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

Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday January 2nd, I'm your host Kim Kahn. Our top story so far.

Apple, Microsoft, and a host of other tech stocks are likely to help boost the NASDAQ composite to hit 20,000 according to Wedbush securities. Tech analyst Dan Ives says,

while we can see ebbs and flows in the coming months given fed jawboning slash macro factors,

we believe tech stocks will be up 25% in 2024 with

the Nasdike 20,000 level our bull case scenario as the street is still

significantly underestimating how quickly this AI monetization cycle is playing out among

enterprises in the field. Ives listed Apple, Microsoft, Google, Palo Alto and Networks, Palantier, Z-Scaler, Cyber Arc, Crowd Strike, and Mongo

DB as his favorite text stocks for 2024.

He added recent channel checks at the end of the fourth quarter, shared that AI monetization

has started to positively impact the broader tech sector, as companies like

Invidia, Microsoft, Google, Data Dogg, and Palantier have all demonstrated multiplying use cases in both the enterprise and consumer landscapes.

But on the flip side, Apple caught a downgrade from Barclays amid concerns over its hardware business, including the iPhone 15. Analysts Timothy Long lowered his rating on Apple to underweight from equal weight, pointing out that sales for the iPhone 15 line unveiled in September have been

uninspired. Long, who was also cut his price target to $160, does not expect much

from the iPhone 16 line, widely expected to be released in the fall of this year.

In addition, he said there's been a lack of bounce back from the Macs, iPads, and wearable business lines.

Apple introduced new Max Max along with its new

M3 processors in October and several new Max last January. In today's trading

Wall Street is kicking off the new year in the opposite fashion of

2023. Tech stocks are stumbling while Treasury yields are gaining. The

Nasnet composite trails the major averages down more than 1%. The 10-year

Treasury yield is back above 3.9%. On the economic front,

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