Us Alleges Car Parts Factory In Mexico Violates North America Trade Pact

Despite widespread anticipation that NVIDIA Corp. 's quarterly results would dictate Wall Street's year-end trajectory, the stock market delivered a robust weekly rebound — even in the absence of its AI darling.

While the semiconductor titan beat analyst expectations on both earnings and revenue for the third quarter, Nvidia's stock remained flat for the week.

Alphabet Inc. , the parent company of Google, faced sharp turbulence. Shares tumbled after the U.S. Department of Justice called for the divestiture of Chrome in a bid to curb Google's dominance in search and digital advertising.

The sell-off wiped out over $120 billion in market capitalization on Thursday alone.

A recent Benzinga poll indicates 64% of respondents oppose breaking up Alphabet, with YouTube viewed as the company's most valuable asset.

On the economic front, U.S. private sector activity expanded significantly in November, as reflected in S&P Global's Purchasing Managers' Index surveys. The services sector, in particular, surged at its fastest pace since March 2022, while price pressures continued to recede, creating less headwinds for the Federal Reserve.

Bitcoin’s rally shows no signs of cooling, with the cryptocurrency notching its fourth consecutive week of gains and hovering around the historic $100,000 threshold.

The U.S. dollar also maintained its upward momentum, rising for the eighth straight week to reach two-year highs. This latest rally, however, stemmed largely from external turmoil, as escalating geopolitical tensions between Russia and Ukraine, coupled with worsening economic momentum in Europe, triggered sharp weekly sell-offs in the euro and the British pound.

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© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Ford Motor Company shares are trading higher Friday. There were multiple developments this week, including unionization efforts at its Kentucky battery plant and broader industry calls to President-elect Donald Trump to preserve key EV tax credits. Here’s what you need to know.

What To Know: Earlier this week, the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced that a supermajority of workers at Ford's BlueOval SK battery plant in Kentucky, a joint venture with SK On, signed union authorization cards.

The workers cited pay and benefit disparities compared to unionized Ford employees as key motivators. UAW stated that BlueOval SK workers earn significantly less than their unionized counterparts, starting pay at $21 per hour compared to $26.32 for Ford's UAW production workers.

Additionally, a group representing major automakers, including Ford, urged the incoming Trump administration to preserve the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicle purchases and support self-driving car technologies. The group also expressed concerns over emissions regulations and potential revisions to rules mandating automatic emergency braking systems. This lobbying effort potentially highlights the auto industry’s focus on sustaining momentum in EV and autonomous vehicle development while addressing regulatory challenges.

What Else: On Wednesday, the company announced plans to cut about 4,000 jobs or 14% of its European workforce, due to weak demand for electric vehicles and increasing competition. The layoffs, representing 2.3% of Ford’s global headcount, are expected to occur by the end of 2027. Ford’s European sales have dropped 17.9% this year, largely due to reduced EV subsidies in markets like Germany, contributing to the company’s challenges as its transition to electric vehicles.

F Price Action: Ford Motor shares were up 3.56% at $11.18 at the time of writing, according to Benzinga pro.

It doesn't matter your age or experience: taking full advantage of the stock market and investing with confidence are common goals for all investors. Luckily, Zacks Premium offers several different ways to do both.

The popular research service can help you become a smarter, more self-assured investor, giving you access to daily updates of the Zacks Rank and Zacks Industry Rank, the Zacks #1 Rank List, Equity Research reports, and Premium stock screens.

It also includes access to the Zacks Style Scores.

What are the Zacks Style Scores?

The Zacks Style Scores is a unique set of guidelines that rates stocks based on three popular investing types, and were developed as complementary indicators for the Zacks Rank. This combination helps investors choose securities with the highest chances of beating the market over the next 30 days.

Based on their value, growth, and momentum characteristics, each stock is assigned a rating of A, B, C, D, or F. The better the score, the better chance the stock will outperform; an A is better than a B, a B is better than a C, and so on.

The Style Scores are broken down into four categories:

Value Score

Finding good stocks at good prices, and discovering which companies are trading under their true value, are what value investors like to focus on. So, the Value Style Score takes into account ratios like P/E, PEG, Price/Sales, Price/Cash Flow, and a host of other multiples to highlight the most attractive and discounted stocks.

Growth Score

While good value is important, growth investors are more focused on a company's financial strength and health, and its future outlook. The Growth Style Score takes projected and historic earnings, sales, and cash flow into account to uncover stocks that will see long-term, sustainable growth.

Momentum Score

Momentum traders and investors live by the saying "the trend is your friend." This investing style is all about taking advantage of upward or downward trends in a stock's price or earnings outlook. Employing factors like one-week price change and the monthly percentage change in earnings estimates, the Momentum Style Score can indicate favorable times to build a position in high-momentum stocks.

VGM Score

If you like to use all three kinds of investing, then the VGM Score is for you. It's a combination of all Style Scores, and is an important indicator to use with the Zacks Rank. The VGM Score rates each stock on their shared weighted styles, narrowing down the companies with the most attractive value, best growth forecast, and most promising momentum.

How Style Scores Work with the Zacks Rank

The Zacks Rank is a proprietary stock-rating model that harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions, or changes to a company's earnings expectations, to help investors build a successful portfolio.

It's highly successful, with #1 (Strong Buy) stocks producing an unmatched +25.41% average annual return since 1988. That's more than double the S&P 500. But because of the large number of stocks we rate, there are over 200 companies with a Strong Buy rank, plus another 600 with a #2 (Buy) rank, on any given day.

With more than 800 top-rated stocks to choose from, it can certainly feel overwhelming to pick the ones that are right for you and your investing journey.

That's where the Style Scores come in.

You want to make sure you're buying stocks with the highest likelihood of success, and to do that, you'll need to pick stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 or #2 that also have Style Scores of A or B. If you like a stock that only as a #3 (Hold) rank, it should also have Scores of A or B to guarantee as much upside potential as possible.

Since the Scores were created to work together with the Zacks Rank, the direction of a stock's earnings estimate revisions should be a key factor when choosing which stocks to buy.

Here's an example: a stock with a #4 (Sell) or #5 (Strong Sell) rating, even one with Style Scores of A and B, still has a downward-trending earnings outlook, and a bigger chance its share price will decrease too.

Thus, the more stocks you own with a #1 or #2 Rank and Scores of A or B, the better.

Stock to Watch: General Motors (GM)

One of the world’s largest automakers, General Motors held the largest share of the U.S. auto market at 16.2% in 2023. Headquartered in Detroit, the auto giant has had a long and checkered history. Founded in 1908, the company rose to dominate the U.S. industry. However, hit by the financial crisis, General Motors filed for bankruptcy on Jun 1, 2009. Just within 40 days, the firm emerged from bankruptcy. In 2010, the company launched its IPO – the biggest in U.S. history at that time – and has been steadily profitable since then. From going bankrupt in 2009 to becoming one of the world’s best-run car companies, General Motors has indeed come a long way.

GM is a #2 (Buy) on the Zacks Rank, with a VGM Score of A.

It also boasts a Value Style Score of A thanks to attractive valuation metrics like a forward P/E ratio of 5.41; value investors should take notice.

For fiscal 2024, seven analysts revised their earnings estimate upwards in the last 60 days, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.34 to $10.29 per share. GM boasts an average earnings surprise of 17.5%.

With a solid Zacks Rank and top-tier Value and VGM Style Scores, GM should be on investors' short list.

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