Benzinga's Daily Brief On Trending Tickers For Feb. 23, 2022: Palantir, GameStop, Tesla, And More

Benzinga’s Daily Brief On Trending Tickers highlights top-searched tickers from around the web and uses the Benzinga Pro platform to highlight recent news items possibly impacting those stocks.

The data on the trending tickers is compiled from a list of most-discussed tickers on the popular Reddit forum WallStreetBets.

Palantir Technologies PLTR Citigroup analyst Tyler Radke maintains Palantir with a Sell and lowered the price target from $13 to $10. Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment sold 11,761,901 shares of Palantir worth nearly $123.3 million — based on the stock’s Tuesday closing.

GameStop GME With the Federal Reserve expected to raise interest rates in March, the scenario of fear and uncertainty for equity investors is slowly stabilizing. Last week, U.S. authorities launched an investigation into possible illegal trading tactics by short sellers. GameStop investors, mainly in the communities dedicated to the stock on Reddit, have alleged that GME's trading performance has been illegally manipulated by short sellers.

Tesla TSLA CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday the automaker is working on making Steam games available on Tesla’s vehicles.

In addition, Tesla's plan to add a restaurant and dine-in theater at a Supercharger location date back to 2018. The plans appear closer to fruition, with Musk saying that an undisclosed location in Hollywood, California will get a “diner and drive-in theater.”

Teladoc Health Inc TDOC Posted a narrower than expected fourth-quarter EPS loss of 7 cents per share versus consensus of 56 cents. 

AMC Entertainment AMC is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter earnings after the market closes on Tuesday, March 1. The results should showcase the company’s continuing turnaround in revenue and earnings improvement. As a result, AMC stock has a good chance of making a comeback from its recent declines.

Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. IONS Saw a significant increase in short interest in the month of January. As of Jan. 31, there was short interest totalling 9,520,000 shares, an increase of 31.9% from the Jan. 15 total of 7,220,000 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 1,230,000 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 7.7 days. Approximately 6.8% of the company’s shares are sold short.

Advanced Micro Devices AMD Multiple industry insiders and Twitter users have speculated that TSMC has run into several snags with its upcoming N3 process node. Hence, AMD may have to fabricate its Ryzen 8000 Zen 5 processors and Radeon RX 8000 RDNA 4 graphics cards on TSMC's 4 nm process.

Previous reports suggested there are several multibillion-dollar companies lined up to get a piece of TSMC's N3 node. Intel, in particular, has shown great interest in it, as has Apple and MediaTek.

Nvidia NVDA The chip maker reported fourth-quarter FY 2022 earnings on Feb. 16 that beat analysts expectations. Adjusted earnings per share came in above analyst forecasts, rising 69.2% year-over-year. Nvidia's revenue also came in above consensus estimates, up 52.8% compared to the year-ago quarter to a new quarterly record of $7.6 billion.

PayPal Holdings PYPL PayPal continues to battle with Block SQ in the cryptocurrency space. The two payment companies are marketing apps that let shoppers get discounts, make installments and buy cryptocurrencies. PayPal's Venmo and the Square Cash App started off as person-to-person money-transfer services for family members and friends. Now they've evolved into broad consumer financial services apps fueling growth for these leaders in the burgeoning field of digital payments.

Forestar Group Inc FOR Moody's Investors Service upgraded Forestar Group Inc.'s Corporate Family Rating (CFR) to Ba3 from B1, Probability of Default Rating (PDR) to Ba3-PD from B1-PD and senior unsecured rating to Ba3 from B1. The outlook was revised to stable from positive. Moody's also maintained the company's SGL-2 Speculative Grade Liquidity Rating. The rating upgrade reflects Moody's expectation for continued strong operating fundamentals for this year and next, and for further improvement in Forestar's credit profile, including higher revenue and profitability, as well as good execution.