What Sparked Heavy After-Hours Trading In These 5 Stocks?

U.S. stocks extended their slide on Wednesday as the market continued to digest recent gains, with lukewarm reception to the Treasury’s five-year note auction serving as a downside trigger. That said, reflecting the market’s resilience, the pullback was only modest.

Among sectors, energy, consumer, and utility stocks advanced, helping to offset much of the weakness seen in the remaining 11 S&P 500 sector classes. Small-caps underperformed their larger-cap counterparts amid a rise in bond yields. 

Amid the consolidation phase the market is going through, the following stocks saw brisk trading activity in the extended session:

Micron Corp. (MU)

After-hours move: -0.75%

Trading volume: 6 million

Memory chipmaker Micron’s stock fell nearly 3% in Wednesday’s regular session despite its better-than-expected results and positive guidance. The investor pessimism came despite the stock snagging an upgrade to ‘Outperform’ from KGI Securities and multiple price target hikes, according to summaries of research reports published by the Fly. The new price targets ranged from $180 to $250.

Deepwater Asset Management Managing Partner Gene Munster suggested that the negative reaction may be due to the slightly slower revenue growth the company forecast for the current quarter, and the market already factoring in the outperformance following last month’s positive preannouncement.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment toward the stock remained ‘extremely bullish’ (90/100) as of late Wednesday and the message volume was at ‘extremely high’ levels.

Micron’s stock has gained nearly 93% year-to-date (YTD).

Nvidia Corp. (NVDA)

After-hours move: -0.25%

Trading volume: 5.93 million

Nvidia’s stock fell for a second straight day and retreated further in the after-hours session amid the profit-taking seen in the tech space following recent outperformance. The retreat came despite a Bloomberg report suggesting the Chinese e-commerce giant planned to integrate Nvidia’s AI tools in its cloud software platform.

Retail sentiment toward Nvidia’s stock remained ‘bullish’ (56/100), but the message volume reduced to ‘low’ levels.

For the YTD, the stock has added nearly 32%.

Intel Corp. (INTC)

After-hours move: +2.21%

Trading volume: 10.22 million

Intel came onto traders’ radar amid the stock’s 6.4% rally in Wednesday’s regular session following rumors that the struggling chipmaker had approached Apple (AAPL) regarding a potential investment. If a deal is struck in this regard, it would build on investments by SoftBank (SFTBY), the U.S. government, and Nvidia.

The Bloomberg report, which cited people familiar with the matter, also said Intel has been in discussions with other companies as well. 

Retail sentiment toward the Intel stock tempered slightly to ‘bullish’ (72/100) as of late Wednesday from ‘extremely bullish’ a day ago. The message volume on the stream was ‘high.’

Amazon, Inc. (AMZN)

After-hours move: +0.27%

Trading volume: 4.0 million

Amazon’s stock received the attention of traders after Wells Fargo upgraded it. According to The Fly, the research firm upgraded the e-commerce giant’s stock to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ and increased the price target to $280 from $245, implying an 11% upside potential from the last close.

Wells Fargo cited optimism over Amazon’s AWS cloud business, as it forecast the division’s sales rising 22% in 2026, four points more than the consensus. AWS will likely benefit from Project Rainer, Amazon’s compute capacity built with Anthropic, the firm said.

Amazon stock, which is up merely 0.4% YTD, elicited ‘extremely bullish’ sentiment from among retail traders on the Stocktwits platform, with the buoyant mood accompanied by ‘extremely high’ message volumes.

Hertz Global Inc. (HTZ)

After-hours move: +8.96%

Trading volume: 3.76 million

Vehicle rental company Hertz Global’s stock rallied nearly 9% in the after-hours after a mere 0.14% gain in the regular session. The after-hours strength was in response to the company’s announcement regarding a $250 million exchangeable note offering to raise proceeds for the refinancing of its existing debt.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment toward the stock improved to ‘bullish’ from ‘neutral’ and the message volume picked up pace to ‘high’ levels.

The stock has gained 90% YTD.

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