Post-Bell | U.S. Stocks End Lower; Tesla Gains 4%; Intel Jumps 6%; Alibaba Pops 8%; Lithium Americas Surges 96%

U.S. stocks closed lower for a second straight session on Wednesday, as investors booked profits with indexes near record levels after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell flagged potentially stretched stock prices and ahead of a reading on inflation later in the week.

Market Snapshot

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 171.50 points, or 0.37%, to 46,121.28, the S&P 500 lost 18.94 points, or 0.28%, to 6,637.98 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 75.62 points, or 0.33%, to 22,497.86.

Market Movers

Alibaba - U.S.-listed shares of Alibaba jumped 8.2% after the Chinese e-commerce and tech titan said it would increase spending on artificial intelligence and released a new AI language large model, Qwen3-Max. Without specifying an exact amount, CEO Eddie Wu said the company would invest more than $50 billion on AI and cloud infrastructure. Shares closed up 9.2% in Hong Kong.

Tesla - Tesla shares jumped 4% on Wednesday as China registrations ramped and expectations rose for EV giant's Q3 global deliveries.

Intel - Intel stock surged 6.4% on Wednesday after Bloomberg reported that the chip maker had approached Apple asking for an investment.

Micron Technology - Micron Technology fell 2.8%. The memory chip maker reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that topped analysts’ estimates. Revenue rose 46% to $11.3 billion in the quarter, with sales from its high-end memory for AI data centers reaching 40% of total revenue in the period, up from 19% last year. For the current quarter, Micron guided for adjusted earnings of $3.75 a share on revenue of $12.5 billion. Wall Street was looking for first-quarter earnings of $3.10 a share on revenue of $11.91 billion.

Oracle - Oracle is aiming to raise $18 billion in debt, a regulatory filing showed on Wednesday, as the company looks to invest heavily in building out cloud infrastructure to cater to burgeoning AI demand. The shares dropped 1.7%.

Lithium Americas, Albemarle - Lithium Americas, which is developing a lithium deposit in Nevada to supply the critical mineral for batteries, soared 95.8% on news the Trump administration was seeking an equity stake of as much as 10% in the Canadian company. The U.S. proposed an equity stake as it renegotiates terms of Lithium Americas’ $2.26 billion Energy Department loan for its Thacker Pass lithium project with General Motors. “This is a great critical minerals deal,” a Trump administration official told Barron’s while declining to confirm what share of the company the government was seeking. “It’s a small stake,” the official said, adding that negotiations were ongoing. Peer lithium producer Albemarle rose 1.8%.

General Motors - General Motors gained 2.3% to $59.91. Shares of the auto maker were upgraded to Buy from Neutral at UBS. Analysts also hiked their price target to $81 from $56, arguing that margins for GM’s North America segment could return to their target 8% to 10% range, despite tariff impacts.

Freeport-McMoRan - Freeport-McMoRan sank 17%. The company said two workers were found dead last weekend and five remain missing following a mud rush at a mine in Indonesia earlier this month. Freeport-McMoRan said in an update Wednesday that it was lowering its third-quarter sales estimates for copper and gold by 4% and 6%, respectively, due to a temporary suspension in mining operations and damage to infrastructure.

Thor Industries - Thor Industries rose 6.1% after the recreational-vehicle maker posted fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that rose from a year earlier and beat analysts’ estimates. Net sales were $2.52 billion, down from $2.53 billion a year earlier but higher than expectations of $2.32 billion. The company issued a somewhat soft outlook, with Seth Woolf, the company’s head of corporate development and investor relations, citing “multiple data points suggesting weakness emerging in the job market.”

Amazon - Amazon.com fell 0.2% to $220.21 after wavering earlier in the session. Analysts atWells Fargoupgraded the stock to Overweight from Equal Weight and raised their price target to $280 from $245. Wells Fargo expectssales at Amazon Web Servicesto rise 22% in 2026.

Worthington - Worthington Enterprises, the maker of building and consumer products, reported better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter earnings and sales. Worthington posted net sales of $303.7 million, an increase of 18% from a year earlier. A recent acquisition of Elgen Manufacturing contributed about $21 million of sales in the period. Shares, however, were down 11.6%.

Plug Power - Plug Power tumbled 5.1% after falling 4.5% on Tuesday and snapping a nine-session winning streak. Shares of the provider of hydrogen technology have risen 61% in September.

uniQure - Shares of uniQure soared 247.7% to $47.50 after the biotech said its experimental gene therapy had successfully slowed the progression of Huntington’s disease, an inherited condition that causes a progressive breakdown of nerve cells in the brain. The company said a high dose of its AMT-130 slowed disease progression by 75% after 36 months.

Market News

US Opens Tariff Probes into Medical Equipment, Robotics, Industrial Machinery

The U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday it has opened new national security investigations into the import of personal protective equipment, medical items, robotics and industrial machinery.

The "Section 232" investigations, which were opened on September 2 but not publicly disclosed previously, could be used as a basis for even higher tariffs on a wide swath of medical and industrial goods including imported face masks, syringes, and infusion pumps as well as for robotics and industrial machinery like programmable computer-controlled mechanical systems and industrial stamping and pressing machines.

The probe asks companies to detail projected demand for robotics and industrial machinery and the extent to which "domestic production of robotics and industrial machinery, and their parts and components can meet domestic demand" as well as the role of foreign supply chains in meeting U.S. demand.

Trump Will Sign TikTok Executive Order on Thursday, Source Says

US President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday that declares a deal being negotiated by the White House to sell TikTok's U.S. operations will meet requirements set out in a 2024 law, a White House source with knowledge of the matter said.

Earlier this week, the White House said Trump will declare that a deal to divest TikTok's U.S. operations from its Chinese owner ByteDance will meet requirements set out in a law passed by Congress that bans the short video app unless its Chinese owner is ended.

Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million U.S. users, with helping him win re-election last year and has 15 million followers on his personal account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.