Palantir Stock Forecast: PLTR marks two-year high on Friday
- Palantir stock trades up to highest price in two years.
- Stock market indices started Friday on the backfoot.
- Peter Thiel’s venture capital fund sold $48 million worth of PLTR in Q3.
- Analyst Dan Ives says tech stocks are at the beginning of a new rally heading into 2024.
Palantir (PLTR) stock rose above $20.24 – the high from August 1 – on Friday as the artificial intelligence (AI) company attempts to finish off its third straight week of gains. This is the highest level that PLTR stock has traded at since November 2021.
The broad market opened slightly lower as the market digests Thursday’s pullback and consolidates within the significant gains achieved on Tuesday and Wednesday. All three indices – the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ Composite – are down less than 0.1% at the time of writing.
Palantir stock news
Much of the news surrounding Palantir at the moment stems from hedge funds and family offices filing their 13Fs for the third quarter with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) this week. PLTR stock is a common holding of many of them.
Most notably, Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel’s Mithril venture capital fund sold $48 million worth of Palantir stock in the third quarter, which ended in September. The shares were acquired about a decade ago.
Coatue Management, run by Philippe Laffont, purchased a new position in Palantir. The hedge fund bought just under 894,000 shares of the AI platform company. This is more notable since Coatue trimmed stakes in nearly all of the Magnificent 7 stocks except Meta Platforms (META).
On Monday, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives chose Palantir stock as one of his top picks for 2024 as he predicted that AI and cloud spending will rise more than 20% next year.
“We believe the new tech bull market has now begun and tech stocks are set up for a strong 2024 as the AI spending tidal wave hits the shores of the broader tech sector.”
Ives has reiterated his $25 price target on Palantir stock several times since July, but the analyst has chosen Apple (AAPL) stock as his top pick heading into the new year.
S&P 500 FAQs
The S&P 500 is a widely followed stock price index which measures the performance of 500 publicly owned companies, and is seen as a broad measure of the US stock market. Each company’s influence on the computation of the index is weighted based on market capitalization. This is calculated by multiplying the number of publicly traded shares of the company by the share price. The S&P 500 index has achieved impressive returns – $1.00 invested in 1970 would have yielded a return of almost $192.00 in 2022. The average annual return since its inception in 1957 has been 11.9%.
Companies are selected by committee, unlike some other indexes where they are included based on set rules. Still, they must meet certain eligibility criteria, the most important of which is market capitalization, which must be greater than or equal to $12.7 billion. Other criteria include liquidity, domicile, public float, sector, financial viability, length of time publicly traded, and representation of the industries in the economy of the United States. The nine largest companies in the index account for 27.8% of the market capitalization of the index.
There are a number of ways to trade the S&P 500. Most retail brokers and spread betting platforms allow traders to use Contracts for Difference (CFD) to place bets on the direction of the price. In addition, that can buy into Index, Mutual and Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) that track the price of the S&P 500. The most liquid of the ETFs is State Street Corporation’s SPY. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) offers futures contracts in the index and the Chicago Board of Options (CMOE) offers options as well as ETFs, inverse ETFs and leveraged ETFs.
Many different factors drive the S&P 500 but mainly it is the aggregate performance of the component companies revealed in their quarterly and annual company earnings reports. US and global macroeconomic data also contributes as it impacts on investor sentiment, which if positive drives gains. The level of interest rates, set by the Federal Reserve (Fed), also influences the S&P 500 as it affects the cost of credit, on which many corporations are heavily reliant. Therefore, inflation can be a major driver as well as other metrics which impact the Fed decisions.
Palantir stock forecast
Palantir has just barely marked a new two-year high on Friday. The stock has risen as high as $20.34 at the time of writing, 10 cents above the August 1 high of $20.24 and its highest value in two years.
There is no telling how far Palantir stock could rise in the present rally. The 161.8% Fibonacci Extension (not pictured) provides a reading of $22.18 though. The 9-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) is strongly leading its 21-day SMA counterpart, as would be expected in a rally of this type.
Support rests nearby at $18, a level that has been used as both resistance and support since the summer.
PLTR daily chart