Wall Street's indexes rose on Wednesday, with the benchmark S&P 500 hitting an intraday record high as investors cheered streaming video provider Netflix's quarterly report and President Donald Trump's private-sector artificial intelligence infrastructure investment plan.
Market Snapshot
The S&P 500 ended up 37.13 points, or 0.61%, to 6,086.37, just a few points below its last record closing high of 1090.27, reached on Dec. 6. The Nasdaq Composite gained 252.56 points, or 1.28%, to 20,009.34 while The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 130.92 points, or 0.30%, to 44,156.73. Tesla Motors fell 2%, Trump Media & Technology fell 6%, Palantir Technologies Inc. up 5.2%.
Market Movers
Netflix posted fourth-quarter earnings that topped analysts' estimates and reported 18.9 million paid net additions of subscribers in the period. It was the company's biggest quarter of net adds in its history and well above forecasts of 9.77 million.
Fourth-quarter revenue was $10.25 billion, better than analysts' expectations of $10.1 billion, and the company slightly raised its revenue guidance for 2025. Netflix also said its ad-supported tier will cost $7.99 a month, up from $6.99, while the cost of the company's premium tier will rise by $2 to $24.99. The stock rose 9.7%.
Oracle rose 6.8% after the software company, along with ChatGPT maker OpenAI and SoftBank Group, announced an investment of as much as $500 billion in building artificial-intelligence infrastructure in the U.S. The joint venture, known as Stargate, will build data centers for OpenAI.
The announcement of the venture lifted other AI-related stocks. NVIDIA, the leading maker of artificial-intelligence chips, rose 4.4%. The chip designer ARM Holdings rallied 16%, putting it on pace for its largest daily percentage increase since Feb. 12, when it rose 29%.
Separately, Nvidia surpassed Apple as the largest U.S. company by market capitalization on Tuesday. Nvidia closed with a market cap of $3.449 trillion versus Apple's $3.348 trillion, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Apple stock was up 0.5% after sliding earlier in the day on Wednesday.
Fourth-quarter earnings and revenue at United Continental were better than expected. The carrier said it anticipates first-quarter adjusted profit of 75 cents to $1.25 a share, compared with analysts' estimates of 53 cents. The stock, however, was down 2.3%.
Johnson & Johnson reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $2.04 a share, topping estimates of $1.99, on revenue of $22.5 billion, which was slightly ahead of the consensus call for $22.4 billion. The company said it expects operational adjusted earnings in 2025 of between $10.75 and $10.95 a share, and reported adjusted earnings of between $10.50 and $10.80. The stock fell 1.9%.
Ford was down 3.8% to $10.03 after Barclays downgraded the auto maker to Equal Weight from Overweight and reduced its target for the stock price to $11 from $13. The industry has "an air of uncertainty in 2025," wrote analyst Dan Levy in a report, citing high dealer inventories, weaker new car pricing, and Trump's tariff policies.
Seagate Technology PLC , the data storage company, posted fiscal second-quarter earnings of $2.03 a share, better than analysts' expectations of $1.88 and an improvement from year-earlier adjusted earnings of 12 cents. Revenue jumped 50% in the period to $2.33 billion. The stock rose 6.8%.
GE Vernova Inc. rose 2.7%. The energy-technology provider reported fourth-quarter sales of $10.6 billion, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, of $1.1 billion. Wall Street had been looking for sales of $10.7 billion, and Ebitda of $1.1 billion.
Market News
Netflix Stock Hits Record High After Blowout Subscriber Net Adds in Q4; Analysts Cheer
Shares of streaming giant Netflix closed up 9.7% and soared as much as 15%, hitting an all-time high of $999 intraday on Wednesday after it delivered a record fourth-quarter earnings report where it logged much higher user growth than expected, and the company added billions of dollars to its buyback plans.
In addition to its top- and bottom-line beat, the company added 18.91M net subscribers for the quarter—44% year-over-year growth—and more than doubling an expected gain of 9.18M.
Anthropic CEO Says OpenAI’s ‘Stargate’ Venture Seems ‘Chaotic’
Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei expressed skepticism about the financing for rival OpenAI’s $500 billion infrastructure venture and called the planned project “a bit chaotic.”
In an interview with Bloomberg News at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Amodei said it’s “hard to make head or tail” of OpenAI’s new “Stargate” joint venture with SoftBank Group Corp., Oracle Corp. and other partners. The effort, announced by President Donald Trump at an event on Tuesday, is focused on building out the physical infrastructure needed to support AI development.
“It’s not clear how much money is actually involved and how much of that was committed,” Amodei said. He added that it’s also unclear what the government’s involvement in the project will be.
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