How I Made $5000 in the Stock Market

These Stocks Moved the Most Today: Tesla, Oracle, Dell, Fair Isaac, Equifax, AST SpaceMobile, Freeport-McMoRan, and More

Oct 08, 2025 05:21:00 -0400 by Joe Woelfel | #Technology

Traders working at the New York Stock Exchange. (NYSE)

Key Points

Stocks rose Wednesday as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite marked record closing highs. Minutes from the last Federal Reserve meeting, at which the central bank cut interest rates, revealed that most officials “judged that it likely would be appropriate to ease policy further over the remainder of this year.”

The U.S. government shutdown, meanwhile, entered its eighth day.

These stocks made notable moves Wednesday:

Tesla rose 1.3% after falling 4.5% on Tuesday following the electric-vehicle maker’s announcement that it would roll out a pair of vehicles starting below $40,000, including a new standard Model Y starting at $39,900. The Model Y has limited paint options and a base mileage per charge of about 320 miles, or 40 miles less than premium Model Y products. A new Model 3 will start at $36,900, Tesla added.

Oracle rose 1.5% after a 2.5% drop on Tuesday following a report from the Information that highlighted the cloud and AI company’s slim margins from renting out Nvidia chips. Oracle lost $100 million in the quarter that ended in August from rentals of Nvidia Blackwell chips, according to the report, which cited internal documents. Nvidia gained 2.2%.

Dell Technologies rose 9.1% to $164.54 and was one of the top-performing stocks Wednesday in the S&P 500. Analysts at Mizuho raised their price target on the stock to $170 from $160 after the maker of computers and artificial-intelligence servers raised its long-term financial guidance. Mizuho, which maintained its Outperform recommendation on the stock, noted the company’s mention of momentum in enterprise and sovereign AI with strong demand signals over the next 12 to 18 months. Citi, J.P. Morgan, and Wells Fargo, among others, also boosted their price targets on Dell.

Confluent jumped 7.5% after Reuters reported the data streaming software company was exploring a sale. The company is in an early stage of the sale process, which was set in motion after several private equity and technology companies expressed interest in acquiring Confluent, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. No sale price was disclosed. Confluent hasn’t responded to a Barron’s request for comment.

Penguin Solutions tumbled 16% after the AI infrastructure company reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates but revenue that missed, and issued a forecast for fiscal 2026 that was well below expectations. Stifel analysts noted the end of hardware sales to a large data-center operator, likely Meta Platforms, contributed to the weak outlook.

AST SpaceMobile gained 8.6% after the satellite operator announced a deal with Verizon Communications to provide space-based cellular broadband services across the U.S. AST SpaceMobile is a rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Fair Isaac declined 9.8% after Equifax said it was “responding to FICO’s monopoly-like doubling of their mortgage credit score prices to $10 in 2026” by reducing VantageScore 4.0 mortgage credit scores more than 50% from Fair Isaac’s 2026 prices, to $4.50, through the end of 2027. Fair Isaac last week unveiled new pricing models that will allow mortgage lenders to calculate and distribute FICO scores directly to borrowers and bypass credit bureaus like Equifax. Equifax shares rose 0.7%.

Freeport-McMoRan rose 5.3% to $42.84 after the copper miner received two positive calls from Wall Street after some recent volatility in the stock. Citi analyst Alexander Hacking upgraded shares to Buy from Hold and maintained his price target at $48 a share. “Citi expects copper to rally to $12,000/ton in [first-half 2026],” wrote Hacking. That’s about $6 per pound and higher than the current price that is closer to $5.

FedEx declined 1% to $239.93. Analysts at J.P. Morgan downgraded shares of the delivery giant to Neutral from Overweight and trimmed their price target to$274 from $284. “We are increasingly concerned the full year [earnings per share] guide is at risk, given it already embeds a rebound in freight fundamentals,” wrote analyst Brian Ossenbeck. The firm also lowered its price target on United Parcel Service to $85 from $96 and kept a Neutral rating on the shares. UPS rose 0.3% to $86.25.

AZZ Inc., the metal coatings and welding services company, is scheduled to report quarterly earnings Wednesday. The stock was up 0.8%.

Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com and Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com