By Callum Keown, Kit Norton, and Connor Smith
Stocks were generally higher Thursday following a jobs report that showed the U.S. labor market grew at a slower pace in June.
Strategy advanced 7.9% as higher cryptocurrency prices boosted the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin. Robinhood Markets rose 3.8% and Coinbase Global was up 3.9%. Robinhood also was added to Mizuho Securities' "top picks" for July.
Blue Owl Capital rose 4.6% after telling shareholders the firm will enforce a cap on some of its private credit funds after large withdrawal requests. Ares Management added 2.9%, BlackRock gained 1.6%, and Blackstone advanced 2.7%.
Medical and pharmaceutical stocks gained as investors rotated into defensive sectors. Moderna rose 10% and was the second-best performer in the S&P 500 on Thursday. Universal Health Services and HCA Healthcare also rallied.
Tesla fell 7.5%. Elon Musk's electric-vehicle maker delivered 480,126 vehicles in the second quarter, well above Wall Street's expectation of around 406,000. Investors appeared to be selling the good news after shares closed higher in four straight trading sessions ahead of the announcement.
Rivian gained 8.4% after the EV maker's better-than-anticipated quarterly sales prompted the company to raise its full-year outlook. The stock movement was in contrast to Tesla, its larger rival.
SpaceX rose 2.8% to $162 after closing Wednesday down 7.8%. Daiwa analyst Jonathan Kees launched coverage with a Hold rating and $175 price target. Kailash Concepts, which publishes research merging quantitative data with fundamental insights, also called SpaceX returns "catastrophic."
AOL parent Bending Spoons sank 11% after surging 40% in its trading debut Wednesday.
AeroVironment gained 11% after the drone and antidrone technology company was awarded a $500 million fixed-price U.S. government contract for counter-unmanned aerial systems.
Chip stocks and related AI names were falling hard and made up the bulk of the laggards on the S&P 500. Teradyne, which makes the test equipment for semiconductors, dropped 14% and memory chip maker Sandisk sank 14%. They were the two-worst S&P 500 stocks.
Fellow memory stocks Western Digital and Seagate Technology declined 9.9% and 10%, respectively. Micron Technology fell 5.5% after it slumped 11% in the previous session.
Intel dropped 5.3% while Marvell Technology fell 9.8%. Advanced Micro Devices was down 4.3% as the company slipped further away from joining the trillion-dollar club.
Palantir Technologies rose 2.8% to $129.30. DA Davidson upgraded the stock to a Buy rating from Neutral and raised its price target to $175 from $165. The company announced a new strategic initiative with Nvidia to build custom artificial-intelligence models for the U.S. government on Monday. Palantir shares are rebounding after bottoming last week at $107.27.
Write to Callum Keown at callum.keown@dowjones.com and Kit Norton at kit.norton@barrons.com
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