Here’s what is happening with tech stocks today:
Alphabet
has a mixed history when it comes to making big artificial-intelligence announcements. When it first demonstrated its Bard chatbot a year ago the stock dropped, so a muted reaction to its rebranding as Gemini on Thursday shouldn’t be too much of a worry.
Of course, a name change isn’t the only thing that Google parent
Alphabet
is offering. New mobile versions of the Gemini AI and a pricier subscription for a more advanced version point to two important trends—getting AI onto smartphones and testing how much users are willing to pay for the technology.
Alphabet shares were up 0.3% in early trading and those of its rival
Microsoft
were down 0.2%, suggesting the stock market is reserving judgment on how the latest offering will affect the AI battle for now.
In fact investors looked to be at least pausing for breath across the Big Tech companies on Thursday, with
Apple,
Amazon.com,
and
Nvidia
all edging down in early trading. That’s a rare recurrence, at least in recent days but not necessarily a reason to panic. The ITechnology Select Sector SPDR exchange-traded fund was up 0.3%
“Just looking across the consensus price targets of the ‘magnificent seven’, the targets remain anywhere from 6% (Apple) to 20% (Amazon) above last night’s closing levels. The only one of the seven with a lower price target is Nvidia, where this year’s 50% rally has overshot a price target largely there since last summer,” wrote ING analyst Chris Turner in a research note on Thursday.
Sometimes the news isn’t all about AI, even if feels like it recently. Old-fashioned retail competition looks to be facing Amazon after The Wall Street Journal reported that both Chinese fast-fashion company Shein and the shopping unit of TikTok—owned by China’s ByteDance—are recruiting current and former Amazon employees to expand their U.S. operations.
Still, Amazon has seen off plenty of rivals before, and is signing up allies in
Meta Platforms
and Snapchat owner
Snap
to match TikTok’s particular fusion of social media and shopping platform.
Then again, sometimes the news is all about AI. That’s the case right now for
Monolithic Power Systems,
which was up nearly 7% in early trading after reporting earnings and an outlook that beat expectations on Wednesday. Analysts were pointing to the power-management device maker’s role in AI servers and other hardware as the source of the beat.
“Monolithic Power delivered modest upside…and guided [its first-quarter outlook] more solidly above consensus just as its inventories are below the long term target. AI is driving the upside,” Truist Securities analyst William Stein wrote in a research note.
Write to Adam Clark at [email protected]
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