10 Stocks Firm Up Amid Cautious Trading

Wall Street extended its lackluster performance on Tuesday, with two major indices finishing with only slight changes amid a series of key factors keeping investor sentiment neutral.

Only the Dow Jones finished in the green territory, posting a 0.37 percent gain. In contrast, the S&P decreased by 0.47 percent while the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell by 1.37 percent.

During the last trading session, ten companies defied a generally cautious market, albeit posting only modest gains. In this article, we have detailed the reasons behind their stronger performance.

To come up with Tuesday’s top gainers, we considered only the stocks with $2 billion in market capitalization and $5 million in daily trading volume.

A laptop and a computer monitor display a detailed stock market technical analysis chart. Photo by Jakub Zerdzicki on Pexels

10. Lloyds Banking Group PLC (NYSE:LYG)

Lloyds Banking Group grew its share prices by 4.41 percent on Tuesday to close at $3.55 as investor sentiment was fueled by a price upgrade from an investment bank.

In a report published Tuesday, JPMorgan said it raised its price target for LYG to £62 from £55 previously, while keeping an ‘underweight’ rating on the shares.

The rating upgrade was achieved despite a dismal fourth-quarter earnings performance, where net income last year dropped by 19 percent to £4.477 billion from £5.518 billion in 2023.

Meanwhile, net income in the fourth quarter alone inched up by 3.4 percent to £4.378 billion from £4.232 billion in 2023.

On Tuesday, LYG also announced the appointment of Natasha Sayce-Zalem as director of digital and business platforms across its Homes business.

Formerly the global head of partner engineering for Amazon Prime Video for the past four years, Sayce-Zalem will be responsible for accelerating the digitization of mortgage processes across LYG brands and channels.

Her appointment came at a time when LYG was on its planned closure of 130 high-street bank locations across the UK this year.

9. Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC)

Ericsson rose for a second day on Tuesday, adding 4.53 percent to close at $8.30 apiece as investors cheered news of the company’s new bagged deal with India-based telecommunications operator Bharti Airtel.

In a statement, ERIC said it would supply Bharti Airtel with 5G equipment to support the latter’s transition to a commercially live, full-scale 5G standalone (SA) network over the next few years.

The SA network will only power 5G frequency, as against a non-standalone (NSA) network which can operate various frequencies such as 5G, 4G, and 3G in one.

Part of the agreement will also see the deployment of ERIC’s signaling controller and 5G SA-enabled charging and policy solutions within Airtel’s network.

According to Airtel Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Gopal Vittal, the telco giant will soon roll out fixed wireless access (FWA) services on an SA basis.