Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon, today is Thursday, January 18th, and I'm your host Kim Khan. Our top story so far.

Electric vehicle battery charging stocks are in focus. The US Transportation Department

said it is awarding $148.8 million for projects in 20 states

to repair or replace nearly 4,500 existing EV charging ports.

The overall goal is to aggressively expand the nationwide network of chargers to 500,000 by 2030, which include high-speed charges no more than 50 miles apart on key highways. Federal Highway Administrator

Shelan Bot told Reuters the goal is to help frustrated owners who find

chargers out of service saying we know there's going to be more demand for

the technology

we anticipate reliability being less of an issue going forward.

The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program

requires states to operate federally funded charging ports

for at least five years with the

charging ports working at least 97% of the time. Among EV charged stocks are

blink charging, charge point holdings, and. Go. In today's trading, stocks are mixed with growth and tech strongly outperforming thanks mainly to Apple.

B of A upgraded Apple to buy from Neutral, arguing that AI and Vision Pro are drivers for

upside to hardware and services. Analysts raise the price target to 225 from

2008 and note Apple remains under weight on the buy side versus the S&P and anticipation of AI features could prompt institutional investors to increase positions.

The NASDAQ is up about 1% leading the S&P where Infotech is the best performing sector by far.

The Dow, dragged down by a point decline in United Health that came in sympathy with Humana counting its outlook is lower.

Humana revises annual profit outlook, citing higher than expected medical costs.

The company now expects 2609 and adjusted earnings per share for the year ended December 31st, 2023 compared to previous

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