Top 10 Stock Market Moving Headlines From Last Week: Tesla, Ark Innovation ETF, Bitcoin And More

Benzinga debuted a new show on its YouTube channel Friday. The show will air every Friday and recap the top events of the week for stock traders.

Here are the top ten stock market moving headlines of the past week.

10: Tesla Fourth Quarter Deliveries: Electric vehicle giant Tesla Inc TSLA reported record fourth quarter deliveries to kick off the trading week and the start of 2022. The company reported fourth quarter deliveries of 308,600, which marked a 28% quarter-over-quarter increase from the third quarter.

Deliveries for the fourth quarter were up 71% year-over-year and came in sharply ahead of analysts’ expectations. Tesla delivered 936,172 units for the full fiscal year, beating analyst estimates as well.

Shares of Tesla started the week trading higher but ended the week down 3%, closing Friday at $1,026.96.

9: Elizabeth Holmes Guilty: Theranos Inc Founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty on four counts of criminal fraud. A jury convicted the founder of the blood-testing startup on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud against an investor. Holmes was found guilty of four additional charges, while the jury was unable to reach a verdict on three other charges.

Holmes helped Theranos raise over $400 million from investors and became a media darling during her time with Theranos. 

Holmes faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years on the charges. A sentencing date has not yet been announced.

8. Ford Bumps Up F-150 Lightning Production: On Tuesday, Ford Motor Co F announced it would nearly double production of the highly anticipated electric pickup truck, the F-150 Lightning. Ford also announced it was opening the first order bank for the truck on Thursday.

Ford is now planning to produce 150,000 Lightning trucks per year by mid-2023. The increased production figures come due to “soaring customer demand.” Ford reported it had around 200,000 reservations for the Lightning as of Tuesday, excluding fleet reservations. Customer deliveries of the Lightning are expected in the spring of 2022.

Ford shares hit new 52-week highs during the week of $24.95. Shares of Ford are up 170% in the last year.

7: Wejo Partners With Microsoft: Connected vehicle data company Wejo Group Limited WEJO announced its new Neural Edge Processing platform. The platform comes as a partnership with Microsoft Corp MSFT, which is also an investor in Wejo.

Wejo said the new platform will help “enable intelligent handling of data from vehicles at scale.” The platform will also provide insights into automotive innovation and help protect privacy.

Wejo said the new platform could help make vehicles safer, advance electric and autonomous vehicle technology and reduce congestion and emissions.

Related Link: Why The Stock Market Dropped Following Fed Meeting 

6. Fed Meeting Sell Off: Stocks sold off Wednesday after details from the December Federal Open Market Committee meeting were released. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and other officials anticipate high inflation lasting beyond 2022. The Fed could raise interest rates sooner than industry experts initially thought.

The minutes were released Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET, which was followed by major indices and stocks selling off. Tech and high growth stocks were hit hardest, as they tend to experience bigger declines in high-interest rate environments.

The Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 QQQ, which tracks the performance of the NASDAQ 100 Index, was down 3.1% Wednesday. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, which tracks the S&P 500 was down 1.9% Wednesday.

5. Bitcoin Falls: Along with stocks selling off Wednesday, Bitcoin BTC/USD and other major cryptocurrencies started to fall to end the week. Bitcoin, which began the 2022 year at the $47,000 level, dropped to levels last seen in September 2021, setting new three month lows.

Bitcoin trades at $40,850 at the time of writing.

4. Stellantis Partners With Amazon: The owner of vehicle brands that include Dodge, Fiat, Chrysler and Jeep announced a partnership with Amazon.com Inc AMZN. Stellantis Inc STLA will use Amazon’s technology to help created connected in-vehicle experiences and help train automotive software engineers.
Stellantis will use Amazon Web Services as its preferred cloud provider for all its vehicle platforms going forward as part of the new multi-year deal. Stellantis will also use the Alexa voice assistant in its vehicle lineup.

3. Ark Innovation Hits New Lows: Well-known ETF Ark Innovation ETF ARKK led by Cathie Wood hit new 52-week lows on Thursday, falling below the $85 level. Ark Innovation was down around 48% from its highs Thursday and shares are down 10% the first week of 2022.

The top five holdings in ARKK are Tesla at 8.7%, Roku Inc ROKU at 6.1%, Teladoc Health Inc TDOC at 6.1%, Zoom Video Communications Inc ZM at 6.0% and Coinbase Global Inc COIN at 5.1%. All of the top five holdings except Tesla are near 52-week lows.

Ark Innovation is up 130% over the last three years and up over 315% over the last five years, making it one of the top performing ETFs in the respective time frames.

2. Oil Rallies On Kazakhstan Unrest: Political uncertainty in the nation of Kazakhstan and supply outages in Libya led to rallies in the price of oil throughout the week.

1. Value Stocks Outperform Growth: The start of 2022 started off with the trend of value stocks being favored by investors over technology and high growth stocks. The trend comes with several macro issues like inflation, political unrest in Kazakhstan and market uncertainty.

What’s Next: Follow along with Benzinga TV to get the latest news and actionable trading ideas throughout the week. Sign up for a free trial of Benzinga Pro to get market headlines and actionable trading ideas in real time.

PreMarket Prep airs Monday through Friday at 8 a.m. EST followed by Live Trading.

Related Link: Top 10 Most Searched Tickers On Benzinga Pro In 2021: Tesla, Apple, AMC, GameStop And More