BABA Stock Price: Alibaba edges higher as investors move on from cloud software bug

NYSE:BABA managed to close out the week in the green as Santa paid a visit to the struggling Chinese tech giant a couple days early. Shares of BABA gained 0.72% on Thursday and closed the trading day at $118.66. The stock has been under heavy pressure as it sinks back down towards its 52-week low price of $108.70. US markets entered the Christmas break on a bullish note as all three major indices climbed higher for the third straight session. In particular, the tech-heavy NASDAQ led the major indices with a gain of 0.85%, while the S&P 500 closed at a record high as investors shrugged off the recent fears of the Omicron variant.

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AliBaba made some headlines earlier this week when the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology suspended its use of AliBaba’s cloud services platform. The resulting software bug was found by a third party user and not by AliBaba itself. On Thursday, AliBaba admitted it was slow to act on the software glitch that has cost them a government partnership. The bug is just another in a series of issues between the Chinese government and AliBaba in 2021 that has severely fractured the relationship between the two sides.

BABA forecast

One of AliBaba’s closest domestic rivals, JD.Com (NASDAQ:JD) received some disappointing news on Thursday. The company is losing one of its earliest investors: the Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent. It was reported that Tencent will be distributing 86% of its shares of JD.Com to Tencent shareholders as a special dividend. Tencent will also unlikely be providing further capital to JD.Com in the future, as Tencent stated it is more interested in helping startup companies. Shares of JD.Com fell by 6.92% on Thursday.

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