Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading. Trump Media & Technology — The stock fell more than 13% following Tuesday’s debate between majority shareholder former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. On Wednesday, Trump Media hit its lowest intraday level since going public on the Nasdaq in late March. Rentokil Initial — Shares plunged more than 20% after the pest control company announced it’s expecting second-half organic sales growth for North America to slow to around 1%. GameStop — The meme stock tanked more than 15% after the video game retailer reported a steep decline in second quarter sales compared to the year-ago period. GameStop also announced an “at-the-market” stock offering of up to 20 million shares. Novartis — U.S.-listed shares of the Swiss pharma company slipped nearly 2% on the heels of Bank of America’s downgrade to hold from buy. The bank said it sees few growth drivers on the horizon. Viking Therapeutics — Shares advanced more than 7% after JPMorgan initiated coverage of the biotech company at an overweight rating. The bank listed an upcoming data readout in November as a positive catalyst for Viking Therapeutics, which competes in the GLP-1 space. Crypto stocks — Crypto stocks were dragged downward after the price of bitcoin fell slightly overnight, as crypto traders considered central bank policy in Japan . Shares of Coinbase and MicroStrategy respectively slipped 2% and 1%. Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms declined nearly 2%. Morgan Stanley — The bank stock lost 1% following a downgrade at Goldman Sachs to neutral from buy. Goldman cited Morgan Stanley’s expensive valuation versus its peers as a reason for the downgrade. Bank of America — The stock slipped 2% after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway revealed in a filing Tuesday it sold more shares of the bank , reducing its stake to 11%. The latest sales totaled 5.8 million shares and were conducted Friday, Monday and Tuesday. That brings Berkshire’s total sales to more than $7 billion since mid-July. Solar stocks — Solar stocks rose as a group after Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance at Tuesday’s debate raised confidence in a Democratic victory at the U.S. presidential election. The Invesco Solar ETF (TAN) jumped 5%, while the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ICLN) rose 2.6%. Shares of First Solar were higher by more than 11%, while shares of SolarEdge Technology gained more than 5%. Sunnova Energy shares jumped nearly 5%. Sunrun shares advanced 8%. — CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Michelle Fox, Alex Harring, Yun Li, Sarah Min and Samantha Subin contributed reporting.
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