From Yahoo Finance: 2025-05-21 11:55:00

Stocks are lower at midday, jeopardizing the six-day winning streak for the S&P 500. Federal Reserve officials are expected to provide insights into inflation and interest rates. Moody’s recent downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating has raised concerns about the nation’s fiscal health. Investors are awaiting earnings reports from major retailers like Target and Lowe’s to get further insights into consumer spending trends. Home Depot maintained its guidance after a 0.2% increase in US comparable sales in Q1.

In stock news, Intel is considering divesting its network and edge businesses, Pfizer is licensing an experimental cancer treatment from China’s 3SBio, Levi Strauss is selling the Dockers brand to Authentic Brands Group, Amer Sports has boosted its adjusted profit forecast for the full year. On Wall Street calls, Air Lease was upgraded at Citi, Asana was downgraded to Underweight at Morgan Stanley, HP Enterprise was upgraded to Outperform at Evercore ISI, Loop downgraded MongoDB on “lackluster” Atlas adoption, and AES Corp. was downgraded to Underperform at Jefferies.

The DOJ has opened a probe into a breach at Coinbase, Google considered giving publishers more control over their content to train AI models, Nintendo is partnering with Samsung to produce chips for the Switch 2, Builder.ai is entering bankruptcy proceedings, and General Motors has halted exports of US-made vehicles to China due to tariffs. Earnings and guidance reports show Viking Holdings beating consensus, Hovnanian with lower year-over-year results, Trip.com with strong momentum in Q1, Bilibili beating consensus, and nCino expecting financial results to exceed guidance. Indices show the Dow down 0.24%, the Nasdaq down 0.45%, and the S&P 500 down 0.36% near midday.



Read more at Yahoo Finance: Home Depot backs outlook as U.S. sales ticked up: Morning Buzz