an app called Turo, the same service used to rent the vehicle involved in driving over a crowd in New Orleans early Wednesday morning.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) erased early morning gains to hover near the flat line at 11:30 a.m. ET Thursday.

A drop in shares of Boeing ( BA ) weighed on the blue-chip index. The industrial giant’s stock fell as much as 3.5% after Sunday’s fatal crash of a 737-800 plane operated by Jeju Air in South Korea. However, analysts were quick to point out that it is unlikely the incident was related to Boeing’s production challenges last year.

Apple ( AAPL ) shares fell to session lows after the iPhone maker offered rare discounts on its latest devices in China.

A man allegedly linked to the explosion of a Tesla ( TSLA ) Cybertruck filled with fireworks and gasoline in Las Vegas was a U.S. soldier, according to a report from CNN.

“The man in connection with the Tesla Cybertruck rental that exploded outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday is a US special forces soldier attached to the 10th Special Forces Group, per 4 US officials,” CNN correspondent Natasha Bertrand wrote on X.

“The man is a U.S. Army Special Forces operations sergeant with the rank of master sergeant, a senior rank, the officials said. Three officials said he was on active duty and on leave from Germany, where he was serving with the 10th Group, at the time of the incident,” the post said.

The cybertruck had been rented on an app called Turo, the same service used to rent the vehicle involved in driving over a crowd in New Orleans early Wednesday morning. The authorities are investigating whether there is any connection between the two incidents.

Tesla shares fell nearly 6% Thursday morning after the electric giant posted its first annual delivery decline. The stock is down about 18% over the past five trading sessions.

Shares of Tesla hit all-time highs in mid-December on the heels of a massive rally following Donald Trump’s White House victory in early November.

Shares of Cloudflare ( NET ) rose more than 5% on Thursday after the cloud platform company received a double upgrade from Goldman Sachs.

The analysts said they see a 28% upside for the stock and raised their price target to $140. They upgraded the stock to a Buy from a Sell recommendation.

Goldman analysts cited “improving sales and marketing productivity cycle” and “new AI inferencing use cases”

AI chip heavyweight Nvidia (NVDA) rose more than 2% to lead the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) higher Thursday morning.

Other “Magnificent Seven” stocks also helped lift the tech-heavy index, with Meta ( META ) and Amazon ( AMZN ) rising nearly 2%.

Meanwhile, shares of Tesla ( TSLA ) pared some of the losses that came after the EV giant posted its first annual drop in deliveries. The stock fell as much as 6% in early trading.

Apple’s ( AAPL ) stock also came off session lows. The iPhone maker has offered rare price discounts on its latest models in China, highlighting increasing competition from local device makers.

Stocks rose on the first trading day of the new year after a holiday break and a roaring 2024 for the markets.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.5%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose 0.6%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) jumped but quickly erased early session gains.

Tesla (TSLA) stock fell after the electric car giant I saidt delivered 495,570 vehicles in the fourth quarter of last year, making 2024 the first year with a decline in annual deliveries since 2011, according to Bloomberg data.

Tesla ( TSLA ) shares fell 3% in premarket trading after the electric car giant I saidt delivered 495,570 vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2024, bringing total deliveries to around 1.79 million for the full year.

Wall Street analysts expected the automaker to deliver about 512,300 electric cars in the final three months of the year, or about 1.8 million vehicles,

In the fourth quarter, Tesla said it produced approximately 459,000 vehicles.

Tesla ( TSLA ) shares rose more than 1% in premarket trading as investors braced for the Elon Musk-led electric car maker to release its fourth-quarter deliveries on Thursday.

Wall Street analysts expect the company to report deliveries of about 512,300 electric cars for the period, bringing its annual shipments for fiscal 2024 to 1.8 million electric cars, according to Bloomberg’s consensus estimate.

If the average analyst’s forecast holds true, it would mean Tesla’s annual EV shipments fell 0.3% from the previous year — making 2024 the first year since 2011 that Tesla EV sales did not grow, according to Bloomberg- data.

Tesla shares fell more than 3% on the final day of 2024 as megacap tech stocks lagged, but the electric car company’s stock was still up more than 60% on the year.

Tesla had warned in 2023 that production growth would be “strangely lower” in the coming year, as Pras Subramanian noted in his roundup of Tesla’s biggest news in 2024 (you can read that story here).

Separately, Tesla made headlines after a Cybertruck exploded outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, prompts an investigation into a potential terrorist attack.