Ten stocks finished the trading session with hefty gains, mirroring a broader market optimism following President Donald Trump’s decision to delay the imposition of tariffs on pharmaceutical goods, while shrugging off concerns of a government shutdown.
Meanwhile, Wall Street’s main indices all finished in the green, led by the Nasdaq, up 0.42 percent, followed by the S&P 500 with a 0.34 percent increase, and the Dow Jones with a meager 0.09 percent gain.
In this article, we spotlight the names of the best-performing companies on Wednesday and detail the reasons behind their strong performance.
To come up with the list, we focused exclusively on mid-cap stocks with more than $2 billion in market capitalization and 5 million shares in trading volume.
A stock market data. Photo by Alesia Kozik on Pexels
10. AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN)
AstraZeneca saw its share prices jump to a new all-time high on Wednesday, as investors cheered reports that President Donald Trump delayed the imposition of a 100-percent tariff on all pharmaceutical imports.
A report by Politico quoting a White House official said that Trump delayed the imposition of drug levies, set to take effect today, October 1, as the US government negotiates drug pricing with pharmaceutical giants.
Following the news, AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) soared to its highest 52-week price of $84.61 before trimming gains to end the day just up by 9.96 percent at $84.36 apiece.
AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) rallied alongside its counterparts in the US and Europe, helped by Pfizer Inc.’s landmark deal with the US government to lower drug prices for Americans and make them at par with prices in other key developing countries.
Analysts said they expected drugmakers to follow suit in return for lower tariffs on their drugs entering the US.
“We expect EU pharma to follow suit and negotiate with the Trump administration for exemptions,” Lucy Coutts, investment director at wealth managers JM Finn, was quoted as saying in a report by Reuters.
JPMorgan also said that it expects the Pfizer deal to become the bellwether for other drug companies in their negotiation strategies.
9. Enovix Corp. (NASDAQ:ENVX)
Shares of Enovix Corp. jumped by 11.43 percent on Wednesday to close at $11.11 apiece as investor sentiment was bolstered by the US government’s support for the local lithium industry.
Enovix Corp. (NASDAQ:ENVX) rallied alongside its counterparts, supported by the US government’s acquisition of a 10 percent stake in Lithium Americas and its subsidiary, in line with plans to boost domestic supply and reduce the country’s reliance on imports.
The move sparked expectations that the government could be in the works for new policies to prop up the lithium industry, similar to other industries it considered vital to national security. At present, China is the world’s largest lithium refiner.
While focused on manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, Enovix Corp. (NASDAQ:ENVX) stands to benefit from the Trump administration’s initiatives to ramp up domestic lithium manufacturing, as the move could help lower prices of raw materials for companies like Enovix, which is more appealing than relying on overseas suppliers.
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