Stocks slide as oil jumps and Fed leaves rates the same: Live updates

Bill Ackman’s long-awaited push into public markets debuted Wednesday, marking a scaled-back but still ambitious step toward building a Berkshire Hathaway-like investment platform.

The Pershing Square Capital Management founder’s combined initial public offering raised $5 billion, pricing at the low end of expectations after marketing a deal that initially targeted between $5 billion and $10 billion. The haul is a far cry from earlier ambitions floated two years ago to raise as much as $25 billion.

The transaction created two separately traded entities on the New York Stock Exchange: closed-end fund Pershing Square USA Ltd., which began trading under the ticker PSUS, and asset manager Pershing Square Inc., listed as PS. The dual structure allows investors to gain exposure either to the underlying portfolio or to the management business itself.

PSUS opened for trading at $42, well below its IPO price of $50. It was last around $40.90, down 18%. PS, meanwhile, began trading at $24 and traded around $23.50. Read more.

An unusually divided Federal Reserve on Wednesday held its key interest rate steady as policymakers grappled with the policy impact of persistent inflation and awaited a looming leadership transition at the central bank.

In what may have been Chair Jerome Powell’s final meeting at the helm, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to hold the benchmark funds rate in a range between 3.5%-3.75%. Markets had been pricing in a 100% chance of no change.

However, the meeting saw a dramatic turn.

Read more here.

— Jeff Cox

Here are the stocks making headlines in midday trading:

• Regeneron — The biotech stock slid nearly 6% after the company reaffirmed its full-year forecast for adjusted gross margin on net product sales of 83% to 84%. Regeneron also said that its board authorized a new $3 billion share repurchase program.
• GE HealthCare Technologies — Shares tumbled 12% after the company dialed back its forecast for full-year adjusted earnings. GE HealthCare is now calling for a range of $4.80 to $5 a share, compared to its earlier guidance of $4.95 to $5.15 per share. Free cash flow guidance of about $1.6 billion for the full year was also lower than the company’s earlier forecast for roughly $1.7 billion.
• Brinker International — The parent company of Chili’s Grill & Bar jumped about 13%. Third-quarter adjusted earnings topped estimates, landing at $2.90 per share versus the FactSet consensus call for $2.86 a share. Brinker raised the lower end of its forecast for full-year earnings, calling for adjusted earnings of $10.60 to $10.85 per share.

Read the full list here.

— Lisa Kailai Han and Davis Giangiulio

Bill Ackman’s long-awaited push into public markets is set to debut Wednesday, marking a scaled-back but still ambitious step toward building a Berkshire Hathaway-like investment platform.

The Pershing Square Capital Management founder’s combined initial public offering raised $5 billion, pricing at the low end of expectations after marketing a deal that initially targeted between $5 billion and $10 billion. The haul is a far cry from earlier ambitions floated two years ago to raise as much as $25 billion.

The transaction creates two separately traded entities on the New York Stock Exchange: closed-end fund Pershing Square USA Ltd., which will trade under the ticker PSUS, and asset manager Pershing Square Inc., listed as PS. The dual structure allows investors to gain exposure either to the underlying portfolio or to the management business itself. Read more.

— Yun Li

President Donald Trump has rejected a proposal from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and lift a blockade along the key shipping route, according to Axios. Crude prices ticked higher on the report, putting pressure on equities.

Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank were among those praising Starbucks‘ second-quarter earnings beat, with Wells Fargo analyst Lauren Silberman declaring “Starbies is Back.”

Silberman, who has a buy rating on the stock, noted the coffee chain’s “best-in-class management team.”

“We think SBUX is under-earning today, and see sentiment improving as initiatives resonate & the turnaround builds credibility,” she said in a note Wednesday. “Additionally, a China recovery / strategic actions aids optionality. We see SBUX’s EPS rebounding sharply in ’26 off of trough levels, as the initiatives deliver & turnaround unfolds.”

Deutsche Bank analyst Zachary Fadem, who rates the stock overweight, believes the earnings beat should help restore confidence that Starbucks is reaching an inflection point with accelerating top- and bottom-line growth.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is among the firms that maintained their neutral ratings. However, analyst Christine Cho noted the meaningful improvement in Starbuck’s turnaround strategy.

“Key investor pushback has been centered on the lower-than-expected flow through in the North American business despite the strong top-line trends, and we continue to look for more clarity on the net cost savings and margin potential in the next few years,” she said in a note Wednesday.

Shares of Starbucks were last up 9%.

— Michelle Fox

Shares of Avis Budget Group fell more than 7% in morning trading on Wednesday, putting it on pace for a six-day losing streak.

The stock has seen significant volatility recently, with its short-squeeze rally ending last week. It was just under $100 per share last month and surged to a close of about $714 last Tuesday. With the stock’s drop in the sessions thereafter, it now trades around $168.

The Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday voted to advance Kevin Warsh’s nomination to lead the Federal Reserve, teeing up President Donald Trump’s pick for a final confirmation vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The vote fell along party lines, with all 13 Republican members voting in favor of the nominee and all 11 Democrats voting against him. Read more.

— Kevin Breuninger

Shares of Seagate Technology are jumping more than 16% after it posted an earnings beat and better-than-expected outlook. Morgan Stanley sees more upside to go.

The bank reiterated its overweight rating on the stock and its ranking as a “top pick.” Analyst Erik Woodring also hiked his price target to $767, which indicates a 32% gain from Tuesday’s close. Woodring said that the company is firing on all cylinders, and that this is the third quarter in a row where the bank’s previous bull case for the stock becomes its base case.

“Exponential token growth and emerging AI applications are fueling accelerating data growth and growing data retention needs, and HDDs,” hard disk drives, “continue to capture ~80% of cloud storage demand,” Woodring wrote in a Wednesday note. “At the same time, a rational HDD oligopoly is maintaining strict supply discipline, resulting in demand > supply. The combination of these factors is elongating the HDD cycle and pushing pricing power further into the hands of the HDD vendors.”

Woodring added that he thinks Seagate could reach 50% gross margins in the current quarter, a trend that appears sustainable with accelerating demand and constricted supply. 

The S&P 500 began Wednesday’s session little changed.

The broad market index traded around the flatline alongside the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Nasdaq Composite pulled back 0.2%.

— Sean Conlon

In what could be Jerome Powell’s final meeting as Federal Reserve chair, he is expected to lead his fellow policymakers toward another cautious pause, with stubborn inflation and a resilient labor market leaving little room yet for interest rate cuts.

The decision Wednesday will come against a backdrop of elevated energy prices and a central bank that has been above its 2% inflation target for five years at the same time that the labor market has been weak but not in distress. That’s not a recipe for easing, at least not yet.

“On the dual mandate, they’d say we’re roughly at a stable labor market,” Roger Ferguson, an economist and former vice chair at the Fed, told CNBC. “On the inflation side of the mandate, [there’s] a lot more work to be done with a sticky 3% [inflation rate], and I hope they argue, ‘we’re going to sit tight for a little while to see how this all plays out.'” Read more.

— Jeff Cox

With the four tech hyperscalers — Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft — set to report quarterly earnings after the close, hovering over their results is a single company that doesn’t even release its financials to the public: OpenAI.

The ChatGPT creator, now valued at more than $850 billion by private investors, has become a major market mover over the past year as its revenue and hefty spending are increasingly viewed as a proxy for the artificial intelligence trade. Read more.

— Jonathan Vanian

Check out the companies making the biggest moves premarket:

• Seagate Technology — The data storage stock popped almost 18%. Seagate sees fiscal fourth-quarter revenue coming in at $3.45 billion, plus or minus $100 million, and adjusted earnings of $5 per share, plus or minus 20 cents. That compares to the LSEG estimate of $3.97 per share in earnings and revenue of $3.16 billion. Third-quarter results beat estimates on the top and bottom lines.
• Booking Holdings — Shares fell about 4.5% after the travel technology platform lowered its full-year adjusted earnings per share growth to the “low to mid-teens,” down from prior estimates in the “mid-teens,” citing lagging impacts from the Middle East conflict through the end of June. However, Booking posted both a beat on both the top and bottom lines for its first quarter. Shares of Expedia Group slipped about 3% in sympathy.
• Mondelez International — The maker of Oreo cookies and Sour Patch Kids candy added 1.5% after reporting first-quarter adjusted earnings of 67 cents per share on revenue of $10.08 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet had anticipated earnings of 61 cents per share and $9.75 billion in revenue.

Read here for the full list.

— Davis Giangiulio and Lisa Kailai Han

Aside from the Federal Reserve, investors will turn their attention to the four “Magnificent Seven” earnings reports due after the bell. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft are all on deck.

“Look for Mag7 earnings to be a positive catalyst, though positioning points to increasing probability of a near-term top forming, a slight consolidation (assuming no new catalysts emerge), before resuming the bull run,” traders at JPMorgan wrote.

— Fred Imbert

Asia-Pacific markets closed mixed Wednesday, after Wall Street declined overnight as investors assess the latest developments concerning OPEC, as well as a report that pointed to weakness in OpenAI.

The United Arab Emirates will exit OPEC on May 1, in a major blow to the cartel that coordinates production among many of the world’s largest oil producers, particularly those in the Middle East.

Optimism around tech stocks took a hit as the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI’s revenue and new users’ growth was below its own targets. The report added that CFO Sarah Friar told the company leadership that she was concerned OpenAI might not be able to pay for computing contracts in the future if its top line did not expand fast enough.

South Korea’s Kospi added 0.75% to end day at 6,690.9, while the small-cap Kosdaq gained 0.39% to 1,220.26. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.27% to 8,687.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 1.2% as of its last hour of trade, while Mainland China’s CSI 300 gained 1.1% to 4,810.35.

Japan markets were closed for a holiday.

— Lee Ying Shan

Asia-Pacific markets opened mixed Wednesday, after Wall Street declined overnight as investors assess the latest developments concerning OPEC, as well as a report that pointed to weakness in OpenAI.

The United Arab Emirates will exit OPEC on May 1, in a major blow to the cartel that coordinates production among many of the world’s largest oil producers, particularly those in the Middle East.

Optimism around tech stocks took hit as the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI’s revenue and new users growth was below its own targets. The report added that CFO Sarah Friar told the company leadership that she was concerned OpenAI may not be able to pay computing contracts in the future if its top line doesn’t expand fast enough.

South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.39%, while the small-cap Kosdaq traded flat. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.28%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 0.95%, while the CSI 300 was flat.

Japan markets were closed for a holiday.

— Lee Ying Shan

July wheat futures climbed to a high of $6.595 a bushel Tuesday, the highest since June 2024, bringing the gain since the start of the war with Iran to more than 11%. In April alone, wheat futures are ahead 6.8%, extending the year-to-date advance to 29.8% and on track to rise for a fourth straight month.

The National Association of Wheat Growers said major wheat-producing states are challenged by dry weather and recent USDA reports reflect a worsening outlook. Conditions have steadily declined in recent weeks, the farmers said.

July corn futures are higher by nearly 4% in April, up 6% since the start of the Iran war and up 8% since the start of the year.

— Gina Francolla and Scott Schnipper

These are the stocks moving the most in after-hours trading:

• Starbucks — The coffee chain jumped nearly 5% after Starbucks raised its full-year outlook.
• Robinhood — The maker of the trading app saw shares tumble about 9% after first-quarter results fell short of expectations.
• Visa — The credit card payment giant saw shares rise almost 5%. Second-quarter adjusted earnings of $3.31 per share and revenue of $11.23 billion surpassed analysts’ expectations.

Read the full list of stocks moving here.

— Lisa Kailai Han