Plus, Congress passed a massive coronavirus relief and government spending package, Peloton is buying fitness equipment maker Precor, and cryptocurrency XRP has plunged after its parent company, Ripple, said it is being sued by the SEC.
Stocks were mixed to start Tuesday with the Dow falling 121 points, or 0.4%. The S&P 500 slid 0.1%, while the Nasdaq rose 0.36%.
Apple shares are up more than 3% this morning on reports that it is targeting 2024 to produce an autonomous car for consumers. Reuters reported that the company is reportedly developing its own battery technology, which could reduce the cost of power packs and extend the vehicle’s range. Apple will turn to outside partners for its lidar sensors to provide the autonomous vehicles with real-time, 3-D views of the world, pushing lidar suppliers Luminar Technologies and Velodyne Lidar shares higher this morning. There’s still the possibility that Apple could decide to reduce the scope of its efforts to developing an autonomous driving system that would be integrated with a car made by a traditional automaker, according to the Reuters report, which noted that it’s unclear which manufacturer would build the car for Apple.
Congress passed a massive coronavirus relief and government spending package late Monday. Both the House and the Senate approved the more than $2 trillion legislation that included $900 billion pandemic aid and $1.4 trillion to fund the government through September 30, 2021. After six months of fruitless, on-again, off-again negotiations, lawmakers were forced into action this month as coronavirus cases rose sharply across the nation, forcing another round of lockdowns in many parts of the U.S. and putting lawmakers’ inaction in sharper focus. Congress also passed a series of stopgap spending measures to prevent a government shutdown and President Donald Trump now has until the end of December 28 to sign the measure before federal agencies run out of funds.
The new highly contagious new strain of the coronavirus found in the U.K. is likely “already in the U.S.” even as more than 40 countries ban travel to and from the U.K. for 48 hours or more. That’s according to former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who added that “as the virus continues to spread around the world, we’re going to start to see more of these variants, and that’s why it’s important to get the population vaccinated and snuff out these infections. The more infectious you have, the more chances that these variants start to propagate.” Speaking of vaccinations, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said he’s confident the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will work on the new virus strain. “We don’t know at the moment if our vaccine is also able to provide protection against this new variant,” Sahin said. “But scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variants.”
Peloton shares are up more than 12% this morning following the company’s announcement late yesterday that it plans to acquire the exercise equipment maker Precor for $420 million. Demand for Peloton’s exercise equipment has surged amid the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers look look to work out at home, and the Precor purchase could speed up production of its cycles and treadmills and meet its promised delivery windows. “Increased manufacturing capacity should help alleviate the biggest impediment to [Peloton’s] growth,” said KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Ed Yruma said in a note. “By combining our talented and committed R&D and Supply Chain teams with the incredibly capable Precor team and their decades of experience, we believe we will be able to lead the global connected fitness market in both innovation and scale,” said Peloton President William Lynch.
And cryptocurrency XRP has plunged today after Ripple, the fintech company best known for the digital coin, said it expects to be sued by the SEC over allegations that it has violated investor protection laws. The SEC is likely to bring the lawsuit against Ripple, CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and co-founder Chris Larsen, and will claim that the company violated laws against selling unregistered securities when it sold XRP to investors. Garlinghouse said he expects the lawsuit to be filed before Christmas and said the suit was “fundamentally wrong as a matter of law and fact.” “XRP is a currency, and does not have to be registered as an investment contract,” Garlinghouse said. “In fact, the Justice Department and the Treasury’s FinCEN already determined that XRP is a virtual currency in 2015 and other G20 regulators have done the same. No other country has classified XRP as a security.”
Stocks We’re Watching
AIM Immunotech Inc (OTC: AIM): AIM Immunotech shares gained as much as 25.7% yesterday after the immuno-pharma company announced that the FDA had granted Orphan Drug Designation to its Ampligen (rintatolimod) for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. AIM recently announced receipt of statistically significant positive pancreatic cancer survival results from a multi-year Early Access Program conducted at Erasums University Medical Center in the Netherlands where the median overall survival was approximately two-fold higher with Ampligen. “This study data demonstrates that Ampligen has the potential to extend the survival rates of people suffering with pancreatic cancer significantly when compared to the traditional standard of care for this deadly disease,” said CIM CEO Thomas K. Equels.