Stocks – Wall Street Back in Risk-On Mode at Opening

By Geoffrey Smith

Investing.com — Wall Street returned to risk-on mode at the opening of trade on Wednesday, shrugging off the growth concerns triggered by Apple’s warning over the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Stronger-than-expected data from the housing market in January continued to support sentiment, while the market was largely unconcerned by a sharp rise in producer prices that drove annual factory gate inflation to its highest level since May.

By 9:45 AM ET (1445 GMT), the had added 91 points, or 0.3%, to stand at 29,323 points. The S&P 500 index was up 0.4% and the was up 0.7%.

Among the biggest gainers was, again, Tesla (NASDAQ:) stock, which rose 6.7% to a new high of $916, after analysts at Piper Sandler raised their target price to $928, citing the commercial potential of its electricity generation and storage businesses.

Apple (NASDAQ:) rose 0.6%, making good around one-third of the losses that it made on Tuesday after warning that it wouldn’t meet its revenue target of $63 to $67 billion in the first three months of this year.

Hydrogen fuel cell company Plug Power continued to ride a wave of hot money flowing into alternative energy stocks, rising 4.6%, while Virgin Galactic (NYSE:) continued its parabolic trajectory, also fueled overwhelmingly by retail investors in search of the next big thing.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:) analyst Adam Jonas, who has an “overweight” rating on Virgin Galactic, cautioned in a note on Tuesday that the recent surge has been “driven by forces beyond fundamental factors.”

“We are very constructive on the Virgin Galactic story … We just think the share price could use a breather,” Jonas wrote, maintaining his $22 price target.

– Reuters contributed to this report

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