Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Chip equipment stocks – Global chip equipment stocks rose on news that the Biden administration is considering further sanctions on sales of semiconductor equipment and AI memory chips to China that could be less strict than earlier proposals. Shares of U.S.-based companies Applied Materials and KLA Corp. each gained more than 3%, while Lam Research jumped 5.3% following the Bloomberg report . Dutch equipment maker ASML climbed about 3.5%. Robinhood – The brokerage firm saw shares rising more than 3%, resuming their postelection rally. Friday’s gains came after the SEC approved the creation of a 24-hour stock exchange by startup 24 Exchange, paving the way for round-the-clock trading. Robinhood has jumped 66% in November to a record high as investors piled into the company, which is seen as a big beneficiary of the incoming Trump administration’s deregulation plans. Advance Auto Parts — Shares dropped 7% after credit rating agency Moody’s Ratings downgraded the auto parts company’s senior unsecured debt to Ba1, below investment grade, according to FactSet. “The downgrade reflects our expectation for continued very high lease-adjusted leverage, weak interest coverage, and negative free cash flow over the next 12-18 months,” Moody’s said. Hasbro – Shares jumped more than 2% after Elon Musk floated the prospect of acquiring the toymaker to secure the rights to Dungeons and Dragons. Retail stocks – Major retail stocks were fractionally higher as Black Friday shopping kicked into high gear across the U.S. Target moved about 1% higher, and wholesale retailer Costco advanced 0.6%. Meanwhile, Walmart – the nation’s largest retailer – gained 0.1%, hitting an all-time high. Zeta Global Holdings — The marketing software stock climbed 5% after the company’s CEO called a recent short-seller report “erroneous” on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Wednesday. The stock is still down more than 20% this month. Crypto stocks – Stocks tied to the price of bitcoin rose as the cryptocurrency climbed closer to the $100,000 milestone. MicroStrategy , which employs an aggressive bitcoin buying strategy, gained 4%. Mara Holdings , a bitcoin miner and another buyer of the cryptocurrency, jumped nearly 10%. Coinbase was little changed. — CNBC’s Yun Li, Jesse Pound, Hakyung Kim, Sarah Min, Sean Conlon, Pia Singh and Tanaya Macheel contributed reporting
