Hot or Not: Stock Market Edition [11/22/2024]

Are you a bull or a bear? We’ve got you covered either way. Today's biggest gainers included BJ's Wholesale (BJ) following a membership fee increase, and a big spike for Snowflake (SNOW) after a positive earnings report. On the flip side, MicroStrategy's (MSTR) rally abruptly ended, and Google (GOOGL) faced some bad news, resulting in a substantial loss.

🔥 HOT: Shares of BJs Wholesale Club (NYSE: BJ) rose by 8.3% on Thursday after the company announced its first membership fee increase in seven years. The fee increase was announced during BJ’s third-quarter earnings call, which showed that its net income was up 19.3% from $130.5 million for last year’s third quarter to $155.7 million this year. As if that wasn’t enough to get investors excited, BJ’s EPS for the third quarter was $1.17, significantly higher than the consensus estimate of $0.94. Overall, BJs is well-positioned to take advantage of the current difficult economic conditions and has gained 39% YTD.

🥶 NOT: MicroStrategy’s (NASDAQ: MSTR) blistering three-day rally came to an abrupt end on Thursday as the stock lost 16.2% by the close after being up as much as 14.6% shortly after the market opened. The sharp reversal came as Citron Research publicly disclosed a short position on X (formerly Twitter), explaining that it was using MSRT as a hedge against its Bitcoin position. MSTR’s fate seems to be inextricably linked with Bitcoin, but Thursday’s price action marked a significant departure from its usual correlation. Even as its bull run falters, it’s hard to ignore the fact that MSRT is still up nearly 500% since January.

🔥 HOT: Cloud-based storage company Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) gained 32.7% on Thursday after an outstanding earnings report. The company’s third-quarter EPS exceeded analysts’ expectations by 31.6% and its revenue was higher than anticipated by around $43 million. Snowflake also raised its fourth-quarter guidance for its product revenue from $882 million to between $906 and $911 million. Even with such strong third-quarter results, SNOW remains down 12.1% YTD.

🥶 NOT: Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL), lost 4.7% on Thursday as the market weighs the possibility that the company will be forced to break up its search business due to anti-monopoly action from the Department of Justice. The DOJ filed a document on Thursday that recommended Google be forced to sell its Chrome browser and remove Google as the default browser on its Android smartphones and tablets. It’s unclear at this point how likely these actions will come to pass, but their mere threat has been enough to see GOOGL lose 7.7% over the last two weeks. The search giant’s stock is now down 2.1% YTD.

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