Stock market news for May 10, 2024

Goldman Sachs, the largest investment bank in the U.S., touched a record $458.75 on Friday before ending the week 3.8% higher.

Goldman has now risen for four straight weeks, climbing almost 17% during that span and single-handedly adding 431 points to the Dow Jones Industrial Average during the same period.

Looked at another way, Goldman Sachs has accounted for some 31% of the entire 1,405-point gain in the Dow Industrials over the past four weeks.

— Scott Schnipper

Novavax’s nearly triple-digit jump today has investors who have bet against the company running for the exits.

NVAX short sellers are down -$196M in mark-to-market losses based on today’s move, according to data from S3 Partners. NVAX short interest is 44.5M shares, about one-third of the company’s public float. Anything over 10% is considered elevated short interest. The company had more than doubled early in the session on news of a $1.2 billion licensing agreement with Sanofi, though has pulled back slightly.

Investors hoping to get in on the action would have a hard time. S3 reports less than 1M shares available to borrow in support of new short positions. Short sellers are paying 9.5% fees on their existing short positions and up to 10% on new short sales executed. Shorting a stock is a bearish move that involves borrowing shares, then selling them and hoping to buy them back at a lower price.

“We expect a rib crunching short squeeze in NVAX with short sellers taking huge losses on the market open and closing positions throughout the day,” said Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director at S3.

Still, NVAX short sellers are up $2.34B in mark-to-market profits since the stock hit its all-time high in February 2021, per S3 data.

— Nick Wells

Zeekr traded more than 32% above its initial public offering price of $21 a share on Friday, the top of its expected range, marking a strong debut for the Chinese electric vehicle company.

The company planned to sell 21 million American depository shares to raise $441 million when it begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ‘ZK.’ Zeekr, which is backed by parent company Geely, a Chinese-based automotive group, makes luxury vehicle models. The company could be a competitor of Tesla, as it has reportedly outpaced Tesla in car sales in the province of Zhejiang, China, during the first three weeks of April.

For more on Zeekr’s IPO, read here.

— Pia Singh

Stocks are headed for a positive week, but breath during Friday’s session was downbeat. More than 1,600 S&P 500 companies were lower at the New York Stock Exchange, while just 1,076 advanced.

— Fred Imbert

Federal Reserve regional presidents Neel Kashkari of Minneapolis and Austan Goolsbee of Chicago said they are taking a patient approach to monetary policy as they weigh surprisingly strong inflation data this year.

“I’m in a wait-and-see mode. Let’s get a lot more data to see if this inflation is going to continue or if it’s stalling,” Kashkari said during a joint live interview on CNBC. “We are all committed to getting inflation back” to the Fed’s 2% goal.

Goolsbee noted the rapid disinflation that occurred in 2023 and said he is hopeful that can resume following the sticky upward trend seen so far this year.

“I don’t like tying our hands even partially when we’re going to get a lot of data and important information before the next meeting much less for the rest of the year,” he said. “The data dogs need to do some sniffing and figure out, are we going to be on the path like what we saw last year where inflation fell almost as much as it has ever fallen in a year without a recession? Or did we kind of use up all of our good luck and this bump of the beginning of the year is actually a sign of overheating?”

— Jeff Cox

Gen Digital was the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 on Friday.

Shares surged more than 14% after the cybersecurity software company behind LifeLock and Norton posted its latest earnings…