Here we will introduce companies that have become a hot topic in intraday trading. Principal Financial Group — The financial services company fell 4% after Bank of America downgraded its rating from neutral to underperform. “The downgrade reflects expectations for slower operating profit growth over the next 12 months following a period of significant multiple valuation increases,” analyst Joshua Shankar said in a note Wednesday. “Healthy recent operating growth appears to be fading in our forecast (despite being above consensus).” ENERGY STOCK — The energy sector of the S&P 500 fell 2% as West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures fell to $69.63 a barrel at one point as oil tankers continued to transit the Strait of Hormuz. APA Corporation, Halliburton and ConocoPhillips fell more than 3%. ExxonMobil and Chevron each fell more than 2%. Travel stocks — Stock prices of companies related to the travel industry rose as oil prices fell. Expedia Group rose 9% and Booking Holdings rose 8%. Cruise lines Carnival and Royal Caribbean rose 2% and 5%, respectively. Delta Air Lines rose about 4% and United Airlines rose 6%. Alphabet — Google’s parent company rose 1% after S&P Dow Jones Indices said Alphabet would replace Verizon in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The changes will begin before the start of trading on June 29 and will further increase the index’s exposure to big-cap tech stocks. Verizon fell 2%. Cerebras — The semiconductor company fell 16% after releasing its first earnings report since going public in May. Cerebras reported a loss of 22 cents on first-quarter revenue of $193.4 million. The company also said it expects core gross margin to contract to 36-38% in the second quarter, compared to 46.5% in the first quarter. FedEx — Shares fell about 1% even though the company reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results. These numbers reflect the last numbers before FedEx separated its cargo operations. Micron Technology — Memory stocks pared early gains to end the day down 1%. Micron extended its losses in Tuesday’s global tech sell-off, continuing to fall 13%. The company is scheduled to report earnings after the closing bell on Wednesday. Memory stocks — Other memory stocks fell along with Micron, turning negative during trading. SanDisk fell about 2%. Seagate Technology and Western Digital each fell 5%. KB Home — According to LSEG, the home builder rose 17% after posting fiscal second-quarter sales of $1.11 billion, beating analysts’ expectations of $1.1 billion. Meanwhile, KB Home’s earnings per share were 43 cents, below expectations of 45 cents. Home Improvement and Construction Stocks — The iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB) was last up 6%, with tailwinds from a sharp rise in KB Home. Building materials company Builders FirstSource and home builder Pulte Group rose 11% and 9%, respectively. Home Depot rose 5%. Worthington Enterprises — The industrial manufacturer fell 9% after reporting weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter results. Last quarter, Worthington earned an adjusted 97 cents per share on revenue of $371.5 million. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected earnings of $1.06 per share and revenue of $386.5 million. Wendy’s — Shares rose 26% as the fast food stock became one of the most talked about stocks on Reddit’s investment community r/Wallstreetbets, according to data from Swaggy Stocks. Wendy’s has a short interest of about 23% of the stock’s free float, and could mount a short squeeze, according to S3 Partners. — CNBC’s Nick Wells contributed reporting
