The stock market experienced some turmoil on Tuesday, and the Nasdaq Compound (NASDAQINDEX: ^ IXIC) he found himself giving up some of his recent earnings. After starting the day off sharply, the Nasdaq fell about 0.1% just before 1 pm EST.
Nasdaq investors expect 2021 to be able to continue the strong gains that 2020 has produced. In some cases, the actions that proved to perform best in 2020 were surprising. Still, many believe that the same factors that pushed some major stocks up last year are likely to persist into the new year, which is why their stock prices are rising again on Tuesday. Below, we’ll take a closer look at what’s sending shares of Etsy (NASDAQ: ETSY) and Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) up today.
Manufacturing success
Etsy’s shares quadrupled in 2020, making it one of the biggest winners in the market and qualifying it to join the prestigious Nasdaq-100 Index. Etsy’s success resulted from the ability of the arts and crafts-based e-commerce platform provider to help artists and home craftsmen extract part of the income from their work, even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, Etsy has risen another 13%, based on Monday’s earnings. Yesterday’s performance resulted from a positive call from stock analysts in Jefferies, which repeated its purchase rating from the company and raised the target price of Etsy’s shares to $ 205 per share. This represented an increase of $ 37 per share over the previous guidance.
Image source: Getty Images.
Etsy saw extremely good levels of business during the holiday season, with website traffic almost doubling. This is consistent with the extremely rapid growth rate in sales that Etsy reported in the first three quarters of last year.
The big question is whether Etsy will continue to grow when the COVID-19 pandemic is controlled. This is uncertain, but Etsy has become popular and buyers will not forget the site in the near future. As long as vendors using the Etsy platform continue to present innovative products that attract customers, Etsy must continue to profit.
Do you buy Baidu?
Baidu’s shares rose 9% on Tuesday afternoon. This move follows gains of more than 70% in 2020, when the Chinese search engine giant has recovered from some difficult years.
The most recent gains stem from Baidu’s decision to enter the extremely popular electric vehicle market. Many companies have set foot in the EV space, including the biggest tech players, as well as new emerging companies with high hopes and an entrepreneurial outlook. China, in particular, has been a focus of activity in the EV industry, as companies like NIO (NYSE: NIO) seek to retain foreign competitors as Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) in the bay.
But Baidu’s increase of more than 70% in 2020 came largely from the recognition that Chinese Internet gambling had become underestimated. Even with its American counterparts at Big Tech skyrocketing huge profit multiples, Baidu’s stock price was quite reasonable. For much of the year, stocks remained stagnant, even amid a boom in other technology stocks around the world. Only at the end of the year did Baidu really start to stand out.
Even after its big gains, Baidu still boasts an assessment that is not ridiculously rich. This gives investors the hope that stocks will continue to rise until 2021 and beyond.