The Week's Top Stories is a guided tour through the biggest market stories of the week, from winning stocks to brutal dips to the facts and forecasts generating buzz on Wall Street.
KROGER'S CLOSURES
Kroger and Albertson's are moving closer to merging with news that they'll be selling 400 stores and a number of brands to C&S Wholesale Grocers, with several hundred more shops on the table down the line. This deal is worth about $1.9 billion and Kroger will be buying Albertson for $20 billion plus debt. Meanwhile, Kroger also announced in its latest earnings report that it'll take a $1.4 billion charge as part of an opioid settlement. Initially stocks dropped, but quickly rebounded to end Friday up 3 percent and wrap up the week in the black.
APPLE VS. CHINA
Apple stock dropped this week after reports that China banned government officials from using iPhones and phones from foreign brands. China did not confirm the reports, but investors were spooked since the country is a major market for Apple. The company's stock was down 6 percent this week, although fortunes could change in just a few days; Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 15 on Tuesday.
ROKU LAYOFFS
Roku shares are going up, but that isn't enough for about 360 people to keep their jobs. The streaming giant announced it will be cutting about 10 percent of its workforce to try and end a series of quarterly losses. The company began landing in the red after plenty of success during the Covid-era. Investors haven't seemed too concerned this year - the stock has doubled since the beginning of the year.
QANTAS CEO DEPARTS
The head of Qantas Airways announced he will be bumping up his retirement date after a series of damaging revelations about the company came to light. After 22 years with the company - 15 of them at the helm - Chief Executive Alan Joyce stepped down on Tuesday, two months earlier than planned. Among the issues making headlines recently was that the airline sold tickets on more than 8,000 flights after they had already been canceled, and failed to tell passengers in a timely manner that they would have to buy new tickets. We all know that the closer you get to your travel date, the more you have to pay, so customers were clearly outraged. The stock dropped 4 percent on the news Tuesday.
WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY CUTS OUTLOOK
The ongoing Hollywood actors and writers strikes are having an impact. This week Warner Bros. Discovery cut its outlook for the rest of the year and announced it could be on the hook for half a billion dollars because of the walkouts. The media giant owns a lot of household names in the entertainment industry, like HBO, TNT, and DC Comics, so the losses are great. The stock closed the week dow more than 11 percent.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
